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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Nomos: word and myth 253<br />
picture. <strong>Schmitt</strong> surveys three possibilities <strong>of</strong> the new nomos <strong>of</strong> the earth in an<br />
essay <strong>of</strong> the same name (2003: 351–355). <strong>The</strong> first is a unipolar world in which<br />
the victor <strong>of</strong> the Cold War would be sole sovereign. ‘He would appropriate the<br />
whole earth – land, sea and air’ (ibid.: 354). <strong>The</strong> second one retains the balance<br />
structure <strong>of</strong> the old nomos in which the United States administers and guarantees<br />
the balance <strong>of</strong> the rest <strong>of</strong> the world by ‘a joint domination <strong>of</strong> sea and air’ (ibid.:<br />
355). In other words, America becomes the larger island, following in England’s<br />
footsteps in Mahan’s sense. <strong>The</strong> third is one <strong>of</strong> a balance between several Grossräume<br />
or regional blocs (literally, large spaces). What is interesting about this<br />
survey is that <strong>Schmitt</strong> is still toying with the idea that air-power has displaced<br />
the earlier opposition <strong>of</strong> land and sea. <strong>The</strong>re are clearly limits to geo-mythographical<br />
thinking generally and to <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s playing with the four classical elements<br />
in particular.<br />
<strong>Schmitt</strong> tends to hedge his bets about the elemental irruption he notes and<br />
about the new nomos <strong>of</strong> the earth. However, he is clear that the airplane has<br />
changed the nature <strong>of</strong> war and military strategy by challenging traditional spatial<br />
concepts <strong>of</strong> war, especially the idea <strong>of</strong> a ‘theatre <strong>of</strong> war’ and ‘the front’, and<br />
even the distinction between a land-war and a sea-war and the rules governing<br />
them (ibid.: 316–320). Because it is a purely destructive operation, with no relation<br />
between military personnel in the air and those on the earth, as well as no<br />
positive relation to the inhabitants, it is not associated with the attempt to bring<br />
order to territories which depends on the relation between soldiers and civilians<br />
within an occupied territory.<br />
<strong>The</strong> onset <strong>of</strong> air-war is connected to the end <strong>of</strong> the moral ‘bracketing’ <strong>of</strong> war<br />
and the non-discriminatory concept <strong>of</strong> the enemy that <strong>Schmitt</strong> would consider<br />
key features <strong>of</strong> the jus publicum Europaeum: ‘<strong>The</strong> discriminatory concept <strong>of</strong> the<br />
enemy as a criminal and the attendant implication <strong>of</strong> justa causa run parallel to<br />
the intensification <strong>of</strong> the means <strong>of</strong> destruction and the disorientation <strong>of</strong> the theatres<br />
<strong>of</strong> war’ (ibid.: 321). This leads <strong>Schmitt</strong> to another kind <strong>of</strong> mythology. He<br />
characterizes the allied domination <strong>of</strong> the air during the latter stage <strong>of</strong> the<br />
Second World War and its dreadful effects on German civilian populations as a<br />
police action:<br />
Bombing pilots use their weapons against the population <strong>of</strong> an enemy<br />
country as vertically as St. George used his lance against the dragon. Given<br />
the fact that war has been transformed into a police action against troublemakers,<br />
criminals, and pests, justification <strong>of</strong> the methods <strong>of</strong> this ‘policebombing’<br />
must be intensified.<br />
(ibid.)<br />
In doing so, <strong>Schmitt</strong> has added another twist to his story <strong>of</strong> Leviathan who, as<br />
we know, can be a monster, a machine, a mortal god, a whale, a huge fish, the<br />
devil, a serpent or, as here, a dragon.<br />
This kind <strong>of</strong> use <strong>of</strong> the term ‘police’ in the international sphere is echoed<br />
in contemporary Italian post-Marxist characterizations <strong>of</strong> nomos. Agamben