The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal ...
The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal ...
The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal ...
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
100 G. L. Ulmen<br />
whole Eurocentric world that Napoleon had hoped to rescue and that the Congress<br />
<strong>of</strong> Vienna had hoped to restore. For Lenin, partisan warfare was consistent<br />
with the methods <strong>of</strong> civil war.<br />
Generally speaking, civil war is military conflict between two or more<br />
approximately equal political governments for sovereignty over people and territory<br />
native to both, whereas revolution is a change, not necessarily by force or<br />
violence, whereby one system <strong>of</strong> legality is terminated and another is constituted<br />
within the same country (Edwards 1942: 523–525). Civil war is horizontal,<br />
whereas revolution is vertical. Civil war, as compared with foreign war, is war<br />
for complete conquest – for the extinction <strong>of</strong> the enemy government – by at least<br />
one side, whereas foreign war, at least in modern times, generally is waged only<br />
for certain specific and limited aims. As <strong>Schmitt</strong> observed, ‘In civil war, the<br />
enemy no longer has any common concepts, and every concept becomes an<br />
encroachment on the enemy camp’ (<strong>Schmitt</strong> 1991: 36). Indeed:<br />
Civil war has something gruesome about it. It is fraternal war, because it is<br />
pursued within a common political unity that includes also the opponent,<br />
and within the same legal order, and because both belligerent sides<br />
absolutely and simultaneously affirm and negate this common unity. Both<br />
consider their opponent to be absolutely and unconditionally wrong. Both<br />
reject the right <strong>of</strong> the opponent, but in the name <strong>of</strong> the law. Civil war is<br />
subject essentially to the jurisdiction <strong>of</strong> the enemy. Thus, civil war has a<br />
narrow, specifically dialectical relation to law. It cannot be anything other<br />
than just in the sense <strong>of</strong> being self-righteous, and on this basis becomes the<br />
prototype <strong>of</strong> just and self-righteous war.<br />
(<strong>Schmitt</strong> 1950: 56–57)<br />
Elsewhere, <strong>Schmitt</strong> wrote:<br />
Just war, i.e. the deprivation <strong>of</strong> the rights <strong>of</strong> the opponent in war and the<br />
self-improvement <strong>of</strong> the just side means: transformation <strong>of</strong> state war (i.e. <strong>of</strong><br />
war in international law) into a war that is simultaneously colonial war and<br />
civil war; that is logical and irresistible; war becomes global civil war and<br />
ceases to be war between states.<br />
(<strong>Schmitt</strong> 1991: 29)<br />
<strong>Schmitt</strong> further clarified the distinction:<br />
Civil war is bellum, with just cause on both sides, but both sides in – justus<br />
hostis. Law, i.e. the form <strong>of</strong> just war, sanctifies death in war; but how does<br />
the reality <strong>of</strong> civil war or social war compensate for the crime <strong>of</strong> suicide?<br />
Formal legal war justifies killing; the form, not the justa causa. That is<br />
lacking in civil war. Civil war is not simply war without form (on the contrary,<br />
it serves the forms <strong>of</strong> law and justice), but it’s the most gruesome<br />
formal destruction <strong>of</strong> form. Whoever is compelled to participate in civil war