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

10 Against world unity
Carl Schmitt and the Western-centric
and liberal global order
Fabio Petito
In this age of globalization and cosmopolitan thinking, International Relations
and Legal and Political Theory seem, in one way or another, all to point to the
moral and political necessity of some sort of world political unification: as a way
to govern globalization, to democratize international politics, to avoid conflicts,
to prevent massive violations of human rights, and to prosecute crimes against
humanity. In a more specific way, the idea of ‘world unity’ works as a kind of
positive taken-for-granted utopia in many of the normative discourses on international
politics: the end-point, perhaps unrealistic, but still capable of orienting
the construction of a just world order, something close to what Stephen Toulmin
aptly called ‘the hidden agenda of modernity’ (1990; cf. also Zolo 1997). In other
words, the implicit utopia of a cosmopolis helps to frame both the passionate
words of Ulrich Beck, for whom the twenty-first century is urging a new
‘cosmopolitan vision’ (2006), and the policy-oriented suggestions of the supporters
of a global democratic governance (Commission on Global Governance
1995; cf. Aksu and Camilleri 2002). This cosmopolis has even found unexpected
resonance in the social-scientific analytical reasoning (and, as such, arguably
more revealing) of leading IR theorist Alexander Wendt who, in a recent contribution,
argued that a world state is, in the long run, inevitable (2003).
Against this harmonious chorus, the apocalyptic warnings of Carl Schmitt,
who throughout his life saw a unified world as the reign of the Antichrist, are a
disturbing but beneficial dissonance for they allow us to highlight the implicit
problematic assumptions and political dangers of this dominant view. This is
even more urgent in the present moment of world politics when we see
the apparently paradoxical convergence of unilateral-militarist and liberalhumanitarian
themes that immediately remind us of Schmitt’s powerful indictment,
‘whoever invokes humanity wants to cheat’ (1996a: 54), as well as of his
perceptive remarks on the two-sided political nature of the concept of humanity,
whereby the fight in the name of humanity implies the denial to the enemy of the
very quality of being human (2003a: 103–104). But let us proceed gradually: in
the first part of this chapter, focusing on Schmitt’s post-Second World War writings
on world order, I critically discuss Schmitt’s speculations on the possible
configurations of a ‘new nomos of the earth’ emerging from the ashes of the
traditional Eurocentric order of international law, the jus publicum Europaeum;