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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24 A. Colombo<br />
sovereigns appears to have hinged on the thin thread <strong>of</strong> treaties that bound<br />
these leviathans together.... But, in reality, strong traditional ties – religious,<br />
social, and economic – endure longer.<br />
(<strong>Schmitt</strong> 2003: 147–148)<br />
In realizing that anarchy can result in something different from the Hobbesian<br />
paradigm – as it already has in history – <strong>Schmitt</strong> rejects the other cornerstone <strong>of</strong><br />
contemporary realism: the assumption that international politics has remained<br />
immutable through the centuries (Waltz 1979; Gilpin 1987). Once placed in its<br />
particular institutional context, each form <strong>of</strong> international coexistence – from the<br />
Christian medieval up to the modern international system – reveals itself to be<br />
radically different from the others. Continuity and discontinuity, immutability<br />
and catastrophe follow and interweave within institutions; institutions which are<br />
born, on the one hand, to produce expectations and to overcome contingencies,<br />
while being, on the other hand, themselves a contingency, a fact that does not<br />
fundamentally change what is really immutable in politics – <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s dialectic<br />
between friend and enemy (<strong>Schmitt</strong> 1996) – but, rather, changes the nature <strong>of</strong><br />
the players, the extent <strong>of</strong> the playing field, and the rules <strong>of</strong> the game. With<br />
respect to orthodox realism, the meaning <strong>of</strong> immutability changes in this conception,<br />
becoming more complicated and, at the same time, more accurate. On<br />
the one hand, the assumption <strong>of</strong> immutability may even be reinforced by the<br />
rediscovery <strong>of</strong> the institutional framework <strong>of</strong> the jus publicum Europaeum, not<br />
because it constitutes the only element <strong>of</strong> continuity in the history <strong>of</strong> modern<br />
international relations, but, rather, because it constitutes one <strong>of</strong> them, and precisely<br />
the one that has made it possible to give other mutations a form. On the<br />
other hand, the assumption <strong>of</strong> immutability emerges relativized by the recognition<br />
that the jus publicum Europaeum also marks the discontinuity between the<br />
modern international system <strong>of</strong> states and other past, present or future models <strong>of</strong><br />
international cohabitation, both in Europe and in the rest <strong>of</strong> the world.<br />
It is precisely here, in his interest in the modern international system, that<br />
<strong>Schmitt</strong>’s institutionalism reconnects with the realist tradition. Unlike other more<br />
recent institutionalisms, especially those he saw emerging from the League <strong>of</strong><br />
Nations and post-war international law, <strong>Schmitt</strong> is not interested in the institutions<br />
explicitly created during the twentieth century in contrast to the international politics<br />
<strong>of</strong> the past; instead, he turns his attention to institutions rooted in the past, as a<br />
cultural and juridical counterpoint to power politics. He does not focus on the<br />
institutions that sprang from a declared (and ideological) project <strong>of</strong> transformation,<br />
like the League <strong>of</strong> Nations and the United Nations, but, rather, he turns<br />
his attention to institutions so durable as to have accompanied the entire course <strong>of</strong><br />
modern political history and, therefore, naturally able to assert themselves while<br />
no longer being recognized as institutions. <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s approach does not focus on<br />
specific institutions such as international regimes or formal organizations, but on<br />
the more fundamental practices in which these have been inserted and on which<br />
the very nature <strong>of</strong> international cohabitation depends: a nature that political<br />
realism also recognizes, while failing to perceive its institutional footprint.