America is a big country where they like big books. This one is a blockbuster both in physical terms and in its intellectual range and sweep. It has been aptly described as a "non-fiction War and Peace".
It is a work of remarkable ambition and encyclopaedic scope, drawing on the author's considerable erudition and experience in law, politics and literature.
In an age of specialism gone mad, the grand survey is a rare phenomenon. Philip Bobbitt is a professor of constitutional law in his native Texas and a former research fellow at Oxford. In the American way, he has had a dual career in academic and political life, holding quite senior positions with Democratic and Republican administrations, including Director of Intelligence at the National Security Council. Fittingly for a commentator on globalisation, he lives in three places: Austin (Texas), Washington and London.
The title highlights the connection between warmaking and culture. The book starts with 200 lines from The Iliad describing how the shield of the warrior Achilles was forged by the armourer of the gods, to depict battles, naturally, but also religious ceremonies, weddings, sports, farming, dance and the law. The Shield of Achilles is also the title of a 1955 poem by W.H. Auden, contrasting these scenes with accounts of 20th-century executions, concentration camps and refugees. Bobbitt's point is that, without war there might not be peace.
His opinions are controversial. Part of his basic thesis is that war, like death, is unavoidable, the question being what type of war we face. As part of preventing a cataclysmic conflict, it will be necessary to engage in other wars on a lesser scale. Otherwise, the author believes, mankind could be facing a tragedy without precedent in history. He approves of ad hoc coalitions such as the current alliance against terrorism.
Bobbitt examines how the modern state originated as a response to revolutionary changes in warmaking and has reinvented itself in constitutional terms from time to time as fresh technological advances brought new and more efficient military methods. Constitutional changes in turn have also revolutionised warfare.
In the century just gone, rather than two separate world wars followed by the Cold War, he sees them as three phases of a single "Long War". It took an entire epoch, in the Bobbitt version, to decide which form of the nation-state would achieve general legitimacy: German fascism, Soviet communism or Anglo-American liberal democracy.
The parliamentary model finally won, with the collapse of the Berlin Wall. But instead of universal peace and harmony, another age of fear and loathing began. Enter the new breed of international terrorist, with simple weapons, such as the Stanley knives of September 11th, and fanatical plans. Sometimes the fanatic may be at the helm of a "rogue state", wielding nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, or a combination thereof.
Bobbitt argues that the entire nation-state system is being delegitimised because it cannot guarantee the safety of its citizens from terrorism, weapons of mass destruction or non-military perils with no respect for borders such as mass immigration, an incurable virus or global warming. Ironically the dominant, perhaps the only, world superpower is the biggest target.
The political philosopher Thomas Hobbes called the state "That Mortal God - our peace and defence" but Bobbitt sees the traditional nation-state being replaced by the "market-state" which derives its legitimacy from maximising economic opportunity for its citizens in a free market, rather than securing their welfare. It sounds more like Boston than Berlin, more the unfettered capitalist model beloved of American industrialists than the welfare model favoured by European social democrats. But on this side of the Atlantic, Mrs Thatcher was one of the midwives to this new form of state with her clarion-cry, "There is no such thing as society".
Bobbitt explains that the age is passing when only states could wage wars. Indeed we have seen on September 11th how 19 hijackers could bring a great republic to its knees. Since it may be very difficult to identify the source of the attack, defence based on nuclear deterrence and retaliation is undermined.
IN the course of his historical ruminations, Bobbitt challenges the notion that the nuclear attack on Hiroshima in 1945, or at least the second bomb over Nagasaki, was unnecessary. On the contemporary scene, he opposes US ratification of the International Criminal Court because of what he sees as America's unique role in ensuring world security.
While admiring the author's determination, in Mathew Arnold's phrase, to see the world steadily and whole, one is left with a disturbing sense of untrammelled American power policing the bad boys and girls of the world at the head of the latest "coalition of the willing". It's Wyatt Earp at the head of a posse, although sometimes posses are needed. The author does not see the United Nations as an effective alternative and it is true that the UN's performance on the ground often leaves a great deal to be desired. His book is thought-provoking but many will be reluctant to abandon the notion that a modernised UN may yet be the vehicle for achieving world peace and stability.
Deaglán de Bréadún's The Far Side of Revenge: Making Peace in Northern Ireland is published by Collins Press. He is the Foreign Affairs Correspondent of the Irish Times.