The Shield of Achilles is a very worthwhile read, but not because its conclusions wash. Reading a book like this, which, sarcasm aside, is a very intelligent production, is valuable more as an occasion for thought than as a historical TOE. What's vividly missing from the book is finally more important than what is in it. Bobbitt managed to write a 900-page book about the state, warfare, and politics without saying anything about who benefits and who loses. He is often very good about the what and the how of history but the question of who is absent without leave. Thus he manages to write about the contemporary situation at great length without noting that in America, at least, the disparity of wealth between the rich and poor is increasing markedly so that a regime supposedly dedicated to increasing opportunity is actually reducing opportunity for most people. He claims that the media are becoming more democratic when, in fact, five corporations control something like 80% of airtime. There is also no mention of the enormous growth of prisons in the U.S., a social fact that must have some relation to the author's thesis. More generally, Bobbitt writes about tendencies like deregulation or privatization as if the intentions of their promoters were irrelevant. It is also puzzling that Bobbitt seems to think that the transition from what he calls the nation state to the market state continues the Cold War triumph of democratic institutions when political participation rates and even the 2000 American election suggest that democracy is in general retreat.


Complex Interaction of War and Peace in Modeling States   May 16, 2005
 49 out of 50 found this review helpful

In "The Shield of Achilles," Philip Bobbitt has realized an impressive tour de force in studying in great detail the intimate interaction of law, strategy and history between 1494 and the contemporary era. Bobbitt correctly points out that there is no state without law, strategy and history because they complement and influence one another (p. 6). There can be a state only when the governing institutions of a society have an acknowledged monopoly on the legitimate use of violence at home (law) and abroad (strategy). History relates the account of the stewardship of a society over time that in turns influences law and strategy. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, Bobbitt convincingly shows that the history of the Modern State did not begin at Westphalia in 1648, but in the North of Modern Italy in 1494 (p. 805).

Bobbitt clearly demonstrates that the Modern State was put together when it proved necessary to create a constitutional order that could wage war more efficiently than the feudal and mercantile orders it replaced (p. xxv). Bobbitt spends most of his time covering the pattern of epochal wars and state formation, of peace congresses and international constitutions in Europe. The Modern State was indeed born and went through successive mutations in Europe before spreading to the rest of the world. Bobbitt gives his readers a nice pictorial representation of the six constitutional conventions of the international society of states at the end of Book I dedicated to the State of War (pp. 346-347). Book II focuses on the States of Peace.

To his credit, Bobbitt does not reduce war to a pathology that could one day be eradicated totally. War is as inevitable as death because the Modern State aims to be as efficient as possible to wage war when the opportunity arises to maximize its chance of survival and prosperity (pp. xxvii, 819). Contrary to the popular wisdom, Bobbitt rightly construes war not as the result of a decision made by an aggressor, but as the reaction of a state which cannot acquiesce to the legal and strategic demands of the aggressor (p. 8). Operation Iraqi Freedom is one of the most recent applications of this recurring observation.

Bobbitt also makes an interesting comparison between the assassination of Kitty Genovese occurring in New York in 1964 in the presence of multiple passive witnesses and the wide indifference of the international community to the plight of Bosnia for years in the early 1990s (pp. 411-467). The international community will find in this chapter a well-articulated argumentation for doing little or nothing in the naive or vain hope that such problems as the on-going genocide against certain groups of population in Darfur, Sudan will disappear as if by magic.

Furthermore, Bobbitt rightly draws the attention of his audience to the importance of the Peace of Paris of 1990 that ended what he called the Long War starting in 1914 (pp. 24-64, 609-663). The Peace of Paris celebrated the triumph of the parliamentary democracy as the winning nation-state model at the successive expense of fascism and communism. Bobbitt is probably at his weakest when he launches himself in scenario analysis about the future of the three competing constitutional forms of the market-state that is taking the place of the nation-state (pp. 717, 728). The international society of states has indeed the choice among the entrepreneurial market-state (e.g., the U.S.), the mercantile market-state (e.g., Japan and China) and the managerial market-state (e.g., the European Union) (pp. 670-676). Each incarnation of the market-state has its pros and cons.

As Bobbitt points out elsewhere in his book, Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda could be considered a fourth, malevolent version of the market-state that is a common threat to the other three versions (p. 820). For the first time since the birth of the Modern State, a state structure is no longer necessary to constitute a lethal threat to a society (p. 806). The market-states will have to cooperate with one another for example to contain WMD proliferation, cyber-terrorism against their critical infrastructure, which is increasingly privatized and internationalized, or environmental threats to the planet (pp. 785-797, 800, 806).

Bobbitt states that there is no certainty that the first three constitutional forms of the market-state can coexist peacefully (p. 781). Bobbitt enumerates the ten constitutional conditions that will facilitate the peaceful coexistence of market states (p. 802). Unlike the three constitutional forms of the Nation-State, i.e., parliamentary democracy, communism and fascism, the three constitutional forms of the Market-State could coexist peacefully in the long run. The members of the European Union will probably stick to their managerial model of the market-state because Europe was the theater of the bloody development of a highly competitive society of states for centuries. As the leading entrepreneurial market-state, the United States will remain the champion of globalization and push for the further opening of regional trading blocks and mercantile market states in the foreseeable future.

The greatest source of instability besides terrorism and rogue nations could eventually come from some mercantile market-states such as China and Russia. These two states have not yet fully embraced the tenets of Liberalism and are not satisfied with their military position in the world as Michael Mandelbaum correctly points out in "The Ideas that Conquered the World." In all scenarios, the United States will have to bear a disproportionate burden towards the maintenance of the society of market-states as long as it has the willingness and capability to assume its leadership role (p. 803).

To summarize, "The Shield of Achilles" clearly does not target readers who have a short attention span, do not acknowledge the importance of the past to peruse the future, lack persistence, or are interested in simplistic answers to complex issues.



verbose   July 6, 2003
 23 out of 33 found this review helpful

As a doctoral student in International Relations, with a Masters degree in Information Systems, I would like to make the following point to all my superiors: keep it simple.

This book of 800 pages could have been written in 200 pages. The ideas are interesting but, because the book lacks structure, finding them is like bobbing for apples.

The book, in fact, reads like some vast government report (reminding me of those old five-hour, Soviet-style speeches). Too bad, because there are some very sweet apples down below the water-line.

An excellent first draft; please edit and republish.


Great book on a complex subject   January 3, 2005
 22 out of 23 found this review helpful

I understand why so many people have found the book frustrating and too long. It is not a book (like Huntington's Civilizations) where the author simply makes claims on how the future will be. It is a detailed sutdy of the past, of how wars and more pmportantly peace agreements shaped history.

For those who complian about missing the point of the book, I somehow found it very simple. History of the European nation-states, right now the world's most accepted form of governence where the states take the power and legitimacy from its people, has arisen from constant interaction of military and legal innovations. The author goes to great lenght to justify the thesis and in my opinion is very convincing.

The only missing thing in the book is the omition of factors other than those directly related to the topic. Still, one cannot blame the author for keeping those factors out since it would make a book that many already complain is too long, even longer.

Huntington or Fukuyama's approach may seem more direct and understandable to many from the western part of the world, but professor Bobbit goes into great effort to show that history is not over yet, and that we should not expect a clash of civilizations, rather a clash of market states trying to maximize the opporutnites of its clients, sorry citizens.

I definitely reccomend it.


A Classic   September 8, 2002
 18 out of 21 found this review helpful

Those who take the time to wade through this book are in for quite a learning experience. Bobbitt's unique melding of strategy and constitutionalism offers deep insights into the nature of the international system and the future of American power. The chapter on the War in Bosnia - comparing the reaction of the great powers to that of Kitty Genovese's neighbors as she was being murdered in Queens, NY - is gut-wrenching and thought-provoking, and constitutes one of the most engrossing 50 pages that I have ever read. The choices that Bobbitt offers policy-makers are stark and of fundamental importantce - it is a shame that few will take the time to consider the long-term implications of their often hasty short-term decision-making.