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

The re-emerging notion of Empire 161
‘global empire’ that, in my view, may be used today to describe the political
system of the United States (Zolo 2003: 223–240).
First, today the United States’ power can be said to be ‘imperial’ and ‘global’
in a geopolitical sense, for it is a power that, through its absolute military hegemony,
tends to operate economically and militarily in a non-spatial dimension.
State power has always been anchored to a territorial domain, as have inter-state
wars. On the contrary, the ‘global wars’ waged by the United States are not wars
between sovereign states. Their guiding strategy is directed towards universal
goals such as ‘global security’ and a ‘new world order’. The conquest of territorial
spaces for continuous occupation and annexation in one way or another is
alien to the ‘informal’ strategies of the United States empire. Imperial war tends
to be waged as ‘air war’, and, in a rapidly approaching future, also as an extraterrestrial
space war.
Second, the United States’ power can be said to be ‘imperial’ and ‘global’ in
a systemic sense, that is, in the meaning of general systems theory. The foreign
policy of the United States is engaged in a permanent contest to decide who will
be leader of the world system of international relations, who will dictate the systemic
rules, who will have the political power to determine the allocation of
resources of wealth and power, and who will succeed in imposing his own world
view and concept of order. In the most authoritative documents of its administration
the United States declares itself to be the only country that, in its capacity
as a ‘global power’, can ‘project power’ worldwide. 5 To meet the global interests,
responsibilities and duties it ascribes to itself, it must extend its influence,
reinforcing ‘America’s global leadership role’, with the dual goal of enhancing
its own internal security and promoting its ‘vital interests’ in the international
arena by reinforcing its worldwide system of military bases, its satellite espionage
network and, last but not least, its tactical and strategic nuclear weaponry.
Third, the power of the United States can be said to be ‘imperial’ and ‘global’
in a strictly normative sense, for it has a tendency to ignore the rules of international
law. The United States considers itself subject neither to the prohibition
on the ‘private’ use of force (jus ad bellum) enshrined in the Charter of the
United Nations nor to the laws of war (jus in bello) developed by the modern
international legal system. The formal distinction between combatants and noncombatants
allows room for the use of weapons of mass destruction that essentially
affect civilian populations. And prisoners of war are treated without the
slightest respect for the Geneva Conventions. US wars are decided by an authority
that not only sees itself as legibus soluta but, to use Schmitt’s lexicon, operates
as the sovereign source of a new nomos of the earth in a situation – the
threat of global terrorism – of permanent ‘global exception’. The notion (and
practice) of ‘pre-emptive war’ is the most eloquent expression of this will to
subvert the existing international order, still based upon states’ sovereignty.
Finally, the United States can be considered to be a ‘global empire’ in an
ideological sense, because it constantly appeals to universal values to justify its
use of force. It justifies war on the basis not of partisan interests or particular
goals but of a superior, impartial standpoint and of values which it believes are,