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by marco
Mon Apr 28th, 2008 at 03:34:07 PM EST
-- and it's not the one with Chinese characteristics.
Philip Bobbitt, author of The Shield of Achilles (2002), has a new book out, Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century, which Niall Ferguson thinks so highly about that he has "no doubt"
it will be garlanded with prizes. It deserves to be. It is more important that it should be read, marked and inwardly digested by all three of the remaining candidates to succeed George W. Bush as president of the United States.
Ferguson's effusive praise (particularly as it is so prominently positioned in this morning's New York Times "Sunday Book Review") makes it likely that it will get a lot of attention from media talking heads and more significantly from politicians (including, as Ferguson hopes, the U.S. presidential hopefuls). As such, the book may be worth getting familiar with, in particular since it (at least as characterized by Ferguson and other reviewers) boldly announces and advocates the superseding of the obsolescent "nation state" structure in favor of the new "market state", the use of "preclusionary warfare" against terrorist enemies, the need for a new US-EU, post-Westphalian market-state "G2" pole, and the curtailing of civil liberties in the "epochal war" that Bobbitt asserts the world is embroiled in.
Could Bobbitt's work do for the word neoliberal, even for the word neoconservative, what Ferguson's Empire and Colossus did for the word empire, i.e. resurrect it from stigma to respectability?
Diary rescue by Migeru
From Ferguson's review, " War Plans":
The age of "Atlantic man" is conventionally thought to be over. Some, like Parag Khanna, foresee the rise of a "second world" to challenge American hegemony. Others, notably Fareed Zakaria, are harbingers of a "post-American world." ...
Philip Bobbitt, however, is homo atlanticus redux. <...>
In his last book, The Shield of Achilles (2002), Bobbitt advanced a bold argument about the history of international relations since the time of the Treaty of Westphalia (1648). His central argument was that, in the aftermath of the cold war, the traditional post-Westphalian ideal of the sovereign nation-state had become obsolescent. In the increasingly borderless world we associate with globalization, something new was emerging, which Bobbitt called (and continues to call) the "market-state." This state's relationship to its citizens resembles that between a corporation and consumers. <...>
Bobbitt's central premise [in Terror and Consent] is that today's Islamic terrorist network, which he calls Al Qaeda for short, 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. Just as the plagues in the 14th century were unintended consequences of increased trade and urbanization, so terrorism is a negative externality of our borderless world. <...>
In short, we are in a war. <...>
In this war, we do need pre-emptive detention of suspected terrorists; we do need a significant increase of surveillance, particularly of electronic communications; we do need, in some circumstances, to use coercive techniques (short of torture) to elicit information from terrorists. The administration's fatal mistake was its failure to understand that these things could be achieved by appropriate modifications of the law. By doing what indeed was needed, but doing it outside the law, the administration undermined the legitimacy of American policy at home as well as abroad. Bobbitt is emphatic: all branches of government must act in conformity with the Constitution and the law. <...>
... 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. <...>
The United States and its allies must recognize their common fate as the natural defenders of the society of states of consent, while the United States and the European Union should form a new G2, committed to a post-Westphalian notion of sovereignty, yet assuring that their overseas interventions are governed by a new instrument of international law. <...>
To summarize: Bobbitt believes that there is a real war against terror; that civil liberties as previously understood may need to be curtailed to win it; that we must nevertheless fight it without violating our commitment to the rule of law; and that the United States cannot win it alone. This is certainly not a combination of positions calculated to endear Bobbitt either to the left or the right in the United States today.
Another review, "Terror and Consent: Brilliant, Contrarian", in the Austin-American Statesman provides some direct quotes from the book:
- If "we want to defeat state-shattering terror in the twenty-first century," Bobbitt writes, we will have to "transform the emerging constitutional order of the twenty-first century State."
- What's needed is a constitutional order that takes its structural cues from multinational corporations and nongovernmental organizations, relying "less on law and regulation and more on market incentives" to expand people's options. Such a market state keeps its finger on the pulse of consumer demand, advocates trade liberalization, is prone to the privatization of public works and "will outsource many functions." In the seminar rooms of political science departments this change is referred to as "neoliberalism" (on the streets, it is known as "globalization") -- and Bobbitt, who is a geopolitical realist, believes we have no choice but to embrace it.
- "Market state terrorism," Bobbitt explains, thus feeds on the "ardently sought innovations" of the 20th century to exploit "the increasing vulnerability of market states to catastrophic events. <...> One cannot say," Bobbitt warns, "precisely how long we have."
- What should a market state do when an Islamic state holds free elections that bring a bin Laden to power? ... He argues, "States must measure their tactical and strategic policies against the impact these policies are likely to have on their legitimacy," and "Whether (a) state is subject to intervention ... ought to be measured by the relationship between the strategic interests of the states of consent and the severity of the deprivations of human rights."
The author of that second review, James E. McWilliams, raises some questions about Bobbitt's ideas:
One can't help but wonder, as globalization renders millions of people vulnerable to human rights violations, if the nation state and its emphasis on human welfare should be so thoroughly dismissed.
... How does a market state draw "bright-line" rules on human rights when the actors in charge of drawing those lines hold privately funded erasers?
But this breathtaking neoliberal manifesto will certainly require a more thorough and sustained response than a couple of paragraphs and allusions to "the inefficiencies of Halliburton, the corruption of Bechtel and the violence perpetuated by Blackwater".
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