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

Geopolitics and grosspolitics 51
economically tattered after the world wars, Europe was not capable of entering
the world stage as an independent super-state. Rather, its potential was left to be
harnessed by either the West or, Burnham feared, by communism: ‘[p]ermitting
Western Europe to remain divided and quarrelling means permitting communism
to conquer Western Europe’ (ibid.: 199). After taking up its role as the
‘receiver’ of the British Empire and Western Europe, the United States needed
to take steps to protect its hemispheric ‘base’ by gradually extending the sphere
of its political subjectivity, beginning with the Western Hemisphere. Burnham
actually suggested that in doing this the United States should take heed of Nazi
foreign policy in Europe and aim at ‘the de facto elimination of independent
sovereignty in all nations and colonies of the area except the United States, and
thus the creation of a single interrelated territory so far as de facto political sovereignty
goes’ (Burnham 1941: 219).
Even though an American World Empire was the only conceivable solution
for the United States in the post-war international order, Burnham accepted that
a foreign policy open to accusations of ‘imperialism’ or even ‘fascism’ would no
doubt become, sooner or later, a burden for America. He therefore suggested
that it be given a more altruistic name from the start:
[i]t will be useful to give a name to the supreme policy which I have formulated.
It is neither ‘imperial’ nor ‘American’ in any sense that would be
ordinarily communicated by these words. The partial leadership which it
allots to the United States follows not from any nationalist bias but from the
nature and possibilities of existing world power relationships. Because this
policy is the only answer to the communist plan for a universal totalitarianism,
because it is the only chance for preserving the measure of liberty that
is possible for us in our Time of Troubles, and because it proposes the sole
route now open towards a free world society, I shall henceforth refer to it as
the policy of democratic world order.
(Burnham 1947: 226–227, emphasis in original)
With his policy, Burnham did not make a case for world democracy as much as
he did for American order. Apart from stating the obvious – that he would much
rather have democracy than totalitarianism, and anything rather than communism
– he gave very little for the cause of democratic peace.
The Soviet Union has been defeated and communism mostly eradicated from
the world. Burnham played his part here: not only did he write a number of
widely read books on American political affairs during the Cold War, but he
also served as an intelligence officer for the United States government and a
founding editor of one of the most eminent conservative journals in America
today, The National Review. George H. Nash, an influential chronicler of the
conservative intellectual movement, has argued that more than any other single
person, James Burnham supplied the theoretical formulation for American
victory in the Cold War (Nash 1976: 91). In 1983, four years before his death,
President Ronald Reagan decorated Burnham with the Presidential Medal of