Editor Reviews:

Product Description:
"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

Rating : - The Heel of Achilles
The Shield of Achilles by Philip Bobbitt is both more and less than has been reviewed. It is more in the sense that it is more of a familiar argument advanced by the Republican right for less taxation, less regulation, more presidential authority, more privatization, and the like--and less public investment, less social expenditure on health, education, and infrastructure. Dressed up as deep philosophy and insightful history, The Shield is in fact a poor substitute for both. It is, in fact, closer to a screed than an academic monograph. Over and above the lack of primary sources, this book offers a subjective monocausal explanation for the transformation of constitutional change in Europe for the last 500 years as background to the deterministic constitutional transformation the United States is allegedly undergoing--from that of a nation state to that of a market state. As such, the author suggests, we must get used to a plethora of market changes that will make the US less a constitutional republic than a free market playground, with all of the unsavory qualities of a deregulated credit default swap. Methodologically, the book suffers from an inability to distinguish necessary from sufficient with respect to causation, thus conflating causation with the author's subjective desire to "prove" the unprovable: a general thesis for historical transformation which can then be applied deductively to predict the future course of American constitutional, social, political, economic, and economic behavior. No, this book is to be avoided by anyone interested in historical analysis, but may be eagerly read by those interested in political propaganda.