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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Geopolitics and grosspolitics 39<br />
footsteps <strong>of</strong> another political catholicist, Joseph de Maistre, <strong>Schmitt</strong> saw humanitarianism<br />
as a dangerous political ‘religion’, which in its attempt to neutralise<br />
the political nature <strong>of</strong> man succeeded only in bringing chaos and violence in its<br />
wake.<br />
In the place <strong>of</strong> jus publicum Europaeum another international order was<br />
developing but, in <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s view, it was an order without a territorial orientation.<br />
While the shell <strong>of</strong> the old order continued to provide a kind <strong>of</strong> a model,<br />
international law had become a collection <strong>of</strong> loose principles existing in a<br />
geopolitical chaos. Once it had become difficult to distinguish a European state<br />
from a colonial or other quasi-state outside Europe, the European state system<br />
had lost its homogeneity. Confusion resulted from the fact that no new geopolitical<br />
concepts had been developed to grasp the new concrete situation. <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s<br />
conceptual solution to the problem was Großraum (see Ulmen 1987: 43–71).<br />
<strong>The</strong> term Großraum was not <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s own invention, but he conceptualised<br />
it with the means and methods <strong>of</strong> his training in international law. <strong>The</strong> term was<br />
not first used as a juridical concept. It gained general currency in Weimar<br />
Germany as Großraumwirtschaft (bloc economy), an idea that fertilised the<br />
ground for claims to German hegemony in Europe (see Murphy 1997: 61–63).<br />
<strong>Schmitt</strong> dissociated his Großraumtheorie from the geopolitics <strong>of</strong> the notorious<br />
Haush<strong>of</strong>er school (<strong>Schmitt</strong> 1991: 15–19) which understood Geopolitik as a<br />
scientific aid to the conduct <strong>of</strong> statecraft (see e.g. Toal 1996: 46). One <strong>of</strong> the key<br />
concepts <strong>of</strong> Haush<strong>of</strong>er’s geopolitics that came to link political geography with<br />
the Third Reich was Lebensraum, a term that became well known with Friedrich<br />
Ratzel’s Der Lebensraum <strong>of</strong> 1901. Ratzel equated the Darwinian idea <strong>of</strong> the<br />
struggle for existence with the struggle for space: all life forms on the planet<br />
were involved in a ceaseless quest for living space. Although his work was<br />
mainly in plant and animal geography, Ratzel emphasised the existential<br />
meaning <strong>of</strong> Lebensraum, and the analogy with Darwinism among nations was<br />
picked up by the geopoliticians <strong>of</strong> the Haush<strong>of</strong>er school.<br />
For <strong>Schmitt</strong>, the political form <strong>of</strong> Großraum stood between the political categories<br />
<strong>of</strong> the state and the universe (<strong>Schmitt</strong> 1995: 237). A Großraum, <strong>Schmitt</strong><br />
asserted, was an area dominated by a power representing a distinct political idea,<br />
which was formulated with a specific opponent in mind – that is, the distinctions<br />
between friend and enemy were determined by this particular political idea.<br />
<strong>Schmitt</strong> saw the legal precedent for the international order <strong>of</strong> Großräume being<br />
set in the Monroe Doctrine <strong>of</strong> 1823. Geopolitically, the Monroe Doctrine designated<br />
an area far exceeding the territorial boundaries <strong>of</strong> the United States, thus<br />
creating a new form <strong>of</strong> political subjectivity above and beyond the territorial<br />
nation-state. At the time <strong>of</strong> its declaration, the American government avowed it<br />
would not intervene in European political affairs and reciprocally forbade extraneous<br />
intervention in the Western Hemisphere. With the Monroe Doctrine, the<br />
United States accepted the responsibility <strong>of</strong> protector <strong>of</strong> independent ‘Western’<br />
nations and affirmed that it would steer clear <strong>of</strong> European affairs (<strong>Schmitt</strong> 1991:<br />
22–33). <strong>The</strong> Monroe Doctrine not only sought to isolate the Western Hemisphere<br />
from Europe and the rest <strong>of</strong> the world but, for <strong>Schmitt</strong>, constituted a