Terror and Consent
2008 book by Philip Bobbitt / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century is a work by Philip Bobbitt that calls for a reconceptualization of what he calls "the Wars on Terror." First published in 2008 by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and by the Allen Lane imprint of Penguin in the U.K., Terror and Consent takes as its foundation Bobbitt's grand historical theory of the co-evolution of the state and warfare which he developed in The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History. The book consists of an introduction, three parts, and a conclusion.
Author | Philip Bobbitt |
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Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre | Social Sciences |
Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf |
Publication date | 2008 |
Media type | Print (Hardback) |
Pages | 676 |
ISBN | 978-1-4000-4243-2 |
Bobbitt argues most ideas about 21st-century terrorism are mistaken, and that "the wars against terror" comprise efforts against three dangers that threaten the legitimacy of the State: 1) "global, networked terrorists"; 2) "the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction"; and 3) catastrophes natural and "nonnatural." As a historian, Bobbitt understands the contemporary problem of terrorism as part of "the transition from nation states to market states." According to an argument he developed at length in The Shield of Achilles, the principle of legitimacy of the market state is "maximization of opportunities for ... civil society and citizens." It follows that protection of citizens is “the strategic raison d’être of the market state." But despite limited successes, Bobbitt does not believe that the West is winning "the Wars against Terror," in part because of a failure to rethink the relationship of strategy to law, two concepts that, in Bobbitt's view, can no longer be analyzed separately.
The book's title derives from two new concepts he develops: States of terror and states of consent. Bobbitt argues that states are increasingly interdependent: "Realism, it seems, is increasingly unrealistic."