THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES Read Online Free PDF Page A

to war and its interplay with the constitutional order of the State, the second concentrates on peace settlements and their structuring of the international order.
    I have come to see, however, that there is so intimate a connection between the epochal rhythms of state formation and the abrupt shifts in international evolution that a single volume is truer to my subject. Nevertheless, for readers interested in the history and future of war, Book I, “State of War,” can stand alone; for those interested in the history and future of international society, I believe Book II, “States of Peace,” can be read with profit by itself.
    At the beginning of each of the six Parts of this combined work, a general thesis is set forth as a kind of overture to the narrative argument that is then provided. Similarly, the poems that precede and follow each of the Parts reflect some of the motifs of the presentation.
    “State of War,” Book I of this work, focuses on the individual state; it is divided into three parts, which correspond to three general arguments.
    Part I, “The Long War of the Nation-State,” argues that the war that began in 1914 did not end until 1990. By looking at earlier epochal wars beginning with the Peloponnesian Wars, one can see how historians from Thucydides onward have determined whether a particular campaign is a completed war or only a part of a more extended conflict such as the Thirty Years' War. Epochal wars put the constitutional basis of the participants in play and do not truly end until the underlying constitutional questions are resolved. This is how it was with the Long War, which was fought to determine which of three alternatives—communism, fascism, or parliamentarianism—would replace the imperial constitutional orders of the nineteenth century. The Long War embraces conflicts we at present call the First World War, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, the wars in Korea and Viet Nam, and the Cold War.
    Part II provides “A Brief History of the Modern State and the Constitutional Order” * beginning with the origin of the State in Italy at the end of the fifteenth century and ending with the events that began the Long War. These chapters assert the thesis that epochal wars have brought about profound changes in the constitutional order of states through a process of innovation and mimicry as some states are compelled to innovate, strategically and constitutionally, in order to survive, and as other states copy these innovations when they prove decisive in resolving the epochal conflict of an era. Sometimes the impetus comes from the constitutional side, as when the political changes wrought by the French Revolution in the late eighteenth century demanded tactical and strategic change to cope with the loss of a highly trained officer corps; sometimes the impetus was the reverse, as when the use of mobile artillery against the rich walled city-states of Italy in the early sixteenth century required the creation of bureaucracies and efficient systems of taxation. Most often the causality was mutual: strategic innovations (like the use of mass conscription) brought about changes in the constitutional order of the State—such as a broadened franchise and mass public education—and these constitutional changes in turn brought forth new tactical and strategic approaches that sought to exploit the possibilities created by the new domestic political environment, opportunities for innovations as different as terror bombing and the Officer Candidate School.
    Part III of Book I, “The Historic Consequences of the Long War,” argues that the Long War of the twentieth century was another such epochal war, and that it has brought about the emergence of a new form of the State, the market-state. These chapters address the situation of the United States, one of the first market-states, and suggest how this state will change both constitutionally and strategically as