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Article: Soldiers of the State.(The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History)
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- September 30, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History, by Philip Bobbitt (Knopf, 919 pp., $40)
Robert Stewart, second viscount Castlereagh, was the British foreign minister from 1812 to 1822. A member of the Irish peerage, melancholy, aloof, in many ways mysterious, he won a place in the British cabinet; there he labored, during the last decade of his life, to turn the coalition of Great Powers leagued against France into a peacetime alliance capable of establishing, and preserving, order in Europe.
To a large extent he succeeded. In 1814 the allied powers -- Great Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia -- pledged to maintain a ...