The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal ...

The ‘realist institutionalism’ of Schmitt 25
This surprising reversal is the first and fundamental particularity of Schmitt’s
realist institutionalism. Institutions are not conceived as substitutes for the realist
game of international politics; instead, it is the realist game of international politics
that is conceived as an institution. Schmitt, differentiating himself from idealists,
accepts the key principles of realist analysis – the centrality of states, the
balance of power, and international anarchy itself. However, unlike orthodox
realists, he realizes that these principles are not mere assumptions, but institutions.
The major characteristics commonly attributed to international politics
share the features of an institution: from the notion of international politics as
(basically) inter-state politics, to the concept of boundary, to the very distinction
between domestic and international politics and domestic (or civil) and international
war. Schmitt realizes that an authentically realist analysis of international
relations should not base itself on these assumptions, but, on the
contrary, should take them as a principal focus of investigation.
It is no accident that this impressive rewriting of realism culminates in
Schmitt’s analysis of war. Coherent with his realist approach, he considers war
to be the crucial phenomenon of international life, not because it is omnipresent,
but because it is revelatory (like any exception) of what may be overlooked or
concealed in ‘times of unproblematic security’ (Schmitt 2003: 82). Nevertheless,
unlike contemporary realists, Schmitt considers war to be the opposite of a manifestation
of the anarchic and immutable nature of international politics. As he
explains it, it is unwise to indiscriminately define any use of force in the form of
war as anarchy and to hold this definition to be the last word on the juridical
question of war: ‘anarchy and law are not mutually exclusive’ (ibid.: 187). On
the contrary, the ability to acknowledge a justus hostis is the starting point of
any international law, just as the inability to do so is the unambiguous sign of its
demise. The Hobbesian analogy between international politics and the state of
nature makes way for contrasting results. On the one hand, the war of all against
all does not cease to be one of the possible outcomes of anarchy, as the frightening
recurrence of civil war shows. On the other hand, this looming threat creates
the need to contain anarchy, not by juxtaposing a set of institutions to the
intractable reality of war, but by transforming war itself into an institution.
It is exactly the ‘rationalization and humanization of war’ that Schmitt conceives
to be the fundamental contribution of the jus publicum Europaeum. The
role of the state in its domestic sphere – to neutralize conflict by giving it form –
is transferred into the international sphere with inter-state war. The essence of
European international law was the bracketing of war (eine Hegung des
Krieges).
The essence of such wars was a regulated contest of forces gauged by witnesses
in a bracketed space. Such wars are the opposite of disorder. They represent
the highest form of order within the scope of human power. They are
the only protection against a circle of increasing reprisals, i.e. against nihilistic
hatred and reactions whose meaningless goal lies in mutual destruction.
(Schmitt 2003: 187)