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 ...
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158 D. Zolo<br />
world order, that is, a ‘universal enduring peace’ allowing for the normal operation<br />
<strong>of</strong> the market economy. <strong>The</strong> Empire performs the function <strong>of</strong> ‘international<br />
policing’, possibly by means <strong>of</strong> war, and prospectively even neutral judicial<br />
tasks. Imperial power is even appealed to by subjects because <strong>of</strong> its ability to<br />
settle conflicts from a universal, that is basically impartial, standpoint. Significantly<br />
– it is an insightful remark <strong>of</strong> Hardt and Negri – after a long eclipse the<br />
theory <strong>of</strong> bellum justum, which is a medieval, typically universalist and imperial<br />
doctrine, has flourished again in English-speaking culture since the 1990s.<br />
However, it would be wrong to think that Empire – or its central expanding<br />
core – is constituted by the United States and its closest Western allies. Neither<br />
the United States nor any other nation state, Hardt and Negri insist, ‘can today<br />
form the centre <strong>of</strong> an imperialist project’ (2000: 15). Global Empire is something<br />
completely other than classical imperialism, and it would be a serious<br />
theoretical mistake to confuse the two.<br />
This is a very intricate point from both a theoretical and a political point <strong>of</strong><br />
view, and has raised a wide debate. It has been argued, and I personally share<br />
this view, that in Hardt and Negri’s book ‘Empire’ seems to fade into a sort <strong>of</strong><br />
‘category <strong>of</strong> the spirit’: it is present everywhere because it coincides with the<br />
new global dimension. But, some have objected, if everything is imperial,<br />
nothing is imperial. How do we identify supranational subjects that bear imperial<br />
interests and aspirations? Against whom do we enact anti-imperialist critique<br />
and resistance? Excluding the political and military apparatuses <strong>of</strong> great powers,<br />
first <strong>of</strong> all the United States, who plays an imperial role (Negri and Zolo 2002:<br />
8–19)?<br />
Yet another aspect <strong>of</strong> Hardt and Negri’s position has been criticised. It seems<br />
dependent on the ‘ontology’ underlying their analysis: the dialectics <strong>of</strong> history,<br />
in the meaning characteristic <strong>of</strong> Hegelian Marxism and Leninism. According to<br />
Hardt and Negri, global Empire represents a positive victory over the Westphalian<br />
system <strong>of</strong> sovereign states. Having put an end to states and their nationalism,<br />
Empire has also ended colonialism and classical imperialism and opened<br />
up a cosmopolitan perspective that should be welcomed.<br />
In their view, any attempt to reassert the role <strong>of</strong> nation-states in opposition to<br />
the present imperial constitution <strong>of</strong> the world would express a ‘false and<br />
harmful’ ideology. <strong>The</strong> philosophy <strong>of</strong> the anti-globalisation movement and all<br />
forms <strong>of</strong> naturalist environmentalism and localism must therefore be rejected as<br />
primitive and anti-dialectical positions, or in other words as substantially ‘reactionary’.<br />
Communists – as Hardt and Negri declare themselves to be – are universalist,<br />
cosmopolitan, ‘catholic’ by vocation: their horizon is that <strong>of</strong> the whole<br />
<strong>of</strong> mankind, <strong>of</strong> ‘generic human nature’, as Marx wrote. In the last century the<br />
working masses relied on the internationalisation <strong>of</strong> political and social relations.<br />
Today the ‘global’ powers <strong>of</strong> Empire should be controlled but not demolished:<br />
the imperial constitution is to be preserved and directed towards<br />
non-capitalist goals. For Hardt and Negri, while it is true that policing technologies<br />
are the ‘hard core’ <strong>of</strong> the imperial order, this order has nothing to do with<br />
the practices <strong>of</strong> dictatorship and totalitarianism <strong>of</strong> the last century.