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A recent book by Philip Bobbitt, Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century, offers one of the best and most powerful arguments for a legitimate war on terror. I am reading the book now but believe it is important enough to summarize its major arguments for this Perspective. Together with his previous book, The Shield of Achilles, Bobbitt presents a compelling need for the US, and indeed all of western civilization, to change its foreign policy assumptions and strategies. Several thoughts:
- As Niall Ferguson argues in a persuasive review of Bobbitt’s work: “His central argument was that, in the aftermath of the cold war, the traditional post-Westphalian ideal [the treaty that ended the Thirty Years War in 1648] of the sovereign nation-state had become obsolescent. In the increasingly borderless world we associate with globalization, something new was emerging, which Bobbitt called . . . the ‘market-state.’ The state’s relationship to its citizens resembles that between a corporation and consumers. Its counterpart—and its enemy—is the terrorist network.” The challenge now is how does the market-state defeat the terrorist networks, since they are supported by traditional nation-states.
- Bobbitt’s central thesis is that today’s terrorist network is like a “distorted mirror image of the post-Westphalian market-state: decentralized, privatized, outsourced and in some measure divorced from territorial sovereignty. The terrorists are at once parasitical on, and at the same time hostile toward, the globalized economy, the Internet and the technological revolution in military affairs.”
- The goal of the terrorist network is to turn the technological achievements of the West against it in a protracted worldwide war. Ultimately, the terrorist network seeks to create a Sharia-based “terror-state” in the form of a new caliphate. Weapons of mass destruction and other horrific tools are all possible weapons in this global war.
- Bobbitt believes strongly that the West must overhaul its intelligence network in a radical fashion. Ferguson summarizes Bobbitt: “Yes, we really do need something like the abortive Total Information Awareness program, pooling every available piece of data and mining it for clues about the next 9/11. We also need to take large-scale precautions to ensure that constitutional and legal order do not break down in the event of a terrorist attack or natural disaster.”
- Old foreign policy doctrines like deterrence or containment are obsolete. “The United States and its allies must recognize their common fate as the natural defenders of the society of states of consent. . . .” This new doctrine and new consensus must involve an up-front commitment to pre-emption,” which he actually calls “preclusion.” In short, Bobbitt believes that civil liberties as previously understood may need to be curtailed to win the war on terror. But this cannot violate our civilization’s commitment to rule of law.
As I am reading this book, I am struck by the narrowness and actual selfishness of the candidates currently running for president, especially Obama and Clinton. The US is in a deadly war against terror that threatens every aspect of our way of life. Bobbitt’s book should be read by every candidate and every citizen and his argument should then become the basis for debate and discussion as we choose our next president. We are short-sighted and actually rather stupid if we do not see this threat as Bobbitt sees it—real, prolonged and deadly!
See the book by Philip Bobbitt and the helpful review by Niall Ferguson in The New York Times Book Review (13 April 2008). |
