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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254 M. Dean<br />
(2000: 102) has used the term ‘sovereign police’, with a clear <strong>Schmitt</strong>ian resonance,<br />
to discuss the first Gulf War and the treatment <strong>of</strong> internees within concentration<br />
camps. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s book Empire (2000: 17)<br />
discusses the new, imperial form <strong>of</strong> sovereign right as a combination <strong>of</strong> the<br />
‘juridical power to rule over the state <strong>of</strong> exception’ and ‘the capacity to deploy<br />
police force’. Both would maintain that in the new global dispensation, military<br />
interventions today take the form <strong>of</strong> police action in the sense that <strong>Schmitt</strong><br />
meant it in the above passage. Although we cannot unpack these uses <strong>of</strong> the<br />
term ‘police’ here, the notion <strong>of</strong> ‘an international police power’ has a longer<br />
history in international relations dating back at least to <strong>The</strong>odore Roosevelt’s<br />
description <strong>of</strong> the role <strong>of</strong> the United States in the Western Hemisphere in his<br />
extension <strong>of</strong> the Monroe Doctrine as ‘the exercise <strong>of</strong> an international police<br />
power’ (quoted by Ferguson 2004: 52–53).<br />
Yet this is an example where <strong>Schmitt</strong> seems to lack the conceptual history<br />
necessary to understand the nuance <strong>of</strong> the term ‘police’ and its mutations.<br />
<strong>The</strong> beginnings <strong>of</strong> such a genealogy <strong>of</strong> ‘police’ can be found in Foucault’s work<br />
(e.g. 2001) or in German conceptual history (e.g. Knemeyer 1980; Oestreich<br />
1982) and in discussions <strong>of</strong> the German cameralists’ Polizeiwissenshaft or<br />
science <strong>of</strong> police (e.g. Small 1909). However, it is not necessary to go that far<br />
to find a very different meaning <strong>of</strong> police. In his own Leviathan, <strong>Schmitt</strong> uses<br />
the term in a manner consistent with the early modern discourses analysed in<br />
these literatures. When citing a brief defence published by Hobbes against<br />
Bramhall, <strong>Schmitt</strong> (1996b: 21–22) uses ‘police’ to refer to the ‘peace-enforcing<br />
function <strong>of</strong> the state’. For <strong>Schmitt</strong>: ‘<strong>The</strong> absolutism <strong>of</strong> the state is, accordingly,<br />
the oppressor <strong>of</strong> irrepressible chaos inherent in man, or as <strong>Carl</strong>yle said in his<br />
drastic manner, anarchy plus police’. Police here is the civil, stately condition<br />
in which all citizens are secure and in which reigns peace, security and order<br />
(ibid.: 31).<br />
In one text, then, police is the condition sought by the Leviathan in its fight<br />
against the anarchic and rebellious forces <strong>of</strong> the state <strong>of</strong> nature or <strong>of</strong> religious<br />
and civil war (Behemoth). Here, the creation <strong>of</strong> Leviathan is a condition <strong>of</strong><br />
police. In the other, the Leviathan (as dragon) is being lanced by the new airpowers<br />
which introduce anarchy into the rules and spatial theatres <strong>of</strong> war. But<br />
there is no fundamental inconsistency: <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s view is that police is a legitimate<br />
action <strong>of</strong> the sovereign to secure domestic order which needs to be carefully<br />
distinguished from war, which is something that occurs between sovereigns. <strong>The</strong><br />
attempt to view international military intervention as police action is thus linked<br />
to a fundamental remoralization <strong>of</strong> war and the emergence <strong>of</strong> a new discriminatory<br />
kind <strong>of</strong> total war.<br />
<strong>The</strong> strength <strong>of</strong> this view, which is repeated by <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s Left followers, is<br />
that it notes the elision <strong>of</strong> the once domestic police function with that <strong>of</strong> war and<br />
military action. Its weakness is that the solution it nostalgically imposes is to<br />
reinstate the classical spheres <strong>of</strong> domestic police and external, properly conducted<br />
war (Dean, forthcoming). In our own time, we might wish to distinguish<br />
between not only military intervention and police action but also between differ-