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The National Interest
A Papier-Maché Fortress
by Paul W. Schroeder
Philip Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 921 pp., $40.
. . . As history, Bobbit’s work unquestionably presents a broad panorama and offers a bold, arresting and apparently coherent set of theses and arguments relevant to the world today. The historical scheme seems compelling, the analysis of the current crisis cogent, the predictions and scenarios for the future important to consider. The overall recommendation--that America strive for market principles globally and in domestic politics, and continued American military domination and the ability to fight a series of low-level contests as the only way to avoid the next epochal war--offers a program congenial to many Americans today. These qualities, one supposes, have recommended the work to many lay readers and some distinguished scholars. What is wrong with it?
As historical scholarship, a great deal. The book suffers from so many grave defects of an evidential, logical and methodological character as to render it unreliable both for fact and interpretation. . . .
Inadequate research contributes to other defects but cannot wholly account for them. Ungrounded generalizations, naked assertions, logical leaps, vague language, conceptual confusion, contradictions, arbitrary definitions, exaggerations and distortions, and major omissions of vital material abound. Then there is the problem of outright factual errors. . . .
Alas, most instances of incoherence and conceptual confusion in The Shield of Achilles come down, ultimately, to the central one involving Bobbitt’s notion of what drives the course of history. He vastly exaggerates and distorts the roles of war and peace settlements in constituting states and the international system. . . .