The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal ...

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