THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES

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by Bobbitt, Philip


  108. “Law is something we do, not something we have as a consequence of something we do. Sometimes our activities in law—deciding, proposing, persuading—may link up with specific ideas we have at those moments; but often they do not, and it is never the case that this link must be made for the activities that are law to be law. Therefore the causal accounts of how those inner states come into being, accounts that often lose their persuasiveness in contact with the abundance of the world, are really beside the point. If we want to understand the ideological and political commitments in law, we have to study the grammar of the law, that system of logical constraints that the practices of legal activities have developed in our particular culture.” Ibid., 24.

  109. See for example, Gunnar Schuster, “Extraterritoriality of Securities Laws: An Economic Analysis of Jurisdictional Conflicts,” Law and Policy in International Business 26 (1994): 165; Joel Trachtman, “The Theory of the Firm and the Theory of International Economic Organization: Toward Comparative Institutional Analysis,” in Symposium: Institutions for International Economic Integration, Northwestern Journal of International Law and Business 17 (Winter-Spring 1996 – 97): 470.

  110. Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

  111. Ronald Dworkin, Law's Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986).

  112. See Thomas Franck's Fairness in International Law and Institutions (Oxford University Press, 1995) for a sophisticated and even charming exposition of how Rawls's work might be applied to the issue of legitimacy in international law.

  113. Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought), trans. William Rehg (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996).

  114. James Brierly, The Law of Nations, 6th ed. (Oxford University Press, 1963), 51.

  115. Proceedings of the American Society of International Law, vol. 86, 120.

  116. See Jack Balkin for argument that deconstruction can be put to conservative uses; and Bruce Ackerman, in We the People: Foundations (Belknap Press, Harvard, 1991), 320 – 322, and Frederick Schauer in “Constitutional Positivism,” Connecticut Law Review 29 (Spring 1993), for arguments that formalism can be put in service of liberal ideals.

  117. These are discussed in some detail in Constitutional Fate (1982) and Constitutional Interpretation (1991).

  118. James A. Baker III, with Thomas DeFrank, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace (New York: Putnam, 1995).

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: CHALLENGES TO THE NEW INTERNATIONAL ORDER

  1. Having looked at this question when I was writing Democracy and Deterrence, I have less sympathy with those scholars who argue that the United States need not have dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki because the Japanese were obviously losing the war and thus could have been induced to surrender without an American invasion.

  2. For an excellent discussion, see “Japanese Nuclear Weapons,” in Asia-Pacific: Issues and Developments (National Security Planning Associates, 1997), 23.

  3. Lawrence Freedman, “The ‘Proliferation Problem' and the New World Order,” 2 (man-script in possession of the author); see also Lawrence Freedman, “Great Powers, Vital Interests and Nuclear Weapons,” Survival 4 (Winter 1994/95).

  4. Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better (1981).

  5. See Lawrence Freedman, “Great Powers, Vital Interests and Nuclear Weapons, supra n. 3, 36.

  6. This speech is reproduced in Churchill's “Iron Curtain” Speech Fifty Years Later, ed. James W. Muller (with assistance from the Churchill Center) (University of Missouri Press, 1999).

  7. Martin Van Creveld, Nuclear Proliferation and the Future of Conflict (Macmillan, 1993), 122.

  8. Supplying other states with ballistic missile defense can strengthen the credibility of American commitment. This is because it avoids the theorem described in Democracy and Deterrence, which holds that any American effort to cure “decoupling”—the abandonment of the European or any extended theatre—risks “uncoupling”—the confinement of nuclear war to an extended theatre while the U.S. remains a sanctuary. See Bobbitt, Democracy and Deterrence, 99 – 109.

  9. See Richard Betts, “The New Threat of Mass Destruction,” Foreign Affairs 77 (1998): 31.

  10. Cf. Colin G. Calloway, New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 33 – 338.

  11. George W. Christopher and Julie Pavlin, “Biological Warfare: A Historical Perspective,” Journal of the American Medical Association 278 (1997): 412.

  12. Robert Koch (1843 – 1910) discovered mycobacterium tuberculosis as the agent of human tuberculosis in 1871. His postulates are these: an infectious disease is caused by a pathogen organism; that organism must be obtained in pure culture; the organism obtained in culture must reproduce in experimental animals; the pathogen organism must be recovered from the animals used for the experiment so vaccines can be produced.

  13. This was Ken Alibek, the former deputy director of Biopreparat, a network of institutes responsible for weapons research and the production of pathogen agents.

  14. See Ronald Atlas, “Combating the Threat of Biowarfare and Bioterrorism: Defending against Biological Weapons Is Critical to Global Security,” BioScience 9 (1999): 465, from which much of the background provided in this account is taken. The CIA reported in 1995 that seventeen countries—Bulgaria, China, Cuba, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Laos, Libya, North Korea, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Syria, Taiwan, and Viet Nam—were researching or stockpiling weapons for germ warfare.

  15. Ibid. See M. Leitenberg, “The Conversion of Biological Warfare Research and Development Facilities to Peaceful Uses,” in Control of Dual Threat Agents: The Vaccines for Peace Program, ed. Erhard Geissler and John P. Woodall (Oxford University Press, 1994), 77.

  16. Brad Roberts, in Washington Quarterly, Winter 1995, 5; see also Biological Weapons: Weapons of the Future?, vol. 15, ed. Brad Roberts (Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1993).

  17. A United States Office of Technology Assessment Report concluded that a small private plane with 220 pounds of anthrax spores flying over Washington, D.C., on a north to south route trailing an invisible mist would kill a million people on a day with moderate wind. Even a single warhead of anthrax spores, OTA estimates, would kill 30,000 to 40,000 persons, more in fact than an Hiroshima-size nuclear weapon.

  18. A Japanese attack using cholera agents on Changteh in 1941 led to an estimated 10,000 casualties and 1,700 deaths among Japanese troops.

  19. The anthrax released from the Soviet lab near Sverdlovsk in 1979 may have been specially bred to be resistant to antibiotics and specifically engineered to attack adult males. Antibiotics failed to prevent the deaths of over 1,000 civilians, but three times as many men as women died and not a single child.

  20. Though it was ultimately unable to seal its borders against communication. Arthur C. Clarke, who early on speculated about the geosynchronous satellite, observed that “[r]adio waves have never respected frontiers, and from an altitude of 36,000 kilometers, national boundaries are singularly inconspicuous.” Satellites enable persons with such decentralized devices as a simple transistor radio or television to receive information beyond the control of national authorities.

  21. It is worth noting that a team of researchers at Malvern, Worcestershire, given a task of improving the reliability of RAF radar equipment, hit upon the idea of putting an entire circuit on a block of silicon a half-inch square. This concept was not operationalized until 1958 by Roger Kilby at Texas Instruments.

  22. Quoted in Walter B. Wriston, “Clintonomics,” Vital Speeches, vol. 59, April 1, 1993, 376.

  23. Peter Drucker, “The Changed World Economy,” Foreign Affairs 64 (1986): 777 – 778.

  24. Wriston, 379.

  25. Ibid., 380.

 
; 26. Ibid.

  27. Ask not what your country can do for you (nation-state) or what you can do for your country (state-nation), but what, with your country's help, you can do for yourself (market-state).

  28. C. Fred Bergsten, “The World Economy after the Cold War,” Foreign Affairs 69 (1990): 98.

  29. Ibid.

  30. According to the CIA World Factbook 2000, current U.S. external debt stands at $862 billion. The Bureau of the Public Debt does not provide percentage breakdowns by nation. According to Peter Hadfield, “Japan holds a large chunk of U.S. national debt—$500 billion worth, according to some estimates,” “Japan backs away from bond threat,” USA Today, June 25, 1997, 10B. But see Claire Mencke, “Prices Flat Despite Bullish Data: Japan Rumors, Iraq Events Cited,” Investor's Business Daily, November 17, 1997, B14. “‘There's no real evidence of this yet, but people in the market are very fearful of it because of Japan's super-large Treasury holdings,’ MCM Money Watch economist Astrid Adolfson said, ‘noting that Japan holds about $321 billion of the $1.3 trillion of Treasury debt outstanding.’”

  31. Drucker, 786.

  32. See Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge University Press, 1981), 235.

  33. Robert P. Kadlec, “Biological Weapons for Waging Economic Warfare,” in Battlefield of the Future, ed. Barry R. Schneider and Lawrence E. Grinter (Air University Press, 1995), 251.

  34. Drucker, 771.

  35. David Sapsford, Real Primary Commodity Prices: An Analysis of Long-Run Movements, International Monetary Fund Internal Memorandum, May 17, 1985 (unpublished).

  36. Drucker, 773.

  37. Ibid., 781; see also Walt Rostow, “The Terms of Trade in Theory” and “The Terms of Trade in Practice,” in The Process of Economic Growth (Norton, 1953), 168.

  38. Robert W. Kates, “Expecting the Unexpected?” Environment 38 (1996): 6.

  39. William McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (Anchor Press, 1976), 254.

  40. Some knowledgeable commentators expect that advances in biotechnology will obviate this problem by allowing us to grow organs cheaply.

  41. Methyl chloride, for example, killed more than a hundred people in a Cleveland hospital in 1929 when it leaked into a ventilation system following an explosion in an X-ray lab.

  42. Kates, n. 38.

  43. SALADIN: And I a Mussulman. Between us is the Christian. Now, but one of all these three religions can be true. A man like you stands not where accident of birth has cast him. If he so remain, it is from judgment, reason, choice of best. Impart to me your judgment; let me hear the reasons I've no time to seek myself.

  Saladin then gives Nathan a few hurried moments to contemplate on this question alone. After a soliloquy by Nathan, Saladin returns to be told this story.

  NATHAN: In gray antiquity there lived a man in Eastern lands who had received a ring of priceless worth from a beloved hand. Its stone, an opal, flashed a hundred colors, and had the secret power of giving favor, in sight of God and man, to him who wore it with a believing heart. What wonder then this Eastern man would never put the ring from off his finger, and should so provide that to his house it be preserved forever? Such was the case. Unto the best beloved among his sons he left the ring, enjoining that he in turn bequeath it to the son who should be dearest; and the dearest ever, in virtue of the ring, without regard to birth, be of the house the prince and head. You understand me, Sultan?

  SALADIN: Yes; go on!

  NATHAN: From son to son the ring descending, came to one, the sire of three; of whom all three were equally obedient; whom all three he therefore must with equal love regard. And yet from time to time now this, now that, and now the third,—as each alone was by, the others not dividing his fond heart, appeared to him the worthiest of the ring; which then, with loving weakness, he would promise to each in turn. Thus it continued long. Be he must die; and then the loving father was sore perplexed. It grieved him thus to wound two faithful sons who trusted in his word; but what to do? In secrecy he calls an artist to him, and commands of him two other rings, the pattern of his own; and bids him neither cost nor pains to spare to make them like, precisely like to that. The artist's skill succeeds. He brings the ring, and e'en the father cannot tell his own. Relieved and joyful, summons he his sons, each by himself; to each one by himself he gives his blessing, and his ring—and dies. You listen, Sultan?

  SALADIN: (who, somewhat perplexed, has turned away)—Yes; I hear, I hear. But bring your story to an end…

  NATHAN: Return we to our rings. As I have said, the sons appealed to law, and each took oath before the judge that from his father's hand he had the ring, —as was indeed the truth; and had received his promise long before, one day the ring, with all its privileges, should be his own, —as was not less the truth. The father could not have been false to him each one maintained; and rather than allow upon the memory of so dear a father such stain to rest, he must against his brothers, though gladly he would nothing but the best believe of them, bring charge of treachery; means would he find the traitors to expose, and be revenged on them.

  SALADIN: And now the judge? I long to hear what words you give the judge. Go on!

  NATHAN: Thus spoke the judge: Produce your father at once before me, else from my tribunal do I dismiss you. Think you I am here to guess your riddles? Either would you wait until the genuine ring shall speak?—But hold! A magic power in the true ring resides, as I am told, to make its wearer loved—pleasing to God and man. Let that decide. For in the false can no such virtue lie. Which one among you, then, do two love best? Speak! Are you silent? Work the rings but backward, not outward? Loves each one himself the best? Then cheated cheats are all of you! The rings all three are false. The genuine ring was lost; and to conceal, supply the lost, the father made three in place of one.

  SALADIN: Oh, excellent!

  NATHAN: Go, therefore, said the judge, unless my counsel you'd have in place of sentence. It were this: accept the case exactly as it stands. Had each his ring directly from his father, let each believe his own genuine. ‘Tis possible your father would no longer his house to one ring's tyranny subject; and certain that all three of you he loved, loved equally, since two he would not humble, that one might be exalted. Let each one to his unbought, impartial love aspire; each with the others vie to bring to light the virtue of the stone within his ring; Let gentleness, a hearty love of peace, benefiance, and perfect trust in God, come to its help. Then if the jewel's power among your children's children be revealed, I bid you in a thousand, thousand years again before this bar. A wiser man than I shall occupy this seat, and speak. Go!—Thus the modest judge dismissed them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: POSSIBLE WORLDS

  1. Joseph Nye, Jr., “Peering into the Future,” Foreign Affairs 73 (1994): 82.

  2. Ibid.

  3. See Scenario Planning: Forging a Link with Strategic Decision Making (Corporate Executive Board, 1999), 51; and Arie de Geus, The Living Company (Harvard Business School Press, 1997); David Mason, “Scenario-Based Planning Decision Model for the Learning Organization,” in Planning Review, vol. 22, March/April 1994; Ian Wilson, “The Effective Implementation of Scenario Planning: Changing the Corporate Culture,” in Learning from the Future: Competitive Foresight Scenarios, ed. Liam Fahey (Wiley, 1998).

  4. Scenario Planning, supra n. 3.

  5. Ibid., 19 – 21.

  6. For an excellent treatment of the scenario process see Peter Schwartz, The Art of the Long View (New York: Doubleday, 1991).

  7. Public Global Scenarios 1992 – 2020, 2 (Shell International Petroleum Company, 1992). “[T]he purpose of scenario planning is not to pinpoint future events but to highlight large-scale forces that push the future in different directions. It's about making these forces visible, so that if they do happen, the planner will at least recognize them. It's about helping make better decisions today. Scenario planning begins by identifying the focal issue or decision. There are an infinite number of stories that we could tell about the future; our pur
pose is to tell those that matter, that lead to better decisions.”

  8. Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue about the Future with Nongovernment Experts (National Intelligence Council 2000 – 02, Dec. 2000), 12. The following “assumed facts” for the scenario period are taken from this document.

  9. See National Intelligence Estimate on Ballistic Missile Threat, declassified (U.S. GPO, 1999).

  10. Walt W. Rostow, “2050: An Essay on the 21st Century,” 29 (ms.).

  11. Ibid.

  12. Paul Domjan, “Future Scenarios” (2001) (unpublished manuscript).

  13. Ibid., 9.

  14. William Greider, One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism (Simon & Schuster, 1997), 167 – 168; this is basically a description of Germany's policy in the late 1990s.

  15. Roger Rainbow, in Scenarios for the Future.

 

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