Axtmann, Philosophy, Politics, Carl Schmitt

Humanity or Enmity?
Carl Schmitt
on International Politics
Roland Axtmann
Department of Politics and International Relations, School of Humanities, Swansea University,
Wales, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK.
E-mail: r.axtmann@swansea.ac.uk
This article reviews Schmitts analysis of international politics from the period of
the Weimar Republic to the early years of the German Federal Republic. It
highlights the importance of Schmitts opposition to Woodrow Wilsons policies
and liberal universalism more generally for his understanding of and engagement
with international politics. Confronted with the decline of the state (the Ende der
Staatlichkeit), Schmitt develops a concept of the political that is not tied in with the
existence of the state. Schmitt embraces the fascist stato totalitario as a model for a
qualitatively strong state and the distribution of the earth into hegemonic
Grossraume as the new nomos.
International Politics (2007) 44, 531551. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ip.8800213
Keywords: Carl Schmitt; humanity; enmity; the political; war; state; universalism
Introduction: Carl Schmitt in his Time
Still not a widely known figure in international relations theory, Carl Schmitt
has come to be recognized as one of the most controversial as well as most
influential political thinkers of the 20th century.
1
Many political and
intellectual critics and opponents of democracy in Germany took their
arguments from Carl Schmitt. But as Jan-Werner Mu ller (2003) has recently
shown, Schmitt has been a towering intellectual presence in post-war European
thought as well. Schmitts voluminous writings have produced thousands of
items of interpretative literature, most of them in German, but also in Italian,
Spanish and French with Anglo-American scholarship on Schmitt catching
up at great pace over the last two decades or so (Bendersky, 1983; Caldwell,
1997; Dyzenhaus, 1997; McCormick, 1997; Cristi, 1998; Dyzenhaus, 1998;
Mouffe, 1999; Scheuerman, 1999; Balakrishnan, 2000; Mu ller, 2003; Kennedy,
2004).
While there is no arguing about Schmitts centrality in conservative-
nationalist and authoritarian-fascist thought past and present, the degree to
which his thinking has also influenced the democratic left, and the question as
to the legitimacy of any incorporation of Schmitts thought into any left
International Politics, 2007, 44, (531551)
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theory and politics, are highly controversial. Schmitt has rightly been perceived
to be one of the 20th century most profound critics of liberalism, and the
liberal notions of democracy and of politics in particular. Since liberalism as an
ideology, theory and practice has been the bete noir of conservatism and
socialism alike since the 19th century and well into the second half of the 20th
century, the endeavour of either side to draw on Schmitts arguments is
understandable. A lively scholarly debate about the validity and merits of
Schmitts critique of liberalism should therefore be no surprise. What has
caused disquiet, consternation and recrimination within the scholarly commu-
nity is the fact that Schmitt developed his critique not from a position of
dispassionate scholarly disengagement, as an intellectual endeavour of showing
up the shortcomings of a particular theory, but as a committed political
intellectual who did not only wish to critique liberalism but demolish the
political and social system to which it has given rise and bestowed legitimacy
and who did not shy away to consort with the Nazis after 1933. It is the
situatedness of Schmitt the man and thinker in a concrete historical time and
place, the way in which he gave meaning to his world, the political
consequences that for him followed from his critique, and the anxious question
of those who find much to applaud in this critique as to whether it can be
utilized for developing a non-authoritarian alternative to liberal society and
democracy, that fan the heated debate. How best to deal with the ambiguous
legacy of this dangerous mind (Mu ller, 2003) exercises both politically
engaged intellectuals and scholars.
Born in 1888 and died in 1985, Schmitts life spanned four different political
regimes in Germany, the Wilhelminian Reich, the Weimar Republic, National
Socialism and the Federal Republic. In the Weimar Republic he moved within the
horizon of political Catholicism and supported the policies of Heinrich Bru ning,
the leader of the Catholic Centre party. In the later years of the Weimar Republic,
he argued for the parliamentary system to be replaced by a presidential system,
advocating the use of presidential discretionary powers in cases of emergency to
protect the constitution against its critics. Once the Nazi had come to power, he
accommodated himself with the new regime quickly, publishing an infamous
article in 1934 under the title The Fu hrer protects the Law (Fu hrer, 1934).
2
His
fall from favour in 1936 brought to an end eventful 3 years in which Schmitt had
moved into influential positions within higher education and the legal profession.
Arrested in 1945 by the Allies but released without charge, he was not allowed to
return to academia, but remained influential among the generation of legal
scholars who had been socialized into the profession in the late 1920s and during
the Nazi years as well as among a new post-war generation of law, political science
and philosophy students, some of whom would achieve high positions within West
German society in the universities and in the legal profession, including judge in
the Constitutional Court (Laak, 2002).
Roland Axtmann
Carl Schmitt on International Politics
532
International Politics 2007 44
The title Schmitt gave to a collection of his essays in 1940 indicates
the concrete historical situations to whose challenges he wanted to face
up, Positions and Concepts in the Struggle with Weimar, Geneva, and
Versailles. Weimar stood for the new liberal-parliamentary regime whose
fundamental problems of constitutional and political order, the problems
of sovereignty, legality and legitimacy had not been satisfactorily addressed
and whose ambiguous embrace of liberalism had led to a misapprehension
of the true character of the political. Versailles signified the defeat in the
First World War and the collapse of the Hohenzollern Empire, the ascription
of war guilt to the German people and the imposition of reparation payments,
the occupation of the Rhineland and revisionism. Geneva signified the rise
of idealism in international politics and its concomitant moralization,
the decisive ultimate step away from the ius publicum Europaeum that
had regulated the interaction of states for the last four hundred years or so
to a new order whose contours were not yet clearly discernible. The emerg-
ing new global constellation as a result of Germanys defeat in the
Second World War became a central concern in Schmitts writings after
1945. If we wish to identify the focal point of reference for Schmitts thought,
then it would be the experience and fate of the vanquished of 1918 and 1945
(Willms, 1991).
Just War or Just Peace: Schmitts Critical Engagement with Wilsonian
Universalism
My desire is ythat America will come into the full light of the day when all
know that she puts human rights above all other rights and that her flag is
the flag not only of America but of humanity.
Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is
involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to that peace and
freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organized
force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people.
We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same
standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observed
among nations and their governments that are observed among the
individual citizens of civilized states.
The readers of this journal are likely to know whose words have just been
quoted. The first quotation is taken from President Woodrow Wilsons
Address on Independence Day in 1914. The second quote is a passage from
Wilsons Address of 2 April 1917 in which he recommended the declaration of
a state of war between the United States and the Imperial German government.
At stake in this war, Wilson proclaimed, was the ultimate peace of the world,
Roland Axtmann
533
a world that had to be made safe for democracy. Clearly, a principle was at
stake as well, namely, that the right is more precious than peace (in Scott,
1918, 65, 281, 284, 287).
Wilson asserted in his Address on the Conditions of Peace on 8 January 1918
that this final war for human liberty had its only justification in upholding
the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on
equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or
weak. Upon this principle, the structure of international justice was founded.
According to Wilsons 14 Points, acting on this principle required the
acceptance of the principle of national self-determination, and hence the
territorial reconfiguration of Europe (and the colonial world). It also required
that a general association of nations be formed under specific covenants for
the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and
territorial integrity to great and small states alike (in Scott, 1918, 354363).
To the extent that Wilson endorsed the notion of human rights, he embraced
the idea of an abstract humanity. To the extent that he argued for a league of
nations whose members would be states great or small, Wilson accepted,
rhetorically, the reality of a pluriverse of sovereign and hence, in legal terms,
equal states and thus the reality of a politically differentiated humanity. To the
extent that Wilson adhered to the idea that the only justification for war is its
service to mankind or humanity, to democracy and human rights, to
freedom and justice and self-government, Wilson, in effect, upheld the notion
that a distinction must be made between just and unjust wars (in Scott, 1918,
40, 50, 288, 316). In such just wars, remaining neutral was not an option.
While, after a century of bloody wars, one may feel almost intuitively
inclined to applaud these principles and the sentiments they express, this
enthusiasm may be somewhat dampened once one realizes that Wilson spoke
about this service to mankind and humanity also in connection with the
deployment of American troops in Mexico during the civil war situation in 1914.
Carl Schmitts reflections on international politics took shape in his
confrontation with Wilsonian ideology and the reality of Germanys defeat in
the First World War. These writings on international politics entwined polemical
political commentary published in newspapers with scholarly historical analysis,
concept formation and theory building. In the following presentation of
Schmitts thinking on international politics, his scholarly endeavours will be
stressed. But the reader should be aware that Schmitt understood these scholarly
writings as contributions to political debate and mobilization. This becomes
immediately clear when we reconstruct Schmitts discontent with the notion of
humanity and universalism, as it was, for example, deployed by Wilson, at the
level of conceptual analysis. Humanity, Schmitt asserted, is not a political
concept (Concept, 1932, 55). Let us reconstruct Schmitts concept of the
political in order to understand this statement.
Roland Axtmann
534
In 1927, Schmitt published an essay with the title The concept of the
political. In 1932, he published a much revised version of that essay. In
response to political developments and criticisms of this essay in particular,
the criticism of Leo Strauss Schmitt put out a third edition in 1933 an
edition which, later on, he pretended did not exist.
3
The specific political
distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that
between friend and enemy (Concept, 1932, 2526). This distinction denotes
the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation, of an association or
dissociation (Concept, 1932, 2526). The political can derive its energy from
the most varied human endeavours, from the religious, economic, moral,
ethical and other antitheses. Every antithesis transforms itself into a political
one if it is sufficiently strong to group human beings effectively according to
friend and enemy (Concept, 1932, 37). The quality of the political resides in
the decision through which the other, the stranger or alien, is declared to
negate ones own existence and is thus defined as being in a particularly
intense way existentially different, and hence an enemy against whom battle
must be waged, which may rightly and justifiably lead to the enemys
extermination. After all, the political receives its real meaning precisely because
it refers to the real possibility of physical killing.
In the West, so Schmitt asserts, the state had become the bearer of the
monopoly of political decision, the decision on who should be considered
friend, who enemy. The state as the decisive political entity possesses an
enormous power: the possibility of waging war and thereby publicly disposing
of the lives of men. The jus belli [in the sense of jus ad bellum, RA] contains
such a disposition. It implies a double possibility: the right to demand from its
own members the readiness to die and unhesitatingly to kill enemies (Concept,
1932, 46). War follows from enmity. It is the existential negation of the enemy
(Concept, 1932, 33). We shall see later how Schmitt defined the quality of the
enemy in the context of the bracketing of war in the ius publicum Europaeum as
a hostis iustus and why he felt that this understanding had been finally
abandoned in the early 20th century. For our current concern, which rehearses
Schmitts argument about humanity as a non-political concept, one
consequence of his conceptualization of the political must be stressed.
Manifestly, for Schmitt, a people which exists politically cannot renounce the
right to determine by itself and at its own risk who is friend and who enemy. It
cannot hand over this decision to a third party, nor may it allow itself to be
bound in its decisions by ethical considerations that may take the form of just
war arguments. For Schmitt, war can only have an existential meaning:
If physical destruction of human life does not occur out of the existential
assertion of ones own form of existence against an equally existential
negation of this form, then it can simply not be justified. No war can be
Roland Axtmann
535
justified by ethical and juristic norms. If there really are enemies in the
existential sense as meant here, then it makes sense, but only political sense,
to repel them physically and fight them if necessary. (Concept, 1932, 49;
altered translation of German original [Begriff] on p. 50])
According to Schmitt, the notions that postulate a just war usually serve a
political purpose; indeed, following Hobbes, Schmitt suggested that the
conviction of each side to possess the truth, the good, and the just bring about
the worst enmities (Concept, 1932, 65). One must not forget, Schmitt urged,
that there always are concrete human groupings which fight other human
groupings in the name of justice, humanity, order, or peace. When being
reproached for immorality and cynicism, the spectator of political phenomena
can always recognize in such reproaches a political weapon used in actual
combat (Concept, 1932, 67).
4
Humanity is best understood as a political weapon so at least Schmitt
argued. Of the Wilsonian rhetoric of humanity, Schmitt was witheringly
scathing:
When a state fights its political enemies in the name of humanity, it is not a
war for the sake of humanity, but a war wherein a particular state seeks to
usurp a universal concept against its military opponent. At the expense of its
opponent, it tries to identify itself with humanity in the same way as one can
misuse peace, justice, progress, and civilization in order to claim these as
ones own and deny the same to the enemy. The concept of humanity is an
especially useful ideological instrument of imperialist expansion, and in its
ethical-humanitarian form it is a specific vehicle of economic imperialism.
Here one is reminded of a somewhat modified expression of Proudhons,
whoever invokes humanity wants to cheat. To confiscate the word
humanity, to invoke and monopolize such a term probably has certain
incalculable effects, such as denying the enemy the quality of being human
and declaring him to be an outlaw of humanity, and a war can thereby be
driven to the most extreme inhumanity (Concept, 1932, 54).
War in the name of humanity does no longer know of an enemy, but only of a
disturber of the peace and hence an outlaw of humanity. War is not perceived
as war, but as executions, sanction, punitive expeditions, pacifications,
protection of treaties, international police, and measures to ensure peace
remain (Concept, 1932, 79). Humanity, for Schmitt, was thus seen as an
asymmetrical concept since it contains the possibility of the deepest
inequality: since everyone belongs to humanity, any discrimination within
humanity by denying the quality of being human to a disturber or destroyer of
peace means turning the negatively valued person into an unperson whose life
is no longer the highest value but becomes worthless and must be destroyed
Roland Axtmann
536
(Legal Revolution, 1987, 88). It is this asymmetry that makes bestiality the
flip-side of humanity.
The reason why humanity is not a political concept for Schmitt will now
be clear. Conceptually, the political is defined by the distinction of friend and
enemy; the political character of an association presupposes the real existence
of an enemy and hence, of necessity, the coexistence of another political entity.
The political world is thus a pluriverse, not a universe: A world state which
embraces the entire globe and all of humanity cannot exist (Concept, 1932,
53). The concept of humanity, furthermore, excludes the concept of the enemy
yet, the enemy does not cease to be a human being. Without this specific
differentiation, humanity cannot acquire political qualities. After all,
humanity as such cannot wage war because it has no enemy (Concept,
1932, 54).
The political nature of Schmitts definition of the political is apparent: the
other is liberalism. He charged liberalism with evading or ignoring state and
politics in a very systematic fashion, endeavouring to tie the political to the
ethical and subjugating it to economics. For liberalism, to whom the individual
must remain terminus a quo and terminus ad quem, the demand by the political
entity that in case of need the individual must sacrifice his (or her) life is
unconscionable: the individual as such has no enemy with whom he (or she)
must enter into a life-and-death combat if he (or she) does not want to do so.
What we therefore find in liberal thought, Schmitt asserted, is an entire system
of demilitarized and depoliticalized concepts. For example, political combat
and battle becomes competition in the domain of economics and discussion in
the intellectual realm. The liberal denial of the political manifests itself in the
international realm in the ideological conception of humanity (Concept, 1932,
7072).
5
Ius Belli and the Juridification of International Politics
Schmitt situated his critique of the idea of just war and its resurgence in the
early 20th century within both a historical and systematic context. The
resurgence of the just war notion signified for him the end of the period of the
ius publicum Europaeum. Since the 16th century, this new ius inter gentes had
gradually replaced the medieval ius gentium of Latin Christendom as a result of
a spatial revolution that came about through the formation of sovereign
territorial states in Europe and the colonial conquests of the European powers
(Nomos, 1950, Part III). From Hobbes to Kant, the theorists of this new
European public law conceived of states as moral persons who among each
other live in the state of nature with each of them possessing the ius belli and
without an institutional common supreme authority, a common legislator or
Roland Axtmann
537
common judge, but as sovereign entities which face each others as equals. This
sovereign equality is the core of the fundamental rights that states possess, an
equal right of all states to self-determination, a right to existence and thus both
a right to self-defence against attackers and a right to territorial integrity as
well as a right of liberium commercium (Nomos, 1950, Part III, chapter 1;
Repetitorium, 1948/50, 728730). This ius inter gentes recognizes that the ius
supremae decisionis regarding war lies with the independent states. They decide
by and for themselves whether to conduct war and whether to remain neutral
as a third party in wars fought between other states. According to Schmitt,
war in this legal order has its justice in the fact that the combatants are states
which exercise their rights as sovereign political entities. When they fight each
other, they view each other as just enemies (iusti hostes), not as perpetrators of
crimes against humanity or outlaws who must be destroyed (Neutralisierun-
gen, 1939, 324). Wars needed no longer to be justified through iusta causa
arguments as part of the (medieval) just war tradition; but enemies had to be
treated justly and as equals. Schmitt asserts that conceptualizing the friend
enemy distinction without any recourse to ethical theories of just war was the
prerequisite for the bracketing, and thus civilizing, of war.
This ius publicum Europaeum was in the process of being dismantled, and
with it its civilizational advances (Nomos, 1950, Part IV). The rhetoric of
humanity, particularly when deployed in connection with the notion of just
war, tends to define the other as an enemy of humankind and as such evil,
against whom the use of violence is ultimately just. The moral evaluations of
combatants result in distinguishing between violent actions that are deemed to
be criminal and inhumane in some instances, whereas in other instances they
are seen as expressions of legality and legitimate punishment meted out in an
international police action. According to Schmitt, this discriminatory concept
of war leads, of necessity, to the destruction of the institution of neutrality. It is
held that a state cannot be friendly to a state which is condemned as a
disturber of the peace and at the same time have friendly relations with the
state which pursues military sanctions against that disturber in the name of
world peace and humanity (Wendung/Kriegsbegriff, 1937/38). The peace-
restoring state then has a legitimate claim to demand an answer to the
question: Are you with us or are you against us?. Because just war
arguments delegitimize neutrality, they result, according to Schmitt, in total
war (Vae Neutris, 1938; Neutralisierungen, 1939, 323331; Neutralita t, 1938;
Totaler Feind, 1937).
Furthermore, the juridification of international politics had a detrimental
impact. The Wilsonian idea that, just as in the domestic arena the rule of law
had overcome the state of nature, so a universally binding system of
enforceable legal norms would regulate international conflicts and thus end
the international state of nature, was fundamentally flawed. The political world
Roland Axtmann
538
was a pluriverse of heterogeneous and antagonistic political entities which
(potentially) posed existential challenges to each other. Existential life-and-
death conflicts are not amenable to legal containment or at least so Schmitt
argued. Juridification of international politics is unlikely ultimately to lead out
of the state of nature or to contain the political. The Covenant of the League
of Nations did not eliminate the possibilities for war; indeed, it did sanction
certain types of wars, such as coalition wars, against those enemies who
attempt to bring about changes to the territorial status quo (Art. 10). The
Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, too, renounced war as an instrument of national
policy and commits the signatories to settle all international disputes by
peaceful means (USA/Imperialismus, 1932/33, 362365; Nomos, 1950, Part IV,
chapter 4b). But war as an instrument of international politics against those
powers that disturb the status quo was permitted. War cannot altogether be
outlawed. What is being outlawed are specific individuals, peoples, states,
classes, religions etc., which, by being outlawed, are declared to be the enemy
(Concept, 1932, 5051). The friendenemy distinction is thus not abolished,
but the decision on the distinction has acquired a specific kind of legitimacy,
grounded, as it apparently is, in international law.
Indeed, juridification is not limited to the elaboration of norms and attempts
to ensure their validity. Juridification must also have an answer to the question,
Quis judicabit? Who decides on whether a war is just or not; whether certain
types of actions involving the use of violence or force are to be defined as war
or are better understood as means to safeguard and secure international peace?
If an international organization such as the League of Nations is designated to
monopolize this decision, surely, Schmitt suggested, we all realize that the great
powers, while proclaiming respect for the law on all occasions, will no doubt
decide for themselves what is to be considered law in a concrete instance?
Schmitt did not doubt that the great powers will either exercise hegemonic
control over the international system with its legal order or establish a parallel,
particularistic system of international law. Schmitt was adamant that
experience showed that every great power resisted the charge of any of its
actions being understood as an attack, a threat to or a disturbance of peace. It
was likely that a great power would either insist that its actions were an
internal matter in which one rejected any attempts of outside intervention or
that its actions were the opposite of attacks and threat, namely the execution of
international law to safeguard peace (Kernfrage, 1924, 67, 13).
In the case of the League of Nations, Schmitt identified a specific problem
(Kernfrage, 1924, 1926; Vo lkerbund, 1930/31; Nomos, 1950, Part IV, chapter
3). With its legal foundation in the Peace Treaties of 1918, the League of
Nations was charged to ensure the stability of the international order in line
with the provisions of those treaties (e.g., Art. 10 of the Covenant). The
juridification of interstate relations partly due to the legal conclusion of
Roland Axtmann
539
warfare through formal peace treaties, partly as the result of an endeavour for
a positivistic-legal definition of just war privileges the legally defined status
quo. The logical consequence for Schmitt was a situation where everyone who
wishes to change the status quo possibly because this status quo is not
perceived to constitute a just peace is considered as a disturber of the peace
and an enemy against whom any punitive action is not war but legal execution
(Status quo, 1925, 5859). The revisionist twist in Schmitts argument of 1925
was, of course, that he defined those powers which wished to uphold (or
entrench) the status quo as it was defined in the Peace Treaties as threats to
peace rather than Germany. Yet there is the more general point to which
Schmitt alerts us: law is a political tool and presupposes a situation of
normalcy which is often, however, contested. The juridification of international
relations cannot eliminate or replace the political with its distinction of friend
and enemy.
The End of the State and the Grossraum: Towards a New Nomos of the
Earth?
If war is inevitable in human history and, hence, eternal peace is a pipe-
dream how can it be limited? For Schmitt, this was the overriding problem
of international politics as he claimed at least in the preface to the new
edition of Der Begriff des Politischen in 1963 (Begriff, 1963, 19). The sovereign
equality of states was essential in this regard since it ensured the relativization
of enmity and guarded against a discriminatory concept of war that would
distinguish between just wars, and thus just enemies, and unjust wars, and
thus unjust enemies who should better be called criminals. Clearly, the
political background for this argument is Versailles and war guilt, and later on,
Nuremberg and Tokyo and the war crimes tribunals. And to the extent that
Schmitt argued that the principle of sovereign equality had been violated in the
Versailles dictate, he could use a principle of the ius publicum Europaeum
(as he understood it) to argue the case for a revision of a treaty through which,
according to Schmitt, Germany had suffered a wrong.
Yet, for Schmitt, the invocation of the sovereign equality of states as a
solution to the problem of limiting war became increasingly unconvincing. This
was for the simple reason that Schmitt thought that the era of the state was
coming to an end. As we saw before, for Schmitt the state was the monopolist
of political decision. The state as political entity was the highest entity because
it prevented all antagonistic groupings from developing the most extreme
enmity, that is, from confronting each other in a civil war (Staatsethik, 1930,
155, 160). However, for Schmitt the state had become the captive of social
groups, a fact well understood in the pluralist theories of the state which were
developed since the late 19th century mainly in England by Maitland, Cole,
Roland Axtmann
540
Laski and others (Concept, 1932, 3945). In those theories, the state was
perceived as one association among other associations, rather than as the one
association above all the other associations. Without a clear supremacy there
was also no hierarchy of duties and a concurrent plurality of loyalties for
individuals.
The societalization of the state was the result of democratization. The
distinctions between state and economy, state and civil society withered away
since political will formation had been appropriated by political parties whose
interests and motives were essentially derived from economic needs and
concerns. All areas of life had become politicized, a total state had emerged
that could no longer discriminate and concerned itself with all kinds of affairs.
But this state, of which the German state was a prime example, was total in a
purely quantitative sense, in the sense of pure volume. This type of state must
clearly be set apart from the qualitatively total state. For Schmitt, writing in
1932, Mussolinis fascist stato totalitario was the shining example of the
qualitatively total state. According to Schmitt, this state can still discern
between friends and enemies and does not allow forces inimical to it, or those
that limit or divide it, to develop within its interior. This state is total in the
sense of intensity and political energy, not, as the quantitatively total state, in
the sense of incapacity to resist social groupings.
The total state thus exists in two distinct forms, as total state out of
weakness, a state that has lost its monopoly of decision under the onslaught of
parties and organized interests. This is the state of bourgeois-capitalist liberal
society. The other kind of total state, exemplified in fascist Italy, is the total
state out of strength, a state in tune with the potentialities of modernity:
Every state is anxious to acquire the power needed to exercise its political
domination y Every state expanded its power by technological means,
more precisely, by the technomilitary instruments of power yold notions
concerning state power and the possibility of resisting it fade away yThe
proliferation of technical means also allows for the possibility of mass
propaganda y No state can afford to yield these new technical means of
mass control, mass suggestion and the formation of public opinion to an
opponent. The formula total state accurately describes the contemporary
states undreamt-of new means of coercion and possibilities of the greatest
intensity (Strong State, 1932, 216217).
It needed the fascist victory in Italy to establish the qualitatively total state as
both reality and ideal or so, at least, Schmitt argued in 1932 (Strong State
(1932); see also, Wendung/Staat (1931) and Weiterentwicklung/Staat (1933);
for fascism, Wesen/Werden, 1929).
According to Schmitt, liberal universalism complemented from without
what democratization had accomplished from within, the wholesale attack on
Roland Axtmann
541
state sovereignty. The crisis of the German state, for Schmitt, was
fundamentally linked to its position under the Versailles Treaty. The treaty
had turned Germany into a debtor nation and an outlaw state. Its
sovereignty had been limited and parts of it had become an object of
international politics, demilitarized and subject to external intervention, such
as the Rhineland (Objekt, 1925; Politische Lage, 1930). The Inter-Allied
Commissions of Control (Arts. 203206) for demilitarization and the
Reparation Commission (Art. 233) exercised key sovereign rights; and in
Art. 213, a permanent right of investigation into German affairs was
established for the Council of the League of Nations. National self-
determination, the mantra of Wilsonian rhetoric, clearly was not meant to
apply to Germany. Rather than the German people being (or remaining)
subject of its own political existence as a state, it had been turned into the exact
opposite, an object (Objekt, 1925, 27). Schmitt suggested that, in the light of
Britains policies towards Egypt, the United States towards the Caribbean,
and Frances in the Middle East, Germanys treatment should be considered
not just within the context of defeat in war, but as an element within the
developing system of liberal imperialism.
Schmitt analysed the US-American foreign policy as paradigmatic. The
Monroe Doctrine of 1823 possessed a genuine political character (Kernfrage,
1926, 121126; USA/Imperialismus, 1932/33, 351355; Grossraum/Universa-
lismus, 1939; Grossraumordnung, 1941; Nomos, 1950, Part IV, chapter 5). It
grew out of a concern in both the United States and Britain that the European
continental monarchical powers of the Holy Alliance would attempt to restore
Spains former colonies in Latin America, many of which had become newly
independent states. The Doctrine rested on the political idea that the Old
World and New World had different systems and had to remain distinct
spheres. While recognizing existing colonies and dependencies in the Western
Hemisphere, it declared that the United States would resist any future
colonization in this sphere and would view any attempt by a European power
to oppress or control any state in the Western Hemisphere as a hostile act. In
return for the non-intervention of non-American powers in this space, the
United States itself would abstain from any intervention outside this space.
For Schmitt, the Monroe Doctrine, in perceiving the world as being divided
between continents and hemispheres, each with its own political order, for the
first time expressed the idea of the Grossraum, a large territorial expanse in
which alien powers had no right to intervene. This idea appealed to Schmitt,
and he compared it favourably to the British Empire, a hotchpotch of
heterogeneous possessions strewn over the surface of the world and without a
coherent principle of political legitimacy (Balakrishnan, 2000, 238). This
Doctrine legitimized the hegemonic control of the United States over the
American subcontinent. The Roosevelt Corollary of 1904 then claimed
Roland Axtmann
542
hemispheric police power by stating that, in cases of flagrant and chronic
wrongdoing by a state within the space of the Western Hemisphere, the United
States could intervene in the internal affairs of that state. This was a position
already clearly articulated in the Platt Amendment of 1901 according to which
Cuba had granted the United States the right to intervene to safeguard the
independence of Cuba and to keep in power a government that was capable of
protecting life, property and personal freedoms and upholding public order as
well as ensuring that foreign financial demands would be met. Cuba was just
one of a number of countries with which the United States concluded such
intervention treaties. The principle of non-intervention and hence the
sovereignty of those states was, as a result, dislodged; the sovereign decision
as to whether there were grounds for intervention rested with the United States
(Kernfrage, 1926, 122124).
As a consequence of Woodrow Wilsons policy the spatialized system of
non-intervention, that had been given justification in the Monroe Doctrine,
was transformed into a universal, as it were, uprooted or de-localized,
system of interventions [raumlos allgemeines Einmischungssystem]. The
ideology of liberal democracy and the related ideas of free world trade and
a free world market now replaced the geopolitical principle of the Monroe
Doctrine, The Monroe Doctrine as a genuine doctrine of space is the explicit
opposite to a space-neglecting transformation of the earth into an abstract
world and capital market (Grossraum/Universalismus, 1939, 336). By
declaring the compatibility of the Monroe Doctrine with the Covenant of
the League of Nations (Art. 21), the universalist objectives of the United States
became enshrined in international law. The League handed over de facto
political sovereignty in the Americas to the United States, while allowing the
United States an active role in shaping European politics, since the dependence
of the Latin American member states on the United States allowed it to
exercise indirect influence without itself being a member of the League.
When President Coolidge said in 1928, the year of the Kellogg-Briand-Pact,
that an act of war in any part of the world is an act that injures the interests of
my country, the universalistic interventionist orientation of the United States
was made quite explicit. The Stimson Doctrine of 1932 articulated the principle
of non-recognition by the United States of international territorial changes
effected by force. Intend on continuing with the open door policy in China,
the United States informed the Japanese after their military occupation of
Manchuria, that it would not recognize any treaty or agreement ywhich may
impair the treaty rights of the United States or its citizens in China, including
those which relate to the sovereignty, the independence, or the territorial and
administrative integrity of the Republic of China, or the international policy to
China, commonly known as the open door policy. The door had now been
opened for US-American interventions around the globe.
Roland Axtmann
543
For Schmitt, writing in 1942, the reasons behind this development were
clear, the interests of world capitalism. These interests
compel to pursue a policy of ever present, ubiquitous intervention and non-
recognition, which presumes that Washington is entitled to approve or
disapprove of changes in any part of the world. The traditional distinction
between trade and politics as much trade as possible, as little politics as
possible has become inherently untrue because in the long run there can
be no world trade without world politics (Beschleuniger, 1942, 434).
What had come to an end was a particular spatial order of the world, a
particular nomos of the earth. What we were witnessing, according to
Schmitt, was a new spatial revolution.
The nomos of the earth its appropriation, distribution and utilization since
the age of discovery and European colonization was structured around
global lines (Globale Linie, 1943; Nomos, 1950, Part II, chapter 1). The raya
was a distributional line that divided the newly discovered world on the basis of
Pope Alexander Inter caetera divinae of 1494 between the Spanish and
Portuguese. The amity line on the basis of the Peace of Cateau-Cambre sis of
1559 was an agonal line that divided the earth in a space in which the ius publicum
Europaeum obtained and intercourse between the European states was rule-
governed and a space beyond the line where international law was suspended
and a kind of state of nature obtained. The Monroe Doctrine established a line
of self-isolation in the notion of the Western Hemisphere. The endeavours to
ground the spatial order of the earth took place just at the time when the
formation of the state in Europe had ushered in a spatial revolution in Europe.
For Schmitt, it was historically significant that this emerging European
world order immediately broke up into land and sea (Land/Meer, 1981). The
land was divided into closed territories of sovereign states, whereas the sea
remained free of state or territorial sovereignty. This was the basic spatial
premise out of which grew the ius publicum Europaeum. It meant that two
distinct types of war could be distinguished. On the one hand, land war
between states was conducted by, and between, regular armies with a clear
distinction between combatants and non-combatants as well as with the
protection of private property. Out of these land wars arose the bracketing of
war on the basis of a clear friendenemy distinction. War at sea, on the other
hand, did not recognize the distinction between combatants and civil
population. It knew the total enemy: the subjects of an enemy state as well
as everyone who engages in trade with the enemy and strengthens its economy
are considered as enemies whose life, liberty and property are not protected
(Souvera nita t/Meer, 1941, 407).
The nomos of the earth since the 16th century was thus global but knew the
dichotomy of land and sea. It was believed initially to have its legitimacy in the
Roland Axtmann
544
distinction between Christian and non-Christian peoples. Since the 18th
century its legitimacy was grounded in the distinction between civilized and
uncivilized peoples. While this distinction lost much of its force in the course of
the 19th century despite the civilizational and racial (racist) notions of the
White mans burden the idea of stages of civilizational development still
informed the mandate system of the League of Nations (Art. 22).
For Schmitt, the nomos of the ius publicum Europaeum had come to an end.
The technological revolution of the means of transport and communication
had shrunk the earth (Raumrevolution, 1940, 388). The conquest of air space
has ushered in a new view of the earth, which overcomes the distinction
between land and sea and necessitates a new concept of space. Warfare in the
air, and from the air, leads to a complete re-evaluation of land war and war at
sea. It is in its very nature that warfare from the air can no longer distinguish
between combatant and non-combatant (and may even find it difficult to
separate friend from enemy) and hence accelerates the trend towards total
war, which is in any case propelled forward by the development of weapons of
mass destruction. Ever more states, in the past the subjects of the ius publicum
Europaeum, lose their sovereignty as they become domestically captives of
organized social interests and externally find themselves in manifold relation-
ships of political and economic dependency (Kernfrage, 1926, 7879). For
Schmitt, US-American and British endeavours of world control and world
domination, the welding together of global capitalism and global intervention,
aims for global unity. The Soviet Unions design for world revolution is but an
alternative form of planetary imperialism, not its potential nemesis. In either
case, its legitimacy is seen to be grounded in the idea of humanity
(Strukturwandel, 1943, 670).
The situation that has arisen is characterized by a diremption of
international law into two poles, a universalistic-imperialist, space-transcend-
ing global law on the one side, and a pathetically state-fixated law of a space-
constricting nature bound to small territorial spaces, on the other side. Seen
from one pole, humanitarian interventions are considered legal in interna-
tional law, but from the other pole, even the most minute intervention is
considered a breach of international law (Raum/Grossraum, 1940, 251). The
pluriverse world of the modern territorial state, however, is irretrievably lost.
A balkanized continental Europe, divided into micro-states or states without
sovereignty cannot counter-balance the universalistic-imperialist powers
(Raumrevolution, 1940, 390). If there was to be not just one master of the
universe, then more was required than a revolt of the masters of the past, that
is, the states. Genuine large territorial spaces [Grossraume] alone would be
capable of confronting the global powers. What was required, in a sense, was
the embrace around the world of the idea of the Monroe Doctrine, the creation
of large spatial expanses dominated by a regional hegemon which uphold the
Roland Axtmann
545
notion of non-intervention into its territory. Such Grossraume, whose
historical, economic and cultural substance frequently, though not
exclusively of a volkisch nature amounts to a veritable degree of
homogeneity, are truly in accordance with the new spatial dimensions and
the economic structure of the current age and are thus the carriers of real
sovereignty (Kernfrage, 1926, 79; Probleme/Rheingebiet, 1928, 264; Raumre-
volution, 1940, 390; Grossraumordnung, 1941; Strukturwandel, 1943).
In his writings about Grossraum during the Second World War, Schmitt put
forward the idea that there was, of necessity, a leading, hegemonic power, a
Reich, whose political idea radiated throughout the Grossraum and which
would have the task to repel any intervention into that territorial space by
outside powers (Grossraumordnung, 1941, Sections V and VI). But on the
territory of the Grossraum, one would still find peoples organized in states but
also peoples which did not any longer have the organizational capacity for
building a state. However, the Reich ultimately dissolves the sovereignty of
the states in concentrating the ius ad bellum in its hands and by enforcing
homogeneity as the prerequisite for a substantively grounded genuine
Grossraum. The idea of an equality of sovereign states has been left behind
and the argument has moved on to the idea of a pluriverse of sovereign
Grossraume and their equality as a prerequisite of stable peace (Ordnung, 1962,
607).
After the Second World War, Schmitt held fast to the idea of Grossraume,
but in his publications did no longer pursue the idea of a necessary hegemon in
the form of a Reich. He queried the notion that technical and economic
developments would ultimately result in world unity. Neither did he accept,
writing in 1951, that the bipolar division of the world in the cold war (but also
manifested in a series of hot wars) would either continue to exist interminably
or result in an ultimate unity as one side defeats the other. Rather, he saw the
very real possibility of the emergence of an international balance of several
Grossraume (Einheit, 1951). Yet, in what the homogeneity of these Grossraume
should be grounded, he would not spell out in his published work.
6
Conclusion
War and justice; peace and humanity: how to understand these concepts, their
relationships and the reality they conceive has been at the centre of Schmitts
critical engagement with liberal universalism. The invocation of humanity,
Schmitt argues, is an ideological cover for power politics, while humanity
cannot be a political concept in Schmitts definition of the political: the uses
to which the concept is put are deeply political. Crusades in the name of
humanity still remain wars, even if one prefers to speak of humanitarian
Roland Axtmann
546
interventions. To speak of justice, humanity and the shared interests of
humankind opens up the possibility for an ethical discourse, which allows for
the moral damnation of the enemy as evil and, in extremis, its annihilation.
The enemy becomes foe. In the mortal struggle between good and evil, there
can be no neutral third. A just war is a total war, everyone is party, no one
bystander; and the just cause justifies use of whatever means must be
deployed to eradicate evil.
If one wishes to accept Schmitts theses and the arguments he offers in
support, then one should be clear as to what it is one adopts, namely, a
particular kind of critique of the ideology of humanity and related concepts.
However, one does not gain an armoury of arguments for peace. Rather, one is
fortified for conducting war for the right reasons (as spelled out by Schmitt).
After all, 9/11 and all that was a supremely Schmittian political moment, a
clear distinction between friend and enemy and the actualized possibility of the
physical killing of the other. The ensuing total struggle against terrorists
and partisans (or insurgents) abroad and the identification of the enemy at
home (homeland security) epitomize the political. Arguing from a
Schmittian position against the NATO intervention in the Kosovo, for
example, make it well-nigh impossible to argue against the war in Afghanistan
or in Iraq.
7
We encounter a similar dilemma with regard to Schmitts idea of the
Grossraum. One may buy into the argument living, after all, one may
believe, in the age of globalization about the end of the modern state and
the need for spatially larger territorial political entities, based on expansive
social, economic and technological interdependencies and driven by a political
will. But the Schmittian concept of the Grossraum carries clear qualitative
connotations; the Grossraum is grounded in homogeneity a unity in diversity,
constructed, controlled and maintained by a hegemon. Hence, it needs
hierarchy and dominance within as well as military vigilance, the willingness to
use violence, vis-a`-vis the outside world. It thus needs the political will to define
the other. The new right in Europe has shown much willingness to elaborate
the logic of a Schmittian Grossraum (Holmes, 2000; Mu ller, 2003). It is quite
clear that a Schmittian Grossraum is not a zone of peace. Hitler, so Schmitt
thought, had got this right, too.
Notes
1 For a discussion of Carl Schmitt with reference to international relations, see, inter alia,
Scheuerman (1999, chapters 6 and 9) and Pichler (1998). For two early discussions of Schmitts
writings on international politics, see Preuss (1935) and Herz (1939). Stirk (1999, 2003) puts
Schmitts contributions to international law in the context of the intellectual debate and politics
of the Nazi era. For recent discussions of Schmitts opus magnum on international law and
international politics, The Nomos of the Earth, see, for example, Antaki (2004), Koskenniemi
Roland Axtmann
547
(2004), Marramao (2000) and Scheuerman (2004). An interesting German study of Schmitts
writings on Grossraum is Blindow (1999). See also: Kerve gan, 1999.
2 References in the text to Schmitts writings are made in the form of abbreviated titles that are
listed in Part 1 of the bibliography with full bibliographical data.
3 The first version of Der Begriff des Politischen has recently been reprinted in (Schmitt) Frieden
(pp. 194239). For an excellent discussion of the substantial changes that Schmitt made to this
text in 1932, and those he made to the 1932 edition a year later, as well as the reasons for these
changes, see Meier (1995). Unless otherwise noted, in this article, reference is made to the 1932
edition (either in the German original or the English translation).
4 Not much comfort here for just war philosophers. But if one wishes to find an intellectual
lineage for George W. Bush and his war on terror, we should look primarily to Carl Schmitt
and not to Leo Strauss.
5 Schmitts concept of the political is not limited in its application to international politics. This
becomes obvious when we observe what he has to say about democracy. Every actual democracy,
he asserts, rests on the principle that not only are equals equal but unequals will not be treated
equally. Democracy requires, therefore, first homogeneity and second if the need arises
elimination or eradication of heterogeneity. (Crisis, 1926, 9) And for Schmitt, homogeneity
refers above all to national homogeneity. The extermination and annihilation of the internal
enemy in the interest of homogeneity and order is as important as combating the external enemy;
indeed, without homogeneity the political unit will lose the capacity to make a sovereign decision
on who its enemies are and whether an existential threat obtains that needs to be fought.
6 Over the last 20 years or so, Carl Schmitt has increasingly been discussed as a political theologian.
Heinrich Meier (1995, 2004) has been the most vociferous and thoughtful advocate for a reading
of Schmitts texts as political theology (but see, e.g., the critical assessment of Manemann, 2002).
It would be a worthwhile endeavour to review Schmitts analyses of international politics on the
basis of the political theology hypothesis. In a letter to A
lvaro dOrs in September 1951, Schmitt

refers to his lecture on the Unity of the World and remarks: Anything but the Christian unity of
the world would be the work of the Anti-Christ. As his references to the Anti-Christ and the Kat-
echon, which one finds scattered throughout his work, indicate, Schmitt writes within the horizon
of (an idiosyncratic) Christian eschatology (Briefwechsel, 2004, 119123).
7 For a flavour of the debate on military intervention, and Kosovo and Iraq in particular, that
refers to Schmitts position, see, for example, Ananiadis (2002); Chandler (2002); Rasch (2000);
Stirk (2004); and Zolo (2002). See Habermas (2004) for a pronounced anti-Schmittian argument.
References
I. Books and Articles by Carl Schmitt:
Articles. (1999) Four Articles, Edited, translated and with a Preface by Simona Draghici, Corvallis,
OR: Plutarch Press.
Begriff. (1963) Der Begriff des Politischen, (1932) Sixth edition of the text of 1932 with a preface
and three corollaries, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
Beschleuniger. (1942) Beschleuniger wider Willen oder: Problematik der westlichen Hemispha re,
in SGN, pp. 431440.
Briefwechsel. (2004) Carl Schmitt und A
lvaro dOrs, Briefwechsel, edited by M. Herrero, Berlin:

Duncker & Humblot, 2004.
Concept. (1932) The Concept of the Political, Translated and with an Introduction by George
Schwab, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Roland Axtmann
548
Crisis. (1926) The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy. E. Kennedy, (trans.) Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1992.
Einheit. (1951) Die Einheit der Welt, in Frieden, pp. 841871.
Frieden. (2005) Frieden oder Pazifismus? Arbeiten zum Volkerrecht und zur internationalen Politik,
19241978, Edited and with a preface and notes by Gu nter Maschke, Berlin: Duncker &
Humblot, 2005.
Fu hrer. (1934) Der Fu hrer schu tzt das Recht, in PuB, pp. 227232.
Globale Linie. (1943) Die letzte globale Linie, in SGN, pp. 441452.
Grossraumordnung. (1941) Vo lkerrechtliche Grossraumordnung mit Interventionsverbot fu r
raumfremde Ma chte. Ein Beitrag zum Reichsbegriff im Vo lkerrecht, in SGN, 4th edn., pp.
269371.
Grossraum/Universalismus. (1939) Grossraum gegen Universalismus, in PuB, pp. 335343.
Holmes, D.R. (2000) Integral Europe. Fast-Capitalism, Multiculturalism, Neofascism, Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Kernfrage. (1924) Die Kernfrage des Vo lkerbundes, in Frieden, pp. 125.
Kernfrage. (1926) Die Kernfrage des Vo lkerbundes, in Frieden, pp. 73193.
Land/Meer. (1981) Land und Meer. Eine weltgeschichtliche Betrachtung, Hohenheim: Edition
Maschke (English edition: Land and Sea. Translated and with a foreword by Simona Draghici,
Corvallis, OR: Plutarch Press, 1997).
Legal Revolution. (1987) The Legal World Revolution, Telos 72: 7390.
Neutralita t. (1938) Vo lkerrechtliche Neutralita t und vo lkische Totalita t, in Frieden, pp. 617628
(English text in Articles, pp. 3745.).
Neutralisierungen. (1939) Neutralita t und Neutralisierungen, in PuB, pp. 309334.
Nomos. (1950) Der Nomos der Erde im Volkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum, 4th edn., Berlin:
Duncker & Humblot, 1997 (English edition: Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of Jus
Publicum Europaeum, New York: Telos Press, 2003).
Objekt. (1925) Die Rheinlande als Objekt internationaler Politik, in Frieden, pp. 2650.
Ordnung. (1962) Die Ordnung der Welt nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, in SGN, pp. 592618.
Politische Lage. (1930) Die politische Lage der entmilitarisierten Rheinlande, in Frieden, pp.
274280.
Probleme/Rheingebiet. (1928) Vo lkerrechtliche Probleme im Rheingebiet, in Frieden, pp.
255273.
PuB. (1940) Positionen und Begriffe im Kampf mit Weimar Genf Versailles, 19231939, 3rd
edn., Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1988.
Raum/Grossraum. (1940) Raum und Grossraum im Vo lkerrecht, in SGN, pp. 234268.
Raumrevolution. (1940) Die Raumrevolution. Durch den totalen Krieg zu einem totalen Frieden,
in SGN, pp. 388394.
Repetitorium. (1948/50) Vo lkerrecht [Ein juristische Repetitorium], in Frieden, pp. 701840.
SGN. Staat, Grossraum, Nomos. Arbeiten aus den Jahren 19161969, Edited and with a preface and
notes by Gu nter Maschke, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
Souvera nita t/Meer. (1941) Staatliche Souvera nita t und freies Meer. U
ber den Gegensatz von Land

und See im Vo lkerrecht der Neuzeit, in SGN, pp. 401430.
Staatsethik. (1930) Staatsethik und pluralistischer Staat, in PuB, pp. 151165 (English text: Ethic
of State and Pluralistic State in C. Mouffe (ed.), The Challenge of Carl Schmitt, London: Verso,
1999).
Status quo. (1925) Der Status quo und der Friede, in Frieden, pp. 5172.
Strong state. (1932) Strong State and Sound Economy: An Address to Business Leaders, in
R. Cristi (ed.) Carl Schmitt and Authoritarian Liberalism, Cardiff: University of Wales Press,
1998, pp. 212232 (German original text with the title: Starker Staat und gesunde Wirtschaft in
SGN, pp. 7191).
Roland Axtmann
549
Strukturwandel. (1943) Strukturwandel des International Rechts, in Frieden, pp. 652700.
Totaler Feind. (1937) Totaler Feind, totaler Krieg, totaler Staat, in Frieden, pp. 481507 (English
text: Total Enemy, Total War and Total State in Articles, pp. 2836.).
USA/Imperialismus. (1932/33) USA und die vo lkerrechtlichen Formen des modernen Imper-
ialismus, in Frieden, pp. 349377.
Vae Neutris. (1938) Das neue Vae Neutris!, in Frieden, pp. 612616.
Vo lkerbund. (1930/31) Der Vo lkerbund, in Frieden, pp. 333348.
Weiterentwicklung/Staat. (1933) Weiterentwicklung des totalen Staates in Deutschland, in PuB,
pp. 211216 (English text: Further Development of the Total State in Germany, in Articles, pp.
1927).
Wendung/Kriegsbegriff. (1937/38) Die Wendung zum diskriminierenden Kriegsbegriff, in
Frieden, pp. 518597 (English edition: War/Non-War? A Dilemma, ed. and translated by
Simona Draghici, Corvallis, OR: Plutarch Press, 2004).
Wendung/Staat. (1931) Die Wendung zum totalen Staat, in PuB, pp. 166178 (English text: The
Way to the Total State, in Articles, pp. 118).
Wesen/Werden. (1929) Wesen und Werden des faschistischen Staates, in PuB, pp. 124130.
II. Secondary Literature
Ananiadis, G. (2002) Carl Schmitt on Kosovo, or, Taking War Seriously, in D.I. Bjelic and
O. Savic (eds.) Balkan as Metaphor. Between Globalization and Fragmentation, Cambridge, MA:
The MIT Press, pp. 117161.
Antaki, M. (2004) Carl Schmitts Nomos of the Earth, Osgoode Hall Law Journal 42(2): 317334.
Balakrishnan, G. (2000) The Enemy. An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt, London: Verso.
Bendersky, J. (1983) Carl Schmitt: Theorist for the Reich, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Blindow, F. (1999) Carl Schmitts Reichsgrundung: Strategie fur einen europaischen Grossraum,
Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
Caldwell, P.C. (1997) Popular Sovereignty and the Crisis of German Constitutional Law. The Theory
and Practice of Weimar Constitutionalism, Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Chandler, D. (2002) From Kosovo to Kabul: Human Rights and International Intervention, London:
Pluto Press.
Cristi, R. (1998) Carl Schmitt and Authoritarian Liberalism, Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Dyzenhaus, D. (1997) Legality and Legitimacy: Carl Schmitt, Hans Kelsen and Hermann Heller in
Weimar, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Dyzenhaus, D. (ed.) (1998) Law as Politics. Carl Schmitts Critique of Liberalism, Durham and
London: Duke University Press.
Habermas, J. (2004) Hat die Konstitutionalisierung des Vo lkerrechts noch eine Chance?, in
J. Habermas (id.) Der gespaltene Westen, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, pp. 113193.
Herz, J.H. (1939) The National Socialist Doctrine of International Law and the Problem of
International Organization, Political Science Quarterly 54(4): 536554.
Kerve gan, J.-F. (1999) Carl Schmitt and World Unity, in C. Mouffe (ed.) The Challenge of Carl
Schmitt, London: Verso, pp. 5473.
Kennedy, E. (2004) Constitutional Failure. Carl Schmitt in Weimar, Durham and London: Duke
University Press.
Koskenniemi, M. (2004) International Law as Political Theology: How to Read Nomos der Erde?
Constellations 11(4): 492511.
Laak, Dirk van (2002) Gesprache in der Sicherheit des Schweigens. Carl Schmitt in der politischen
Geistesgeschichte der fruhen Bundesrepublik, Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
Manemann, J. (2002) Carl Schmitt und die Politische Theologie. Politischer Anti-Monotheismus,
Mu nster: Aschendorff Verlag.
Roland Axtmann
550
Marramao, G. (2000) The Exile of the Nomos: For a Critical Profile of Carl Schmitt, Cardozo Law
Review 21: 15671586.
McCormick, J.P. (1997) Carl Schmitts Critique of Liberalism. Against Politics as Technology,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Meier, H. (1995) Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss. The Hidden Dialogue, Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press.
Meier, H. (2004) Die Lehre Carl Schmitts. Vier Kapitel zur Unterscheidung Politischer Theologie und
Politischer Philosophie, 2nd edn., Stuttgart: Metzler.
Mouffe, C. (ed.) (1999) The Challenge of Carl Schmitt, London: Verso.
Mu ller, J.-W. (2003) A Dangerous Mind. Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought, New Haven
and London: Yale University Press.
Pichler, H.-K. (1998) The Godfathers of Truth: Max Weber and Carl Schmitt in Morgenthaus
Theory of Power Politics, Review of International Studies 24(2): 185200.
Preuss, L. (1935) National Socialist Conceptions of International Law, American Political Science
Review 29(4): 594609.
Rasch, W. (2000) A Just War? Or Just A War?: Habermas, and the Cosmopolitan Orthodoxy,
Cardozo Law Review 21: 16651684.
Scheuerman, W.E. (1999) Carl Schmitt. The End of Law, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers.
Scheuerman, W.E. (2004) International Law as Historical Myth, Constellations 11(4): 537550.
Scott, J.B. (ed.) (1918) President Wilsons Foreign Policy. Messages, Addresses, Papers, New York:
Oxford University Press.
Stirk, P. (1999) Carl Schmitts Volkerrechtliche Grossraumordnung, History of Political Thought
20(2): 357374.
Stirk, P. (2003) Carl Schmitts Enemy and the Rhetoric of Anti-Interventionism, European Legacy
8(1): 2136.
Stirk, P. (2004) Carl Schmitt, the Law of Occupation, and the Iraq War, Constellations 11(4):
527536.
Willms, B. (1991) Politics as Politics: Carl Schmitts Concept of the Political and the Tradition of
European Political Thought, History of European Ideas 13(4): 371383.
Zolo, D. (2002) Invoking Humanity. War, Law and Global Order, London: Continuum.
Roland Axtmann
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Axtmann, Philosophy, Politics, Carl Schmitt

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Humanity or Enmity?

lvaro dOrs in September 1951, Schmitt

lvaro dOrs, Briefwechsel, edited by M. Herrero, Berlin:

ber den Gegensatz von Land

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