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.
6 War, violence and the<br />
displacement <strong>of</strong> the political<br />
Linda S. Bishai and Andreas Behnke<br />
Recent academic trends have associated the work <strong>of</strong> <strong>Carl</strong> <strong>Schmitt</strong> in general, and<br />
his concept <strong>of</strong> the political in particular, with the excesses <strong>of</strong> George W. Bush’s<br />
foreign policy. Lon Troyer, for example, argues that <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s friend–enemy<br />
distinction is the inspiration for President Bush’s ‘bi-furcation’ <strong>of</strong> the international<br />
system: ‘<strong>The</strong> friend–enemy distinction in the sphere <strong>of</strong> international<br />
relations is ordered, in Bush’s words, according to the great divide in our time<br />
. . . not between religions or cultures, but between civilisation and barbarism’<br />
(Troyer 2003: 262). Another intellectual, German historian Hans August<br />
Winkler, sees <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s critique <strong>of</strong> liberalism vindicated through the influence<br />
<strong>of</strong> Leo Strauss on work in the neo-conservative Project for the New American<br />
Century think-tank in Washington, DC (Winkler 2003: 1).<br />
Both <strong>of</strong> these perceptions <strong>of</strong> <strong>Schmitt</strong> suffer from some severe misconceptions.<br />
While Troyer at least understands the distinction between friend and<br />
enemy, his observation <strong>of</strong> certain hallmarks <strong>of</strong> the Bush administration’s foreign<br />
policy mistakes <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s acerbic criticism <strong>of</strong> liberalism and its universalist<br />
rhetoric for an endorsement <strong>of</strong> these policies. As for Winkler’s assertion, it is<br />
surely oversimplification to reduce Leo Strauss to a mere ‘conduit’ for <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s<br />
ideas. More significantly, though, it is paradoxical and utterly ironic to refer to<br />
the great ‘enemy <strong>of</strong> liberalism’ (Lilla 1997) as the conspiratorial source <strong>of</strong> the<br />
current ‘imperial liberalism’ (Rhodes 2003: 131–154) that constitutes the basis<br />
<strong>of</strong> the Bush administration’s foreign policy.<br />
<strong>The</strong> purpose <strong>of</strong> this chapter, then, is tw<strong>of</strong>old: to salvage <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s critique <strong>of</strong><br />
liberalism, and to ‘unlock’ the concepts <strong>of</strong> the political and <strong>of</strong> politics, that have<br />
been displaced in favour <strong>of</strong> a liberal moralist discourse that refuses to recognize<br />
the conditions <strong>of</strong> its own impossibility. <strong>The</strong> use <strong>of</strong> <strong>Schmitt</strong> in this context is<br />
perhaps best described as a pharmakon, both poison and remedy, ambivalent in<br />
itself, and used to tease out the ambiguities and antinomies <strong>of</strong> liberalism. 1 <strong>The</strong><br />
next section discusses <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s contemplation on the justifiability <strong>of</strong> war, in<br />
particular how <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s ideas about war deny any easy appropriation by the<br />
liberal project. <strong>The</strong> purpose here is to develop a particular ‘realist’ conception <strong>of</strong><br />
war and violence that emphasizes the need to restrain and limit (einhegen) it.<br />
<strong>The</strong> third and fourth parts present a pathology <strong>of</strong> liberal thinking in <strong>International</strong><br />
Relations (IR) theory and international law. Critics <strong>of</strong> the Democratic