Read THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES Online
Authors: Philip Bobbitt
ACKNOWLEDGMENTSZimmermann, Warren,
Origins of a Catastrophe: Yugoslavia and Its Destroyers—America's Last Ambassador Tells What Happened and Why
(New York: Times Books, 1996).
The Shield of Achilles
was begun in 1990 as a series of honorary lectures to be delivered in 1992 at St. Mary's Law School before I left government service in 1993. Dean Barbara Aldave was responsible for that original invitation for which I am most grateful. The expanded written version of these lectures was largely complete when I re-entered government in 1997. These valuable opportunities for government service came my way owing to the invitations of Robert Kimmitt, undersecretary of state for political affairs in the Bush administration, and James B. Steinberg, deputy national security advisor to President Clinton.
.I would not have been able to serve, however, without the leaves of absence from my professorship at the University of Texas that were arranged by Deans Mark Yudof and Michael Sharlot, and the indulgence of Kings College, London, during the interim that Lawrence Freedman, Gibson Gayle, and Brian and Aleksandra Marsh made possible.
When the war in Kosovo ended in the summer of 1999, I again left government and returned to London in order to prepare the manuscript for publication. In September I resumed teaching at the University of Texas and at year's end I sent the manuscript to publishers in what I knew was, and would probably always remain, an uncompleted form. Along the way many persons have read the manuscript and given me detailed comments. I especially wish to acknowledge five persons—Hans Mark, Mark Sagoff, Steven Weinberg, Paul Woodruff, and Lawrence Wright—for their dedication to trying to improve this work by giving me extensive, line-by-line comments on what is, after all, a long book. Eric Wein-mann's immense erudition saved me from many errors; if some still lurk in this thicket of words, it is my sole responsibility.
*
In addition to his many helpful suggestions, I am further indebted to Sir Michael Howard for his characteristically thoughtful foreword.
Betty Sue Flowers introduced me to the Shell Scenario project; that acquaintance with this important method—as explicated for me by Napier Collyns and Roger Rainbow—and her pathbreaking monograph, “The Economic Myth,” have informed all of the discussion about future decisions that this book marries to its historical analysis. I would have written a book on these themes, but
this
book is Betty Sue's.
My wise and profound editor, Ashbel Green, has been both incisive and gentlemanly. His is a classic taste and to the extent this book, though large, is properly proportioned, it is his doing. If there is an informal collegium of literary editors he is its dean. My agents Glen Hartley and Lynn Chu brought him the manuscript (and Harriet Rubin brought them to me), for which I am deeply grateful. Stuart Proffitt, another editor of surpassing distinction, has provided me with his incomparable assistance for which many writers—but none more than I—are thankful.
There are no words in these thousand pages, nor in any book, sufficient to thank Yvonne Tocquigny for her daily encouragement.
Jennifer Lamar, my resourceful and talented secretary, has brought this manuscript through many drafts. Her skill and patience have been tried, but not found wanting. My two research assistants, Paul Domjan and his successor John Tannous (both I am pleased to say Marshall Scholars now at Oxford), were indispensable. Thierry Joffrain, of the many law students I drafted from time to time for this project, stands out even in such an able field. Jory Lange helped prepare the index with meticulous care.
I would also like to thank a number of friends who encouraged me in this long task: James Adams, Michael Beschloss, James Billington, Sidney Blumenthal, Arnaud de Borchgrave, Michael Boudin, Richard Danzig, Bob Inman, Simon Jenkins, Nicholas Lemann, Sanford Levinson, Hans Linde, Roger Louis, Richard Markovits, Dennis Patterson, Henry Reath, Michael Reisman, Elspeth Rostow, Walt Rostow, Steven Simon, Strobe Talbott, Stuart Taylor, Ruth Wedgwood, and Philip Ziegler. Morris Abram, Charles Black, and Barbara Jordan did not live to see the publication of the manuscript we so often discussed, but I cannot forget them here any more than I shall ever be able to forget them.
Despite all this heroic assistance and inspiring aid, I am sorely conscious of the shortcomings that persist in this work, and of my own ignorance. There are many scholars on whose labors I have depended. Yet I have no desire to be a synthesizer or compiler; what I offer is an original, though I hope not idiosyncratic, set of theses with practical and theoretical implications. I do not believe that the study of the past resolves present controversies but I am sure that thinking about the past can illuminate our present problems; that thinking about the past in the context of the future, and vice versa, will be fruitful for new approaches to our current dilemmas. Perhaps this conviction is owed to my unusual personal history; I sometimes think that not only was I supposed to write this book but that I am perhaps one of the few who would. That is because for the last twenty-five years I have led a double life.
As a teacher, I have divided my life between Texas and England. In the United States, I have taught constitutional law at the University of Texas; in the United Kingdom, I have taught the history of nuclear strategy, first at Oxford and later at Kings College, London. Abroad I have taught only strategy; at home I have taught only law.
Overlain on this life of teaching and writing has been another life as a public official. I have served in all three branches of the U.S. government and in both Democratic and Republican administrations. At various times I have been associate counsel to the president for intelligence and international security at the White House; the counselor on international law at the State Department; the legal counsel to the Senate Select Committee on the Iran-Contra Affair and author of the Senate Report
Covert Action in a Democratic Society
. Until returning to academic life in the fall of 1999 I served in a series of senior positions at the National Security Council: director for intelligence; senior director for critical infrastructure; and finally as the senior director for strategic planning.
No doubt this fragmented and multiple existence accounts for the different voices one encounters on reading this book, but more important, this life has given me an unusual array of vantage points that is rarely found in a single professional career and for which I am grateful to the persons named and to many others unnamed. It is precisely these perspectives—national and international, public and private, strategic and constitutional—that at the beginning of the twenty-first century are coming together in the life of the State, an institution that has hitherto been defined by keeping these perspectives logically and politically distinct.
This book is the confluence of all these strands—law, history, and strategy—as these have been interwoven with a life in and out of government. It could not really be otherwise. As Valery wrote, “In fact there is no theory that is not a fragment, carefully prepared, of some autobiography.”
ABC Problem: should the U.S. structure its forces to deal with peer nations, mid-level developing nations with modern forces and primitive weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or militarily ineffectual but dangerous states and nonstate actors?
299
Adolphus, Gustavus (1594 – 1632):
Swedish king 1611 – 1632 during the Thirty Years' War,
69
,
70
,
73
,
96
,
99
,
100 – 14
,
130
,
504
,
508
,
512
,
516 – 17
,
837 – 8
,
898
Akashi, Yasushi (1931– ): U.N. administrator in Bosnia; supervised Cambodian peace talks and elections 1993,
445
,
459
Alba, Duke of (also Alva, Fernando Alvarez de Toledo) (1508 – 1583): Spanish commander in Low Countries,
494
,
495
Alexander I (1777 – 1825): Russian tsar (1801 – 1825) represented Russia at Congress of Vienna (1814 – 1815),
150
,
162
,
869
Aquinas, Thomas (1225 – 1274): Jesuit philosopher,
77
,
87
,
491
,
877
Article 2(4): U.N. Charter provision outlawing aggression by one state against another,
473
,
863
;
compare Article
51
,
a provision recognizing each state's right to defend itself
Articles 42 and 43 of the U.N. Charter:
U.N. Charter provisions authorizing the Security Council to use armed forces to maintain international peace and security,
169
,
256
,
433
,
463
,
473 – 4
Aspin, Les (1938 – 1995): U.S. secretary of defense (1993 – 1994),
298
,
850
Athens: Greek city-state that flourished in the fifth century
B.C
.,
8
,
21
,
332
Augustine, St. (354 – 430): Christian philosopher, author of
Confessions
and
The City of God
,
77
Austin, John (1790 – 1859): English jurist,
6
,
565 – 7
,
585 – 6
,
589 – 90
,
641
,
829
,
845 – 6
,
852
,
889 – 90
Ayala, Balthazar (1548 – 1584): Spanish military figure and jurist,
489
,
494 – 6
,
499
Badinter Commission: E.U. tribunal that establishes criteria for international recognition of states emerging from former Eastern and Central European communist countries,
449
,
463
Baker, James (1930– ): U.S. political figure;
White House chief of staff (1981 – 1985, 1992 – 1993);
secretary of the treasury (1985 – 1988);
secretary of state (1989 – 1992),
280
,
431 – 3
,
612
,
626 – 33
,
635
,
662
,
846
,
876
,
881
balance of power,
90
,
121
,
124
,
126
,
129 – 33
,
153
,
155
,
162
,
169
,
171 – 2
,
233
,
258 – 60
,
263 – 65
,
271
,
278 – 9
,
309
,
344
,
360
,
383
,
521
,
523 – 7
,
532
,
534
,
537
,
539 – 40
,
543
,
550 – 3
,
555
,
559 – 60
,
869
,
886
Bartholomew, Reginald,
457
Berlin,
9
,
26
,
45 – 6
,
50 – 1
,
53 – 55
,
150
,
157
,
382 – 3
,
386
,
389 – 90
,
555
,
580
,
594
,
624
,
639
,
669 – 70
,
672 – 5
,
834
,
845
,
855
Berlin Airlift (1948 – 1949),
51
Bismarck, Otto Eduard Leopold von (1815 – 1898):
Prussian prime minister;
consolidated German states into empire;
first chancellor of German Empire,
25 – 6
,
184 – 7
,
190 – 202
,
204
,
207
,
225
,
280
,
567 – 70
,
573
,
580
,
608
,
612
,
676
,
843
,
890
,
895
Black, Jeremy,
71 – 3
,
101
,
141
,
173
,
336
,
835
,
837
,
839 – 40
,
842
,
844
,
853
,
889
Blair, Tony (1953– ): British politician; prime minister (1997– ); Labor Party leader (1994– ),
222
,
287
,
339
,
667
,
845
Bodin, Jean (1530 – 1596): French political philosopher,
6
,
102
,
334
,
829
,
837
,
852
,
890
Bogomil: South Slav Christians converted by force to Islam (1463),
417