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

Introduction
The international political thought of
Carl Schmitt
Louiza Odysseos and Fabio Petito
Carl Schmitt and international thought
Are we experiencing, at the beginning of the third millennium, the emergence of a
new nomos of the earth? In 1950 Carl Schmitt completed his seminal work with an
international focus, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus
Publicum Europaeum (Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum
Europaeum) (2003 [1950]). In continental Europe, the Nomos is widely regarded
as the masterpiece of Schmitt’s intellectual production and offers perhaps the most
compelling history of the development of international law from the ashes of the
Middle Ages to the beginning of the Cold War. It is, however, much more than a
history of international law: it is a fully fledged alternative historical account of
international relations, of the genesis, achievements and demise of modern ‘international
society’, often referred to as the ‘Westphalian system’ in the field of International
Relations (cf. Bull and Watson 1984).
Schmitt wrote at a time when he believed that ‘Westphalia’ – this spatial,
political and legal global order (the ‘nomos of the earth’) embodied in the jus
publicum Europaeum – had undergone a momentous process of collapse, which
he dates from the later decades of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the
First World War. In the foreword to the Nomos, with ill-concealed regret
Schmitt notes, ‘[t]he traditional Eurocentric order of international law is
foundering today, as is the old nomos of the earth’ (2003: 39). In its stead,
Schmitt foresaw many dangers arising from the hegemonic global interventionism
of the United States of America, the effects of de-concretisation and universalisation
of international law (that is, of ‘order’ without explicit spatial
grounding), of diminishing pluralism in the international system, as well as the
evolution of partisan warfare and terrorism. It is with these concerns in mind
that he posed the question with which we began this introduction to a volume
dedicated to his international political thought.
The effects of these dangers have become alarmingly and increasingly apparent
since the end of the Cold War. But it is only now that a serious engagement
with Schmitt’s international political thought is progressively seen as a useful,
some might say necessary, engagement for understanding the current international
situation. 1 In fact, while his legal and political writings during the