Ever since the spectacular and terrible terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001, Western societies have been understandably obsessed with security. On that day we became aware of a frightening new threat not from heavily armed states, or enormously destructive weapons, but from small groups of highly motivated and determined men using the routine apparatus of modern life against us. This was true for Australia, a close ally of the United States, which immediately committed troops to a new ‘war on terror’ beginning in Afghanistan, then lost eighty-eight of its citizens in the double bombing of nightclubs in Bali a year later. As the US and its allies extended their war on terror from Afghanistan to Iraq, the Philippines, Pakistan, Palestine and Lebanon, and Islamist terrorists struck trains in Madrid and London, housing complexes in Saudi Arabia, tourists at Sharm el-Sheikh and Bali, and sacred Shiite mosques in Iraq, it was clear that the new reality facing large parts of the world was permanent insecurity. Yet such raw facts are meaningless if we fail to bring a critical historical perspective to understanding and acting upon them. Such an understanding is the focus of this book, and it sets out from the premise that assuming to know what security is, and how to achieve it, can be the most dangerous thing of all.