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37 Syracuse J. Int'l L. & Com. 23 (2009-2010)
Submission and Consent: Law, War, and the Search for New Strategic Paradigms

handle is hein.journals/sjilc37 and id is 25 raw text is: SUBMISSION AND CONSENT:

LAW, WAR, AND THE SEARCH FOR NEW
STRATEGIC PARADIGMS
Audrey Kurth Cronin*
Philip Bobbitt's Terror and Consent brilliantly shifts the
intellectual paradigm for considering the future of law, war, and the
State, compelling overly sanguine, complacent Westerners to revisit our
assumptions as we confront the age of globalized threats. It draws upon
the best traditions of world history, strategic thinking, and legal scholar-
ship to highlight challenges to the constitutional order of the twenty-
first century State, asserting that we face a stark choice between states
of consent and states of terror in our response.
The book is so original, so broad in its scope, and so intentionally
confrontational that it would be impossible either to agree or disagree
with everything that Bobbitt asserts. One thought-provoking passage
follows another. To respond to this book is to be forced to refine, clarify
and defend one's own thinking, to cast aside twentieth-century relics
and focus on grave dangers to the legitimacy of the State. Bobbitt offers
a remarkable lens through which to focus the mind, peer through, and
glean a pathway ahead. The reader may come to different policy conclu-
sions about the best way to proceed but without Bobbitt's illuminating
masterpiece, there would be no clarifying vision at all. Terror and Con-
sent is a contentious book that should be read and re-read as a classic of
modern political philosophy, as well as a warning to all those who are
mired in the intellectual paradigms of the twentieth century. Whether
you agree with him in the end or not, it will force you to stretch.
The manuscript picks up where Bobbitt's earlier book, The Shield
ofAchillest leaves off, in the ongoing post-Cold War transition from the
Nation State to what he calls the Market State. Confounding the
common tendency to see state threats as the most serious, Bobbitt
asserts that three nonstate threats-global terrorism, nuclear prolifer-
ation, and catastrophic natural disaster-require a fundamental re-
thinking of conventional wisdom in international security. All of the
assumptions about the nature of terrorism, warfare and victory are
* This article reflects only the author's personal views and should not be construed to
be the official position of the National War College, the Department of Defense, or any
other government agency.
1. PHILLIP BOBBITT, THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES: WAR, PEACE AND THE COURT OF
HISTORY (Alfred A. Knopf 2002).

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