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

64 C. Brown
Years War is described as a religious conflict which predates the idea of war as a
duel between sovereign states, and yet religion was only one element in that
conflict, and often not the most significant element. Catholic France and the
Papacy ended up effectively on what was nominally the ‘Protestant’ side of the
conflict which hardly suggests deep religious motivations.
Still, even though one might wish to challenge Schmitt’s history – and it
would require a much longer study to do it properly – this does not necessarily
get to the core of the issue which is his, and later critics’, characterization of Just
War thinking as essentially and necessarily leading to the demonization of the
enemy and legitimating total war. This is the core of the debate about the relevance
of Just War thinking to both the humanized war of the classic European
states-system and the humanitarian interventions of today (or at least the 1990s).
The Just War reconsidered
Booth and other modern critics of the Just War deliver the same criticisms as
Schmitt, but on a contingent/psychological basis – that is to say, they see the
behaviour of Just Warriors as extremist because that is what they observe of
individuals who use Just War language, and they explain this by the alleged
sense of superiority that believing oneself to be ‘justified’ brings with it.
However, as noted above, this line of reasoning is not particularly convincing,
because self-satisfied self-righteousness is by no means peculiar to the Just War
tradition. Schmitt offers a more compelling critique, arguing that the extremism
of Just Warriors is best explained by examining the theological origins of the
notion. The Christian world order of the Middle Ages – the respublica Christiana
– believed itself to be under potential assault from the Antichrist; the role
of the Empire in the respublica Christiana was to restrain the Antichrist, and the
notion of Just War emerges as no more than an ancillary notion associated with
this role. However, as time goes by it becomes increasingly divorced from this
context and it is at this point that the logic of escalation and the removal of
restraints on the conduct of the Just become apparent. By the late Middle Ages,
Just War thinking has become a recipe for extremism and this tendency is even
more apparent in the modern revival of the notion in the form of humanitarian
intervention.
What has happened is that a set of ideas that make sense in one context are
being applied in another; we no longer set the use of military force within a
context that revolves around the prevention of the coming of the Antichrist –
instead we try to derive from the Just War tradition a set of rules that can be
applied in any circumstances to the use of force. We ask of any particular action
whether the force employed is intended to right a wrong, is the last resort, is proportional
to the offence, has reasonable prospects of success, is undertaken with
proper authority, and with care being taken, as far as possible, to protect the
innocent; if we feel we can put a tick in all these boxes, then we feel we can act
with justice on our side, with all the possibilities for legitimating extreme action
that this implies. In short, from Schmitt’s perspective, Just War has been turned