Interlinking the Domestic with the International: Carl Schmitt on Democracy and International Relations

Abstract

Carl Schmitt's Der Nomos der Erde allows us to rethink his interlinked proposals for the organization of the Weimar Republic, namely his theory of 'democratic dictatorship' and the 'concept of the political'. Connecting the domestic homogeneity of an empowered people with the pluralism of the Westphalian state system, Schmitt seeks to humanize war; he objects to the renaissance of the 'just war' tradition, which is premised on a discriminating concept of war. Schmitt's objections are valid today, yet their Eurocentric foundations are also partially outdated. We are thus to argue with Schmitt against Schmitt to reflect on possibilities for the humanization of war.

Saint George, the dragonslayer : the symbolism of ‘responsibility to protect

“…The outsider here becomes a non-value, which could be easily disposed of. 1 The rule and institutionalisation of bare norm and singular rationality helps to maintain the status quo and to further stigmatise the outsiders. Correspondingly, such a system allows the dominant states to maintain hegemonic modes of thinking, especially in the fields of rights, governance, and economics.…”

The Kelsen/Schmitt Controversy and the Evolving Relations between Constitutional and International Law

“…According to a recent reconstruction, Schmitt's concept of Nomos , the cornerstone of his international theory, should be connected with the fact that his initial Weimar solution of the Reichspräsident as guardian of the Constitution appeared “a nihilistic myth,” and more precisely a “caesaristic hypostatization of the volonté générale , which was not able to create more than imaginary homogeneity among a people.” In this view, the concept of Nomos as the primordial partition and allocation of space, that is, as the first seizure of land, was “the antithesis of nihilistic vagueness,” capable of countering “any potential instability” due to its real substantiality and veracity (Burchard 2006, 16–7).…”

“…Kelsen's theory was alien to the intention of legitimizing imperialism (Ferraro 2002), but also, to the extent that it amounted to a prediction of the development of international law, clearly at odds with the post‐Cold War rise of wars of humanitarian intervention and especially with the post‐9/11 “war on terror.” This kind of conflict has rather evoked the Schmittian description of the bellum iustum , of discriminatory war against adversaries viewed as outlaws and enemies of humanity (Burchard 2006, 32). The question of whether the “Schmittian revival” is justified should thus depend on the correspondence of Schmitt's description with the contemporary practice of bellum iustum .…”

“…Schmitt's accuracy in contrasting the rules of warfare embedded in the Westphalian tradition with the bellum iustum has first of all been challenged on the ground that it rests on a “romantic idealization” of the Westphalian land war as a “duel” between sovereign “gentlemen,” and it is rooted “in an outdated understanding of the state and in an obsolete monopolar Eurocentrism” (Burchard 2006, 33ff.). Furthermore, while Schmitt's account focuses on the big exception, the declaration of war, exceptions are now made as a continual mode of action, and can be made by bureaucratic machinery and functionaries quite as easily as by grand sovereigns (Walker 2006, 80).…”

“…Furthermore, Schmitt contrasted the bellum iustum with the Westphalian tradition, to the extent that it is founded on the belief that resorting to moral justifications for waging wars is but an ideological instrument that degrades the enemy and renders conflicts exceptionally inhumane and brutal. This might have profited in the abstract by reference to the UN Charter, that “replaced moral with procedural reasoning intrinsic to formal legality, and spiritual logic with secular procedures” (Burchard 2006, 38). References to the Charter, as well as to the changes affecting post‐Second World War international law, are instead banned from Der Nomos der Erde .…”