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.