Belgian author Paye conducts a comprehensive and detailed comparative study of the “fight against terrorism” in the United States, Britain and the European Union, examining the recent radical shifts in law and the political behavior of states. Informed by autonomist theoretical work regarding “empire,” juridical “states of exception” and “constitutive” political actions, he concludes with a prediction of increasingly dictatorial forms of sovereignty and an anticipation of escalating internal social war throughout the West.