The International Political thought of Carl Schmitt Quotes

“Along with Schmitt, neo-Aristotelianism is critical of the search for universal legal and/or moral rules, and, again following Schmitt, neo-Aristotelians associate this tendency with the characteristic moral theories of liberalism, in particular Kantianism and utilitarianism. However, unlike Schmitt, Toulmin at least locates the origin of this tendency not with the Anglo-American thought of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but much earlier – in fact, just at the point where Schmitt's jus publicum Europaeum is first established, in the early seventeenth century. This is when, Toulmin argues, the moral insights of Renaissance humanism and the classical world were put aside. Under the influence of Descartes and Hobbes, along with many lesser talents, formal logic came to displace rhetoric, general principles and abstract axioms were privileged over particular cases and concrete diversity, and the establishment of rules (or 'laws') that were deemed of permanent as opposed to transitory applicability came to be seen as the task of the theorist. Toulmin suggests that at this time moral reasoning became 'theory-centered' rather than 'practically-minded”
― Louiza Odysseos, The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal War and the Crisis of Global Order

“The League of Nations Covenant (which specifically endorses the Monroe Doctrine) represents the global extension of this hegemony. The US did not join the League, but American economic power underwrote the peace settlement and, eventually, in the Second World War, US military power was brought to bear to bring down the jus publicum Europaeum and replace it with 'international law', liberal internationalism and, incipiently, the notion of humanitarian intervention in support of the liberal, universalist, positions that the new order had set in place. On Schmitt's account, the two world wars were fought to bring this about – and the barbarism of modern warfare is to be explained by the undermining of the limits established in the old European order. In effect, the notion of a Just War has been reborn albeit without much of its theological underpinnings. The humanized warfare of the JPE with its recognition of the notion of a 'just enemy' is replaced by the older notion that the enemy is evil and to be destroyed – in fact, is no longer an 'enemy' within Schmitt's particular usage of the term but a 'foe' who can, and should, be annihilated. Schmitt”
― Louiza Odysseos, The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal War and the Crisis of Global Order

“It is equally easy to see how Schmitt associates this notion of international law with the United States – but it is worth noting that for Schmitt, unlike Carr and other realists, the liberal internationalism of Woodrow Wilson is not central to this critique, or rather is simply a continuation of early American policies. The key date here is not 1919 but 1823, the proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine which symbolizes the emergence of a new kind of imperial rule. The Monroe Doctrine purports to warn off European powers from attempting to take new territories in the Americas, but actually involves an assertion of American power over the rest of the Western hemisphere. This is a new kind of Empire, a hegemony under which the US dominates usually without actually formally ruling; the US often intervenes in the affairs of the lesser American powers, and sometimes does so militarily, but always in the name of progressive values and in the putative interests of the locals – this is a form of rule that is both more effective than traditional empire because it does not involve the usual administrative costs, but also more hypocritical, because it denies its own nature, pretending to exercise power only in the interests of others.”
― Louiza Odysseos, The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal War and the Crisis of Global Order

“The new thinking about war also opened up the possibility of neutrality as a legal status; since war was no longer justified in accordance with a theological judgement based on notions of good and evil, it became possible for third parties to stand aside if their interests were not engaged. Equally, the ordinary subjects of belligerent rulers need not feel obliged to become emotionally engaged in the fray. War becomes a matter for sovereigns and their servants, civil and military; the kind of wider involvement that might be appropriate to a war between good and evil becomes strictly optional.6”
― Louiza Odysseos, The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal War and the Crisis of Global Order

“As between European rulers within Europe, war became 'bracketed' – rationalized and humanized. Rather than a divine punishment, war became an act of state. Whereas in the medieval order the enemy must necessarily be seen as unjust (the alternative being that one was, oneself, unjust – clearly an intolerable prospect), the new humanitarian approach to war involved the possibility of the recognition of the other as a justus hostis, an enemy but a legitimate enemy, not someone who deserves to be annihilated, but someone in whom one can recognize oneself, always a good basis for a degree of restraint. This, for Schmitt, is the great achievement of the age, and the ultimate justification for – glory of, even – the sovereign state. [An]”
― Louiza Odysseos, The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal War and the Crisis of Global Order

“A superficial reading of Schmitt, focusing on his subtitle, might take the concept of the jus publicum Europaeum (hereafter JPE) to be synonymous with the notion of international law (Völkerrecht), but for Schmitt the two notions are completely different, indeed opposed to one another. Schmitt objects to the notion of international law for two, interconnected, reasons. First, international law lacks the spatial aspect which is central to the JPE; it purports to offer a universal account of international order, blurring the crucial distinction between the European and the non-European worlds. But second, and more important, international law is, for Schmitt, a progressive, liberal project which is subject to the same critique as he delivers against liberalism in general, namely that it undermines the political and acts as a cover for special interests.”
― Louiza Odysseos, The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal War and the Crisis of Global Order

“The 'Amboyna Massacre' of 1623 is perhaps the most famous illustration of this point. The Dutch and English East India companies were then competing for the spice trade of the East Indies; neither was satisfied with the division of the spoils set out in a trade treaty between the United Provinces and England of 1619, and in retaliation for an English attack on the Dutch 'Factory' on Jakarta, the Dutch at Amboyna on the Molucca Islands turned on the English Factory there – the ten English factors (i.e. traders) who survived the initial attack, and their nine Japanese assistants, were subsequently tortured to death. 6”
― Louiza Odysseos, The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal War and the Crisis of Global Order

“The European princes create among themselves a jus publicum Europaeum, a secular legal order under which they recognize each other's rights and interests, within Europe (the proviso here is crucial). Beyond the line, in the extra-European world, Europeans engage in large-scale appropriations of land, respecting neither the rights of the locals nor each other's rights, but within Europe a different modus vivendi is possible. In the extra-European world appalling atrocities occur which would not happen, or at least ought not to happen, in Europe.5”
― Louiza Odysseos, The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal War and the Crisis of Global Order