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.