THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES Read Free Page B

being transformed, and this transformation is constitutional in nature, by which I mean we will change our views as to the basic
raison d'être
of the State, the legitimating purpose that animates the State and sets the terms of the State's strategic endeavors.
    The nation-state's model of statecraft links the sovereignty of a state to its territorial borders. Within these borders a state is supreme with respect to its law, and beyond its borders a state earns the right of recognition and intercourse to the extent that it can defend its borders. Today this model confronts several deep challenges. Because the international order of nation-states is constructed on the foundation of this model of state sovereignty, developments that cast doubt on that sovereignty call the entire system into question.
    Five such developments do so: (i) the recognition of human rights as norms that require adherence within all states, regardless of their internal laws; (2) the widespread deployment of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction that render the defense of state borders ineffectual for the protection of the society within; (3) the proliferation of global and transnational threats that transcend state borders, such as those that damage the environment, or threaten states through migration, population expansion, disease, or famine; (4) the growth of a world economic regime that ignores borders in the movement of capital investment to a degree that effectively curtails states in the management of their economic affairs; and (5) the creation of a global communications network that penetrates borders electronically and threatens national languages, customs, and cultures. As a consequence, a constitutional order will arise that reflects these five developments and indeed exalts them as requirements that only this new order can meet. The emergence of a new basis for the State will also change the constitutional assumptions of the international society of states, for that framework too derives from the domestic consti-tutional rationale of its constituent members.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MILITARY
INNOVATION AND CHANGE IN THE CONSTITUTIONAL ORDER
     
    Ever since Max Weber, 1 scholars have argued that a revolution in military affairs brought forth the modern state by requiring an organized system of finance and administration in order for societies to defend themselves. Accepting this premise, however, it is unclear precisely which revolution in military affairs actually brought the modern state into being. Was it the use of mobile artillery in the sixteenth century that abruptly rendered the castles and moats of the Middle Ages useless? Or was it the Gunpowder Revolution of the seventeenth century that replaced the shock tactics of pikemen with musket fire? Or the rise in professionalism within the military in the eighteenth century and the cabinet wars this made possible (or was it the change in tactics that accompanied mass conscription in the nineteenth century) ? One important consequence of asking this question in this way is that it assumes that there has been only one form of the modern state: the nation-state. If, as many believe, the nation-state is dying owing to the five developments mentioned above, then this scholarly debate about the birth of the state has consequences for its death.
    But if we see, on the contrary, that
each
of the important revolutions in military affairs enabled a political revolution in the fundamental constitutional order of the State, then we will be able not only to better frame the scholarly debate but also to appreciate that the death of the nation-state by no means presages the end of the State. Moreover, we will then be able to see aright the many current political conflicts that arise from the friction between the decaying nation-state and the emerging market-state, conflicts that have parallels in the past when one constitutional order was replaced by another and led to civil strife