This ambitious book sets out to reinterpret the history of the twentieth century as a long war in which conditions of outright military confrontation or of frantic 'cold' competition lasted from the outbreak of the first world war until the collapse of the Soviet Union. He goes on to argue that this long experience of war has brought about a fundamental change in the constitutional basis of states, and explores this idea through the notion of the 'market state'. By clarifying the relationship between constitutional settlements and military power, and by drawing on his firsthand experience in the heart of superpower planning, Bobbitt reveals a startling new way of understanding the past - and an awesome glimpse of the future.