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March 31, 2006
A good question. How should one read Carl Schmitt's Der Nomos der Erde ---The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europeaum--- in view of the present European-American controversy about the unilateral assertions of power by the US?
On this Martti Koskenniemi says:
One alternative is to suggest that its critical analysis is largely correct.The United States is embarked on a morally-inspired crusade opposed by a Europe that invokes the formal law of sovereign equality under the United Nations Charter. There is undoubtedly something right in such an analysis. It is especially hard to avoid thinking about the American rhetoric of freedom as anempty form through which the United States asserts its unconditional sovereigntyover the world. This would be empire, and the only remaining question would be whether it is a "rational empire," inspired by genuine confidence in the universalityof the moral truth for which Washington decision-makers see themselves ascarriers (in Schmittian terms, the United States as a kind of "commissarial dictatorship" upholding the substantive constitution of the world by a suspension of its formal provisions); or whether the right characterization would be of a "cynical empire," lacking such faith though still using its language. Both alternatives would be compatible with understanding American acts in terms of a political theology (of freedom) in the strict Vitorian sense: one's unconditional deference to right authority as the sole standard of evaluation, whereby one's acts would be automatically virtuous whether their consequences were good or evil... This is the logic of (American) nationalism: the unquestioned authority of my (liberal democratic) country as the sole normative standard..
Well that is how I read the US assertion of unilateralism and hegemony--a cynical empire-- even though I do have doubts about the European conception of international law as a system of rules based on universal values expressed as human rights.
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Foreign relation are dominated by power politics. Australia has been somewhat unique under Howard in how little power politics it plays. We connect like gossamer threads to the "great and powerful friends" in an entirely uncritical nature.
We do not make bold efforts to increase our influence and power, we just don't even try. One of the biggest economies, militaries and best known nations on the planet, and we are too scared to stand on the global stage as a powerful entity.
Unusual.