Type of bind: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 960
Printing Date: May 14, 2002
Publishing house: Knopf
Release Date: May 14, 2002
Sale Popularity Level: 580447
Studio: Knopf
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'We are at a moment in world affairs when the essential ideas that govern statecraft must change. For five centuries it has taken the resources of a state to destroy another state . . . This is no longer true, owing to advances in international telecommunications, rapid computation, and weapons of mass destruction. The change in statecraft that will accompany these developments will be as profound as any that the State has thus far undergone.'
—from the Prologue
The Shield of Achilles is a classic inquiry into the nature of the State, its origin in war, and its drive for peace and legitimacy. Philip Bobbitt, a professor of constitutional law and a historian of nuclear strategy, has served in the White House, the Senate, the State Department, and the National Security Council in both Democratic and Republican administrations, and here he brings his formidable experience and analytical gifts to bear on our changing world. Many have observed that the nation-state is dying, yet others have noted that the power of the State has never been greater. Bobbitt reconciles this paradox and introduces the idea of the market-state, which is already replacing its predecessor. Along the way he treats such themes as the Long War (which began in 1914 and ended in 1990). He explains the relation of violence to legitimacy, and the role of key individuals in fates that are partially—but only partially—determined.
This book anticipates the coalitional war against terrorism and lays out alternative futures for the world. Bobbitt shows how nations might avoid the great power confrontations that have a potential for limitless destruction, and he traces the origin and evolution of the State to such wars and the peace conferences that forged their outcomes into law, from Augsburg to Westphalia to Utrecht to Vienna to Versailles.
The author paints a powerful portrait of the ever-changing interrelatedness of our world, and he uses his expertise in law and strategy to discern the paths that statehood will follow in the coming years and decades. Timely and perceptive, The Shield of Achilles will change the way we think about the world.
Amazon.com Review:
The scope of Philip Bobbitt's The Shield of Achilles is breathtaking: the interplay, over the last six centuries, among war, jurisprudence, and the reshaping of countries ('states,' in Bobbitt's vocabulary). Bobbitt posits that certain wars should be deemed epochal--that is, seen as composed of many 'smaller' wars. For example, according to Bobbitt the epochal war of the 20th century began in 1914 and ended with the collapse of communism in 1990. These military affairs--and their subsequent 'ultimate' peace agreements--have caused, each in their own way, revolutionary reconstructions of the idea and actuality of statehood and, following, of relationships between these various new entities. Of these reconstructions (including the princely state, the kingly state, and the nation-state), Bobbitt is most interested in the current incarnation, which he calls the market-state: one whose borders are scuffed and hazy at best (certainly compared to earlier territorial markers) and whose strengths, weaknesses, citizens, and enemies roam across cyberspace rather than plains and valleys. The Shield of Achilles is massive, erudite, and demanding--at once highly abstract and extremely detailed. There is about it an air of detached erudition, one noticeably free of the easy 'decline and fall' hysteria too often present in contemporary historical analyses. --H. O'Billovich
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Rated by buyers 
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This is a sweeping view of history and international relations that is illuminating, seminal, unique. A whole college degree is social science, government, history, law and strategy put together.
Beautifully written.
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To call this a seminal work is an understatement. I believe Bobbitt began work on this book around 1993 and finished a few weeks after 9-11. Careful and deliberate scholarship...how often do you hear that today?
It is a brilliant on a number of levels: political theory, history, law, economics, and a touch of sociology. As the title suggests, it does, indeed, chart the course of history....describing the context for today's emerging global society.
This work has immensely practical implications for those interested in transnational threats. The very first three goals of good science are exquisitely accomplished - those of description, explanation, and prediction. As to the final goal - prescription - that is accomplished through various scenarios. And, I believe, done in a more than satisfactory manner.
I do, however, have an issue. And it's not with Bobbitt. I have consistently seen Bobbitt's ideas and theories elsewhere, emerging several years after the release of Achilles in works dealing with globalization, "the subsequent stage of terrorism" etc. If Bobbitt is mentioned, it is in passing; and he is never given full intellectual credit as his work is expropriated in a shameless manner.
Read Achilles. It is stimulating and provocative. It has longevity. You will revisit it on an ongoing basis.
Rated by buyers -
Philip Bobbitt is a constitutional law professor. Having gone to law school and a few dozen legal textbooks along the way, I felt right at "home" trudging through this beast of a book. It's a difficult read, there is no doubt.
For the person considering reading this book: be warned. This is not lowest common denominator drivel or faddish revisionist history. It is not sensationally written, nor is it even pleasant at times. But this book is way too cerebral to simply be called pedantic. It is crafted like a contract is carefully crafted. It is precise, thorough, and, if you can get going with the scholarly vocab and prose, riveting.
What this book is is a masterwork on the nature of the state -- what is is, how it functions and thrives, and how it dies. Bobbitt takes you through the history of the modern state since its beginnings in the Renaissance in Italy with the "princely state," how its bases of legitimacy have changed, and how law, history, and strategy have, and do mutually influence and shape each other, and the successfully innovative state along with them. The end is a look at "possible futures," three hypothetical approaches (most, there are no absolutes) states will take in their metamorphoses into market-states, mirroring the three approaches that fascism, parliamentarianism, and communism were to the nation-state. It pretty much predicts a lot of things becoming relevant to us only as mere glimmers on the horizon, such as whether we will choose to integrate the economies of Canada, the US, and Mexico, with a common currency, and also strategic issues, such as positing that the market-state, with its ostensible abandonment of society-wide total wars where entire populations fight other entire populations such as with the end of the "Long War" (basically the name of the wars of 1914-1990 as one continuous conflict of what form of nation-state would be triumphant, a central theme of the book), will find its elite states in those that most quickly eschew giant military infrastructure of tanks and aircraft carriers for resistance against, for example, information system and biological weapons attacks.
In a nutshell, this is a book that tells you how the world works, at least through one very qualified lens. The book leads up to, as Bobbitt maintains, the present, where we are transitioning to a new form of the state, the "market-state" (the US began as a "state-nation," was transformed into one of the earliest "nation-states" by the Civil War and the resulting 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution), with, as each state form before it, though they are contiguous and continuous, radically different bases of legitimacy, threats, and advantages.
Along the way, I got a giant dose of actual, factual history, like about the wars of the Balkans, which I didn't know much about, the real reason we entered World War I, which I always wondered about, and, interestingly, even cutting-edge political prognostication, foretelling stuff like the North American Union the US is in the process of entering right now. There was even the "Kitty Genovese Incident" that is a law school staple in criminal law classes being used as an incredibly apt metaphor for the paralysis of action leading to the slaughters in the former Yugoslav states. And it's all in there specifically to show you how the state functions and how it and history, law, and strategy transform each other.
If you don't want to be a know-nothing about history, you'd better read this book. Also, if you don't like it, please don't write a review that looks like you stopped to look in a thesaurus every five seconds. Philip Bobbitt will always be smarter than you, sorry. I'm not sure I like what he either predicts by his genius, or perhaps simply repeats from his inside view of the State Department and Council on Foreign Relations (I guess it's both), but the simple fact is this is one of the most scholarly, and easily the most insightful, book I have ever read. A banal description of evil? Perhaps. Indispensable? Also yes. It's right up there with "The Prince," though obviously not as uh, "concise," since, you know, "The Prince" is about 90 pages and this is about 820 pages.
Rated by buyers 
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.... and a little mouse is born. A flaccid bladder of utter banality inflated by the hot air of middle-brow legalism and obscurantist prose. No exploration of any depth or detail is carried out of the disruption wrought by a market-dependent way of life on the ecological, anthropological, cultural, social, political and psychological fibres that hold together the world's various societies, or on the fragility and volatility of the global market itself, which, of course, is portrayed as a fait accompli. Thus there is simply no contextual platform for the author's analysis, and, despite the standard air of portent, no clear picture of what law and militarism can or might actually do in the near future, and we are left non the wiser about what the course of history might actually BE. This work is fairly indicative of the mainstream American understanding of history; my advice is that they take a break from making it, or we are all in big trouble.
Rated by buyers -
Phillip Bobbitt has created something very rare in the realm of International Relations: an entirely unique new idea. For those students of history and current events who have grown accustomed to the accepted world views: Realism, Idealism - internationalism vs. isolationism; this new entry will provide a welcome and refreshing perspective.
Rather than defining international politics in the typical framework of the "balance of power", or that of a "bipolar" or "mulitpolar" world, Bobbitt has completely redefined the course of history with his thesis. He states the modern state has evolved through the course of history and taken many different forms, based on the demands and interplay (or history) of Strategy and Constitutional development.
These various forms of the state have had differing expectations demanded from their populaces, and differing relationships amongst themselves at the international level. Based on a field relationship between Strategy and Constitutionalism, different forms of the state have proven dominant at different periods of time. Developments in one arena will create new trends in another- and the interplay is constant. Currently Bobbitt makes the case that the current incarnation of the modern state, the Nation-State, is giving way to a new form which he has named the Market-State.
Bobbitt backs up his arguments well with an historical analysis of the modern state ranging from the Machiavellian Princely-State to the wars of the Nation-States and beyond. The entire book is very well documented with Primary and Secondary sources, which are indexed and included in a comprehensive bibliography.
There is also a very interesting section written on the "Possible Worlds" of tomorrow based on the ground rules laid down throughout the book. So Bobbitt not only comments on our past and present, but continues with speculation and predictions on the near term future. This gives the "Shield" very well rounded experience for its contemporary reader. What will be interesting is if this section stands the test of time. I also hope that Mr. Bobbitt comments on his theses in future editions and expands this particular section as history progresses.
The book is Mammoth, and would require a mammoth review to do it justice. So at the expense of thoroughness, and to save you a few minutes I will say this: "The Shield of Achilles" is a long read well worth your time and its arguments should be considered by any students or participants in the field of International Relations.
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