Terror and Consent; The Wars for the Twenty-First Century
New York, N.Y. Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. First American Edition [stated]. Presumed first printing. Hardcover. x, 672, [4] pages. DJ has slight discoloration and small edge chips. Inscribed on the half title page by the author. Inscription reads: " For Jerry, who had the warm affection and admiration of my father, and now has that of his son. From Philip". Includes Introduction: Plagues in the Time of Feast. Also includes chapters on The Idea of a War Against Terror; Law and Strategy in the Domestic Theater of Terror; Strategy and Law in the International Theater of Terror; Conclusion: A Plague Treatise for the Twenty-first Century; and Coda. Also includes Acknowledgments, Notes, Selected Bibliography, and Annotated Index. Philip Chase Bobbitt (born July 22, 1948) is an American author, academic, and lawyer. He is known for work on military strategy and constitutional law and theory, and as the author of several books: Constitutional Fate: Theory of the Constitution, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History, and Terror and Consent: the Wars for the Twenty-first Century. He is currently Professor of Jurisprudence at Columbia University School of Law Bobbitt has also served extensively in government, for both Democratic and Republican administrations. In the 1970s, he was Associate Counsel to President Carter. He was Legal Counsel to the Iran-Contra Committee in the U. S. Senate, the Counselor for International Law at the State Department during the first Bush administration, and served at the National Security Council, where he was director for Intelligence Programs, senior director for Critical Infrastructure, and senior director for Strategic Planning during Bill Clinton's presidency. Philip Bobbitt follows his magisterial Shield of Achilles with an equally provocative analysis of the West’s struggle against terror. Boldly stating that the primary driver of terrorism is not Islam but the emergence of market states (like the U.S. and the E.U.), Bobbitt warns of an era where weapons of mass destruction will be commodified and the wealthiest societies even more vulnerable to destabilizing, demoralizing terror. Unflinching in his analysis, Bobbitt addresses the deepest themes of history, law and strategy. In this book, Philip Bobbitt brings together historical, legal,and strategic analyses to understand the idea of a "war on terror." He provocatively declares that the United States is the chief cause of global networked terrorism because of overwhelming American strategic dominance. Bobbitt argues that the United States has ignored the role of law in devising its strategy, with fateful consequences, and has failed to reform law in light of the changed strategic context. Terror and Consent was on both the New York Times and the London Evening Standard’s best-seller lists and was widely reviewed. The front page of the New York Times Sunday Book Review called it, "quite simply the most profound book to have been written on the subject of American foreign policy since the attacks of 9/11 — indeed, since the end of the cold war." Among others, Senator John McCain praised the book as "the best book I’ve ever read on terrorism," and Henry Kissinger called Bobbitt, "perhaps the most important political philosopher today." Tony Blair wrote of Terror and Consent, "It may be written by an academic but it is actually required reading for political leaders." David Cameron, the leader of the Tory party in the UK put it on a list of summer reading for his parliamentary colleagues in 2008. In Terror & Consent, Bobbitt argued that the only justification for warfare in the 21st century was to protect human rights. In 2017, he had a spirited exchange arguing that litigation is not the exclusive legal method for determining constitutionality in national security affairs and that law applied even when the constitutional issue in question was not justifiable. General Sir Rupert Smith wrote that Terror and Consent, "shows more convincingly than any other book I know, why the defeat of terrorism must be brought about within the context of law." Condition: Very good / Very good.
Keywords: Terrorism, Foreign Relations, Government Policy, al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, Deterrence, WMD, Weapons of Mass Destruction
ISBN: 9781400042432
[Book #80382]
Price: $60.00