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

more traditional meaning – de Benoist argues – is the only model that can reconcile
the one and the many: it is the politia that organizes the organic unity in its
different components, while respecting their autonomy’ (Taguieff 1994: 130).
The problem, he adds, is that since Maastricht there has emerged no design of an
autonomous Europe, politically sovereign and determined to adopt an equivalent
of what the Monroe Doctrine has been for the United States (the influence of
Schmitt’s thought is conspicuous here). Instead, we are facing a Europe without
a project, legitimacy or political identity.
De Benoist’s proposal does have interesting aspects, even though, needless to
say, the imperial European model seems unlikely to be accepted by either liberal
European political forces or a European left wing shaped by the liberal democratic
tradition. As we have seen, the imperial paradigm implies an absolutist
and anti-egalitarian conception of power, though tolerant and consistent with
ethnic and cultural pluralism. And the very idea of a ‘heathen’ – rather than
simply ‘secular’ – Europe does not seem easy to propose, since European
culture stems from Greek philosophy, Roman law and the Enlightenment, but
also from the three monotheistic religions that flourished on the shores of the
Mediterranean sea: the Jewish, the Christian and, last but not least, the Islamic.
Moreover, it is unclear whether de Benoist’s reference to the model of the
Monroe Doctrine, following Schmitt, points to an ‘imperial Europe’ under the
influence of one or more hegemonic states – possibly France and Germany – and
whether his idea of empire is consistent with an egalitarian structure of the relationships
between different European nationalities, and hence with the equal
protection of European citizens’ basic rights. In fact, both issues are relatively
alien to the positions of the French ‘New Right’ (Zolo 2004b).
Hardt and Negri: an apology for global Empire
The re-emerging notion of Empire 157
In their successful book Empire, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri maintain that
the new ‘world order’ imposed by globalisation has led to the disappearance of
the Westphalian system of sovereign states (2000). Nation-states no longer exist,
other than as thin formal structures that still survive within the legal system and
international institutions. The world is no longer ruled by state political systems.
It is governed by a single power structure that bears no significant analogy with
the modern state of European origin. It is a decentred and deterritorialised political
system that makes no reference to national or ethnic traditions and values,
and whose political and normative substance is cosmopolitan universalism. For
these reasons, Hardt and Negri believe ‘Empire’ to be the most appropriate
name for this new kind of global power.
The ‘imperial constitution of the world’ – say Hardt and Negri – is distinguished
from a state constitution through its functions: imperial sovereignty is
not aimed at the political and territorial inclusion and assimilation of subordinated
peoples and countries, as was typical of state imperialism and colonialism
during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The new imperial rule works
through political institutions and legal arrangements essentially meant to secure