However, as she has all along, Duffy keeps an eye on the interplay of law and politics. She concludes the book with a close look at the agencies responsible for defining and enforcing the international legal framework. She makes trenchant criticisms of the United Nations and the way it has been used to reinforce national sovereignty at the expense of international conflict resolution. She also forwards useful proposals for reform of the Security Council and other crucial UN agencies, aimed toward strengthening the United Nation’s credibility and authority. In this discussion, Duffy is close to the discussion in a 2004 book by historian John Lewis Gaddis on the founding of the UN and the American tradition of unilateralism in Surprise, Security, and the American Experience.

Duffy’s book is long. Though it is clearly written, it has the characteristics, apart from the author’s intentions, of a catalogue. Still, the catalogue is needed to demonstrate that international law is not a disparate set of elements, but a framework that can be used to analyze actions taken under the rubric of a conflict as remote from the “conventional” as the War on Terror. The understanding we derive by comparing the framework to current international relations is well worth the effort to understand the genesis and operation of the international legal framework that is set out over several hundred pages.

Duffy has provided us with an excellent resource on the modern, international response to Hobbesian dilemma and an indispensable analysis of law and conflict beyond national borders. It applies to the war on terror; it applies to what hope we have for a more peaceful future.