Philip C. Bobbitt

The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History

Excerpt: Conclusion

Many things ought to look different after one has finished reading this book: 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 Vietnam 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 nationalist secession movements in a new context. For example, nation-states typically endorsed – or banned – prayers in public schools; 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.

Above all, the reader should get from this book a sense of the importance of certain choices that otherwise might be casually made but 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 modern age, now past, was one of those. But there are also times, such as the Renaissance and our own coming 21st century, when it is the past that creates the future, by breaking the shackles of the present.