A Papier-Mache Fortress

National Interest, The, Winter, 2002 by Paul W. Schroeder

The final section of Book II, entitled "The Society of Market States", speculates further on the challenges to the new international order of market states, and the nature of war and peace in the coming age. The bewildering variety of the propositions offered and the absence or impossibility of proof or substantiation would seem to put this section beyond summary or critical evaluation, at least for historians. The author insists, however, that his arguments and prescriptions for the present and future derive from the historical scheme earlier developed and schematized, so even Bobbitt's futurology invites evaluation according to the standards of historical scholarship.

A Reach Too Shallow

AS HISTORY, Bobbit's work unquestionably presents a broad panorama and offers a bold, arresting and apparently coherent set of theses and arguments relevant to the world today. The historical scheme seems compelling, the analysis of the current crisis cogent, the predictions and scenarios for the future important to consider. The overall recommendation--that America strive for market principles globally and in domestic politics, and continued American military domination and the ability to fight a series of low-level contests as the only way to avoid the next epochal war--offers a program congenial to many Americans today. These qualities, one supposes, have recommended the work to many lay readers and some distinguished scholars. What is wrong with it?

As historical scholarship, a great deal. The book suffers from so many grave defects of an evidential, logical and methodological character as to render it unreliable both for fact and interpretation. Stating such a verdict flatly, while being unable for reasons of space to bring full evidence for it, is uncomfortable. Since it is not possible to comment inclusively on over 900 pages of text in a review of a few thousand words, only a few of the book's technical historical flaws, though they are crucially important, can be discussed.

The first of these is inadequate research. Sixty pages of notes and eleven of bibliography may seem impressive, but the reading required to undergird so sweeping a reinterpretation of history as Bobbitt offers would have to be at least ten times as great and yet also more discriminating--a nearly superhuman demand, to be sure, but one that is inseparable from the undertaking. Apart from discussions of Bobbitt's specialty, constitutional law, the only topic among the many huge, controversial ones he discusses on which his reading is adequate is that on the 15th-18th century revolutions in military affairs.

Inadequate research contributes to other defects but cannot wholly account for them. Ungrounded generalizations, naked assertions, logical leaps, vague language, conceptual confusion, contradictions, arbitrary definitions, exaggerations and distortions, and major omissions of vital material abound. Then there is the problem of outright factual errors.

Factual errors are bound to occur in any book as broad and ambitious as this one. What counts is the level of their incidence and significance, and it is unacceptably high. Some errors do not directly affect the overall theses, but others demonstrate a general misconception of a problem important to the story. As to the former, for example, when Bobbitt writes that in 1798-99 France attacked and conquered Switzerland, the Papal States, Piedmont-Sardinia and Naples (which is like saying that the Soviet Union in 1947-48 attacked and conquered Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary), the factual error shows only that he misunderstands the nature of French expansion and the allied response in a crucial period of one of his epochal wars. But the statement that after 1815 the majority of Poles lived under Prussian and Austrian (rather than Russian) rule is not an incidental error. It shows that the author cannot have understood the Polish question either in its domestic or international aspects. It would be like trying to understand the American race problem if one believed that after 1865 the majority of freed blacks lived in the North.