THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES (135 page)

The onslaughts in the autumn of 2001 on a warm, summerlike day on the East Coast of the United States are both the herald of further savagery and the call for defenses that, if they are sustained, offer the world's best hope of avoiding a world-rending cataclysm. States that otherwise might find themselves in a violent competition can take this opportunity to cooperate in a new security structure. States that otherwise have little in common in their foreign policies have this in common: all are subject to attacks by a virtual state because a virtual state is the neighbor of all. States whose relations with the United States have been fraught in the past could now become valuable partners; states whose relations with the United States have been warm and trusted can be even more relied upon for their counsel now that our fates are more closely bound together.

The foregoing book was completed well before September 11, but the terrible events of that day were not unexpected or even unprecedented, as the text of this book discloses. Rather one had hoped that we might be spared a little longer. If those horrors inspire us now to deal realistically and creatively with the threats we face, then the sacrifice of innocents on that day may yet yield a stronger and more resilient society of the survivors. In thinking about the past, we will remember our dead, and secure the future for which they died.

We are entering a fearful time, a time that will call on all our resources, moral as well as intellectual and material. It is not unlike periods in the past when there was “a sense of anticipation, a sense of conflict, a sense of dread, a sense of the unknown.”
*
As I write this, the world is in a mood of apprehension because many had expected that by this time other horrors would have been inflicted upon us, yet for a while little has happened. In a similar period, after the invasion of Poland but before the battles of France and Britain, King George VI spoke to his country in a radio broadcast. He spoke of the “hard… waiting, [that] waiting is a trial of nerve and discipline.” Finally he warned of the “dark times ahead of us.”

A new year is at hand. We cannot tell what it will bring. If it brings peace, how thankful we shall all be. If it brings us continued struggle we shall remain undaunted. In the meantime, I feel that we may all find a message of encouragement in the lines which, in my closing words, I would like to say to you:

May that Almighty Hand guide and uphold us all.
*

Philip Bobbitt

December 13, 2001

Perhaps these thoughts of ours

will never find an audience

Perhaps the mistaken road

will end in a mistake

Perhaps the lamps we light one at a time

will be blown out, one at a time

Perhaps the candles of our lives will gutter out

without lighting a fire to warm us
.

Perhaps when all the tears have been shed

the earth will be more ertile

Perhaps when we sing praises to the sun

the sun will praise us in return

Perhaps these heavy burdens

will strengthen our philosophy

Perhaps when we weep for those in misery

we must be silent about miseries of our own.

Perhas

Because of our irresistible sense of mission

We have no choice.

—Shu Ting

(translated by Carolyn Kizer)

I should like to append three notes in order to dispel—or at least to mitigate—the natural concerns of readers undertaking arguments and theses that are presented in the way I have chosen.

As Steven Weinberg has thoughtfully pointed out to me in a letter, although I say that the Crimean War was the most deadly of any from 1815 to 1914, the Tai Ping Rebellion in China killed ten times as many people. Indeed throughout the historical discussion of constitutional forms, I concentrate almost entirely—until the twentieth century—on European examples. Similarly, although gunpowder was invented in Asia and conscription by force took place in tribal Africa, my discussion of strategic innovations is also confined to Europe, at least in the initial periods.

The reason for this is the State is a European political idea. The society of states first emerged in Europe at the time of the Renaissance and only in the late twentieth century encompassed the globe. The military and strategic innovations relevant to its development occurred in Europe and in those theatres of war with which European states were concerned. It has been suggested that it was the sheer bellicosity of Europe that accounted for its domination of the world political order. Without going so far, I will simply say that the exploitation of strategic innovation was certainly given impetus by the intense political competition among states, and vice versa. As a result, the forms of government developed in Europe were well situated to compete with other forms in the Americas and in Africa and Asia.

In this work I have described a recurring pattern: long periods of over a century in which the international order of states is stable, broken by an
abrupt shift to epochal war that puts the constitutional basis of the warning states in play, followed by the renovation of the international order as states copy the constitutional order of the winning states, and the ratification of this new order by international congresses of peace. I have traced these patterns from the Renaissance into the twenty-first century. But I do not believe that I have discovered an historical law of general application.

Far from it. Rather I believe that at each juncture, things might have gone differently. It is the decisions of those persons who guide the State that determine whether stability or innovation will ensue. True, these deci-sions are confined by the “genetic material” of the State: its culture and resources. But within these constraints many real choices are possible with respect to the two dominant, mutually affecting dimensions of the State, law and strategy. The society of states we have today has been brought into being by countless acts of decision making that were not compelled by larger structures, but rather that constituted those structures. It is precisely because these choices could have been different that legitimacy is conferred—or withdrawn—by their outcome. History is the name we put to choices made.

I came across this manifesto by Rey Koslowski and Friedrich Kratochwil that seems to me very largely right on this issue. They write:

Causes of war will vary with particularity, owing to the local historical context, and yet will also be, very broadly, the same as ever. My claim is that the strategic innovations that prove decisive in epochal wars (most recently, the advances in international telecommunications, rapid computation, and weapons of mass destruction that won the Long War) interact with the struggle over the constitutional order (most recently, as the decaying nation-state is superseded by the emerging market-state), creating new forms of government (for example, the virtual, multinational nonterritorial regime, like the terrorist Al Qaeda) and new tactics (such as asymmetrical
warfare using the latest communications technology, cartel-like coalitions, daring weapons of mass destruction that match the lucrative targets amassed by the market-state, like the World Trade Center towers, with manned cruise missiles such as fuel-fire commercial airliners).

War is inevitable not because of this interaction but because of the nature of the State, which operationalizes and magnifies a group's ability to wage conflict, and the nature of man in groups. Given that wars will occur, this historical interaction—more descriptive than causal—can manifest itself in many different events. This is a matter of human agency. Epochal wars could be great power cataclysms, or coalitional low-intensity conflicts, or high-technology nonexplosive attacks that induce economic and social collapse. This book tries to help us make choices, not forecasts.

The periods I describe, and the forms of government to which they are attached, are given sharper edges than might otherwise be the case were my perspective less lengthened. But like the black border on a hemline in a Sargent painting that dissipates into streaks and then into disconnected islands of paint as one approaches the canvas more closely, my categories are composed of many disparate elements that are drawn together by my vision of their purpose.

In the states we have studied, each period is typified by great constitutional forms—princely, kingly, territorial, imperial, national—whose elements include bureaucratic establishments, the expectations of citizens as to what the State is for, the views of those citizens and of foreigners of the source of the State's legitimacy, the State's role in transnational institutions, and other matters. Like the traits shared by a family, many mixtures are possible and it may be that no single state shares with another every single element of its form. Moreover, in any period there are members of the society of states who typify earlier periods, some that are in transition, and some that are evidence of a new, challenging form.

For these reasons, it may appear that I am trying to shoehorn a complicated history into a rigid taxonomy. Sophisticated readers may find their minds flooded with counterexamples as they proceed through the historical/analytical parts of the narrative.

Indeed I am quite aware of this reaction; I tend to be a skeptical reader myself, one who suspends counterargument with difficulty. My only defense, if such it be, is this: if my general characterizations are useful, and if the reader finds himself adding examples to those periods and forms I have described, then I will feel my rather arbitrary constructions have been worthwhile. If not, I invite amendment.

1
. As Max Weber observed, the “medieval knights made feudal social organization inevitable; then its displacement by mercenary armies and later (beginning with Maurice of Orange) by disciplined troops led to the establishment of the modern State.” Max Weber,
Economy and Society
(University of California Press, 1978), 904 – 908. It is also to Weber that we owe the idea that the State seeks a monopoly on legitimate violence. Max Weber, “Politics as Vocation,” in
Essays in Sociology
, ed. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (Routledge, 1970), 77 – 78.

2
. Frederick Turner,
Natural Classicism: Essays on Literature and Science
(Paragon House, 1985) and
The Culture of Hope: A New Birth of the Classical Spirit
(New York: Free Press, 1995).

1
. Cf.
La Pietra Report
(2000), which affirms national histories, but of a very different kind. “Instead of assuming the nation to be the “natural” unit of historical analysis, it acknowledges a variety of relevant and interrelated geographical units of history. It urges not only the exploration of the different historical forces, including transnational ones, that made and sustained the nation and national identities but also the importance, always changing, of the nation in relation to other social units, from the town, to the transnational region, to solidarity with all peoples of color, to international corporations.” Thomas Bender, “Writing National History in a Global Age,”
Correspondence: An International Review of Culture and Society
, no. 7 (Winter 2000/2001): 14.

2
. Hans Kelsen,
General Theory of Law and State
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1945).

3
. John Austin,
Province of Jurisprudence Determined
(Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1995 [1832]).

4
. Niccolò Machiavelli,
The Prince
, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. (University of Chicago Press, 1985).