Terror and Consent by Philip Bobbitt

Bobbitt starts off with a very broad theory about how human organization (essentially, governance), has changed over time, and how "terrorists" have changed along with these shifts. He argues that we are now moving into a period of what he calls "market states", which is related to the idea of "globalization", and that Al Qaeda is an example of how terrorist groups will move on from the "nation state" (or was it "state nation" -- he uses these two terms as two different phases of development, which was more than a little confusing) model that, say, the IRA adopted to a "market state" model of its own---decentralized resources, outsourcing, etc. This portion of the book was interesting and thought-provoking, but not super-convincing. Nor did it need to be, because it wasn't nearly as important as the arguments presented in the rest of the book.

In the rest of the book, Bobbitt much more convincingly argues that we do not have the legal structures to handle the catastrophic threats we face now. This doesn't just mean we can't deal with terrorists -- he also points out that we don't have the legal structures to respond swiftly to a massive plague (whether terror induced or natural), a huge earthquake (he points at Katrina, of course), a massive failed state (Rwanda, for example), etc. Of course, he spends most of his time on terrorism, with issues like nuclear proliferation, torture, international cooperation, and so on. I'm generally *very* skeptical of ideas that get anywhere close to world government, but Bobbitt is convincing when he argues that we simply need more international law that will facilitate dealing with these threats. For example, if the US really wanted to do something about Darfur, there's probably no way the UN would allow it -- how do we create a legal structure that would allow some group of 5000 people with big guns to stop the next Rwanda (the UN even had them in the last Rwanda, and they were told to stand down)? He also argues that we need a lot more strategic thinking on dealing with "market state" terrorism, but that's hardly a novel assessment (though it does make me wonder why there was so little discussion about nuclear proliferation -- early in the book, Bobbitt describes Pakistan's nuclear development and the black market built by A.Q. Khan for nuclear-bomb related materials...scary stuff).

On a more local level, Bobbitt is also convincing in arguing that the US doesn't have the legal structures in place to deal with crises in our own borders. For example, as we saw in Katrina, the military can't help in a domestic crisis unless the governor of the state signs off on it. Apparently this is related to a law from the Civil War era that was intended to keep Yankee troops from interfering in Southern politics. I think we're past that threat now, and for those worried about removing this law leading to a military state, I hardly think this law would stop, or even slow, a President so inclined. He goes through a number of very low probability examples that our current law really provides very little for. This is part of his argument about the need for more strategic thinking. He argues that we spend a great deal of our time with fairly low-probability, but fairly low-impact events (like fretting so much over TSA) and not nearly enough time thinking about *very* low-probability, but tremendous impact events. (And he doesn't even talk about asteroids, which would have fit right into this discussion.)

All in all, this was one of the most interesting books I've read in a while, but it was very, very long. I also read it a couple weeks ago (I'm many books behind in blogging), so I'm already forgetting a lot of the most interesting bits... But if you like to think about these sorts of topics, you'll almost certainly enjoy this book, even if you don't agree with much of the author's observations.