(The Return of) Carl Schmitt Essay
Why is an understanding of the political theory of Carl Schmitt still important to International Relations theorists today?
Introduction.
Carl Schmitt may be remembered by most more for his affiliation with Hitler’s Nazi Germany than for any of his academic work, however, his political theory was based on some interesting and unresolved questions within contemporary politics. I will argue that his legacy, good or bad, can not be ignored. It was to the surprise of many, that the last few years have brought intellectuals of many different political persuasions to have a renewed interest in some of the central ideas of his political theory. My suggestion is that this theory has never really gone away and arouses interest in International Relations theorists of many different types because of the quality of the questions he attempted to answer rather than his own conclusions. Due to the limited length of this essay I am going to look at the central themes of Schmitt via two broad but very different (and internally divided) schools of IR theorists to illustrate how his ideas are still important today. The first can be crudely classified as the ‘Neo-Classical Realists/ Neo- Realists/ Neoconservatives’ who share an interest in the primacy of his ‘Friend/Enemy’ distinction, allude to similar ideas around ‘Political Theology’, and share some of his criticisms of ‘Liberal’ democratic models and his related solutions around the role of executive ‘state of exception.’ The second broad grouping are IR theorists with more of a ‘Post-Structuralist’ view of IR who are interested in critical sociological theory of many types, like for example, the broad range of ‘Social Constructivists’ and people influenced by Michael Foucault’s ‘Discourse Theory.’ They reject the ‘Positivist’ ideas of the first grouping of IR theorists, are interested in the ‘social construction’ of key IR concepts like identity, the state, and national security, and/or are interested in the formation of ‘dominant discourses’ and the power distribution behind their formation. For this latter grouping the centrality of identity within Schmitt’s political theory and the way that his ideas have been used to help construct dominant discourses is why he is still of interest to them. Finally, I will illustrate how Schmitt’s theory is even having a renaissance in Neo-Marxist Anti-Globalisation theories from the far left whilst many other critics of the current United States government’s actions, their justifications for ‘American Exceptionalism’, and their rejection of international norms, laws and the United Nations draw parallels between their legal justifications and the ‘exceptionalism’ in Schmitt.
The Return of Carl Schmitt
Carl Schmitt was a jurist and political theorist who first came to prominence in the troubled post World War One Weimar Republic government in Germany of the 1930’s. He is remembered by most more for later joining the Nazi Party, being involved in anti-Semitic writings and holding a post as a professor at the University of Berlin right up the end of the Second World War. His authoritarian political views, reputed support for ‘exceptional’ executive actions like the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ and affiliations with Hitler’s Germany and Franco’s Spain doesn’t make him the most likely candidate for renewed interest in the 21st Century. Until recently an interest in Schmitt was mainly reserved for more right wing IR theorists in the US and Europe but with the explosion of interest in the debate around the ‘politics of identity’ he has attracted a renewed interest in his work from a more diverse group of intellectuals. New waves of critical theorists are interested in how the acceptance of Schmittian ideas (like, for example, his ‘friend/enemy’ distinction), amongst other things, underpins the assumptions of dominant IR theorists in the US and helps reproduce, recreate and affirm its central identity creating paradigms. I will look at three central ideas of Schmitt to illustrate why this revival has taken place. The first is the primacy of his ‘Friend/Enemy’ distinction within his political theory; the second is his ideas about ‘Political Theology’ and, finally, his criticisms of ‘liberal’ democracy and his solutions around the executive use of a ‘state of exception.’ I will explore these ideas using these two diametrically opposed methodological approaches to the study of contemporary IR theory to illustrate that his ideas are important today even if you do not like his conclusions.
Two Methodological Approaches to IR Theorizing
Carl Schmitt is important to different types of IR theorist for very different reasons. I will briefly explain the different academic approaches of the two general groupings of IR theorists that, for the purposes of exploring Schmitt’s legacy more fully, I have grouped together. Although I have already mentioned how crude these two groupings are I would just like to stress again that I am not suggesting that these groups of theorists are anything like homogenous groups, only that they share certain (but not all) academic approaches and assumptions to the study of the field. The first grouping I called ‘Neo-Classical Realists/ Neo- Realists/Neoconservatives’ and I will argue that they share a ‘Positivist’ approach to IR that claims that by ‘exercising parsimony and rigor, and by employing the “scientific method”, international relations can be studied in a objective manner, and scientific, neutral, and true knowledge can be produced. ’ I will argue that far from being objective, scientific or neutral, the hegemonic position realist thinking of these types has in IR is a political practice that helps to underpin the dominant discourses of U.S. national identity and foreign policy. I will go as far as saying that these ideas do not innocently seek to explain U.S. national security concerns but rather attempt to legitimize their own subjective views about the use of its hegemonic position in the post 9/11 world. For the second grouping of IR scholars, the poststructuralist, or critical theorists do not accept that IR theory can ever escape some sort of political influence because “[t]heory is always for someone and for some purpose ” These theorists are interested in digging deeper into our understanding of key concepts within IR to ‘problematize’ the very foundations of what most realist theory is built on like, for example, the hegemonic status of the ‘state’ or recognizing the implicit/explicit identity creation related to any ‘friend/enemy’ distinctions. I aim to illustrate how Schmitt’s political theory can be seen to be important to both these different approaches for very different reasons.
Schmitt and the ‘Godfather’ of Neo-conservatism
The most direct ideological link between Schmitt and the influential realist ‘Neo-conservative’ IR theorists in the US is through Leo Strauss who ‘is widely regarded today as a founding father, perhaps the Godfather, of neo-conservatism, with direct or indirect ties to the Bush administration in Washington. ’ Strauss, a Jew also born in Germany, was helped by Schmitt, to secure a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship in Paris in 1932 before he finally left France during the war. He lived briefly in England but later he moved permanently to American where he taught for many years at the University of Chicago. Strauss like Schmitt saw problems with the ‘Liberal’ democratic model of politics and he ‘regarded modernity as a mixed blessing that required certain premodern classical and biblical teachings to rescue modernity from its own self-destructive tendencies. ’ Strauss had a devoted following at the University of Chicago in the 1960’s where he taught political philosophy with the work of Schmitt being an important part of the Straussian canon. Strauss also taught about a method of identifying double meanings aimed at different audiences in ancient philosopher’s works. He believed that because many philosophers were restrained by what could be seen in their contemporary societies as heresy, they therefore wrote for two audiences, the first an exoteric meaning for the general reader but also there was cryptic esoteric meaning for the ‘gentlemen,’ the truly ‘wise’ who could read it properly. He also taught about Plato’s concept of the ‘Noble Lie’ and admired leaders like Lincoln and Churchill who had acted powerfully when in ‘state of exception’ situations. This has led to the suggestion that Straussian ‘Neo-Conservative’ IR theorists can be secretive about their own views on things like religion because this could fall into the ‘Noble Lie’ category.
Schmitt on Democracy: In the Context of His Contemporary World
Schmitt’s central problems with ‘liberal’ models of the state, ‘liberal individualism’ and cosmopolitan global governance can only be understood fully by exploring the historically specific time the ideas were first formulated by him. His problems with ‘liberal’ models of the state stem from his disappointment of the post World War One situation for Germany in Europe and this led to his assertion that the ‘essence of liberalism is negotiation, a cautious half measure, in the hope that the definitive dispute, the decisive bloody battle, can be transformed into a parliamentary debate and permit the decision to be suspended forever in an everlasting discussion. ’ The state needs strong ‘exceptional’ powers to maintain its own values but for Schmitt “[liberalism] has produced a doctrine of the separation and balance of powers, i.e. a system of checks and controls of state and government. [But] [t]his cannot be characterized as either a theory of state or a basic political principle. ” He was also strongly against any type of liberal ‘individualism’ because “to compel him [the private individual] to fight against his will…is,…lack of freedom and repression. All liberal pathos turns against repression and lack of freedom.” The result for him is that “we…arrive at an entire system of demilitarized and depoliticalized concepts, thus forming the society of individualist liberalism. ” Finally he is against the idea of any type of global governance, because even if there is an international ‘state of nature’ he chooses not to accept the possibility of any type of cosmopolitan global governance, so to him, there is no power (sovereign) to enforce its dictates. Schmitt was apposed to the League of Nations for the perceived injustices of the post war situation in Germany but his views are analogous to what Richard Pearle has said recently about the UN: "As we sift the debris of the war to liberate Iraq, it will be important to preserve, the better to understand, the intellectual wreckage of the liberal conceit of safety through international law administered by international institutions."
Friends and Enemies
To understand the political theory of Carl Schmitt it is important to recognize the primacy of his claim that ‘the specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy. " Although this is the starting point of his theory he warns against thinking that this is some abstract conceptualization by saying that "the friend, enemy, and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing. " This clear cut friend and enemy distinction although it may sound simplistic is still used in modern international politics like, when, for example, George Bush Jr. the President of the United States of America claimed in 2001: "You are either with us [friend] or against us [enemy] in the fight against terror." When defining the concept of enemy Schmitt wrote that ‘the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible. ” These distinctions play another important role helping create and recreate identity as Samuel Huntington suggests in his (in)famous book the ‘Clash of Civilizations’: “People use politics not just to advance their interests but also to define their identity. We know who we are only when we know who we are not and often only when we know whom we are against. ” Schmitt was influenced by the English political theorist Thomas Hobbes, it is analogous to Schmitt because it has been said that ‘the central textual strategy of Hobbes’s political theory: a strategy of otherness designed to discipline the self. ’ This friend and enemy distinction in Schmitt is attractive to contemporary politicians for just these reasons; it helps to clarify binary opposites; illustrate who ‘They’ are; and reinforce ideas of homogeneity for ‘Us’ through articulating who are our friends and who are our enemies.
The ‘Politics of Identity’ Debate
The debate around the ‘politics of identity’ has reinvigorated the interest and exploration in the Schmittian concept of ‘Friend/Enemy’ for many poststructuralists. The problamatizing of identity and the role of the ‘state’ is of interest to critical IR theorists because the ‘identity of a “people” is the basis for the legitimacy of the state and its subsequent practices. [ …] Nationalism is a construct of the state in pursuit of its legitimacy. Benedict Anderson, for example, has argued in compelling fashion that “the nation” should be understood as an “imagined political community” that exists only insofar as it is a cultural artifact that is represented textually. ’ This rejection of the assumption of the centrality and legitimacy of the ‘state’ makes any analysis much more demanding but as Michel Foucault said: ‘Practicing criticism is a matter of making facile gestures difficult.’ These types of theorist accept the importance of Schmitt’s ‘Friend/Enemy’ distinction because for them ‘identity is constituted in relation to difference… [This] is achieved through the inscription of boundaries that serve to demarcate an “inside” from an “outside,” a “self” from an “other,” a “domestic” from a “foreign.” ’ They progress this logic onto the ‘national security culture’ of the United States to problematize the concept of an objective ‘security concern’ because ‘danger is not an objective condition. It [sic] is not a thing that exists independently of those to whom it may be a threat. ’ Thus, certain crises are used, to reinforce dominant discourses but at the same time these ‘‘discourses create and reflect identities, and thus they construct those who are our allies and those who are our enemies. When not in flux, they settle who ‘we’ are, and who ‘they’ are; what ‘we’ stand for, and what ‘they’ mean to ‘us.’ ’’ To suggest that Schmitt didn’t know about the ideational creation of enemy is to underestimate him because as he himself said “what constitutes an existential danger to one’s own form of life can be judged only by the participants in a potential conflict, because it is they who have experienced the challenge of the enemy. The specifically political perspective which informs this judgment emerges out of a first-hand encounter with the enemy. ”
Politics and God: or ‘Political Theology’
The Schmittian concept of ‘Political Theology’ has a strong resonance with ‘Post-structualist’ critical theorists who are interested in his central claims relating to the incorporation of theological concepts within politics but think that it is only part of the ideational formation and construction of state identity. This idea is also of interest to theorist with a more positivist approach because of what Strauss has called the relationship between ‘revelation’ and ‘reason’, or as he put it ‘Jerusalem’ versus ‘Athens.’ In relation to this Schmitt put forward the idea that:
“All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts not only because of their historical development—in which they were transferred from theology to the theory of the state, whereby, for example, the omnipotent God became the omnipotent lawgiver—but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts. The exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology. ” So for Schmitt the state has taken on many theological concepts as their own but the role of exceptions is a clear example of ‘Jerusalem’ taking precedence over ‘Athens.’ David Campbell in his poststructuralist work ‘Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity’ touched on these themes by saying: ‘The Enlightenment had been an attack on ecclesiastical authority through the instruments of reason and scientific rationality. […] the popular characterization of this period as the victory of reason over faith, experience over intuition, science over religion, and modernity over tradition, the outcome was not so clear-cut. […..] The problem was that once the “death of God” had been proclaimed, the link between the world, “man,” and certitude had been broken.[..] The state requires discourses of “danger” to provide a new theology of truth about who and what “we” are by highlighting who or what “we” are not, and what “we” have to fear. ’ He elaborates further by saying “In this way, the state project of security replicates the church project of salvation. The state grounds its legitimacy by offering the promise of security to its citizens who, it says, would otherwise face manifold dangers. ….. Both the state and the church require considerable effort to maintain order within and around themselves, and thereby engage in a evangelism of fear to ward off internal and external threats, succumbing in the process to the temptation to treat difference as otherness…. We can consider foreign policy as an intergral part of the discourse of danger that serve to discipline the state. ’
‘Ausnahmezustand’ Today
When I have previously talked about ‘exceptionalism’ within Schmitt I am talking about something derived from the concept within the German legal tradition called ‘Ausnahmezustand’ which in English political tradition is called ‘emergency powers’ but I will use the more popular translation the ‘state of exception.’ Schmitt is clear about who decides when this suspension of the normal constitution and laws when he says definitively that the ‘sovereign is he who decides on the exception. ’ This goes back to the problems Schmitt has with the traditional separation of power within liberalism because he doesn’t believe in Locke’s ideas about ‘checks and balances’ between the different parts of government or the primacy of law. This is clearly illustrated when he says ‘all law is "situational law." The sovereign produces and guarantees the situation in its totality. He has the monopoly over this last decision. ” He believes that "only the actual participants can correctly recognize, understand, and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case of conflict. Each participant is in a position to judge whether the adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one's own form of existence. ” Critics of the current U.S. administration of G. W. Bush illustrate in their critique of his ‘exceptionalism’ echoes of Scmitt when they say ‘the White House has been eager to assert what is claimed to be the power of the "unitary executive," that is, the asserted power of the executive branch to override those provisions of laws with which it does not agree. ’ In both Schmitt’s political theory, Nazi Germany and the current U.S. administration the ultimate power of government lies not in legal legislation, but in the executive that has the right to ignore the ‘rule’ in favour of the ‘exception.’ Although I have used the examples of Nazi Germany and the United States of America because of the heavy use of these powers, this concept of ‘exceptionalism’ is present in most ‘liberal democratic’ models and leads to the necessity of re-examining the validity of such claims due to the likelihood of abuse. The necessity of this type of ‘exceptionalism’ for me cuts right to heart of issues around the current legitimacy of democracy and the need to examine what our political systems are actually saying about the ‘rule of the people.’
Schmitt, ‘Multitude’ and Perpetual War
Another different example of the recent renaissance of Scmitt’s political theory is illustrated by the fact that an exploration of his political theory is even present in ‘Neo-Marxist’ anti-globalization IR theorists Hardt/Negri in their 2003 book ‘Multitude.’ They suggest that the current global situation is one of perpetual war and that ‘the state of exception has become permanent and general. ’ This has ramifications for understanding contemporary international politics because ‘‘when the state of exception becomes the rule and when wartime becomes an interminable condition, then the traditional distinction between war and politics becomes increasingly blurred. ’ Schmitt uses the friend/enemy distinction as the cornerstone of his political theory but it ignores any problematization of the state as the primary actor in international relations and only has mild warnings about using difference as ‘otheness’ to help create your own identity. Schmitt never resolves the same problem that was an issue for me in Hobbes: if the reason an individual enters into a political entity only to protect their own life, how does that political entity ever demand that they risk serious injury or death for the state? As in Hobbes there is no attempt to universalize his theory to stop the international system being in a ‘State of Nature.’
Schmitt, the Geneva Conventions and Guantanamo
Although Carl Schmitt was both a political theorist and important scholar of international law his political theory places adhering to international law as secondary to the ‘exceptionalism’ of the executive. This position has resulted in the suggestion that the legal policy of the current American administration, with its rejection of the Geneava Conventions, many international laws on human rights and legislation on what constitutes torture, is similar to or influenced by, Carl Schmitt. An example of this type of legal ‘exceptionalism’ is Guantanamo Detention Centre where the US administration have said that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the detainees at Guant́anamo, as it was, “written for a different kind of war.” In a recent article about Schmitt it was said that because of his views about the primacy of the political this ‘led him to ridicule international humanitarian law in a tone and with words almost identical to those recently employed by Yoo [US administration senior legal advisor] and several of his colleagues. ’ The striking similarities between the Nazi era rejections of the 1929 Geneva Conventions and those of the current American administration are interesting to those interested in the theoretical underpinning of ‘American Exceptionalism.’ When talking about Bush’s new powers the spectre of the founding fathers is more often conjured up but this link through Carl Schmitt is more reminiscent of Adolf Hitler.
Why We Can’t Ignore Schmitt
Although the political theory of Carl Schmitt may not be to the liking of many in the 21st century it is wrong to think that he lacks relevance. His ‘Friend/Enemy’ distinction is just as central to the thinking of many important IR theorists in the US and elsewhere, from Neoconervatives to poststructualists. The debate around ‘identity’ within ‘security studies’ and poststructuralist ideas around ‘political theology’ revive interest is some of the questions posed by Carl Schmitt. His criticisms of ‘liberal democracy’ and the need for ‘executive autonomy’ are shared by many influential IR theorists and policy makers in the United States of America. My suggestion here is that the conclusions of Carl Schmitt are still being used today in many ‘liberal democracies’ and the renewed interest in Schmitt’s ideas could highlight that these questions remain unsatisfactorily answered. The ideas of Hardt/Negri also suggest that the current ‘state of global war’ have ramifications for the adherence to Scmittian ‘state of emergency’ executive power because this is no longer the ‘exception’ but rather a constant situation. When war is fought against abstract concepts like ‘drugs’ and ‘terror’ it has the affect of being almost without end. I would be unfair of me not to mention that Carl Scmitt himself had a more nuanced understanding of the danger implicit in his theories, and that both the Nazi use and that of the current US administration ignored his warnings.
Conclusion
There are many different reasons why the political theory of Carl Schmitt is still important. I have attempted to illustrate that his theory, far from being forgotten, is still important today for many different types of IR theorists, policy makers and legal advisors. I particularly concentrated on two very different types of IR theorists to illustrate how some of the central themes of Schmitt’s political theory are still feeding debate, from the ‘positivist’ position of the influential Neoconservative IR theorists close the Pentagon to ‘Poststructuralists’ on the outer fringes. I also touched on how Schmittian political theory is experiencing a renaissance with the example of the attention shown to his theory in Hardt and Negri’s leftist anti-globalization manifesto ‘Multitude.’ I explored the ideological links between Leo Strauss, Neoconservative theorist close to George W. Bush and Carl Schmitt with a particular focus on his ‘Friend and Enemy’ distinction and ‘State of Exception’ to highlight its relationship with ‘American Exceptionalism.’ I wanted to show that the ideas of Carl Schmitt from in between the two world wars are still relevant today and the acceptance of his ideas of ‘exceptionalism’ are still important today for ‘liberal democratic’ states. This, for me, raises questions about the very foundations of our ‘democratic’ systems of liberal democracy that was described by Francis Fukuyama, another influential IR theorist in the US as ‘The End of History.’ The ‘Friend and Enemy’ distinction and his concept of ‘Political Theology’ are important to ‘Poststucturalist’ IR theorists who are interested looking deeper into the genealogy and formation of ‘Dominant Discourses’ and problamatizing many assumptions in the ‘Politics of Identity’ debate. Finally I look at the implication of his ‘state of exception’ when we are in a state of perpetual war. This has lead people to compare the way that way that the current US administration has reneged on many human rights treaties, rejected the Geneva Conventions on torture and rejected International law to the political to legal and political theory of Carl Schmitt. Although I previously thought that a political theorist who is associated with the Fascist governments of Hitler and Franco would be of no interest today it is the quality of the unresolved questions within Schmitt and the tacit acceptance of some of his central ideas that are still iimportant. This appraisal of his work has led me to question the theoretical underpinning of the ‘liberal democratic’ model and made me think that some of the current US administration’s policies are closer than most may think to a Fascist ideology.
Sebastian O’Brien May 2008 .
Bibliography
Books
Campbell, David, ‘Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity’ Revised Edition, 1998, Manchester University Press, Manchester.
Schmitt,Carl, ‘The Concept of the Political’ Wikibooks.com
Schmitt,Carl, ‘Political Theology’ Wikibooks.com
Blumenburg, Hans, ‘The Legitimacy of the Modern Age’ Cambridge, Massaxhusetts,1983
Huntington, Samuel P: ‘Who Are We? America’s Great Debate’, 2004, Simon & Schuster, London.
Huntington, Samuel P: ‘The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of World Order’, 1997, Simon & Schuster, London.
Gopal Balakrishnan, ‘The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt’ (New York: Verso, 2000),
Croft, Stuart, ‘Culture, Crisis and America’s War on Terror’ Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Hardt, Michael & Negri, Antonio, ‘Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire’ London UK, Penguin, 2005
Cox, Robert: ‘Social Forces, States and World Order: Beyond International Relations Theory’ in ‘Approaches to World Order’ Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press 1996.
Hobbes, Thomas, ‘Leviathan’ London UK, Penguin, 1968
Said, Edward, ‘Orientalism’ London UK, Penguin, 2003.
Articles and others
Grondin, David. ‘(Re)Writing the ‘National Security State’: How and Why Realists (Re)Built the(ir) Cold War’ Paper presented at the annual International Studies Association Convention March 17-20 2004.
Smith, Steven B.: ‘Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism’ Excerpt from pages 1-15 of Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism by Steven B. Smith, published by the University of Chicago Press. ©2006 by the University of Chicago.
Versluis, Arthur: ‘How Carl Schmitt Spawned Fascist America’ http://www.counterpunch.org/versluis08102006.html
Horton, Scott: ‘The Return of Carl Schmitt.’ Monday, November 07, 2005 www.balkin.com
Introduction.
Carl Schmitt may be remembered by most more for his affiliation with Hitler’s Nazi Germany than for any of his academic work, however, his political theory was based on some interesting and unresolved questions within contemporary politics. I will argue that his legacy, good or bad, can not be ignored. It was to the surprise of many, that the last few years have brought intellectuals of many different political persuasions to have a renewed interest in some of the central ideas of his political theory. My suggestion is that this theory has never really gone away and arouses interest in International Relations theorists of many different types because of the quality of the questions he attempted to answer rather than his own conclusions. Due to the limited length of this essay I am going to look at the central themes of Schmitt via two broad but very different (and internally divided) schools of IR theorists to illustrate how his ideas are still important today. The first can be crudely classified as the ‘Neo-Classical Realists/ Neo- Realists/ Neoconservatives’ who share an interest in the primacy of his ‘Friend/Enemy’ distinction, allude to similar ideas around ‘Political Theology’, and share some of his criticisms of ‘Liberal’ democratic models and his related solutions around the role of executive ‘state of exception.’ The second broad grouping are IR theorists with more of a ‘Post-Structuralist’ view of IR who are interested in critical sociological theory of many types, like for example, the broad range of ‘Social Constructivists’ and people influenced by Michael Foucault’s ‘Discourse Theory.’ They reject the ‘Positivist’ ideas of the first grouping of IR theorists, are interested in the ‘social construction’ of key IR concepts like identity, the state, and national security, and/or are interested in the formation of ‘dominant discourses’ and the power distribution behind their formation. For this latter grouping the centrality of identity within Schmitt’s political theory and the way that his ideas have been used to help construct dominant discourses is why he is still of interest to them. Finally, I will illustrate how Schmitt’s theory is even having a renaissance in Neo-Marxist Anti-Globalisation theories from the far left whilst many other critics of the current United States government’s actions, their justifications for ‘American Exceptionalism’, and their rejection of international norms, laws and the United Nations draw parallels between their legal justifications and the ‘exceptionalism’ in Schmitt.
The Return of Carl Schmitt
Carl Schmitt was a jurist and political theorist who first came to prominence in the troubled post World War One Weimar Republic government in Germany of the 1930’s. He is remembered by most more for later joining the Nazi Party, being involved in anti-Semitic writings and holding a post as a professor at the University of Berlin right up the end of the Second World War. His authoritarian political views, reputed support for ‘exceptional’ executive actions like the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ and affiliations with Hitler’s Germany and Franco’s Spain doesn’t make him the most likely candidate for renewed interest in the 21st Century. Until recently an interest in Schmitt was mainly reserved for more right wing IR theorists in the US and Europe but with the explosion of interest in the debate around the ‘politics of identity’ he has attracted a renewed interest in his work from a more diverse group of intellectuals. New waves of critical theorists are interested in how the acceptance of Schmittian ideas (like, for example, his ‘friend/enemy’ distinction), amongst other things, underpins the assumptions of dominant IR theorists in the US and helps reproduce, recreate and affirm its central identity creating paradigms. I will look at three central ideas of Schmitt to illustrate why this revival has taken place. The first is the primacy of his ‘Friend/Enemy’ distinction within his political theory; the second is his ideas about ‘Political Theology’ and, finally, his criticisms of ‘liberal’ democracy and his solutions around the executive use of a ‘state of exception.’ I will explore these ideas using these two diametrically opposed methodological approaches to the study of contemporary IR theory to illustrate that his ideas are important today even if you do not like his conclusions.
Two Methodological Approaches to IR Theorizing
Carl Schmitt is important to different types of IR theorist for very different reasons. I will briefly explain the different academic approaches of the two general groupings of IR theorists that, for the purposes of exploring Schmitt’s legacy more fully, I have grouped together. Although I have already mentioned how crude these two groupings are I would just like to stress again that I am not suggesting that these groups of theorists are anything like homogenous groups, only that they share certain (but not all) academic approaches and assumptions to the study of the field. The first grouping I called ‘Neo-Classical Realists/ Neo- Realists/Neoconservatives’ and I will argue that they share a ‘Positivist’ approach to IR that claims that by ‘exercising parsimony and rigor, and by employing the “scientific method”, international relations can be studied in a objective manner, and scientific, neutral, and true knowledge can be produced. ’ I will argue that far from being objective, scientific or neutral, the hegemonic position realist thinking of these types has in IR is a political practice that helps to underpin the dominant discourses of U.S. national identity and foreign policy. I will go as far as saying that these ideas do not innocently seek to explain U.S. national security concerns but rather attempt to legitimize their own subjective views about the use of its hegemonic position in the post 9/11 world. For the second grouping of IR scholars, the poststructuralist, or critical theorists do not accept that IR theory can ever escape some sort of political influence because “[t]heory is always for someone and for some purpose ” These theorists are interested in digging deeper into our understanding of key concepts within IR to ‘problematize’ the very foundations of what most realist theory is built on like, for example, the hegemonic status of the ‘state’ or recognizing the implicit/explicit identity creation related to any ‘friend/enemy’ distinctions. I aim to illustrate how Schmitt’s political theory can be seen to be important to both these different approaches for very different reasons.
Schmitt and the ‘Godfather’ of Neo-conservatism
The most direct ideological link between Schmitt and the influential realist ‘Neo-conservative’ IR theorists in the US is through Leo Strauss who ‘is widely regarded today as a founding father, perhaps the Godfather, of neo-conservatism, with direct or indirect ties to the Bush administration in Washington. ’ Strauss, a Jew also born in Germany, was helped by Schmitt, to secure a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship in Paris in 1932 before he finally left France during the war. He lived briefly in England but later he moved permanently to American where he taught for many years at the University of Chicago. Strauss like Schmitt saw problems with the ‘Liberal’ democratic model of politics and he ‘regarded modernity as a mixed blessing that required certain premodern classical and biblical teachings to rescue modernity from its own self-destructive tendencies. ’ Strauss had a devoted following at the University of Chicago in the 1960’s where he taught political philosophy with the work of Schmitt being an important part of the Straussian canon. Strauss also taught about a method of identifying double meanings aimed at different audiences in ancient philosopher’s works. He believed that because many philosophers were restrained by what could be seen in their contemporary societies as heresy, they therefore wrote for two audiences, the first an exoteric meaning for the general reader but also there was cryptic esoteric meaning for the ‘gentlemen,’ the truly ‘wise’ who could read it properly. He also taught about Plato’s concept of the ‘Noble Lie’ and admired leaders like Lincoln and Churchill who had acted powerfully when in ‘state of exception’ situations. This has led to the suggestion that Straussian ‘Neo-Conservative’ IR theorists can be secretive about their own views on things like religion because this could fall into the ‘Noble Lie’ category.
Schmitt on Democracy: In the Context of His Contemporary World
Schmitt’s central problems with ‘liberal’ models of the state, ‘liberal individualism’ and cosmopolitan global governance can only be understood fully by exploring the historically specific time the ideas were first formulated by him. His problems with ‘liberal’ models of the state stem from his disappointment of the post World War One situation for Germany in Europe and this led to his assertion that the ‘essence of liberalism is negotiation, a cautious half measure, in the hope that the definitive dispute, the decisive bloody battle, can be transformed into a parliamentary debate and permit the decision to be suspended forever in an everlasting discussion. ’ The state needs strong ‘exceptional’ powers to maintain its own values but for Schmitt “[liberalism] has produced a doctrine of the separation and balance of powers, i.e. a system of checks and controls of state and government. [But] [t]his cannot be characterized as either a theory of state or a basic political principle. ” He was also strongly against any type of liberal ‘individualism’ because “to compel him [the private individual] to fight against his will…is,…lack of freedom and repression. All liberal pathos turns against repression and lack of freedom.” The result for him is that “we…arrive at an entire system of demilitarized and depoliticalized concepts, thus forming the society of individualist liberalism. ” Finally he is against the idea of any type of global governance, because even if there is an international ‘state of nature’ he chooses not to accept the possibility of any type of cosmopolitan global governance, so to him, there is no power (sovereign) to enforce its dictates. Schmitt was apposed to the League of Nations for the perceived injustices of the post war situation in Germany but his views are analogous to what Richard Pearle has said recently about the UN: "As we sift the debris of the war to liberate Iraq, it will be important to preserve, the better to understand, the intellectual wreckage of the liberal conceit of safety through international law administered by international institutions."
Friends and Enemies
To understand the political theory of Carl Schmitt it is important to recognize the primacy of his claim that ‘the specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy. " Although this is the starting point of his theory he warns against thinking that this is some abstract conceptualization by saying that "the friend, enemy, and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing. " This clear cut friend and enemy distinction although it may sound simplistic is still used in modern international politics like, when, for example, George Bush Jr. the President of the United States of America claimed in 2001: "You are either with us [friend] or against us [enemy] in the fight against terror." When defining the concept of enemy Schmitt wrote that ‘the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible. ” These distinctions play another important role helping create and recreate identity as Samuel Huntington suggests in his (in)famous book the ‘Clash of Civilizations’: “People use politics not just to advance their interests but also to define their identity. We know who we are only when we know who we are not and often only when we know whom we are against. ” Schmitt was influenced by the English political theorist Thomas Hobbes, it is analogous to Schmitt because it has been said that ‘the central textual strategy of Hobbes’s political theory: a strategy of otherness designed to discipline the self. ’ This friend and enemy distinction in Schmitt is attractive to contemporary politicians for just these reasons; it helps to clarify binary opposites; illustrate who ‘They’ are; and reinforce ideas of homogeneity for ‘Us’ through articulating who are our friends and who are our enemies.
The ‘Politics of Identity’ Debate
The debate around the ‘politics of identity’ has reinvigorated the interest and exploration in the Schmittian concept of ‘Friend/Enemy’ for many poststructuralists. The problamatizing of identity and the role of the ‘state’ is of interest to critical IR theorists because the ‘identity of a “people” is the basis for the legitimacy of the state and its subsequent practices. [ …] Nationalism is a construct of the state in pursuit of its legitimacy. Benedict Anderson, for example, has argued in compelling fashion that “the nation” should be understood as an “imagined political community” that exists only insofar as it is a cultural artifact that is represented textually. ’ This rejection of the assumption of the centrality and legitimacy of the ‘state’ makes any analysis much more demanding but as Michel Foucault said: ‘Practicing criticism is a matter of making facile gestures difficult.’ These types of theorist accept the importance of Schmitt’s ‘Friend/Enemy’ distinction because for them ‘identity is constituted in relation to difference… [This] is achieved through the inscription of boundaries that serve to demarcate an “inside” from an “outside,” a “self” from an “other,” a “domestic” from a “foreign.” ’ They progress this logic onto the ‘national security culture’ of the United States to problematize the concept of an objective ‘security concern’ because ‘danger is not an objective condition. It [sic] is not a thing that exists independently of those to whom it may be a threat. ’ Thus, certain crises are used, to reinforce dominant discourses but at the same time these ‘‘discourses create and reflect identities, and thus they construct those who are our allies and those who are our enemies. When not in flux, they settle who ‘we’ are, and who ‘they’ are; what ‘we’ stand for, and what ‘they’ mean to ‘us.’ ’’ To suggest that Schmitt didn’t know about the ideational creation of enemy is to underestimate him because as he himself said “what constitutes an existential danger to one’s own form of life can be judged only by the participants in a potential conflict, because it is they who have experienced the challenge of the enemy. The specifically political perspective which informs this judgment emerges out of a first-hand encounter with the enemy. ”
Politics and God: or ‘Political Theology’
The Schmittian concept of ‘Political Theology’ has a strong resonance with ‘Post-structualist’ critical theorists who are interested in his central claims relating to the incorporation of theological concepts within politics but think that it is only part of the ideational formation and construction of state identity. This idea is also of interest to theorist with a more positivist approach because of what Strauss has called the relationship between ‘revelation’ and ‘reason’, or as he put it ‘Jerusalem’ versus ‘Athens.’ In relation to this Schmitt put forward the idea that:
“All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts not only because of their historical development—in which they were transferred from theology to the theory of the state, whereby, for example, the omnipotent God became the omnipotent lawgiver—but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts. The exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology. ” So for Schmitt the state has taken on many theological concepts as their own but the role of exceptions is a clear example of ‘Jerusalem’ taking precedence over ‘Athens.’ David Campbell in his poststructuralist work ‘Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity’ touched on these themes by saying: ‘The Enlightenment had been an attack on ecclesiastical authority through the instruments of reason and scientific rationality. […] the popular characterization of this period as the victory of reason over faith, experience over intuition, science over religion, and modernity over tradition, the outcome was not so clear-cut. […..] The problem was that once the “death of God” had been proclaimed, the link between the world, “man,” and certitude had been broken.[..] The state requires discourses of “danger” to provide a new theology of truth about who and what “we” are by highlighting who or what “we” are not, and what “we” have to fear. ’ He elaborates further by saying “In this way, the state project of security replicates the church project of salvation. The state grounds its legitimacy by offering the promise of security to its citizens who, it says, would otherwise face manifold dangers. ….. Both the state and the church require considerable effort to maintain order within and around themselves, and thereby engage in a evangelism of fear to ward off internal and external threats, succumbing in the process to the temptation to treat difference as otherness…. We can consider foreign policy as an intergral part of the discourse of danger that serve to discipline the state. ’
‘Ausnahmezustand’ Today
When I have previously talked about ‘exceptionalism’ within Schmitt I am talking about something derived from the concept within the German legal tradition called ‘Ausnahmezustand’ which in English political tradition is called ‘emergency powers’ but I will use the more popular translation the ‘state of exception.’ Schmitt is clear about who decides when this suspension of the normal constitution and laws when he says definitively that the ‘sovereign is he who decides on the exception. ’ This goes back to the problems Schmitt has with the traditional separation of power within liberalism because he doesn’t believe in Locke’s ideas about ‘checks and balances’ between the different parts of government or the primacy of law. This is clearly illustrated when he says ‘all law is "situational law." The sovereign produces and guarantees the situation in its totality. He has the monopoly over this last decision. ” He believes that "only the actual participants can correctly recognize, understand, and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case of conflict. Each participant is in a position to judge whether the adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one's own form of existence. ” Critics of the current U.S. administration of G. W. Bush illustrate in their critique of his ‘exceptionalism’ echoes of Scmitt when they say ‘the White House has been eager to assert what is claimed to be the power of the "unitary executive," that is, the asserted power of the executive branch to override those provisions of laws with which it does not agree. ’ In both Schmitt’s political theory, Nazi Germany and the current U.S. administration the ultimate power of government lies not in legal legislation, but in the executive that has the right to ignore the ‘rule’ in favour of the ‘exception.’ Although I have used the examples of Nazi Germany and the United States of America because of the heavy use of these powers, this concept of ‘exceptionalism’ is present in most ‘liberal democratic’ models and leads to the necessity of re-examining the validity of such claims due to the likelihood of abuse. The necessity of this type of ‘exceptionalism’ for me cuts right to heart of issues around the current legitimacy of democracy and the need to examine what our political systems are actually saying about the ‘rule of the people.’
Schmitt, ‘Multitude’ and Perpetual War
Another different example of the recent renaissance of Scmitt’s political theory is illustrated by the fact that an exploration of his political theory is even present in ‘Neo-Marxist’ anti-globalization IR theorists Hardt/Negri in their 2003 book ‘Multitude.’ They suggest that the current global situation is one of perpetual war and that ‘the state of exception has become permanent and general. ’ This has ramifications for understanding contemporary international politics because ‘‘when the state of exception becomes the rule and when wartime becomes an interminable condition, then the traditional distinction between war and politics becomes increasingly blurred. ’ Schmitt uses the friend/enemy distinction as the cornerstone of his political theory but it ignores any problematization of the state as the primary actor in international relations and only has mild warnings about using difference as ‘otheness’ to help create your own identity. Schmitt never resolves the same problem that was an issue for me in Hobbes: if the reason an individual enters into a political entity only to protect their own life, how does that political entity ever demand that they risk serious injury or death for the state? As in Hobbes there is no attempt to universalize his theory to stop the international system being in a ‘State of Nature.’
Schmitt, the Geneva Conventions and Guantanamo
Although Carl Schmitt was both a political theorist and important scholar of international law his political theory places adhering to international law as secondary to the ‘exceptionalism’ of the executive. This position has resulted in the suggestion that the legal policy of the current American administration, with its rejection of the Geneava Conventions, many international laws on human rights and legislation on what constitutes torture, is similar to or influenced by, Carl Schmitt. An example of this type of legal ‘exceptionalism’ is Guantanamo Detention Centre where the US administration have said that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the detainees at Guant́anamo, as it was, “written for a different kind of war.” In a recent article about Schmitt it was said that because of his views about the primacy of the political this ‘led him to ridicule international humanitarian law in a tone and with words almost identical to those recently employed by Yoo [US administration senior legal advisor] and several of his colleagues. ’ The striking similarities between the Nazi era rejections of the 1929 Geneva Conventions and those of the current American administration are interesting to those interested in the theoretical underpinning of ‘American Exceptionalism.’ When talking about Bush’s new powers the spectre of the founding fathers is more often conjured up but this link through Carl Schmitt is more reminiscent of Adolf Hitler.
Why We Can’t Ignore Schmitt
Although the political theory of Carl Schmitt may not be to the liking of many in the 21st century it is wrong to think that he lacks relevance. His ‘Friend/Enemy’ distinction is just as central to the thinking of many important IR theorists in the US and elsewhere, from Neoconervatives to poststructualists. The debate around ‘identity’ within ‘security studies’ and poststructuralist ideas around ‘political theology’ revive interest is some of the questions posed by Carl Schmitt. His criticisms of ‘liberal democracy’ and the need for ‘executive autonomy’ are shared by many influential IR theorists and policy makers in the United States of America. My suggestion here is that the conclusions of Carl Schmitt are still being used today in many ‘liberal democracies’ and the renewed interest in Schmitt’s ideas could highlight that these questions remain unsatisfactorily answered. The ideas of Hardt/Negri also suggest that the current ‘state of global war’ have ramifications for the adherence to Scmittian ‘state of emergency’ executive power because this is no longer the ‘exception’ but rather a constant situation. When war is fought against abstract concepts like ‘drugs’ and ‘terror’ it has the affect of being almost without end. I would be unfair of me not to mention that Carl Scmitt himself had a more nuanced understanding of the danger implicit in his theories, and that both the Nazi use and that of the current US administration ignored his warnings.
Conclusion
There are many different reasons why the political theory of Carl Schmitt is still important. I have attempted to illustrate that his theory, far from being forgotten, is still important today for many different types of IR theorists, policy makers and legal advisors. I particularly concentrated on two very different types of IR theorists to illustrate how some of the central themes of Schmitt’s political theory are still feeding debate, from the ‘positivist’ position of the influential Neoconservative IR theorists close the Pentagon to ‘Poststructuralists’ on the outer fringes. I also touched on how Schmittian political theory is experiencing a renaissance with the example of the attention shown to his theory in Hardt and Negri’s leftist anti-globalization manifesto ‘Multitude.’ I explored the ideological links between Leo Strauss, Neoconservative theorist close to George W. Bush and Carl Schmitt with a particular focus on his ‘Friend and Enemy’ distinction and ‘State of Exception’ to highlight its relationship with ‘American Exceptionalism.’ I wanted to show that the ideas of Carl Schmitt from in between the two world wars are still relevant today and the acceptance of his ideas of ‘exceptionalism’ are still important today for ‘liberal democratic’ states. This, for me, raises questions about the very foundations of our ‘democratic’ systems of liberal democracy that was described by Francis Fukuyama, another influential IR theorist in the US as ‘The End of History.’ The ‘Friend and Enemy’ distinction and his concept of ‘Political Theology’ are important to ‘Poststucturalist’ IR theorists who are interested looking deeper into the genealogy and formation of ‘Dominant Discourses’ and problamatizing many assumptions in the ‘Politics of Identity’ debate. Finally I look at the implication of his ‘state of exception’ when we are in a state of perpetual war. This has lead people to compare the way that way that the current US administration has reneged on many human rights treaties, rejected the Geneva Conventions on torture and rejected International law to the political to legal and political theory of Carl Schmitt. Although I previously thought that a political theorist who is associated with the Fascist governments of Hitler and Franco would be of no interest today it is the quality of the unresolved questions within Schmitt and the tacit acceptance of some of his central ideas that are still iimportant. This appraisal of his work has led me to question the theoretical underpinning of the ‘liberal democratic’ model and made me think that some of the current US administration’s policies are closer than most may think to a Fascist ideology.
Sebastian O’Brien May 2008 .
Bibliography
Books
Campbell, David, ‘Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity’ Revised Edition, 1998, Manchester University Press, Manchester.
Schmitt,Carl, ‘The Concept of the Political’ Wikibooks.com
Schmitt,Carl, ‘Political Theology’ Wikibooks.com
Blumenburg, Hans, ‘The Legitimacy of the Modern Age’ Cambridge, Massaxhusetts,1983
Huntington, Samuel P: ‘Who Are We? America’s Great Debate’, 2004, Simon & Schuster, London.
Huntington, Samuel P: ‘The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of World Order’, 1997, Simon & Schuster, London.
Gopal Balakrishnan, ‘The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt’ (New York: Verso, 2000),
Croft, Stuart, ‘Culture, Crisis and America’s War on Terror’ Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Hardt, Michael & Negri, Antonio, ‘Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire’ London UK, Penguin, 2005
Cox, Robert: ‘Social Forces, States and World Order: Beyond International Relations Theory’ in ‘Approaches to World Order’ Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press 1996.
Hobbes, Thomas, ‘Leviathan’ London UK, Penguin, 1968
Said, Edward, ‘Orientalism’ London UK, Penguin, 2003.
Articles and others
Grondin, David. ‘(Re)Writing the ‘National Security State’: How and Why Realists (Re)Built the(ir) Cold War’ Paper presented at the annual International Studies Association Convention March 17-20 2004.
Smith, Steven B.: ‘Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism’ Excerpt from pages 1-15 of Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism by Steven B. Smith, published by the University of Chicago Press. ©2006 by the University of Chicago.
Versluis, Arthur: ‘How Carl Schmitt Spawned Fascist America’ http://www.counterpunch.org/versluis08102006.html
Horton, Scott: ‘The Return of Carl Schmitt.’ Monday, November 07, 2005 www.balkin.com
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