Readers familiar with Bobbitt’s reputation will know that he has been a harsh critic of the Bush administration, particularly of its record in Iraq and Afghanistan, of its use of detention and coercive interrogation at Guantanamo and elsewhere, as well as of its public diplomacy towards friend and foe alike. So the drastic prescriptions advocated in Terror and Consent may come as a shock to those who share Bobbitt’s critique of US policy since 9/11.

Let us take the uniquely sensitive issue of torture. Bobbitt believes that, while torture should always be outlawed, it is still necessary in extreme cases, provided that the interrogator accepts the consequences: “There ought to be an absolute ban on torture or coercive interrogations for the purpose of collecting tactical information, with the acceptance that this ban will be violated in the ‘ticking bomb’ circumstances: the prosecutions that must follow will allow juries to consider the mitigating question of whether a reasonable person, motivated by a sincere desire to protect others, would have violated the law.” Most people, faced with something like the “ticking bomb” scenario, would commit torture. But Bobbitt extends the exemption to include the torture of terrorist leaders with exclusive knowledge of long-term plans to commit attacks. And thus his justification of coercion goes further: “There cannot be a ban on the collection of strategic information – information from terrorist leaders and senior managers – by whatever means are absolutely necessary short of inflicting severe pain when that information is likely to preclude further attacks, when it is disconfirmable by interrogators (and thus the means used are actually no more violent than is necessary), and when a non-governmental jury has decided that the government has met its burden of proof in establishing these matters.”