Georgia is only the start

Philip Bobbitt’s cover piece in this week’s magazine is a very significant intervention in the debate on what is happening in Georgia. I commissioned the article because – in my opinion – Bobbitt is the most important writer in the world on geopolitical issues right now: his impeccable scholarship, work for the National Security Council, the advice he has given presidents, and his capacity to soar over the battlefield of confusion make him unique. Above all, he is intrinsically wary of applying old paradigms of analysis to new landscapes: that is why his book Terror and Consent is such a masterpiece. There is no better guide to the new international order and its discontents (I was delighted to see it on the Tories’ summer reading list).

So do read his essay on why the Georgian crisis challenges so many of our preconceptions. For much too long, discussion on foreign policy has been dangerously restricted to a series of questions about the Iraq War, its legality and the success of the surge.