This is 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. I have no doubt it will be garlanded with prizes. It deserves to be. It is more important that it should be read, marked and inwardly digested by all three of the remaining candidates to succeed George W. Bush as president of the United States.

Bobbitt’s central premise is that today’s Islamic terrorist network, which he calls Al Qaeda for short...

Bobbitt’s central premise is that today’s Islamic terrorist network, which he calls Al Qaeda for short...

Yet it is striking that, despite being a Democrat, Philip Bobbitt so often echoes the arguments made by John McCain on foreign policy. He sees the terrorist threat as deadly serious. He is willing to fight it. But he wants to fight it within the law, and with our traditional allies.

Perhaps — who knows? — this brilliant book may also be an application for the post of national security adviser. In times of war, stranger bedfellows have been known than a Democratic Texas lawyer and a Republican Arizona soldier.

Only one point seems to elude Bobbitt, and that is what seems to me to be the great defect of any pre-emptive action by a democratic regime: the electoral rewards for success are slight because the public finds it hard to be grateful for a nonevent. Retaliation, by contrast, is a surefire vote-winner. That is a major difficulty, I think, since the United States can scarcely be an effective “claviger” (key bearer) and “steward” of the states of consent if its executive cannot secure enduring domestic consent for its “preclusive” actions.