The Iliad
(Book XVIII, lines 558 – 720)
And first Hephaestus makes a great and massive shield,
blazoning well-wrought emblems all across its surface,
raising a rim around it, glittering, triple-ply
with a silver shield-strap run from edge to edge
and five layers of metal to build the shield itself,
and across its vast expanse with all his craft and cunning
the god creates a world of gorgeous immortal work.
There he made the earth and there the sky and the sea
and the inexhaustible blazing sun and the moon rounding full
and there the constellations, all that crown the heavens,
the Pleiades and the Hyades, Orion in all his power too
and the Great Bear that mankind also calls the Wagon:
she wheels on her axis always fixed, watching Orion,
and she alone is denied a plunge in the Ocean's baths.
And he forged on the shield two noble cities filled
with mortal men. With weddings and wedding feasts in one
and under glowing torches they brought forth the brides
from the women's chambers, marching through the streets
while choir on choir the wedding song rose high
and the young men came dancing, whirling round in rings
and among them the flutes and harps kept up their stirring call —
women rushed to the doors and each stood moved with wonder.
And the people massed, streaming into the marketplace
where a quarrel had broken out and two men struggled
over the blood-price for a kinsman just murdered.
One declaimed in public, vowing payment in full—
the other spurned him, he would not take a thing—
so both men pressed for a judge to cut the knot.
The crowd cheered on both, they took both sides,
but heralds held them back as the city elders sat
on polished stone benches, forming the sacred circle,
grasping in hand the staffs of clear-voiced heralds,
and each leapt to his feet to plead the case in turn.
Two bars of solid gold shone on the ground before them,
a prize for the judge who'd speak the straightest verdict.
But circling the other city camped a divided army
gleaming in battle-gear, and two plans split their ranks:
to plunder the city or share the riches with its people,
hoards the handsome citadel stored within its depths.
But the people were not surrendering, not at all.
They armed for a raid, hoping to break the siege—
loving wives and innocent children standing guard
on the ramparts, flanked by elders bent with age
as men marched out to war. Ares and Pallas led them,
both burnished gold, gold the attire they donned, and great,
magnificent in their armor—gods for all the world,
looming up in their brilliance, towering over troops.
And once they reached the perfect spot for attack,
a watering place where all the herds collected,
there they crouched, wrapped in glowing bronze.
Detached from the ranks, two scouts took up their posts,
the eyes of the army waiting to spot a convoy,
the enemy's flocks and crook-horned cattle coming…
Come they did, quickly, two shepherds behind them,
playing their hearts out on their pipes—treachery
never crossed their minds. But the soldiers saw them,
rushed them, cut off at a stroke the herds of oxen
and sleek sheep-flocks glistening silver-gray
and killed the herdsmen too. Now the besiegers,
soon as they heard the uproar burst from the cattle
as they debated, huddled in council, mounted at once
behind their racing teams, rode hard to the rescue,
arrived at once, and lining up for assault
both armies battled it out along the river banks—
they raked each other with hurtling bronze-tipped spears:
And Strife and Havoc plunged in the fight, and violent Death—
now seizing a man alive with fresh wounds, now one unhurt,
now hauling a dead man through the slaughter by the heels,
the cloak on her back stained red with human blood.
So they clashed and fought like living, breathing men
grappling each other's corpses, dragging off the dead.
And he forged a fallow field, broad rich plowland
tilled for the third time, and across it crews of plowmen
wheeled their teams, driving them up and back and soon
as they'd reach the end-strip, moving into the turn,
a man would run up quickly
and hand them a cup of honeyed, mellow wine
as the crews would turn back down along the furrows,
pressing again to reach the end of the deep fallow field
and the earth churned black behind them, like earth churning,
solid gold as it was—that was the wonder of Hephaestus' work.
And he forged a king's estate where harvesters labored,
reaping the ripe grain, swinging their whetted scythes.
Some stalks fell in line with the reapers, row on row,
and others the sheaf-binders girded round with ropes,
three binders standing over the sheaves, behind them
boys gathering up the cut swaths, filling their arms,
supplying grain to the binders, endless bundles.
And there in the midst the king,
scepter in hand at the head of the reaping-rows,
stood tall in silence, rejoicing in his heart.
And off to the side, beneath a spreading oak,
the heralds were setting out the harvest feast,
they were dressing a great ox they had slaughtered,
while attendant women poured out barley, generous,
glistening handfuls strewn for the reapers' midday meal.
And he forged a thriving vineyard loaded with clusters,
bunches of lustrous grapes in gold, ripening deep purple
and climbing vines shot up on silver-vine poles.
And round it he cut a ditch in dark blue enamel
and round the ditch he staked a fence in tin.
And one lone footpath led toward the vineyard
and down it the pickers ran
whenever they went to strip the grapes at vintage—
girls and boys, their hearts leaping in innocence,
bearing away the sweet ripe fruit in wicker baskets.
And there among them a young boy plucked his lyre,
so clear it could break the heart with longing,
and what he sang was a dirge for the dying year,
lovely… his fine voice rising and falling low
as the rest followed, all together, frisking, singing,
shouting, their dancing footsteps beating out the time.
And he forged on the shield a herd of longhorn cattle,
working the bulls in beaten gold and tin, lowing loud
and rumbling out of the farmyard dung to pasture
along a rippling stream, along the swaying reeds.
And the golden drovers kept the herd in line,
Four in all with nine dos at their heels
their paws flickering quickly—a savage roar!—
a crashing attack—and a pair of ramping lions
had seized a bull from the cattle's front ranks—
he bellowed out as they dragged him off in agony.
Packs of dogs and the young herdsmen rushed to help
but the lions ripping open the hide of the huge bull
were gulping down the guts and the black pooling blood
while the herdsmen yelled the fast pack on—no use.
The hounds shrank from sinking teeth in the lions,
they balked, hunching close, barking, cringing away.
And the famous crippled Smith forged a meadow
deep in a shaded glen for shimmering flocks to graze,
with shepherds' steadings, well-roofed huts and sheepfolds.
And the crippled Smith brought all his art to bear
on a dancing circle, broad as the circle Daedalus
once laid out on Cnossos' spacious fields
for Ariadne the girl with lustrous hair.
Here young boys and girls, beauties courted
with costly gifts of oxen, danced and danced,
linking their arms, gripping each other's wrists.
And the girls wore robes of linen light and flowing,
the boys wore finespun tunics rubbed with a gloss of oil,
the girls were crowned with a bloom of fresh garlands,
the boys swung golden daggers hung on silver belts.
And now they would run in rings on their skilled feet,
nimbly, quick as a crouching potter spins his wheel,
palming it smoothly, giving it practice twirls
to see it run, and now they would run in rows,
in rows crisscrossing rows—rapturous dancing.
A breathless crowd stood round them struck with joy
and through them a pair of tumblers dashed and sprang,
whirling in leaping handsprings, leading out the dance.
And he forged the Ocean River's mighty power girdling
round the outmost rim of the welded indestructible shield.
And once the god had made that great and massive shield
he made Achilles a breastplate brighter than gleaming fire,
he made him a sturdy helmet to fit the fighter's temples,
beautiful, burnished work, and raised its golden crest
and made him greaves of flexing, pliant tin.
Now,
when the famous crippled Smith had finished off
that grand array of armor, lifting it in his arms
he laid it all at the feet of Achilles' mother Thetis—
and down she flashed like a hawk from snowy Mount Olympus
bearing the brilliant gear, the god of fire's gift.
—Homer
(translated by Robert Fagles)
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: only states could muster the huge revenues, conscript the vast armies, and equip the divisions required to threaten the survival of other states. Indeed posing such threats, and meeting them, created the modern state. In such a world, every state knew that its enemy would be drawn from a small class of potential adversaries. 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.
THE END OF THE LONG WAR AND
THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE MODERN STATE
This book is about the modern state—how it came into being, how it has developed, and in what directions we can expect it to change. Epochal wars, those great coalitional conflicts that often extend over decades, have been critical to the birth and development of the State, and therefore much of this book is concerned with the history of warfare. Equally determinative of the State has been its legal order, and so this is a book about law, especially constitutional and international law as these subjects relate to statecraft. This book, however, is neither a history of war nor a work of jurisprudence. Rather it is principally concerned with the relationship between strategy and the legal order as this relationship has shaped and transformed the modern state and the society composed of these states. A new form of the State—the market-state—is emerging from this relationship in much the same way that earlier forms since the fifteenth century have emerged, as a consequence of war. This war, the fifth great epochal war in modern history, began in 1914 and only ended in 1990. The Long War, like previous epochal wars, brought into being a new form of the State—the market-state. The previous form—the constitutional order of the nation-state—is now everywhere under siege.
As a result of the Long War, the State is being transformed, and this transformation is constitutional in nature, by which I mean we will change our views as to the basic raison d'être of the State, the legitimating purpose that animates the State and sets the terms of the State's strategic endeavors.
The nation-state's model of statecraft links the sovereignty of a state to its territorial borders. Within these borders a state is supreme with respect to its law, and beyond its borders a state earns the right of recognition and intercourse to the extent that it can defend its borders. Today this model confronts several deep challenges. Because the international order of nation-states is constructed on the foundation of this model of state sovereignty, developments that cast doubt on that sovereignty call the entire system into question.
Five such developments do so: (i) the recognition of human rights as norms that require adherence within all states, regardless of their internal laws; (2) the widespread deployment of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction that render the defense of state borders ineffectual for the protection of the society within; (3) the proliferation of global and transnational threats that transcend state borders, such as those that damage the environment, or threaten states through migration, population expansion, disease, or famine; (4) the growth of a world economic regime that ignores borders in the movement of capital investment to a degree that effectively curtails states in the management of their economic affairs; and (5) the creation of a global communications network that penetrates borders electronically and threatens national languages, customs, and cultures. As a consequence, a constitutional order will arise that reflects these five developments and indeed exalts them as requirements that only this new order can meet. The emergence of a new basis for the State will also change the constitutional assumptions of the international society of states, for that framework too derives from the domestic consti-tutional rationale of its constituent members.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MILITARY
INNOVATION AND CHANGE IN THE CONSTITUTIONAL ORDER
Ever since Max Weber, 1 scholars have argued that a revolution in military affairs brought forth the modern state by requiring an organized system of finance and administration in order for societies to defend themselves. Accepting this premise, however, it is unclear precisely which revolution in military affairs actually brought the modern state into being. Was it the use of mobile artillery in the sixteenth century that abruptly rendered the castles and moats of the Middle Ages useless? Or was it the Gunpowder Revolution of the seventeenth century that replaced the shock tactics of pikemen with musket fire? Or the rise in professionalism within the military in the eighteenth century and the cabinet wars this made possible (or was it the change in tactics that accompanied mass conscription in the nineteenth century) ? One important consequence of asking this question in this way is that it assumes that there has been only one form of the modern state: the nation-state. If, as many believe, the nation-state is dying owing to the five developments mentioned above, then this scholarly debate about the birth of the state has consequences for its death.
But if we see, on the contrary, that each of the important revolutions in military affairs enabled a political revolution in the fundamental constitutional order of the State, then we will be able not only to better frame the scholarly debate but also to appreciate that the death of the nation-state by no means presages the end of the State. Moreover, we will then be able to see aright the many current political conflicts that arise from the friction between the decaying nation-state and the emerging market-state, conflicts that have parallels in the past when one constitutional order was replaced by another and led to civil strife within the State and spurred novel and deadly conflict abroad. Finally, we will be better prepared to craft new strategies for the use of force that are appropriate to this new constitutional order—and vice versa.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE CONSTITUTIONAL ORDER AND
THE INTERNATIONAL ORDER
Every society has a constitution. Of course not all of these are written constitutions—the British constitution, for example, is unwritten. Nor does every society happen to require a state. But every society—the Vineyard Haven Yacht Club no less than the Group of Eight—has a constitution because to be a society is to be constituted in some particular way. If a revolution in military affairs enables the triumph of certain constitutional order in war, then the peace conferences that ratify such triumphs set the terms for admission to the society of legitimate states, a society that is reconstituted after each great epochal war on the basis of a consensus among states. Each great peace conference that ended an epochal war wrote a constitution for the society of states.
Yet all constitutions also carry within themselves the seeds of future conflict. The 1789 U.S. constitution was pregnant with the 1861 civil war because it contained, in addition to a bill of rights, provisions for slavery and provincial autonomy. Similarly the international constitution created at Westphalia in 1648, no less than those created at Vienna in 1815 or Utrecht in 1713, set the terms for the conflict to come even while it settled the conflict just ended. The importance of this idea in our present period of transition is that we can shape the next epochal war if we appreciate its inevitability and also the different forms it may take. I believe that we face the task of developing cooperative practices that will enable us to undertake a series of low-intensity conflicts. Failing this, we will face an international environment of increasingly violent anarchy and, possibly, a cataclysmic war in the early decades of the twenty-first century.
While it is commonly assumed that the nuclear great powers would not (because they need not) use nuclear weapons in an era in which they do not threaten each other, in fact the new era that we are entering makes their use by a great power more likely than in the last half century. Deterrence and assured retaliation, as well as overwhelming conventional force, which together laid the basis for the victory of the coalition of parliamentary nation-states in the Cold War era, cannot provide a similar stability in the era of the market-state to come because the source of the threats to a state are now at once too ubiquitous and too easy to disguise. We cannot deter an attacker whose identity is unknown to us, and the very massiveness of our conventional forces makes it unlikely we will be challenged openly. As a consequence, we are just beginning to appreciate the need for a shift from target, threat-based assessments to vulnerability analyses.* What is less appreciated is the consequent loss of intrawar deterrence† and the implications of this loss with respect to the actual use of nuclear weapons. To illustrate this paradox consider this example: Nuclear weapons do not deter biological warfare (because its true perpetrators can be easily disguised), and yet a nuclear strike is probably the only feasible means of destroying a biological stockpile that is easy to hide and fortify in a subterranean vault. As we shall see, the possibilities of nuclear pre-emptive strikes, draconian internal repression, and fitful retaliation all accompany the scenarios of weakened deterrence and disguised attacks, and all can lead to cataclysmic wars between states that would otherwise studiedly avoid such confrontations. Even though the possibility of cataclysmic war threatens the twenty-first century, however, defensive systems can play a far more useful role than they could in the previous period, when they tended to weaken deterrence.
At the same time that we have experienced these quiet yet disturbing changes in the strategic environment, there have been ongoing low-intensity conflicts of the kind we have seen in Bosnia, Rwanda, Northern Ireland, Palestine, and elsewhere, which are being transformed by the information revolution. Remote, once local tribal wars have engaged the values and interests of all the great powers because these conflicts have been exported into the domestic populations of those powers through immigration empathy, and terrorism.
What is rarely noted is the relation between cataclysmic and low-intensity wars and the constitution of the society of market-states that will have to fight them. There can be no peace settlement without war, but there can be peace making. If we can successfully manage the consensus interventions of the great powers in low-intensity conflicts—as we have done, finally, in the former state of Yugoslavia—we will have constructed a new constitution for the society of market-states, thereby avoiding the systemic breakdown that provokes more generally catastrophic war. It may be that the very vulnerability of the critical infrastructures of the developed world, which invites, even necessitates, great-power cooperation, will then provide a basis for strengthening the society of states through information sharing and market cooperation.
HOW TO UNDERSTAND THE EMERGING
WORLD ORDER OF MARKET-STATES
There is a widespread sense that we are at a pivotal point in history—but why is it pivotal? This book offers an answer: that we are at one of a half dozen turning points that have fundamentally changed the way societies are organized for governance. It identifies this change and shows how it is related to five previous such pivotal moments that began with the emergence of the modern state at the time of the Renaissance. It lays bare the neglected relationship between the strategic and the constitutional—the outer and inner faces of the State. Yet, this book is just as concerned with the future as it is with the past, laying out alternative possible worlds of the twenty-first century.
The modern state came into existence when it proved necessary to organize a constitutional order that could wage war more effectively than the feudal and mercantile orders it replaced. The emergence of a new form of the State and the decay of an old one is part of a process that goes back to the very beginning of the modern state, perhaps to the beginning of civil society itself. That process takes place in the fusing of the inner and outer dominions of authority: law and strategy.
Whether war or law is the initial object of innovation, constitutional and strategic change inevitably ensue, and new forms of the State are the result of the interaction. Each new form of the State is distinguished by its unique basis for legitimacy—the historical claim it makes that entitles the State to power.
A great epochal war has just ended. The various competing systems of the contemporary nation-state (fascism, communism, parliamentarianism) that fought that war all took their legitimacy from the promise to better the material welfare of their citizens. The market-state offers a different covenant: it will maximize the opportunity of its people. Not only the world in which we live but also the world that is now emerging is more comprehensible and more insistent once this historical development is appreciated and explored for the implications it holds for the fate of civilization itself.
The emergence of the market-state will produce conflict in every society as the old ways of the superseded nation-state (its use of law to bring about certain desired moral outcomes, for example) fall away. This emergence will also produce alternative systems that follow different versions of the market-state in London, Singapore, or Paris, and this development could also lead to conflict. Most important, however, the global society of market-states will face lethal security challenges in an era of weakened governments and impotent formal international institutions. And these challenges will pose difficult internal problems as well, as every developed, postindustrial state struggles to maintain democracy and civil liberties in the face of new technological threats to its well-being.
A society of market-states, however, will be good at setting up markets. This facility could bring about an international system that rewards peaceful states and stimulates opportunity in education, productivity, investment, environmental protection, and public health by sharing the technologies that are crucial to advancement in these areas. And these habits of collaboration can provide precedents for security cooperation; for example, the United States can develop ballistic missile defense technology or fissile material sensors that can be licensed to threatened countries. The technology for safer nuclear energy can be provided as a way, perhaps the only way, of halting global warming while assisting Third World economic development. A state's internal difficulties can be dealt with—perhaps can only be dealt with—through international information sharing that the market makes feasible. Markets, on the other hand, are not very good at assuring political representation or giving equal voice to every group. Unaided by the assurance that the political process will not be subordinated to the most powerful market actors, markets can become targets of the alienated and of those who are disenfranchised by any shift away from national or ethnic institutions.
The decisions that arise from the emergence of the market-state are already, or will soon be, upon us, but they are often disguised if they are not seen in the context of this new form of the State.
THE FUTURE OF THE STATE
The pattern of epochal wars and state formation, of peace congresses and international constitutions, has played out for five centuries to the end of the millennium just past. A new constitutional order—the market-state—is about to emerge. But if the pattern of earlier eras is to be repeated, then we await a new, epochal war with state-shattering consequences. Many persons see war as an illness of states, a pathology that no healthy state need suffer. This way of looking at things more or less disables us from shaping future wars, as we search, fruitlessly, for the wonder serum that will banish war once and for all (or as we plan to fight wars we know—or believe—we can win). Yet we can shape future wars, even if we cannot avoid them. We can take decisions that will determine whether the next epochal war risks a general cataclysm.
Whatever course is decided upon will be both constitutional and strategic in nature because these are the two faces of the modern state—the face the state turns toward its own citizens, and the face it turns toward the outside world of its competitors and collaborators. Each state develops its own constitutional order (its inward-facing profile) as well as its strategic paradigm (its outward-turned silhouette), and these two forms are logically and topologically inseparable. A state that privatizes most of its functions by law will inevitably defend itself by employing its own people as mercenaries—with profound strategic consequences. A state threatened with cyberattacks on its interdependent infrastructures can protect itself by virtually abolishing civil privacy or by increasing official surveillance and intelligence gathering or by expensively decentralizing. Each course has profound constitutional consequences.
THE STRUCTURE OF THIS BOOK
The Shield of Achilles treats the relationship between strategy and law. I had originally intended to publish this study in two volumes, corresponding to the different focus in each: whereas the first part of this work deals with the State, the second takes up the society of states; whereas the first is largely devoted to war and its interplay with the constitutional order of the State, the second concentrates on peace settlements and their structuring of the international order.
I have come to see, however, that there is so intimate a connection between the epochal rhythms of state formation and the abrupt shifts in international evolution that a single volume is truer to my subject. Nevertheless, for readers interested in the history and future of war, Book I, “State of War,” can stand alone; for those interested in the history and future of international society, I believe Book II, “States of Peace,” can be read with profit by itself.
At the beginning of each of the six Parts of this combined work, a general thesis is set forth as a kind of overture to the narrative argument that is then provided. Similarly, the poems that precede and follow each of the Parts reflect some of the motifs of the presentation.
“State of War,” Book I of this work, focuses on the individual state; it is divided into three parts, which correspond to three general arguments.
Part I, “The Long War of the Nation-State,” argues that the war that began in 1914 did not end until 1990. By looking at earlier epochal wars beginning with the Peloponnesian Wars, one can see how historians from Thucydides onward have determined whether a particular campaign is a completed war or only a part of a more extended conflict such as the Thirty Years' War. Epochal wars put the constitutional basis of the participants in play and do not truly end until the underlying constitutional questions are resolved. This is how it was with the Long War, which was fought to determine which of three alternatives—communism, fascism, or parliamentarianism—would replace the imperial constitutional orders of the nineteenth century. The Long War embraces conflicts we at present call the First World War, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, the wars in Korea and Viet Nam, and the Cold War.
Part II provides “A Brief History of the Modern State and the Constitutional Order”* beginning with the origin of the State in Italy at the end of the fifteenth century and ending with the events that began the Long War. These chapters assert the thesis that epochal wars have brought about profound changes in the constitutional order of states through a process of innovation and mimicry as some states are compelled to innovate, strategically and constitutionally, in order to survive, and as other states copy these innovations when they prove decisive in resolving the epochal conflict of an era. Sometimes the impetus comes from the constitutional side, as when the political changes wrought by the French Revolution in the late eighteenth century demanded tactical and strategic change to cope with the loss of a highly trained officer corps; sometimes the impetus was the reverse, as when the use of mobile artillery against the rich walled city-states of Italy in the early sixteenth century required the creation of bureaucracies and efficient systems of taxation. Most often the causality was mutual: strategic innovations (like the use of mass conscription) brought about changes in the constitutional order of the State—such as a broadened franchise and mass public education—and these constitutional changes in turn brought forth new tactical and strategic approaches that sought to exploit the possibilities created by the new domestic political environment, opportunities for innovations as different as terror bombing and the Officer Candidate School.
Part III of Book I, “The Historic Consequences of the Long War,” argues that the Long War of the twentieth century was another such epochal war, and that it has brought about the emergence of a new form of the State, the market-state. These chapters address the situation of the United States, one of the first market-states, and suggest how this state will change both constitutionally and strategically as this new constitutional order comes to maturity.
Related theses can be found elsewhere. The notion that state formation in Europe occurred as a result of a revolution in military tactics (a claim made by Michael Roberts and others), the “short century” thesis (the notion that the century began in 1914 and ended with the end of the Cold War) associated with Eric Hobsbawm, and even the notion that a new form of society is coming into being (proposed by Peter Drucker, among others) are well-known. My thesis, however, implies, but also depends upon, the constitutional/strategic dynamic of five centuries, and it is this dynamic that shapes the expectations I put forward about the future structure and purpose of the market-state.
While Book I treats the individual state, Book II, “States of Peace,” deals with the subject of the society of states. The society of states, as described notably by the late Hedley Bull, is to be distinguished from the state system. The state system is a formal entity that is composed of states alone and defined by their formal treaties and agreements. The society of states, on the other hand, is composed of the formal and informal customs, rules, practices, and habits of states and encompasses many entities—like the Red Cross and CNN—that are not states at all. International law is usually defined in terms of the state system. There are, of course, exceptions to this way of looking at international law, particularly in the work of Myres McDougal and his followers. In Book II, I treat international law as the practices of the society of states rather than as an artifact of the state system. I argue that international law is a symptom of the triumph of a particular constitutional order within the individual states of which that society consists (and is not therefore a consequence solely of the international acts of states). International law arises from constitutional law, not the other way around.
Part I of Book II, “The Society of Nation-States,” deals with the society of states in which we currently live. It traces the origins of this society to the abortive peace that followed World War I and the American program that attempted to superimpose the U.S. constitutional model on the society of states. Part I then brings this plan forward to its collapse in Bosnia in the 1990s, and concludes with the claim that the society of nation-states is rapidly decaying. Although it is not novel to encounter a claim that the nation-state is dying, my thesis is markedly different from others because it derives from my general conclusion that the dying and regeneration of its constitutional orders are a periodic part of the history of the modern state. Those who write that the nation-state is finished are usually also of the view that the nation-state is synonymous with the modern state itself. Thus they are committed to maintaining that the State is withering away, a highly implausible view in my judgment. Once one sees, however, that there have been many forms of the modern state, one can appreciate that though the nation-state is in fact dying, the modern state is only undergoing one of its periodic transformations.
Part II of Book II, “A Brief History of the Society of States and the International Order,” revisits the historic conflicts that have given the modern state its shape and which were the subject of Part II of Book I. In Book II, however, the perspective has changed. Here I am less concerned with epochal wars than I am with the peace agreements that ended those wars. Part II makes the claim that the society of modern states has had a series of constitutions, and that these constitutions were the outcome of the great peace congresses that ended epochal wars. The state conflicts discussed in Book I are taken up in Book II in terms of their peace conferences, culminating in the twentieth century with the Peace of Paris that ended the Long War in 1990. In these chapters, the emphasis is on international law rather than strategic conflict, though of course, consistent with my general thesis, the two subjects are treated as inextricably intertwined.
Part III, “The Society of Market-States,” depicts the future of the society of states. Its chapters hypothesize various possible worlds that depend on different choices we are even now in the process of making. Most of this Part is devoted to a series of scenarios about the future, adapting methods pioneered by the Royal Dutch Shell Corporation. Book II ends with the conclusion that, by varying the degree of sovereignty retained by the People, different societies will develop different forms of the market-state. The task ahead will be to develop rules for cooperation when these differ-ent approaches frustrate consensus or even invite conflict—a conflict that could threaten the very survival of some states.
Finally, I should like to provide some background regarding the title of this work. “The Shield of Achilles” is the name of a poem by W. H. Auden. At the end of this book I have reprinted that poem in full. It provides, in alternating stanzas, a juxtaposition of the epic description of classical heroic warrior society with a gritty, twentieth century depiction of warfare and civilian suffering. It is important to remember, in the discussions on which we are about to embark, that they ultimately concern violence, and that our moral and practical decisions have real consequences in the use of force, and all that the use of force entails for suffering and death. This is the first point to be suggested by the title.
The shield for which Auden named his poem and to whose description much of the poem is devoted is described by Homer in Book XVIII of the Iliad, lines 558 – 720 (see pp. ix – xiii). Many readers will be familiar with this famous passage, which has inspired paintings by Rubens, Van Dyck, West, and others as well as countless classical Greek depictions. It will be recalled that the Trojan hero Hector had claimed the armor worn by Patroclus when he slew Patroclus in battle; this armor had belonged to Achilles. Patroclus had borne Achilles armor into battle in an effort to inspire the Greeks by making them believe that Achilles himself had taken the field. Achilles then asked his mother, the sea goddess Thetis, to procure for him another set of armor from Hephaestus, the armorer of the gods, whose forge was beneath the volcano at Mount Etna.
Hephaestus's mirror, which showed the past, present, and future, might also come to the minds of some persons. It is my aim not only to support certain theses about strategy, law, and history with arguments drawing on the past, but to illuminate our present predicament and speculate about the choices the future will present us. This is another resonance of this title to which I wish to call attention.
Hephaestus created an elaborate shield on which he depicted a wedding and feasts, a marketplace, dancing and athletics, a law court, and a battle, along with other arts of culture, the cultivation of fields, and the making of wine. This is the main point that I wish my readers to bear in mind: war is a product as well as a shaper of culture. Animals do not make war, even though they fight. No less than the market and the law courts, with which it is inextricably intertwined, war is a creative act of civilized man with important consequences for the rest of human culture, which include the festivals of peace.
CONCLUSION
Many things ought to look different after one has finished reading this book: former U.S. President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who have been widely criticized in their respective parties, will be seen as architects attempting a profound change in the constitutional order of a magnitude no less than Bismarck's. As of this writing, U.S. President George W. Bush appears to be pursuing a similar course on many fronts. Foreign policy concerns, like the protection of the critical infrastructure of the developed world or the creation of intervention forces (such as those so discredited in Viet Nam and Somalia), which may now seem marginal, will be seen as centerpieces in the struggle to change, or at least manage, the shape of wars to come. The law-oriented methods of the nation-state will be seen as being replaced by the market-oriented methods of the market-state, setting controversies as different as abortion rights and affirmative action in a new context. For example, nation-states typically endorsed—or banned—prayers in public schools because such states used legal regulations on behalf of particular moral commitments. The market-state is more likely to provide an open forum for prayers from many competing sects, maximizing the opportunity for expression without endorsing any particular moral view. This is but one example of countless such contrasts.
Above all, the reader should get from this book a sense of the importance of certain choices that otherwise might be made in isolation but that will structure our future as thoroughly as similar choices in the last half millennium structured our past.
There are times when the present breaks the shackles of the past to create the future—the Long War of the twentieth century, now past, was one of those. But there are also times, such as the Renaissance—when the first modern states emerged—and our own coming twenty-first century, when it is the past that creates the future, by breaking the shackles of the present.2
Preparation
Still one more year of preparation.
Tomorrow at the latest I'll start working on a great book
In which my century will appear as it really was.
The sun will rise over the righteous and the wicked.
Springs and autumns will unerringly return,
In a wet thicket a thrush will build his nest lined with clay
And foxes will learn their foxy natures.
And that will be the subject, with addenda. Thus: armies
Running across frozen plains, shouting a curse
In a many-voiced chorus; the cannon of a tank
Growing immense at the corner of a street; the ride at dusk
Into a camp with watchtowers and barbed wire.
No, it won't happen tomorrow. In five or ten years.
I still think too much about the mothers
And ask what is man born of woman.
He curls himself up and protects his head
While he is kicked by heavy boots; on fire and running
He burns with bright flame; a bulldozer sweeps him into a clay pit.
Her child. Embracing a teddy bear. Conceived in ecstasy.
I haven't learned yet to speak as I should, calmly.
With not-quite truth
and not-quite art
and not-quite law
and not-quite science
Under not-quite heaven
on the not-quite earth
the not-quite guiltless
and the not-quite degraded
—Czeslaw Milosz