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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Against world unity 171<br />
this triple nature <strong>of</strong> the present order and in the remainder <strong>of</strong> this section I<br />
briefly sketch some <strong>of</strong> these possibilities.<br />
<strong>The</strong> ‘global linear thinking’ <strong>of</strong> a US-centred Western hemisphere<br />
<strong>The</strong> Western-centric nature <strong>of</strong> the present world order can be fruitfully comprehended<br />
from the viewpoint <strong>of</strong> the global linear thinking, which <strong>Schmitt</strong> develops<br />
in <strong>The</strong> Nomos <strong>of</strong> the Earth (2003a: 86–100). <strong>Schmitt</strong> talks <strong>of</strong> the Western<br />
hemisphere as a central category <strong>of</strong> US foreign policy discourse since the<br />
formulation <strong>of</strong> the famous Monroe doctrine in 1823. <strong>The</strong> Western hemisphere<br />
represented, in <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s language, the American Großraum defining the US<br />
sphere <strong>of</strong> special interests, namely the American continent. It originated as a<br />
defensive line around a security zone, a line <strong>of</strong> self-isolation, as well as an anti-<br />
European line based on contempt for the old and corrupt Europe and, in this<br />
sense, it was, according to <strong>Schmitt</strong>, a kind <strong>of</strong> quarantine line, a cordon sanitaire<br />
which separated a contaminated region from a healthy one. At the same time,<br />
however, it carried with it the moral claim, grounded in the Calvinist-Puritan<br />
belief <strong>of</strong> being ‘elected’, to express the true European civilization and international<br />
law. In the powerful words <strong>of</strong> <strong>Schmitt</strong>, this meant that the true ‘Occident’,<br />
‘the centre <strong>of</strong> civilization shifted further West, to America’ (2003a:<br />
281–294). But it was during the transition <strong>of</strong> ‘the twenty years’ crisis’, to use E.<br />
H. Carr’s words (2001), that the originally isolationalist nature <strong>of</strong> the Western<br />
hemisphere – still visible in the 1939 Panama declaration in which the European<br />
belligerents were told not to take any hostile actions within the security zone <strong>of</strong><br />
the American continent – degenerated into a universalistic-humanitarian global<br />
interventionism, articulated for example in the 1941 <strong>of</strong>ficial declaration <strong>of</strong> the<br />
US entry into the war as a reversion to the older and sounder views <strong>of</strong> the Just<br />
War tradition (<strong>Schmitt</strong> 2003a: 259–280). With this act, the most essential<br />
component <strong>of</strong> the jus publicum Europaeum, the rationalization and limitation <strong>of</strong><br />
war, chanted its swansong and, with it, the old nomos <strong>of</strong> the earth.<br />
<strong>The</strong> global interventionism <strong>of</strong> the US as the defensor fidei <strong>of</strong> the Free World<br />
continued throughout the Cold War, justified by the ideological bipolar confrontation;<br />
and it has arguably been intensified in the post-1989 era in the name <strong>of</strong><br />
human rights (humanitarian interventions) and more recently in the name <strong>of</strong> the<br />
need for a global security and democracy (preventive war and war against terror).<br />
<strong>The</strong> change is well exemplified by the fact that Central and Southern America, still<br />
perceived as the special interest <strong>of</strong> the US, the Reich <strong>of</strong> the Western hemisphere,<br />
in the original formulation <strong>of</strong> the Monroe Doctrine, are today only secondary strategic<br />
areas compared to the Greater Middle East, Central Asia and the Far East,<br />
that is, the rest <strong>of</strong> the world. In this context, <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s analysis <strong>of</strong> the Western<br />
hemisphere is also still very topical because it does not hide, as many uses <strong>of</strong> this<br />
concept tend to do, its political origin as the first counter-attack <strong>of</strong> the New World<br />
against Old Europe and therefore foregrounds the issue <strong>of</strong> so-called transatlantic<br />
tensions with a strength necessary, in my view, to capture the centrality this issue<br />
will have in the future <strong>of</strong> international politics. 5