humanity or enmity? carl schmitt on international politicsrlipsch/migrated/pol272/axtmann.pdf ·...

Humanity or Enmity? Carl Schmitt

on International Politics

Roland AxtmannDepartment of Politics and International Relations, School of Humanities, Swansea University,

Wales, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK.

E-mail: [email protected]

This article reviews Schmitt’s analysis of international politics from the period ofthe Weimar Republic to the early years of the German Federal Republic. Ithighlights the importance of Schmitt’s opposition to Woodrow Wilson’s policiesand ‘liberal’ universalism more generally for his understanding of and engagementwith international politics. Confronted with the decline of the state (the Ende derStaatlichkeit), Schmitt develops a concept of the political that is not tied in with theexistence of the state. Schmitt embraces the fascist stato totalitario as a model for a‘qualitatively’ strong state and the distribution of the earth into hegemonicGrossraume as the new nomos.International Politics (2007) 44, 531–551. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ip.8800213

Keywords: Carl Schmitt; humanity; enmity; the political; war; state; universalism

Introduction: Carl Schmitt in his Time

Still not a widely known figure in international relations theory, Carl Schmitthas come to be recognized as one of the most controversial as well as mostinfluential political thinkers of the 20th century.1 Many political andintellectual critics and opponents of democracy in Germany took theirarguments from Carl Schmitt. But as Jan-Werner Muller (2003) has recentlyshown, Schmitt has been a towering intellectual presence in post-war Europeanthought as well. Schmitt’s voluminous writings have produced thousands ofitems of interpretative literature, most of them in German, but also in Italian,Spanish and French — with Anglo-American scholarship on Schmitt catchingup at great pace over the last two decades or so (Bendersky, 1983; Caldwell,1997; Dyzenhaus, 1997; McCormick, 1997; Cristi, 1998; Dyzenhaus, 1998;Mouffe, 1999; Scheuerman, 1999; Balakrishnan, 2000; Muller, 2003; Kennedy,2004).While there is no arguing about Schmitt’s centrality in conservative-

nationalist and authoritarian-fascist thought past and present, the degree towhich his thinking has also influenced the democratic left, and the question asto the legitimacy of any incorporation of Schmitt’s thought into any ‘left’

International Politics, 2007, 44, (531–551)r 2007 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1384-5748/07 $30.00

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theory and politics, are highly controversial. Schmitt has rightly been perceivedto be one of the 20th century most profound critics of liberalism, and theliberal notions of democracy and of politics in particular. Since liberalism as anideology, theory and practice has been the bete noir of conservatism andsocialism alike since the 19th century and well into the second half of the 20thcentury, the endeavour of either side to draw on Schmitt’s arguments isunderstandable. A lively scholarly debate about the validity and merits ofSchmitt’s critique of liberalism should therefore be no surprise. What hascaused disquiet, consternation and recrimination within the scholarly commu-nity is the fact that Schmitt developed his critique not from a position ofdispassionate scholarly disengagement, as an intellectual endeavour of showingup the shortcomings of a particular theory, but as a committed politicalintellectual who did not only wish to critique liberalism but demolish thepolitical and social system to which it has given rise and bestowed legitimacy —and who did not shy away to consort with the Nazis after 1933. It is thesituatedness of Schmitt the man and thinker in a concrete historical time andplace, the way in which he gave meaning to ‘his’ world, the politicalconsequences that for him followed from his critique, and the anxious questionof those who find much to applaud in this critique as to whether it can beutilized for developing a non-authoritarian alternative to ‘liberal’ society anddemocracy, that fan the heated debate. How best to deal with the ambiguouslegacy of this ‘dangerous mind’ (Muller, 2003) exercises both politicallyengaged intellectuals and scholars.Born in 1888 and died in 1985, Schmitt’s life spanned four different political

regimes in Germany, the Wilhelminian Reich, the Weimar Republic, NationalSocialism and the Federal Republic. In the Weimar Republic he moved within thehorizon of political Catholicism and supported the policies of Heinrich Bruning,the leader of the Catholic Centre party. In the later years of the Weimar Republic,he argued for the parliamentary system to be replaced by a presidential system,advocating the use of presidential discretionary powers in cases of emergency toprotect the constitution against its critics. Once the Nazi had come to power, heaccommodated himself with the new regime quickly, publishing an infamousarticle in 1934 under the title ‘The Fuhrer protects the Law’ (Fuhrer, 1934).2 Hisfall from favour in 1936 brought to an end eventful 3 years in which Schmitt hadmoved into influential positions within higher education and the legal profession.Arrested in 1945 by the Allies but released without charge, he was not allowed toreturn to academia, but remained influential among the generation of legalscholars who had been socialized into the profession in the late 1920s and duringthe Nazi years as well as among a new post-war generation of law, political scienceand philosophy students, some of whom would achieve high positions withinWestGerman society’ in the universities and in the legal profession, including judge inthe Constitutional Court (Laak, 2002).

Roland AxtmannCarl Schmitt on International Politics

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International Politics 2007 44

The title Schmitt gave to a collection of his essays in 1940 indicatesthe concrete historical situations to whose challenges he wanted to faceup, ‘Positions and Concepts in the Struggle with Weimar, Geneva, andVersailles’. ‘Weimar’ stood for the new liberal-parliamentary regime whosefundamental problems of constitutional and political order, the problemsof sovereignty, legality and legitimacy had not been satisfactorily addressedand whose ambiguous embrace of liberalism had led to a misapprehensionof the true character of ‘the political’. ‘Versailles’ signified the defeat in theFirst World War and the collapse of the Hohenzollern Empire, the ascriptionof war guilt to the German people and the imposition of reparation payments,the occupation of the Rhineland and revisionism. ‘Geneva’ signified the riseof idealism in international politics and its concomitant moralization,the decisive ultimate step away from the ius publicum Europaeum thathad regulated the interaction of states for the last four hundred years or soto a new order whose contours were not yet clearly discernible. The emerg-ing new global constellation as a result of Germany’s defeat in theSecond World War became a central concern in Schmitt’s writings after1945. If we wish to identify the focal point of reference for Schmitt’s thought,then it would be the experience and fate of the ‘vanquished’ of 1918 and 1945(Willms, 1991).

‘Just War’ or ‘Just Peace’: Schmitt’s Critical Engagement with WilsonianUniversalism

My desire isy that America will come into the full light of the day when allknow that she puts human rights above all other rights and that her flag isthe flag not only of America but of humanity.Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is

involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to that peace andfreedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organizedforce which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people.We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the samestandards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observedamong nations and their governments that are observed among theindividual citizens of civilized states.

The readers of this journal are likely to know whose words have just beenquoted. The first quotation is taken from President Woodrow Wilson’sAddress on Independence Day in 1914. The second quote is a passage fromWilson’s Address of 2 April 1917 in which he recommended the declaration ofa state of war between the United States and the Imperial German government.At stake in this war, Wilson proclaimed, was ‘the ultimate peace of the world’,


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a world that had to be ‘made safe for democracy’. Clearly, a principle was atstake as well, namely, that ‘the right is more precious than peace’ (in Scott,1918, 65, 281, 284, 287).Wilson asserted in his Address on the Conditions of Peace on 8 January 1918

that this ‘final war for human liberty’ had its only justification in upholding‘the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live onequal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong orweak’. Upon this principle, ‘the structure of international justice’ was founded.According to Wilson’s 14 Points, acting on this principle required theacceptance of the principle of national self-determination, and hence theterritorial reconfiguration of Europe (and the colonial world). It also requiredthat a general association of nations ‘be formed under specific covenants forthe purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence andterritorial integrity to great and small states alike’ (in Scott, 1918, 354–363).To the extent that Wilson endorsed the notion of human rights, he embraced

the idea of an abstract humanity. To the extent that he argued for a ‘league ofnations’ whose members would be states ‘great or small’, Wilson accepted,rhetorically, the reality of a pluriverse of sovereign and hence, in legal terms,equal states and thus the reality of a politically differentiated humanity. To theextent that Wilson adhered to the idea that the only justification for war is itsservice to ‘mankind’ or ‘humanity’, to ‘democracy and human rights’, to‘freedom and justice and self-government’, Wilson, in effect, upheld the notionthat a distinction must be made between ‘just’ and ‘unjust’ wars (in Scott, 1918,40, 50, 288, 316). In such ‘just wars’, remaining neutral was not an option.While, after a century of bloody wars, one may feel — almost intuitively —inclined to applaud these principles and the sentiments they express, thisenthusiasm may be somewhat dampened once one realizes that Wilson spokeabout this service to mankind and humanity also in connection with thedeployment of American troops in Mexico during the civil war situation in 1914.Carl Schmitt’s reflections on international politics took shape in his

confrontation with Wilsonian ideology and the reality of Germany’s defeat inthe First World War. These writings on international politics entwined polemicalpolitical commentary published in newspapers with scholarly historical analysis,concept formation and theory building. In the following presentation ofSchmitt’s thinking on international politics, his scholarly endeavours will bestressed. But the reader should be aware that Schmitt understood these scholarlywritings as contributions to political debate and mobilization. This becomesimmediately clear when we reconstruct Schmitt’s discontent with the notion of‘humanity’ and ‘universalism’, as it was, for example, deployed by Wilson, at thelevel of conceptual analysis. ‘Humanity’, Schmitt asserted, ‘is not a politicalconcept’ (Concept, 1932, 55). Let us reconstruct Schmitt’s concept of ‘thepolitical’ in order to understand this statement.


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In 1927, Schmitt published an essay with the title ‘The concept of thepolitical’. In 1932, he published a much revised version of that essay. Inresponse to political developments and criticisms of this essay — in particular,the criticism of Leo Strauss — Schmitt put out a third edition in 1933 — anedition which, later on, he pretended did not exist.3 ‘The specific politicaldistinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is thatbetween friend and enemy’ (Concept, 1932, 25–26). This distinction ‘denotesthe utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation, of an association ordissociation’ (Concept, 1932, 25–26). The political can derive its energy fromthe most varied human endeavours, from the religious, economic, moral,ethical and other antitheses. Every antithesis transforms itself into a politicalone ‘if it is sufficiently strong to group human beings effectively according tofriend and enemy’ (Concept, 1932, 37). The quality of the political resides inthe decision through which the ‘other’, the stranger or alien, is declared tonegate one’s own existence and is thus defined as being — in a particularlyintense way — existentially different, and hence an enemy against whom battlemust be waged, which may — rightly and justifiably — lead to the enemy’sextermination. After all, the political receives its real meaning precisely becauseit refers to the real possibility of physical killing.In the West, so Schmitt asserts, the state had become the bearer of the

monopoly of political decision, the decision on who should be consideredfriend, who enemy. ‘The state as the decisive political entity possesses anenormous power: the possibility of waging war and thereby publicly disposingof the lives of men. The jus belli [in the sense of jus ad bellum, RA] containssuch a disposition. It implies a double possibility: the right to demand from itsown members the readiness to die and unhesitatingly to kill enemies’ (Concept,1932, 46). War follows from enmity. It is ‘the existential negation of the enemy’(Concept, 1932, 33). We shall see later how Schmitt defined the ‘quality’ of ‘theenemy’ in the context of the bracketing of war in the ius publicum Europaeum asa hostis iustus and why he felt that this understanding had been finallyabandoned in the early 20th century. For our current concern, which rehearsesSchmitt’s argument about ‘humanity’ as a non-political concept, oneconsequence of his conceptualization of ‘the political’ must be stressed.Manifestly, for Schmitt, a people which exists politically cannot renounce theright to determine by itself and at its own risk who is friend and who enemy. Itcannot hand over this decision to a third party, nor may it allow itself to bebound in its decisions by ethical considerations that may take the form of ‘justwar’ arguments. For Schmitt, war can only have an ‘existential meaning’:

If physical destruction of human life does not occur out of the existentialassertion of one’s own form of existence against an equally existentialnegation of this form, then it can simply not be justified. No war can be


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justified by ethical and juristic norms. If there really are enemies in theexistential sense as meant here, then it makes sense, but only political sense,to repel them physically and fight them if necessary. (Concept, 1932, 49;altered translation of German original [Begriff] on p. 50])

According to Schmitt, the notions that postulate a ‘just war’ usually serve apolitical purpose; indeed, following Hobbes, Schmitt suggested that ‘theconviction of each side to possess the truth, the good, and the just bring aboutthe worst enmities’ (Concept, 1932, 65). One must not forget, Schmitt urged,that there ‘always are concrete human groupings which fight other humangroupings in the name of justice, humanity, order, or peace. When beingreproached for immorality and cynicism, the spectator of political phenomenacan always recognize in such reproaches a political weapon used in actualcombat’ (Concept, 1932, 67).4

‘Humanity’ is best understood as a political weapon — so at least Schmittargued. Of the Wilsonian rhetoric of ‘humanity’, Schmitt was witheringlyscathing:

When a state fights its political enemies in the name of humanity, it is not awar for the sake of humanity, but a war wherein a particular state seeks tousurp a universal concept against its military opponent. At the expense of itsopponent, it tries to identify itself with humanity in the same way as one canmisuse peace, justice, progress, and civilization in order to claim these asone’s own and deny the same to the enemy. The concept of humanity is anespecially useful ideological instrument of imperialist expansion, and in itsethical-humanitarian form it is a specific vehicle of economic imperialism.Here one is reminded of a somewhat modified expression of Proudhon’s,whoever invokes humanity wants to cheat. To confiscate the wordhumanity, to invoke and monopolize such a term probably has certainincalculable effects, such as denying the enemy the quality of being humanand declaring him to be an outlaw of humanity, and a war can thereby bedriven to the most extreme inhumanity (Concept, 1932, 54).

‘War’ in the name of humanity does no longer know of an enemy, but only of a‘disturber of the peace’ and hence an outlaw of humanity. War is not perceivedas war, but as ‘executions, sanction, punitive expeditions, pacifications,protection of treaties, international police, and measures to ensure peaceremain’ (Concept, 1932, 79). ‘Humanity’, for Schmitt, was thus seen as an‘asymmetrical concept’ since it contains the possibility of the ‘deepestinequality’: since everyone belongs to humanity, any discrimination withinhumanity by denying the quality of being human to a disturber or destroyer ofpeace means turning the negatively valued person into an unperson whose lifeis no longer the highest value but becomes worthless and must be destroyed


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(Legal Revolution, 1987, 88). It is this asymmetry that makes ‘bestiality’ theflip-side of ‘humanity’.The reason why ‘humanity’ is not a ‘political’ concept for Schmitt will now

be clear. Conceptually, ‘the political’ is defined by the distinction of friend andenemy; the ‘political’ character of an association presupposes the real existenceof an enemy and hence, of necessity, the coexistence of another political entity.The political world is thus a pluriverse, not a universe: ‘A world state whichembraces the entire globe and all of humanity cannot exist’ (Concept, 1932,53). The concept of humanity, furthermore, excludes the concept of the enemyyet, the ‘enemy’ does not cease to be a human being. Without this specificdifferentiation, ‘humanity’ cannot acquire ‘political’ qualities. After all,‘humanity as such cannot wage war because it has no enemy’ (Concept,1932, 54).The ‘political’ nature of Schmitt’s definition of ‘the political’ is apparent: the

‘other’ is ‘liberalism’. He charged liberalism with evading or ignoring state andpolitics in a very systematic fashion, endeavouring to tie the political to theethical and subjugating it to economics. For liberalism, to whom the individualmust remain terminus a quo and terminus ad quem, the demand by the politicalentity that in case of need the individual must sacrifice his (or her) life isunconscionable: the individual as such has no enemy with whom he (or she)must enter into a life-and-death combat if he (or she) does not want to do so.What we therefore find in liberal thought, Schmitt asserted, is an entire systemof demilitarized and depoliticalized concepts. For example, ‘political’ combatand battle becomes competition in the domain of economics and discussion inthe intellectual realm. The liberal denial of ‘the political’ manifests itself in theinternational realm in the ideological conception of ‘humanity’ (Concept, 1932,70–72).5

‘Ius Belli’ and the Juridification of International Politics

Schmitt situated his critique of the idea of ‘just war’ and its resurgence in theearly 20th century within both a historical and systematic context. Theresurgence of the ‘just war’ notion signified for him the end of the period of theius publicum Europaeum. Since the 16th century, this new ius inter gentes hadgradually replaced the medieval ius gentium of Latin Christendom as a result ofa spatial revolution that came about through the formation of sovereignterritorial states in Europe and the colonial conquests of the European powers(Nomos, 1950, Part III). From Hobbes to Kant, the theorists of this newEuropean public law conceived of states as ‘moral persons’ who among eachother live in the state of nature with each of them possessing the ius belli andwithout an institutional common supreme authority, a common legislator or


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common judge, but as sovereign entities which face each others as equals. Thissovereign equality is the core of the ‘fundamental rights’ that states possess, anequal right of all states to self-determination, a right to existence and thus botha right to self-defence against attackers and a right to territorial integrity aswell as a right of liberium commercium (Nomos, 1950, Part III, chapter 1;Repetitorium, 1948/50, 728–730). This ius inter gentes recognizes that the iussupremae decisionis regarding war lies with the independent states. They decideby and for themselves whether to conduct war and whether to remain neutralas a ‘third party’ in wars fought between other states. According to Schmitt,war in this legal order has its justice in the fact that the combatants are stateswhich exercise their rights as sovereign political entities. When they fight eachother, they view each other as ‘just enemies’ (iusti hostes), not as perpetrators ofcrimes ‘against humanity’ or ‘outlaws’ who must be destroyed (Neutralisierun-gen, 1939, 324). Wars needed no longer to be justified through iusta causaarguments as part of the (medieval) ‘just war’ tradition; but enemies had to betreated justly and as equals. Schmitt asserts that conceptualizing the friend–enemy distinction without any recourse to ethical theories of ‘just war’ was theprerequisite for the bracketing, and thus ‘civilizing’, of war.This ius publicum Europaeum was in the process of being dismantled, and

with it its ‘civilizational’ advances (Nomos, 1950, Part IV). The rhetoric of‘humanity’, particularly when deployed in connection with the notion of ‘justwar’, tends to define the ‘other’ as an enemy of humankind and as such ‘evil’,against whom the use of violence is ultimately ‘just’. The moral evaluations ofcombatants result in distinguishing between violent actions that are deemed tobe criminal and inhumane in some instances, whereas in other instances theyare seen as expressions of legality and legitimate punishment meted out in aninternational ‘police action’. According to Schmitt, this discriminatory conceptof war leads, of necessity, to the destruction of the institution of neutrality. It isheld that a state cannot be ‘friendly’ to a state which is condemned as adisturber of the peace and at the same time have ‘friendly’ relations with thestate which pursues military sanctions against that disturber in the name ofworld peace and humanity (Wendung/Kriegsbegriff, 1937/38). The ‘peace-restoring’ state then has a legitimate claim to demand an answer to thequestion: ‘Are you with us or are you against us?’. Because ‘just war’arguments delegitimize neutrality, they result, according to Schmitt, in ‘totalwar’ (Vae Neutris, 1938; Neutralisierungen, 1939, 323–331; Neutralitat, 1938;Totaler Feind, 1937).Furthermore, the juridification of international politics had a detrimental

impact. The Wilsonian idea that, just as in the domestic arena the rule of lawhad overcome the state of nature, so a universally binding system ofenforceable legal norms would regulate international conflicts and thus endthe international state of nature, was fundamentally flawed. The political world


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was a pluriverse of heterogeneous and antagonistic political entities which(potentially) posed existential challenges to each other. Existential life-and-death conflicts are not amenable to legal containment — or at least so Schmittargued. Juridification of international politics is unlikely ultimately to lead outof the ‘state of nature’ or to contain ‘the political’. The Covenant of the Leagueof Nations did not eliminate the possibilities for war; indeed, it did sanctioncertain types of wars, such as coalition wars, against those ‘enemies’ whoattempt to bring about changes to the territorial status quo (Art. 10). TheKellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, too, renounced war as an instrument of nationalpolicy and commits the signatories to settle all international disputes bypeaceful means (USA/Imperialismus, 1932/33, 362–365; Nomos, 1950, Part IV,chapter 4b). But war as an instrument of international politics against thosepowers that disturb the status quo was permitted. War cannot altogether beoutlawed. What is being outlawed are ‘specific individuals, peoples, states,classes, religions etc., which, by being outlawed, are declared to be the enemy’(Concept, 1932, 50–51). The friend–enemy distinction is thus not abolished,but the decision on the distinction has acquired a specific kind of legitimacy,grounded, as it apparently is, in ‘international law’.Indeed, juridification is not limited to the elaboration of norms and attempts

to ensure their validity. Juridification must also have an answer to the question,Quis judicabit? Who decides on whether a war is just or not; whether certaintypes of actions involving the use of violence or force are to be defined as ‘war’or are better understood as means to safeguard and secure international peace?If an international organization such as the League of Nations is designated tomonopolize this decision, surely, Schmitt suggested, we all realize that the greatpowers, while proclaiming respect for the law on all occasions, will no doubtdecide for themselves what is to be considered law in a concrete instance?Schmitt did not doubt that the great powers will either exercise hegemoniccontrol over the international system with its legal order or establish a parallel,particularistic system of international law. Schmitt was adamant thatexperience showed that every great power resisted the charge of any of itsactions being understood as an attack, a threat to or a disturbance of peace. Itwas likely that a great power would either insist that its actions were an‘internal matter’ in which one rejected any attempts of outside intervention orthat its actions were the opposite of attacks and threat, namely the execution ofinternational law to safeguard peace (Kernfrage, 1924, 6–7, 13).In the case of the League of Nations, Schmitt identified a specific problem

(Kernfrage, 1924, 1926; Volkerbund, 1930/31; Nomos, 1950, Part IV, chapter3). With its legal foundation in the Peace Treaties of 1918, the League ofNations was charged to ensure the stability of the international order in linewith the provisions of those treaties (e.g., Art. 10 of the Covenant). Thejuridification of interstate relations — partly due to the legal conclusion of


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warfare through formal peace treaties, partly as the result of an endeavour fora positivistic-legal definition of ‘just war’ — privileges the legally defined statusquo. The logical consequence for Schmitt was a situation where everyone whowishes to change the status quo — possibly because this status quo is notperceived to constitute a ‘just peace’ — is considered as a disturber of the peaceand an enemy against whom any punitive action is not war but legal execution(Status quo, 1925, 58–59). The ‘revisionist’ twist in Schmitt’s argument of 1925was, of course, that he defined those powers which wished to uphold (orentrench) the status quo as it was defined in the Peace Treaties as threats topeace rather than Germany. Yet there is the more general point to whichSchmitt alerts us: law is a political tool and presupposes a situation ofnormalcy which is often, however, contested. The juridification of internationalrelations cannot eliminate or replace ‘the political’ with its distinction of friendand enemy.

The End of the State and the Grossraum: Towards a New ‘Nomos’ of theEarth?

If war is inevitable in human history — and, hence, eternal peace is a pipe-dream — how can it be limited? For Schmitt, this was the overriding problemof international politics — as he claimed at least in the preface to the newedition of Der Begriff des Politischen in 1963 (Begriff, 1963, 19). The sovereignequality of states was essential in this regard since it ensured the relativizationof enmity and guarded against a discriminatory concept of war that woulddistinguish between ‘just wars’, and thus ‘just enemies’, and ‘unjust wars’, andthus ‘unjust enemies’ who should better be called ‘criminals’. Clearly, thepolitical background for this argument is Versailles and war guilt, and later on,Nuremberg and Tokyo and the war crimes tribunals. And to the extent thatSchmitt argued that the principle of sovereign equality had been violated in theVersailles ‘dictate’, he could use a principle of the ius publicum Europaeum(as he understood it) to argue the case for a revision of a treaty through which,according to Schmitt, Germany had suffered a wrong.Yet, for Schmitt, the invocation of the ‘sovereign equality’ of states as a

solution to the problem of limiting war became increasingly unconvincing. Thiswas for the simple reason that Schmitt thought that the era of the state wascoming to an end. As we saw before, for Schmitt the state was the monopolistof political decision. The state as political entity was the highest entity becauseit prevented all antagonistic groupings from developing the most extremeenmity, that is, from confronting each other in a civil war (Staatsethik, 1930,155, 160). However, for Schmitt the state had become the captive of socialgroups, a fact well understood in the pluralist theories of the state which weredeveloped since the late 19th century mainly in England by Maitland, Cole,


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Laski and others (Concept, 1932, 39–45). In those theories, the state wasperceived as one association among other associations, rather than as the oneassociation above all the other associations. Without a clear supremacy therewas also no hierarchy of duties and a concurrent plurality of loyalties forindividuals.The societalization of the state was the result of democratization. The

distinctions between state and economy, state and civil society withered awaysince political will formation had been appropriated by political parties whoseinterests and motives were essentially derived from economic needs andconcerns. All areas of life had become politicized, a ‘total state’ had emergedthat could no longer discriminate and concerned itself with all kinds of affairs.But this state, of which the German state was a prime example, was ‘total’ in apurely ‘quantitative’ sense, in the sense of pure volume. This type of state mustclearly be set apart from the ‘qualitatively total state’. For Schmitt, writing in1932, Mussolini’s fascist ‘stato totalitario’ was the shining example of the‘qualitatively total state’. According to Schmitt, this state can still discernbetween friends and enemies and does not allow forces inimical to it, or thosethat limit or divide it, to develop within its interior. This state is ‘total’ in thesense of intensity and political energy, not, as the quantitatively total state, inthe sense of incapacity to resist social groupings.The ‘total state’ thus exists in two distinct forms, as ‘total state’ out of

weakness, a state that has lost its monopoly of decision under the onslaught ofparties and organized interests. This is the state of bourgeois-capitalist liberalsociety. The other kind of total state, exemplified in fascist Italy, is the totalstate out of strength, a state in tune with the potentialities of modernity:

Every state is anxious to acquire the power needed to exercise its politicaldomination y Every state expanded its power by technological means,more precisely, by the technomilitary instruments of power y old notionsconcerning state power and the possibility of resisting it fade away y Theproliferation of technical means also allows for the possibility of masspropaganda y No state can afford to yield these new technical means ofmass control, mass suggestion and the formation of public opinion to anopponent. The formula ‘total state’ accurately describes the contemporarystate’s undreamt-of new means of coercion and possibilities of the greatestintensity (Strong State, 1932, 216–217).

It needed the fascist victory in Italy to establish the ‘qualitatively total state’ asboth reality and ideal — or so, at least, Schmitt argued in 1932 (Strong State(1932); see also, Wendung/Staat (1931) and Weiterentwicklung/Staat (1933);for fascism, Wesen/Werden, 1929).According to Schmitt, ‘liberal’ universalism complemented from without

what democratization had accomplished from within, the wholesale attack on


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state sovereignty. The crisis of the German state, for Schmitt, wasfundamentally linked to its position under the Versailles Treaty. The treatyhad turned Germany into a ‘debtor nation’ and an ‘outlaw state’. Itssovereignty had been limited and parts of it had become an ‘object ofinternational politics’, demilitarized and subject to external intervention, suchas the Rhineland (Objekt, 1925; Politische Lage, 1930). The Inter-AlliedCommissions of Control (Arts. 203—206) for demilitarization and theReparation Commission (Art. 233) exercised key ‘sovereign’ rights; and inArt. 213, a permanent right of investigation into German affairs wasestablished for the Council of the League of Nations. ‘National self-determination’, the mantra of Wilsonian rhetoric, clearly was not meant toapply to Germany. Rather than the German people being (or remaining)subject of its own political existence as a state, it had been turned into the exactopposite, an object (Objekt, 1925, 27). Schmitt suggested that, in the light ofBritain’s policies towards Egypt, the United States’ towards the Caribbean,and France’s in the Middle East, Germany’s treatment should be considerednot just within the context of defeat in war, but as an element within thedeveloping system of liberal imperialism.Schmitt analysed the US-American foreign policy as paradigmatic. The

Monroe Doctrine of 1823 possessed a genuine political character (Kernfrage,1926, 121–126; USA/Imperialismus, 1932/33, 351–355; Grossraum/Universa-lismus, 1939; Grossraumordnung, 1941; Nomos, 1950, Part IV, chapter 5). Itgrew out of a concern in both the United States and Britain that the Europeancontinental monarchical powers of the Holy Alliance would attempt to restoreSpain’s former colonies in Latin America, many of which had become newlyindependent states. The Doctrine rested on the ‘political’ idea that the OldWorld and New World had different systems and had to remain distinctspheres. While recognizing existing colonies and dependencies in the ‘WesternHemisphere’, it declared that the United States would resist any futurecolonization in this sphere and would view any attempt by a European powerto oppress or control any state in the Western Hemisphere as a hostile act. Inreturn for the non-intervention of non-American powers in this space, theUnited States itself would abstain from any intervention outside this space.For Schmitt, the Monroe Doctrine, in perceiving the world as being divided

between continents and hemispheres, each with its own political order, for thefirst time expressed the idea of the Grossraum, a large territorial expanse inwhich ‘alien’ powers had no right to intervene. This idea appealed to Schmitt,and he compared it favourably to the British Empire, a hotchpotch ofheterogeneous possessions strewn over the surface of the world and without acoherent principle of political legitimacy (Balakrishnan, 2000, 238). ThisDoctrine legitimized the hegemonic control of the United States over theAmerican subcontinent. The Roosevelt Corollary of 1904 then claimed


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hemispheric police power by stating that, in cases of flagrant and chronicwrongdoing by a state within the space of the Western Hemisphere, the UnitedStates could intervene in the internal affairs of that state. This was a positionalready clearly articulated in the Platt Amendment of 1901 according to whichCuba had granted the United States the right to intervene — to safeguard theindependence of Cuba and to keep in power a government that was capable ofprotecting life, property and personal freedoms and upholding public order aswell as ensuring that foreign financial demands would be met. Cuba was justone of a number of countries with which the United States concluded suchintervention treaties. The principle of non-intervention and hence thesovereignty of those states was, as a result, dislodged; the sovereign decisionas to whether there were grounds for intervention rested with the United States(Kernfrage, 1926, 122–124).As a consequence of Woodrow Wilson’s policy the spatialized system of

non-intervention, that had been given justification in the Monroe Doctrine,was transformed into a universal, as it were, ‘uprooted’ or ‘de-localized’,system of interventions [raumlos allgemeines Einmischungssystem]. Theideology of liberal democracy and the related ideas of ‘free’ world trade anda ‘free’ world market now replaced the geopolitical principle of the MonroeDoctrine, ‘The Monroe Doctrine as a genuine doctrine of space is the explicitopposite to a space-neglecting transformation of the earth into an abstractworld and capital market’ (Grossraum/Universalismus, 1939, 336). Bydeclaring the compatibility of the Monroe Doctrine with the Covenant ofthe League of Nations (Art. 21), the universalist objectives of the United Statesbecame enshrined in international law. The League handed over de factopolitical sovereignty in the Americas to the United States, while allowing theUnited States an active role in shaping European politics, since the dependenceof the Latin American member states on the United States allowed it toexercise indirect influence without itself being a member of the League.When President Coolidge said in 1928, the year of the Kellogg-Briand-Pact,

that ‘an act of war in any part of the world is an act that injures the interests ofmy country’, the universalistic interventionist orientation of the United Stateswas made quite explicit. The Stimson Doctrine of 1932 articulated the principleof non-recognition by the United States of international territorial changeseffected by force. Intend on continuing with the ‘open door’ policy in China,the United States informed the Japanese after their military occupation ofManchuria, that it would not ‘recognize any treaty or agreementy which mayimpair the treaty rights of the United States or its citizens in China, includingthose which relate to the sovereignty, the independence, or the territorial andadministrative integrity of the Republic of China, or the international policy toChina, commonly known as the open door policy’. The door had now beenopened for US-American interventions around the globe.


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For Schmitt, writing in 1942, the reasons behind this development wereclear, the interests of world capitalism. These interests

compel to pursue a policy of ever present, ubiquitous intervention and non-recognition, which presumes that Washington is entitled to approve ordisapprove of changes in any part of the world. The traditional distinctionbetween trade and politics — as much trade as possible, as little politics aspossible — has become inherently untrue because in the long run there canbe no world trade without world politics (Beschleuniger, 1942, 434).

What had come to an end was a particular spatial order of the world, aparticular ‘nomos’ of the earth. What we were witnessing, according toSchmitt, was a new spatial revolution.The ‘nomos’ of the earth — its appropriation, distribution and utilization since

the age of ‘discovery’ and European colonization — was structured aroundglobal lines (Globale Linie, 1943; Nomos, 1950, Part II, chapter 1). The ‘raya’was a distributional line that divided the newly ‘discovered’ world on the basis ofPope Alexander Inter caetera divinae of 1494 between the Spanish andPortuguese. The ‘amity’ line on the basis of the Peace of Cateau-Cambresis of1559 was an agonal line that divided the earth in a space in which the ius publicumEuropaeum obtained and intercourse between the European states was rule-governed and a space ‘beyond the line’ where international law was suspendedand a kind of ‘state of nature’ obtained. The Monroe Doctrine established a lineof self-isolation in the notion of the Western Hemisphere. The endeavours toground the spatial order of the earth took place just at the time when theformation of the state in Europe had ushered in a spatial revolution in Europe.For Schmitt, it was historically significant that this emerging European

world order immediately broke up into land and sea (Land/Meer, 1981). Theland was divided into closed territories of sovereign states, whereas the searemained free of state or territorial sovereignty. This was the basic spatialpremise out of which grew the ius publicum Europaeum. It meant that twodistinct types of war could be distinguished. On the one hand, land warbetween states was conducted by, and between, regular armies with a cleardistinction between combatants and non-combatants as well as with theprotection of private property. Out of these land wars arose the bracketing ofwar on the basis of a clear friend–enemy distinction. War at sea, on the otherhand, did not recognize the distinction between combatants and civilpopulation. It knew the ‘total enemy’: the subjects of an enemy state as wellas everyone who engages in trade with the enemy and strengthens its economyare considered as enemies whose life, liberty and property are not protected(Souveranitat/Meer, 1941, 407).The nomos of the earth since the 16th century was thus global but knew the

dichotomy of land and sea. It was believed initially to have its legitimacy in the


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distinction between Christian and non-Christian peoples. Since the 18thcentury its legitimacy was grounded in the distinction between civilized anduncivilized peoples. While this distinction lost much of its force in the course ofthe 19th century — despite the civilizational and racial (racist) notions of ‘theWhite man’s burden’ — the idea of stages of civilizational development stillinformed the mandate system of the League of Nations (Art. 22).For Schmitt, the nomos of the ius publicum Europaeum had come to an end.

The technological revolution of the means of transport and communicationhad shrunk the earth (Raumrevolution, 1940, 388). The conquest of air spacehas ushered in a new view of the earth, which overcomes the distinctionbetween land and sea and necessitates a new concept of space. Warfare in theair, and from the air, leads to a complete re-evaluation of land war and war atsea. It is in its very nature that warfare from the air can no longer distinguishbetween combatant and non-combatant (and may even find it difficult toseparate friend from enemy) and hence accelerates the trend towards ‘totalwar’, which is in any case propelled forward by the development of weapons ofmass destruction. Ever more states, in the past the subjects of the ius publicumEuropaeum, lose their sovereignty as they become domestically captives oforganized social interests and externally find themselves in manifold relation-ships of political and economic dependency (Kernfrage, 1926, 78–79). ForSchmitt, US-American and British endeavours of world control and worlddomination, the welding together of global capitalism and global intervention,aims for global unity. The Soviet Union’s design for world revolution is but analternative form of planetary imperialism, not its potential nemesis. In eithercase, its legitimacy is seen to be grounded in the idea of humanity(Strukturwandel, 1943, 670).The situation that has arisen is characterized by a diremption of

international law into two poles, ‘a universalistic-imperialist, space-transcend-ing global law’ on the one side, and ‘a pathetically state-fixated law of a space-constricting nature bound to small territorial spaces’, on the other side. Seenfrom one pole, ‘humanitarian interventions’ are considered legal in interna-tional law, but from the other pole, even the most minute ‘intervention’ isconsidered a breach of international law (Raum/Grossraum, 1940, 251). Thepluriverse world of the modern territorial state, however, is irretrievably lost.A balkanized continental Europe, divided into micro-states or states withoutsovereignty cannot counter-balance the universalistic-imperialist powers(Raumrevolution, 1940, 390). If there was to be not just one ‘master of theuniverse’, then more was required than a revolt of the masters of the past, thatis, the states. Genuine large territorial spaces [Grossraume] alone would becapable of confronting the global powers. What was required, in a sense, wasthe embrace around the world of the idea of the Monroe Doctrine, the creationof large spatial expanses dominated by a regional hegemon which uphold the


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notion of non-intervention into its territory. Such Grossraume, whosehistorical, economic and cultural substance — frequently, though notexclusively of a volkisch nature — amounts to a veritable degree ofhomogeneity, are truly in accordance with the new spatial dimensions andthe economic structure of the current age and are thus the carriers of realsovereignty (Kernfrage, 1926, 79; Probleme/Rheingebiet, 1928, 264; Raumre-volution, 1940, 390; Grossraumordnung, 1941; Strukturwandel, 1943).In his writings about Grossraum during the Second World War, Schmitt put

forward the idea that there was, of necessity, a leading, hegemonic power, aReich, whose ‘political idea’ radiated throughout the Grossraum and whichwould have the task to repel any intervention into that territorial space byoutside powers (Grossraumordnung, 1941, Sections V and VI). But on theterritory of the Grossraum, one would still find peoples organized in states butalso peoples which did not any longer have the organizational capacity forbuilding a state. However, the Reich ultimately dissolves the ‘sovereignty’ ofthe states in concentrating the ius ad bellum in its hands and by enforcinghomogeneity as the prerequisite for a substantively grounded ‘genuine’Grossraum. The idea of an equality of sovereign states has been left behindand the argument has moved on to the idea of a pluriverse of sovereignGrossraume and their equality as a prerequisite of stable peace (Ordnung, 1962,607).After the Second World War, Schmitt held fast to the idea of Grossraume,

but in his publications did no longer pursue the idea of a necessary hegemon inthe form of a Reich. He queried the notion that technical and economicdevelopments would ultimately result in world unity. Neither did he accept,writing in 1951, that the bipolar division of the world in the cold war (but alsomanifested in a series of ‘hot’ wars) would either continue to exist interminablyor result in an ultimate unity as one side defeats the other. Rather, he saw thevery real possibility of the emergence of an international balance of severalGrossraume (Einheit, 1951). Yet, in what the homogeneity of these Grossraumeshould be grounded, he would not spell out in his published work.6

Conclusion

War and justice; peace and humanity: how to understand these concepts, theirrelationships and the ‘reality’ they conceive has been at the centre of Schmitt’scritical engagement with liberal universalism. The invocation of ‘humanity’,Schmitt argues, is an ideological cover for power politics, while ‘humanity’cannot be a ‘political’ concept in Schmitt’s definition of the political: the usesto which the concept is put are deeply ‘political’. Crusades in the name of‘humanity’ still remain wars, even if one prefers to speak of ‘humanitarian


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interventions’. To speak of ‘justice’, ‘humanity’ and the shared interests of‘humankind’ opens up the possibility for an ethical discourse, which allows forthe moral damnation of the enemy as ‘evil’ and, in extremis, its annihilation.The enemy becomes foe. In the mortal struggle between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, therecan be no neutral third. A just war is a ‘total war’, everyone is party, no onebystander; and the just cause ‘justifies’ use of whatever means must bedeployed to eradicate ‘evil’.If one wishes to accept Schmitt’s theses and the arguments he offers in

support, then one should be clear as to what it is one adopts, namely, aparticular kind of critique of the ideology of humanity and related concepts.However, one does not gain an armoury of arguments for peace. Rather, one isfortified for conducting war ‘for the right reasons’ (as spelled out by Schmitt).After all, 9/11 ‘and all that’ was a supremely Schmittian ‘political’ moment, aclear distinction between friend and enemy and the actualized possibility of thephysical killing of ‘the other’. The ensuing ‘total’ struggle against ‘terrorists’and ‘partisans’ (or ‘insurgents’) abroad and the identification of the ‘enemy’ athome (‘homeland security’) epitomize ‘the political’. Arguing from aSchmittian position against the NATO intervention in the Kosovo, forexample, make it well-nigh impossible to argue against the war in Afghanistanor in Iraq.7

We encounter a similar dilemma with regard to Schmitt’s idea of theGrossraum. One may buy into the argument — living, after all, one maybelieve, ‘in the age of globalization’ — about the end of the modern state andthe need for spatially larger territorial political entities, based on expansivesocial, economic and technological interdependencies and driven by a politicalwill. But the Schmittian concept of the Grossraum carries clear ‘qualitative’connotations; the Grossraum is grounded in homogeneity – a unity in diversity,constructed, controlled and maintained by a hegemon. Hence, it needshierarchy and dominance within as well as military vigilance, the willingness touse violence, vis-a-vis the outside world. It thus needs the political will to define‘the other’. The ‘new right’ in Europe has shown much willingness to elaboratethe logic of a Schmittian Grossraum (Holmes, 2000; Muller, 2003). It is quiteclear that a Schmittian Grossraum is not a ‘zone of peace’. Hitler, so Schmittthought, had got this right, too.

Notes

1 For a discussion of Carl Schmitt with reference to international relations, see, inter alia,

Scheuerman (1999, chapters 6 and 9) and Pichler (1998). For two early discussions of Schmitt’s

writings on international politics, see Preuss (1935) and Herz (1939). Stirk (1999, 2003) puts

Schmitt’s contributions to international law in the context of the intellectual debate and politics

of the Nazi era. For recent discussions of Schmitt’s opus magnum on international law and

international politics, The Nomos of the Earth, see, for example, Antaki (2004), Koskenniemi


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(2004), Marramao (2000) and Scheuerman (2004). An interesting German study of Schmitt’s

writings on Grossraum is Blindow (1999). See also: Kervegan, 1999.

2 References in the text to Schmitt’s writings are made in the form of abbreviated titles that are

listed in Part 1 of the bibliography with full bibliographical data.

3 The first version of Der Begriff des Politischen has recently been reprinted in (Schmitt) ‘Frieden’

(pp. 194–239). For an excellent discussion of the substantial changes that Schmitt made to this

text in 1932, and those he made to the 1932 edition a year later, as well as the reasons for these

changes, see Meier (1995). Unless otherwise noted, in this article, reference is made to the 1932

edition (either in the German original or the English translation).

4 Not much comfort here for ‘just war’ philosophers. But if one wishes to find an intellectual

lineage for George W. Bush and his ‘war on terror’, we should look primarily to Carl Schmitt —

and not to Leo Strauss.

5 Schmitt’s concept of the political is not limited in its application to international politics. This

becomes obvious when we observe what he has to say about democracy. Every actual democracy,

he asserts, ‘rests on the principle that not only are equals equal but unequals will not be treated

equally. Democracy requires, therefore, first homogeneity and second — if the need arises —

elimination or eradication of heterogeneity.’ (Crisis, 1926, 9) And for Schmitt, ‘homogeneity’

refers above all to ‘national homogeneity’. The extermination and annihilation of the internal

enemy in the interest of homogeneity and order is as important as combating the external enemy;

indeed, without homogeneity the political unit will lose the capacity to make a sovereign decision

on who its enemies are and whether an existential threat obtains that needs to be fought.

6 Over the last 20 years or so, Carl Schmitt has increasingly been discussed as a political theologian.

Heinrich Meier (1995, 2004) has been the most vociferous and thoughtful advocate for a reading

of Schmitt’s texts as political theology (but see, e.g., the critical assessment of Manemann, 2002).

It would be a worthwhile endeavour to review Schmitt’s analyses of international politics on the

basis of the ‘political theology’ hypothesis. In a letter to Alvaro d’Ors in September 1951, Schmitt

refers to his lecture on the ‘Unity of the World’ and remarks: ‘Anything but the Christian unity of

the world would be the work of the Anti-Christ’. As his references to the Anti-Christ and the Kat-

echon, which one finds scattered throughout his work, indicate, Schmitt writes within the horizon

of (an idiosyncratic) Christian eschatology (Briefwechsel, 2004, 119–123).

7 For a flavour of the debate on military intervention, and Kosovo and Iraq in particular, that

refers to Schmitt’s position, see, for example, Ananiadis (2002); Chandler (2002); Rasch (2000);

Stirk (2004); and Zolo (2002). See Habermas (2004) for a pronounced anti-Schmittian argument.

References

I. Books and Articles by Carl Schmitt:

Articles. (1999) Four Articles, Edited, translated and with a Preface by Simona Draghici, Corvallis,

OR: Plutarch Press.

Begriff. (1963) Der Begriff des Politischen, (1932) Sixth edition of the text of 1932 with a preface

and three corollaries, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.

Beschleuniger. (1942) ‘Beschleuniger wider Willen oder: Problematik der westlichen Hemisphare’,

in SGN, pp. 431–440.

Briefwechsel. (2004) Carl Schmitt und Alvaro d’Ors, Briefwechsel, edited by M. Herrero, Berlin:

Duncker & Humblot, 2004.

Concept. (1932) The Concept of the Political, Translated and with an Introduction by George

Schwab, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996.


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Crisis. (1926) The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy. E. Kennedy, (trans.) Cambridge, MA: MIT

Press, 1992.

Einheit. (1951) ‘Die Einheit der Welt’, in Frieden, pp. 841–871.

Frieden. (2005) Frieden oder Pazifismus? Arbeiten zum Volkerrecht und zur internationalen Politik,

1924–1978, Edited and with a preface and notes by Gunter Maschke, Berlin: Duncker &

Humblot, 2005.

Fuhrer. (1934) ‘Der Fuhrer schutzt das Recht’, in PuB, pp. 227–232.

Globale Linie. (1943) ‘Die letzte globale Linie’, in SGN, pp. 441–452.

Grossraumordnung. (1941) ‘Volkerrechtliche Grossraumordnung mit Interventionsverbot fur

raumfremde Machte. Ein Beitrag zum Reichsbegriff im Volkerrecht’, in SGN, 4th edn., pp.

269–371.

Grossraum/Universalismus. (1939) ‘Grossraum gegen Universalismus’, in PuB, pp. 335–343.

Holmes, D.R. (2000) Integral Europe. Fast-Capitalism, Multiculturalism, Neofascism, Princeton:

Princeton University Press.

Kernfrage. (1924) ‘Die Kernfrage des Volkerbundes’, in Frieden, pp. 1–25.

Kernfrage. (1926) ‘Die Kernfrage des Volkerbundes’, in Frieden, pp. 73–193.

Land/Meer. (1981) Land und Meer. Eine weltgeschichtliche Betrachtung, Hohenheim: Edition

Maschke (English edition: Land and Sea. Translated and with a foreword by Simona Draghici,

Corvallis, OR: Plutarch Press, 1997).

Legal Revolution. (1987) ‘The Legal World Revolution’, Telos 72: 73–90.

Neutralitat. (1938) ‘Volkerrechtliche Neutralitat und volkische Totalitat’, in Frieden, pp. 617–628

(English text in Articles, pp. 37–45.).

Neutralisierungen. (1939) ‘Neutralitat und Neutralisierungen’, in PuB, pp. 309–334.

Nomos. (1950) Der Nomos der Erde im Volkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum, 4th edn., Berlin:

Duncker & Humblot, 1997 (English edition: Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of Jus

Publicum Europaeum, New York: Telos Press, 2003).

Objekt. (1925) ‘Die Rheinlande als Objekt internationaler Politik’, in Frieden, pp. 26–50.

Ordnung. (1962) ‘Die Ordnung der Welt nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg’, in SGN, pp. 592–618.

Politische Lage. (1930) ‘Die politische Lage der entmilitarisierten Rheinlande’, in Frieden, pp.

274–280.

Probleme/Rheingebiet. (1928) ‘Volkerrechtliche Probleme im Rheingebiet’, in Frieden, pp.

255–273.

PuB. (1940) Positionen und Begriffe im Kampf mit Weimar — Genf — Versailles, 1923–1939, 3rd

edn., Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1988.

Raum/Grossraum. (1940) ‘Raum und Grossraum im Volkerrecht’, in SGN, pp. 234–268.

Raumrevolution. (1940) ‘Die Raumrevolution. Durch den totalen Krieg zu einem totalen Frieden’,

in SGN, pp. 388–394.

Repetitorium. (1948/50) ‘Volkerrecht [Ein juristische Repetitorium]’, in Frieden, pp. 701–840.

SGN. Staat, Grossraum, Nomos. Arbeiten aus den Jahren 1916–1969, Edited and with a preface and

notes by Gunter Maschke, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.

Souveranitat/Meer. (1941) ‘Staatliche Souveranitat und freies Meer. Uber den Gegensatz von Land

und See im Volkerrecht der Neuzeit, in SGN, pp. 401–430.

Staatsethik. (1930) ‘Staatsethik und pluralistischer Staat’, in PuB, pp. 151–165 (English text: ‘Ethic

of State and Pluralistic State’ in C. Mouffe (ed.), The Challenge of Carl Schmitt, London: Verso,

1999).

Status quo. (1925) ‘Der Status quo und der Friede’, in Frieden, pp. 51–72.

Strong state. (1932) ‘Strong State and Sound Economy: An Address to Business Leaders’, in

R. Cristi (ed.) Carl Schmitt and Authoritarian Liberalism, Cardiff: University of Wales Press,

1998, pp. 212–232 (German original text with the title: ‘Starker Staat und gesunde Wirtschaft’ in

SGN, pp. 71–91).


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Strukturwandel. (1943) ‘Strukturwandel des International Rechts’, in Frieden, pp. 652–700.

Totaler Feind. (1937) ‘Totaler Feind, totaler Krieg, totaler Staat’, in Frieden, pp. 481–507 (English

text: ‘Total Enemy, Total War and Total State’ in Articles, pp. 28–36.).

USA/Imperialismus. (1932/33) ‘USA und die volkerrechtlichen Formen des modernen Imper-

ialismus’, in Frieden, pp. 349–377.

Vae Neutris. (1938) ‘Das neue Vae Neutris!’, in Frieden, pp. 612–616.

Volkerbund. (1930/31) ‘Der Volkerbund’, in Frieden, pp. 333–348.

Weiterentwicklung/Staat. (1933) ‘Weiterentwicklung des totalen Staates in Deutschland’, in PuB,

pp. 211–216 (English text: ‘Further Development of the Total State in Germany’, in Articles, pp.

19–27).

Wendung/Kriegsbegriff. (1937/38) ‘Die Wendung zum diskriminierenden Kriegsbegriff’, in

Frieden, pp. 518–597 (English edition: War/Non-War? — A Dilemma, ed. and translated by

Simona Draghici, Corvallis, OR: Plutarch Press, 2004).

Wendung/Staat. (1931) ‘Die Wendung zum totalen Staat’, in PuB, pp. 166–178 (English text: ‘The

Way to the Total State’, in Articles, pp. 1–18).

Wesen/Werden. (1929) ‘Wesen und Werden des faschistischen Staates’, in PuB, pp. 124–130.

II. Secondary Literature

Ananiadis, G. (2002) ‘Carl Schmitt on Kosovo, or, Taking War Seriously’, in D.I. Bjelic and

O. Savic (eds.) Balkan as Metaphor. Between Globalization and Fragmentation, Cambridge, MA:

The MIT Press, pp. 117–161.

Antaki, M. (2004) ‘Carl Schmitt’s Nomos of the Earth’, Osgoode Hall Law Journal 42(2): 317–334.

Balakrishnan, G. (2000) The Enemy. An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt, London: Verso.

Bendersky, J. (1983) Carl Schmitt: Theorist for the Reich, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Blindow, F. (1999) Carl Schmitts Reichsgrundung: Strategie fur einen europaischen Grossraum,

Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

Caldwell, P.C. (1997) Popular Sovereignty and the Crisis of German Constitutional Law. The Theory

and Practice of Weimar Constitutionalism, Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Chandler, D. (2002) From Kosovo to Kabul: Human Rights and International Intervention, London:

Pluto Press.

Cristi, R. (1998) Carl Schmitt and Authoritarian Liberalism, Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Dyzenhaus, D. (1997) Legality and Legitimacy: Carl Schmitt, Hans Kelsen and Hermann Heller in

Weimar, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Dyzenhaus, D. (ed.) (1998) Law as Politics. Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism, Durham and

London: Duke University Press.

Habermas, J. (2004) ‘Hat die Konstitutionalisierung des Volkerrechts noch eine Chance?’, in

J. Habermas (id.) Der gespaltene Westen, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, pp. 113–193.

Herz, J.H. (1939) ‘The National Socialist Doctrine of International Law and the Problem of

International Organization’, Political Science Quarterly 54(4): 536–554.

Kervegan, J.-F. (1999) ‘Carl Schmitt and ‘‘World Unity’’’, in C. Mouffe (ed.) The Challenge of Carl

Schmitt, London: Verso, pp. 54–73.

Kennedy, E. (2004) Constitutional Failure. Carl Schmitt in Weimar, Durham and London: Duke

University Press.

Koskenniemi, M. (2004) ‘International Law as Political Theology: How to Read Nomos der Erde?’

Constellations 11(4): 492–511.

Laak, Dirk van (2002) Gesprache in der Sicherheit des Schweigens. Carl Schmitt in der politischen

Geistesgeschichte der fruhen Bundesrepublik, Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

Manemann, J. (2002) Carl Schmitt und die Politische Theologie. Politischer Anti-Monotheismus,

Munster: Aschendorff Verlag.


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Marramao, G. (2000) ‘The Exile of the Nomos: For a Critical Profile of Carl Schmitt’, Cardozo Law

Review 21: 1567–1586.

McCormick, J.P. (1997) Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism. Against Politics as Technology,

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Meier, H. (1995) Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss. The Hidden Dialogue, Chicago and London:

University of Chicago Press.

Meier, H. (2004) Die Lehre Carl Schmitts. Vier Kapitel zur Unterscheidung Politischer Theologie und

Politischer Philosophie, 2nd edn., Stuttgart: Metzler.

Mouffe, C. (ed.) (1999) The Challenge of Carl Schmitt, London: Verso.

Muller, J.-W. (2003) A Dangerous Mind. Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought, New Haven

and London: Yale University Press.

Pichler, H.-K. (1998) ‘The Godfathers of ‘Truth’: Max Weber and Carl Schmitt in Morgenthau’s

Theory of Power Politics’, Review of International Studies 24(2): 185–200.

Preuss, L. (1935) ‘National Socialist Conceptions of International Law’, American Political Science

Review 29(4): 594–609.

Rasch, W. (2000) ‘A Just War? Or Just A War?: Habermas, and the Cosmopolitan Orthodoxy’,

Cardozo Law Review 21: 1665–1684.

Scheuerman, W.E. (1999) Carl Schmitt. The End of Law, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield

Publishers.

Scheuerman, W.E. (2004) ‘International Law as Historical Myth’, Constellations 11(4): 537–550.

Scott, J.B. (ed.) (1918) President Wilson’s Foreign Policy. Messages, Addresses, Papers, New York:

Oxford University Press.

Stirk, P. (1999) ‘Carl Schmitt’s Volkerrechtliche Grossraumordnung’, History of Political Thought

20(2): 357–374.

Stirk, P. (2003) ‘Carl Schmitt’s Enemy and the Rhetoric of Anti-Interventionism’, European Legacy

8(1): 21–36.

Stirk, P. (2004) ‘Carl Schmitt, the Law of Occupation, and the Iraq War’, Constellations 11(4):

527–536.

Willms, B. (1991) ‘Politics as Politics: Carl Schmitt’s ‘Concept of the Political’ and the Tradition of

European Political Thought’, History of European Ideas 13(4): 371–383.

Zolo, D. (2002) Invoking Humanity. War, Law and Global Order, London: Continuum.


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