Terror and Consent: The Wars for the 21st Century by Philip Bobbitt

We have spectacularly failed to understand the nature of global networked terrorism, of which al Qaeda is the vanguard, and countermeasures adopted so far have been muddled and wrongheaded, argues Bobbitt. He quotes with approval Donald Rumsfeld's memo on the subject: "The US is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists." His argument opens where that of his last mighty tome, The Shield of Achilles, left off. There, Bobbitt explored the notion that the era of the nation states and their alliances, which began at the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 is now over. Nation states are transforming into "market states", frontierless, networked and outsourcing key agencies and functions to commercial subcontractors, from welfare NGOs to private security companies.

In this new book, Bobbitt says the market state is now mirrored by terrorists in their globalised networks.

Brand and market leader is al Qaeda, but it is not likely to be unique, merely the first in the field, with its successors and imitators not even likely to come from the Islamic world.

The aim of the new global terrorist networks is to destroy the market states linked in the globalised economy and led by America. It is more than likely that the terrorists will deploy "dirty" bombs which could kill thousands, and portable nuclear devices which could destroy millions.

There is evidence enough that they have been trying to acquire this kind of weaponry for years.

However, the strategic end sought by the terrorists is not just the killing of large numbers of civilians as such, but the massive collective psychological breakdown — possibly on a global scale — that would follow.

The civilised world, the community that believes in civic values of justice and governance, needs to take a radically different approach to confront, indeed face down, such a threat. This should be an international network of "transparent" or "translucent" (the favoured Bobbitt term) states, based on security matched by respect for the law. This is where he believes the Bush doctrine post-9/11 has gone wrong: it hasn't matched security with respect for the law — he is vehemently against torture in all circumstances, for example.

The old norm that sovereignty means a state is immune from outside interference no longer should apply. If a state is preparing weapons of mass destruction or even pandemicthreatening viruses for instance, it must be stopped.

There are many brilliant ideas in this intriguing book, and quite a few pretty bad ones. But it puts one of the central dilemmas of the age on the table in a way few others would have dared. Notions that defence, insurgency, terrorism, and home security belong in different compartments are outmoded, and it is time Whitehall and Washington realised this and put money and brainpower behind the effort to combat the new terrorist agenda.

In the best sense the book describes a work in progress. His readers should now progress their work to meet the challenges Philip Bobbitt has so powerfully laid before us..

Synopsis by Foyles.co.uk

The wars against terror have begun, but it will take some time before the nature and composition of these wars is widely understood. The objective of these wars is not the conquest of territory, or the silencing of any particular ideology, but rather to secure the necessary environment for states to operate according to principles of consent and make it impossible for our enemies to impose or induce states of terror. "Terror and Consent" argues that, like so many states and civilizations in the past that suffered defeat, we are fighting the last war, with weapons and concepts that were useful to us then but have now been superseded.Philip Bobbitt argues that we need to reforge links that previous societies have made between law and strategy; to realize how the evolution of modern states has now produced a globally networked terrorism that will change as fast as we can identify it; to combine humanitarian interests with strategies of intervention; and, above all, to rethink what 'victory' in such a war, if it is a war, might look like - no occupied capitals, no treaties, no victory parades, but the preservation, protection and defence of states of consent. This is one of the most challenging and wide-ranging books of any kind about our modern world.