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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22 A. Colombo<br />
law, Europe stumbled into a world war that dethroned the old world from<br />
the center <strong>of</strong> the earth and destroyed the bracketing <strong>of</strong> war it had created.<br />
(<strong>Schmitt</strong> 2003: 239)<br />
Overcoming this disjunction between law and politics marks not only the<br />
historical and conceptual foundation <strong>of</strong> <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s reflections on both Staatsrecht<br />
and Völkerrecht, but also his distinctiveness in <strong>International</strong> Relations theory,<br />
what I shall call his ‘realist institutionalism’. First, I will analyse the meaning <strong>of</strong><br />
this concept, which can legitimately seem an oxymoron in contemporary <strong>International</strong><br />
Relations theory, since most institutionalists reject realist assumptions<br />
and most realists downplay the role <strong>of</strong> institutions. Second, I will focus on the<br />
fundamental subject <strong>of</strong> <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s institutionalism: the state. <strong>Schmitt</strong> places it at<br />
the centre <strong>of</strong> modern international politics, as do realism and neorealism.<br />
However, he attributes to it a totally different role: the state is not conceived to<br />
be the sole, real actor behind the institutional scene but, rather, the very creator<br />
and guarantor <strong>of</strong> that scene. Finally, I will discuss <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s image <strong>of</strong> history,<br />
which also escapes the common realism–institutionalism distinction. On the one<br />
hand, it rejects the realist dogma <strong>of</strong> the immutability <strong>of</strong> international politics,<br />
clearly recognizing the important changes that the jus publicum Europaeum had<br />
introduced into the international sphere. On the other hand, <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s image <strong>of</strong><br />
history also rejects the progressive and optimistic image <strong>of</strong> contemporary institutionalism,<br />
opposing it with <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s own catastrophic and somewhat nostalgic<br />
vision <strong>of</strong> the demise <strong>of</strong> European international law.<br />
This inevitability <strong>of</strong> demise is, at the same time, the outcome and the inspirational<br />
source <strong>of</strong> <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s thought. If he recognizes in the institutional dimension<br />
the connective tissue <strong>of</strong> the international scene, it is precisely because he is<br />
observing that scene’s collapse, the moment when ‘the plankings begin to creak’<br />
– as a German poet contemporary <strong>of</strong> <strong>Schmitt</strong>, Gottfried Benn, put it. Instead <strong>of</strong><br />
continuing to support the building from the inside, the planks come to the<br />
surface, become visible, and allow us to read their history in their cracks. Facing<br />
such a crisis landscape <strong>Schmitt</strong>, first, retraces its origin, then its long course,<br />
until the institutional dimension reveals itself to be very different from how it is<br />
portrayed in most <strong>of</strong> the so-called institutional theories <strong>of</strong> <strong>International</strong> Relations:<br />
that is, it is not an innovation <strong>of</strong> the twentieth century, but, rather, the<br />
most impressive element <strong>of</strong> continuity in the modern history <strong>of</strong> international<br />
politics; not the negation <strong>of</strong> power relations, but, rather, the expression <strong>of</strong> their<br />
ability to give form to international life; not a manifestation <strong>of</strong> universalism, but,<br />
rather, the last sign <strong>of</strong> the exceptionalism and centrality <strong>of</strong> Europe.<br />
A realist institutionalism<br />
That <strong>Carl</strong> <strong>Schmitt</strong> belongs to the realist tradition cannot be seriously put into<br />
doubt. All <strong>of</strong> the major assumptions that underlie his thought prove it: the preeminence<br />
<strong>of</strong> political over economic relations; the centrality <strong>of</strong> conflict, upon<br />
which his concept <strong>of</strong> the political rests (<strong>Schmitt</strong> 1996); and his insistence on the