Schmitt Kritik - Open Evidence Project

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Schmitt Kritik
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
2
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Schmitt Kritik ................................................................................................................................................. 1
Table of Contents ...................................................................................................................................... 2
Notes ......................................................................................................................................................... 4
Frontline .................................................................................................................................................... 7
K ............................................................................................................................................................ 8
Block Goodies.......................................................................................................................................... 13
Links .................................................................................................................................................... 14
Impacts ................................................................................................................................................ 33
Alternative........................................................................................................................................... 45
Absolute Enmity Stuff ......................................................................................................................... 49
Liberalism Kills Politics (turns Cede the Political) ............................................................................... 51
Solves K aff .......................................................................................................................................... 52
Framing (if not read in 1NC).................................................................................................................... 53
2NC ...................................................................................................................................................... 54
2NR ...................................................................................................................................................... 57
Overview(s) ............................................................................................................................................. 58
2NC ...................................................................................................................................................... 59
Framing 2NC (if read in the 1NC) ........................................................................................................ 60
2NR ...................................................................................................................................................... 61
Framing 2NR (if read in the 1NC) ........................................................................................................ 62
A/Ts ......................................................................................................................................................... 63
Enmity Inevitable ................................................................................................................................ 64
A/T Cede the Political.......................................................................................................................... 67
A/T Nationalism Bad ........................................................................................................................... 69
A/T Perm ............................................................................................................................................. 71
A/T Perm Doublebind ......................................................................................................................... 74
A/T Perm – Reject in all other instances ............................................................................................. 75
A/T Realism ......................................................................................................................................... 77
A/T Schmitt=Nazi ................................................................................................................................ 78
A/T Schmitt=Neocon ........................................................................................................................... 81
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
3
A/T Schmitt=Realist............................................................................................................................. 83
A/T Truth Claims ................................................................................................................................. 86
A/T You Cause Violence and Genocide ............................................................................................... 87
A/T “You’re Racist” ............................................................................................................................. 92
A/T Various War/Bad Stuff.................................................................................................................. 93
A/T Zizek.............................................................................................................................................. 94
Theory ..................................................................................................................................................... 95
Framework .......................................................................................................................................... 96
Condo ................................................................................................................................................ 100
Misc Cards ............................................................................................................................................. 102
Schmitt and Radical Democracy........................................................................................................ 103
A/T Hobbesian Critique of Schmitt ................................................................................................... 104
Democracy and the State of Nature ................................................................................................. 105
Aff Answers ........................................................................................................................................... 107
Alt = Genocide and stuffz .................................................................................................................. 108
Alt =/= Solve ...................................................................................................................................... 109
A/T Gitmo .......................................................................................................................................... 110
Cede the Political .............................................................................................................................. 112
Framework Cards .............................................................................................................................. 114
Free Trade Good ............................................................................................................................... 116
Heg Turn ............................................................................................................................................ 117
Impact Answer .................................................................................................................................. 120
Lank Turns ......................................................................................................................................... 121
Liberalism Good ................................................................................................................................ 126
Liberalism solves ............................................................................................................................... 127
Peace is inevitable............................................................................................................................. 128
Perm .................................................................................................................................................. 130
Schmitt=Nazi ..................................................................................................................................... 131
The K Isn’t Special ............................................................................................................................. 133
Theorizing Trades off with action ..................................................................................................... 134
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
4
Notes
Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) was a German legal philosopher, and so called “Crown Jurist of the Third
Reich”. He advocated, among other things that this kritik does not cover, a clear definition of friend from
enemy. He said that “the political”, that is to say the space in which the citizenry interact, is made up by
friend/enemy distinctions, much like aesthetics is made up of beautiful/ugly, moral by good/evil, and so
on *cue Zizek…*. He thinks (and his contemporaries write more extensively about this) that defining
friend from enemy is key to preventing wars and conflicts from escalating to the point of genocide or a
war for morals.
This argument is best read against aff’s that advocate some type of Levinasian ethics (that is to say, the
inclusion of the other, we’re all equal, stuff like that) because it is a direct response to Levinas/. Then
again, this argument can really be read against any aff that advocates some form of liberalism and even
free trade (as you shall see in the links section).
Also, a lot of times, I refer to the “friend/enemy” dichotomy as “the fundamental
distinction/dichotomy”, they are one in the same.
-peter
Types of Enmity
Thorup ‘6 [Mikkel Thorup - Ph.D.-dissertation, Institute of Philosophy and the History of Ideas,
Department of the History of Ideas, University of Aarhus, Denmark, “In Defence of Enmity
- Critiques of Liberal Globalism”, published January 2006, accessed 7/7/13,
<https://pure.au.dk/portal/files/1125531/In_defence_of_enmity_-_pdf.pdf>] //pheft
Conventional enmity (or just enmity). This is the ideal according to which the other enmities are¶
measured. This is the great achievement of the nation state era. It is also what we here describe as¶ political enmity.
It describes a relation of enmity between states who recognize, fight and negotiate¶ with each other.
The conventional just enemy is recognized as an equal and the war is thus¶ contained through
international law and a codex of honour among combatants. This concept of¶ enmity arises through the detheologization and de-moralization of international relations. Silete¶ theologi!, as Schmitt is fond of saying. The new nation state order was
conditioned upon a¶ ‘dethronement of the theologists’ (1985: 65). Julien Freund (1996: 65) reminds us of Oldendorp, a¶ sixteenth century
Lutheran jurist who “used to say that a just war was ultimately no war, but the¶ work of justice, whereas the unjust war was no war either, but
a rebellion against the just order.¶ Thus verbal dialectic finally does away with the act of war”. But only on a verbal plane. In
the¶ world of
flesh and bone, warfare was endemic; and it was the banishment of just war in favour of¶ the just
enemy who ultimately stopped the ferocious religious wars and created the interstate order.¶ It marks
a transition from a discriminatory concept of war and enmity, where the enemy is a moral ¶ or religious
enemy to be destroyed, to a non-discriminatory concept, where no one can claim moral¶ superiority
and where the political enemy is (only) to be defeated, not destroyed (2003c). In a¶ Schmitt-inspired text, Paul
Hirst (2001a: 59) elaborates: “Reason of state limits the enmity of¶ interstate relations in that it makes them a
matter of pure power technique: one’s enemy is not an¶ implacable foe but an honourable opponent
in a conflict of interests”. The enemy is not a criminal.¶ The clear demarcations between war and
peace, internal and external, combatant and¶ civilian/neutral help contain the enmity and its
implications. It is a limited and regulated enmity, a¶ ‘duel’ between equal sovereigns. The aim is to impose our will on the
other, not to annihilate him.¶ In a footnote to the 1963-edition of Begriff des Politischen, Schmitt explicates the meaning of the¶
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
5
conventional concept of enmity as consisting not in the elimination of the enemy but in “the¶ prevention, in the clash of forces and in the
creation of a common border” (1996a: 119).¶ This is why he insists on the autonomy of the political decision. It is not informed by or
dependent¶ upon other criteria: “The
political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he does
not¶ have to be an economic competitor” (1996a: 27). In actual politics, this is of course not true: “In¶ psychological reality the
enemy is often treated as evil or ugly because every demarcation – not¶ least the political which is the strongest and most intensive distinction
and grouping – uses all¶ available differentiations as support. But this changes nothing of the autonomy of such oppositions”¶ (1996a: 28). To
Schmitt, this concept of enmity is tied to the nation state and his concern for the¶ decline of the nation
state is intimately connected to the re-emergence of other kinds of enmities. As¶ Andreas Behnke (2004: 285)
says: “In order to channel violence into structured conflict, the State is¶ based on the territorialization and spatialization of the decision
between Friend and Enemy”. Once¶ the
connection between state, territory and decision is loosened the
conventional enmity is dissolved¶ in favour of other more sinister and less containable forms. The
paradigmatic war of conventional¶ enmity is the interstate war.¶ Real enmity is an enmity, which
cannot be contained within or by international law. The prime¶ example is the partisan, a non-state
contractor of violence, where the rules of law do not and cannot¶ apply as they are characterized by
the opposite of the regular army: they hide their status as¶ combatants, they merge with the civilian
population; they evade the battle; they have no clear¶ hierarchical chain of command: “The partisan leads
the regular army away from the traditional¶ theatre of war and into a secret clandestine underground war, without traditional fronts, without¶
emblems or uniforms” (Slomp 2005: 510). Real
enmity, according to Schmitt, emerges where a war¶ is being
fought by the population or segments of it to expel an intruder. Its first appearance was,¶ according to Schmitt, in the
opposition to Napoleon’s war on Spain and Prussia. Napoleon’s army¶ can be considered the first modern army with mass mobilization,
national conscription, national¶ propaganda etc. And at the same moment its counter-force emerges. This shows
the precarious¶
nature of the conventional enmity, which produces its own challengers and the fight against the¶
partisan takes on an irregular form, where the fight against the partisan entails copying his tactics. ¶
The partisan explodes the distinction between enemy and criminal. The partisan knows that his¶ opponents
consider him a criminal acting outside both juridical and moral law. The partisan on his¶ part tries to gain political status as a military and
political opponent, that is, to turn the real enmity¶ into a conventional one, although his tactics consistently hinders this transformation.¶
What distinguishes real enmity from the absolute enmity (to be discussed next) is its connection to¶
territory. The struggle may be fierce, fought with unconventional means and between combatants¶ who do not recognize each other as
legitimate others, but it is geographically as well as temporally¶ limited. The goal is to expel the invader, not to
exterminate him. We could add that during the¶ decolonialization struggles, once the colonizing force
was expelled, the disrecognized partisan force¶ often transformed itself into a recognized, legitimate
and sovereign state. The partisan blurs the¶ distinction of nation state modernity, peace/war, inside/outside, domestic/foreign, which
add to the¶ transformation of enmity, but it still has strong elements of the political, as understood by Schmitt,¶ within it. It is highly significant
that Schmitt says that partisan warfare started when, for the first¶ time, a people “pre-bourgeois, pre-industrial, pre-conventional” clashed
with the army of the French¶ Revolution (2002: 11). A people tied to the native earth versus a universalizing force. Both the¶ conventional and
the real enmity have its limiting factor in the relationship to the earth. It is a true¶ relation between man and earth, which also helps explain
Schmitt’s positive attitude towards the tellurian partisan (we’ll return to the two partisan types in chapter 8).31 Hence,
real enmity is¶
relative and defensive rather than absolute and aggressive. The paradigmatic war of real enmity is ¶
war of liberation and its present manifestation could be interethnic civil wars where, as Mary ¶ Kaldor
(1999: 98) says, “the main method of territorial control is not popular support … but¶ population
displacement – getting rid of all possible opponents”. One should not mistake real¶ enmity for a benign or bloodless
enmity, should such a form exist.¶ Absolute enmity (or total enmity) is the radicalization of real enmity. The goal
is no longer concrete¶ and limited but total and universal. Whereas real enmity is carried by ‘freedom
fighters’ liberating¶ an occupied nation, absolute enmity is carried by world-aggressive actors fighting
for an abstract¶ notion of justice. The goal is liberation of mankind. Schmitt sees this figure as a degeneration of the¶ telluric
partisan. The world-aggressive partisan has cut his connection to the ‘real’, concrete fight;¶ the local fight is only one front in a global struggle.
The telluric partisan locates his enemy in a¶ concrete geographical and historical setting, whereas the world-aggressive partisan views his
enemy¶ as a universal enemy: A
class, a race, a religion. In chapter 8 we’ll discuss how a real conflict may ¶
easily slide into an absolute one. The enemy is de-humanized; he stands in the way of the final¶
liberation and his total destruction is hence both necessary and justified. This is a war without¶
limitations. All containments are dissolved; all demarcations other than that between friend and¶ enemy are meaningless.
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
6
Distinction between “enemy” and “foe”
Prozorov ‘6 [Sergei Prozorov - University of Helsinki, Department of Political and Economic Studies,
“Liberal Enmity: The Figure of the Foe in the Political Ontology of Liberalism”, published in Millennium Journal of International Studies 2006 35: 75, accessed 7/15/13, mil.sagepub] //pheft
Schmitt makes a distinction between hostis and inimicus to stress¶ the specificity of the relationship of
a properly political enmity. The¶ concept of inimicus belongs to the realm of the private and concerns¶
various forms of moral, aesthetic or economic resentment, revulsion or¶ hate that are connoted by the archaic English
word ‘foe’, whose return¶ into everyday circulation was taken by Schmitt as an example of the¶ collapse of the political into the moral.31
In contrast, the concept of hostis¶ is limited to the public realm and concerns the existential threat
posed¶ to the form of life of the community either from the inside or from the¶ outside. In simple terms, the enemy (hostis) is
what we confront, fight¶ and seek to defeat in the public realm, to which it also belongs, while the¶ foe
(inimicus) is what we despise and seek either to transform into a more¶ acceptable life-form or to
annihilate. Contrary to Zizek’s attribution of the¶ ‘ultra-politics of the foe’ to Schmitt, he persistently emphasised that the¶ enemy
conceptually need not and normatively should not be reduced to¶ the foe: ‘The enemy in the political sense need not be
hated personally.’ 32¶ In Schmitt’s argument, during the twentieth century such a reduction¶ entailed the destruction of the symbolic
framework of managing enmity¶ on the basis of equality and the consequent absolutisation of enmity, i.e.¶ the actualisation of the ‘most
extreme possibility’:¶ [Presently] the war is considered to constitute the absolute last war of¶ humanity. Such a war is necessarily unusually
intense and inhuman¶ because, by transcending the limits of the political framework, it¶ simultaneously degrades the enemy into moral and
other categories¶ and is forced to make of him a monster that must not only be defeated¶ but also utterly destroyed. In other words, he is an
enemy who no¶ longer must be compelled to retreat into his borders only.33
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
7
Frontline
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
8
K
Absent specific link: The Liberal Mindset serves to homogenize difference and eliminate the enemy in
the name of “equality” – this non-innate concept takes all significance out of the political
Rasch ‘5 [William Rasch – professor of Germanic Studies, “Lines in the Sand: Enmity as a
Structuring Principle”, published The South Atlantic Quarterly 104:2, Spring 2005, accessed 6/21/13,
PDF] //pheft
With its pacific presuppositions, liberalism, according to Schmitt, dissolves¶ the specificity of the
political and hides the necessarily asymmetric¶ power relations that mark all political maneuverings. By
way of an anthropological¶ sleight of hand, liberalism represents itself as an ethos, a moral¶ and economic emancipation, and not as what it
really is, namely, a power political¶ regime with traditional power-political aims. For
Schmitt, distinctions,¶ rather than the
effacement of distinctions, structure the space within¶ which we live, including the space of the
political. Only within structured¶ space, space literally marked by human activities, by human
groupings and¶ the boundaries they draw, do terms achieve their meanings. Norms, he¶ repeatedly stated, are
derived from situations, normal situations; they are¶ not derived logically from underived first principles. Categories like ‘‘liberty’’¶
and ‘‘equality’’ can have political significance only when defined and¶ delineated within the sphere of
the political. They are neither natural nor¶ innately human qualities; they are not self-evident truths.
Consequently,¶ Schmitt’s suspicion of liberalism, pacifism, or any other -ism that denies an¶ initial and
therefore ever-present potential war of all against all is a suspicion¶ of those who wish to make their
operative distinctions invisible, and¶ thus incontestable, by claiming the immorality or illegality of all
distinction.¶ Schmitt’s insistence, then, on our ‘‘evil’’ nature is evidence neither of his¶ existential misanthropy nor even, necessarily, of his
conservative authoritarianism,¶ but rather of his desire to secure the autonomy and necessity of¶ that human mechanism called ‘‘the political.’’
To the question of whether¶ there is a war, Schmitt emphatically answers ‘‘yes’’—by which he means to¶ affirm not armed conflict or
bloodshed as a virtue in and of itself, but rather¶ the necessity of the view that the proverbial state of nature is, as Hobbes¶ knew, a state
marked by imperfection, and that this imperfection manifests¶ itself as violence and the guilt associated with it.
This attempt at constant peace leads to more violence because all else that is deemed a threat to the
peace must be rooted out and destroyed – leads to worse forms of dehumanization and turns the aff
Rasch ‘5 [William Rasch – professor of Germanic Studies, “Lines in the Sand: Enmity as a
Structuring Principle”, published The South Atlantic Quarterly 104:2, Spring 2005, accessed 6/21/13,
PDF] //pheft
In The Concept of the Political, Schmitt concludes that ‘‘all genuine political¶ theories presuppose man to be evil, i.e., by no means an
unproblematic¶ but a dangerous and dynamic being.’’2 This anthropological fiction—and¶ Schmitt is aware of the claim’s fictional status—
serves as the logical premise¶ that secures Schmitt’s definition of the political as the friend/enemy¶ distinction. We
live in a world, he
says, in which associations with likeminded¶ others are our only means of security and happiness.
Indiscriminate¶ concourse of all with all cannot be the foundation for necessary political¶ discriminations. Thus, the anthropological
presupposition of evil, guilt,¶ and violence is designed to expose what Schmitt sees as the duplicity of¶
liberal theory, which consists in using the promise of formal equality to¶ camouflage political power
by displacing it in the realms of economics and¶ morality. Liberal theory denies original enmity by
assuming the innate¶ goodness of the human being. Those—communitarians and liberals alike—¶ who
say there is no war presuppose a counterfactual ‘‘ontological priority of¶ non-violence,’’ a ‘‘state of
total peace’’ 3 that invites universal inclusion based¶ on the ‘‘essential homogeneity and natural
virtue of mankind.’’ 4 If, in such¶ a benign state of nature, violence were to break out, such violence
would be¶ considered a perversion and, if all else were to fail, would have to be extirpated¶ by an
even greater violence. To cite John Locke, this ‘‘State of perfect¶ Freedom’’ and universal ‘‘Equality,’’ governed solely by reason and
natural¶ law, can be disturbed only by an ‘‘Offender’’ who ‘‘declares himself to live by¶ another Rule, than that of reason and common Equity.’’
Such a ‘‘Criminal’’¶ has ‘‘declared War against all Mankind, and therefore may be destroyed as a¶ Lyon
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
9
or a Tyger, one of those wild Savage Beasts, with whom Men can have¶ no Society nor Security.’’ 5 The
political, on this view, emerges only as the¶ result of the Fall—that is, emerges only to fight the war against war, a war¶ always initiated by a
sinful or bestial other. It seeks to make itself superfluous¶ by restoring or, more progressively, establishing for the first time this¶ natural order
of peace. Should
one demur and find the perfect state to be¶ less than advertised, then one’s demurral
would most assuredly be recognized not as legitimate political opposition, but rather as evidence of
greed,¶ moral perversity, or some other pathological behavior.
The alternative is to embrace enmity, to draw clear lines in the sand defining “us” from “them”. This is
manifest in a rejection of the affirmative’s liberal policies.
Empirically this stops conflict from escalating
Rasch ‘5 [William Rasch – professor of Germanic Studies, “Lines in the Sand: Enmity as a
Structuring Principle”, published The South Atlantic Quarterly 104:2, Spring 2005, accessed 6/21/13,
PDF] //pheft
In Nomos, Schmitt describes the now much maligned and seldom¶ mourned European nation-state system as ‘‘the highest form of order
within¶ the scope of human power’’ (187). Historically, the territorial state developed¶ as a response to the religious civil wars of the sixteenth
and early¶ seventeenth centuries. Once thought of as a unity called Christendom,¶ Europe became fractured by the events of the Reformation
and Counter-¶ Reformation. The old asymmetrical distinction between believers and nonbelievers¶ that governed the relationship not only
between Christians and¶ non-Christians, but also between Christian orthodoxy and heresy, now¶ threatened to regulate the distinction
between Catholics and Protestants.¶ Yet,
miraculously (one might be tempted to say), with the conclusion of¶
religious warfare in 1648, a symmetrical relationship among the European¶ nation-states prevailed—
in theory, if not always in fact. It is this symmetrical¶ ordering of internally differentiated Europe that Schmitt highlights. In¶
effect—and Hobbes had already described it in these terms—the war of all¶ individuals against all individuals in the state of nature, which
perennially¶ threatens to resurface within the state as civil discord, is elevated into a war¶ of all states against all states in a second-order state
of nature.¶ In theory and practice, then, the individual is protected from arbitrary¶ and irrational, because incalculable, violence by states acting
as moral¶ persons living in an unregulated but serendipitously achieved balance of¶ power. We
might best update Schmitt’s
description of this order as an ideally¶ anarchic, self-regulating coexistence of antagonistic powers, an
emergent,¶ horizontal self-organization of sovereign systems with no one system serving ¶ as sovereign
over all the others—a plurality of states that refused to¶ coalesce into one single state but rather
achieved relative security without¶ relinquishing autonomy. The ‘‘medium’’ of this self-organization
was violence¶ (war); yet, by virtue of mechanisms of reciprocity, by virtue, that is,¶ of a similarly
emergent self-regulation of violence called international law¶ (the jus public um Europaeum of which
Schmitt sings his praises), the conduct¶ of warfare among European states was restrained and
controlled. Thus, the¶ nation-state way of organizing early modern Europe served as the katechon,¶
the political as restrainer, establishing relative stability and peace to stave¶ off chaos and civil war.¶ ¶
How is this possible? Despite its internal self-differentiation, Europe still¶ saw itself as a unity because of a second major distinction, the one
between¶ Europe and the New World, where New World denotes the entire¶ non-European world, but especially the newly ‘‘discovered’’
regions of the¶ globe following Columbus’s three voyages. This distinction was asymmetrical;¶ on the one side we find Christianity and culture,
on the other only¶ pagan ‘‘barbarians.’’ How did Europeans mark this difference between a¶ self-differentiated ‘‘us’’ and a homogenous
‘‘them’’? Through violence. Only¶ now, violence was regulated hierarchically by the traditional ‘‘just war’’ doctrine.¶ Schmitt
clearly
marks the difference between symmetrical and asymmetrical¶ modes of warfare (thus the difference
between warfare ‘‘this side’’¶ versus the ‘‘other side’’ of so-called amity lines that separated Old
Europe¶ from the New World) as the difference between wars fought against ‘‘just¶ enemies’’ and
those fought for a ‘‘just cause.’’ The former recognize a commonality¶ among combatants that allows
for reciprocity; the latter does not.¶ Wars fought against enemies one respects as occupiers of the
same cultural¶ ‘‘space,’’ no matter how subdivided, allows for the desirable constraints on¶ the
conduct of war. Wars fought against infidels, pagans, and barbarians,¶ whether these barbarians deny
the one God, the laws of nature, the truth of¶ reason, or the higher morality of liberalism, are wars
fought against those¶ who are not to be respected or accorded the rights granted equals.8 To be in¶
possession of truth, no matter how much that truth is debated internally,¶ allows one to stand over against the other as a conglomerated unity.
This¶ self-differentiated unity can assume the restrained and restraining order¶ of civilization because it has inoculated itself against outbreaks
of ‘‘natural’’¶ and lawless violence by displacing them in the NewWorld. America, as¶ Hobbes and others imagined it, was the preeminent site
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
10
of the feared state¶ of nature; thus Europe was spared any recurrence of the civil wars that had¶ previously ravaged it.¶ ¶ What Schmitt
describes as an enviable achievement—that is, the balanced¶ order of restrained violence within Europe—presupposed the consignment¶ of
unrestrained violence to the rest of the world. That is, desired¶ restraint was founded upon sanctioned lack of restraint. If Schmitt, by
concentrating¶ on the development of European international law after the religious¶ civil wars, highlights an admirable local result of a
disagreeable global¶ process, this can be attributed to his explicit Eurocentrism. But even non-¶ Eurocentrics may be dismayed by the
twentieth-century reintroduction of¶ unrestricted violence within Europe itself. The epitome of this return of the¶ repressed may be the
midcentury death camp, as Giorgio Agamben maintains,¶ 9 but its initial breakthrough is the Great War of the century’s second¶ decade. For
how else can one explain that a traditional European power¶ struggle that started in 1914 as a war fought for state interest should end in¶
1918–19 as a war fought by ‘‘civilization’’ against its ‘‘barbarian’’ other? And¶ how else can one explain that we have been so eager to replicate
this distinction¶ in every war we have fought ever since? If,
in other words, we are¶ rightly horrified by the distinction
between civilized and uncivilized when¶ it is used to describe the relationship of Old Europe and its
colonial subjects,¶ and if we are rightly horrified by the distinction between the human and the¶ in- or
subhuman when it is used to discriminate against blacks, Jews, Gypsies,¶ and other so-called
undesirables, then why do we persist today in using¶ these very distinctions when combating our
latest enemies? Is it merely¶ ironic or in fact profoundly symptomatic that those who most
vehemently¶ affirm universal symmetry (equality, democracy) are also more often than¶ not the ones
who opt for the most asymmetrical means of locating enemies¶ and conducting war—that is, just wars
fought for a just cause?
Absent our dichotomy the other is seen as barbaric and not respected thus leading to atrocities –
turns the aff
Rasch ‘5 [William Rasch – professor of Germanic Studies, “Lines in the Sand: Enmity as a
Structuring Principle”, published The South Atlantic Quarterly 104:2, Spring 2005, accessed 6/21/13,
PDF] //pheft
How is this possible? Despite its internal self-differentiation, Europe still¶ saw itself as a unity because of a second major distinction, the one
between¶ Europe and the New World, where New World denotes the entire¶ non-European world, but especially the newly ‘‘discovered’’
regions of the¶ globe following Columbus’s three voyages. This distinction was asymmetrical;¶ on the one side we find Christianity and culture,
on the other only¶ pagan ‘‘barbarians.’’ How did Europeans mark this difference between a¶ self-differentiated ‘‘us’’ and a homogenous
‘‘them’’? Through violence. Only¶ now, violence was regulated hierarchically by the traditional ‘‘just war’’ doctrine.¶ Schmitt
clearly
marks the difference between symmetrical and asymmetrical¶ modes of warfare (thus the difference
between warfare ‘‘this side’’¶ versus the ‘‘other side’’ of so-called amity lines that separated Old
Europe¶ from the New World) as the difference between wars fought against ‘‘just¶ enemies’’ and
those fought for a ‘‘just cause.’’ The former recognize a commonality¶ among combatants that allows
for reciprocity; the latter does not.¶ Wars fought against enemies one respects as occupiers of the
same cultural¶ ‘‘space,’’ no matter how subdivided, allows for the desirable constraints on¶ the
conduct of war. Wars fought against infidels, pagans, and barbarians,¶ whether these barbarians deny
the one God, the laws of nature, the truth of¶ reason, or the higher morality of liberalism, are wars
fought against those¶ who are not to be respected or accorded the rights granted equals.8 To be in¶
possession of truth, no matter how much that truth is debated internally,¶ allows one to stand over against the other as a conglomerated unity.
This¶ self-differentiated unity can assume the restrained and restraining order¶ of civilization because it has inoculated itself against outbreaks
of ‘‘natural’’¶ and lawless violence by displacing them in the NewWorld. America, as¶ Hobbes and others imagined it, was the preeminent site
of the feared state¶ of nature; thus Europe was spared any recurrence of the civil wars that had¶ previously ravaged it.¶ What Schmitt describes
as an enviable achievement—that is, the balanced¶ order of restrained violence within Europe—presupposed the consignment¶ of
unrestrained violence to the rest of the world. That is, desired¶ restraint was founded upon sanctioned lack of restraint. If Schmitt, by
concentrating¶ on the development of European international law after the religious¶ civil wars, highlights an admirable local result of a
disagreeable global¶ process, this can be attributed to his explicit Eurocentrism. But even non-¶ Eurocentrics may be dismayed by the
twentieth-century reintroduction of¶ unrestricted violence within Europe itself. The epitome of this return of the¶ repressed may be the
midcentury death camp, as Giorgio Agamben maintains,¶ 9 but its initial breakthrough is the Great War of the century’s second¶ decade. For
how else can one explain that a traditional European power¶ struggle that started in 1914 as a war fought for state interest should end in¶
1918–19 as a war fought by ‘‘civilization’’ against its ‘‘barbarian’’ other? And¶ how else can one explain that we have been so eager to replicate
this distinction¶ in every war we have fought ever since? If,
in other words, we are¶ rightly horrified by the distinction
between civilized and uncivilized when¶ it is used to describe the relationship of Old Europe and its
colonial subjects,¶ and if we are rightly horrified by the distinction between the human and the¶ in- or
subhuman when it is used to discriminate against blacks, Jews, Gypsies,¶ and other so-called
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
11
undesirables, then why do we persist today in using¶ these very distinctions when combating our
latest enemies? Is it merely¶ ironic or in fact profoundly symptomatic that those who most
vehemently¶ affirm universal symmetry (equality, democracy) are also more often than¶ not the ones
who opt for the most asymmetrical means of locating enemies¶ and conducting war—that is, just wars
fought for a just cause?
--If you want
The Political is the distinction between friend/enemy
Schmitt ’32 [Carl Schmitt – the illist of all the German Legal Philosophers, “The Concept of the Political”,
published as Der Begriff des Politischen in 1932, accessed 6/23/13, pg. 25-27, Print] //pheft
A definition of the political can be obtained only by discovering and defining the specifically political categories. In contrast to the various
relatively independent endeavors of human thought and action, particular the moral, aesthetic, and economic, the political has its own criteria
which express themselves in a characteristic way. The
political must therefore rest on its own ultimate distinctions,
to which all action with a specifically political meaning can be traced. Let us assume that in the realm
of morality the final distinctions are between good and evil, in aesthetes beautiful and ugly, in
economics, profitable and unprofitable. The question then is whether there is also a special distinction
which can serve as a simple criterion of the political and of what it consists. The nature of such a
political distinction is surely different from that of those others. It is independent of them and as such can speak
clearly for itself.¶ The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is
that between friend and enemy.* This provides a definition in the sense of a criterion and not as an
exhaustive definition or one indicative of substantial content.** Insofar as it is not derived from other
criteria, the antithesis of friend and enemy corresponds to the relatively independent criteria of other
antithesis: good and evil in the moral sphere, beautiful and ugly in the aesthetic sphere, and so on. In
any event it is independent, not in the sense of a distinct new domain, but in that it can neither be based on any one antithesis or any
combination of other antitheses, nor can it be traced to these. If the antithesis of good and evil is not simply identical with that of beautiful and
ugly, profitable and unprofitable, and cannot be directly reduced to the others, then the antithesis of friend and enemy must even less be
confused with or mistaken for the others. The
distinction of friend and enemy denotes the utmost degree of
intensity of a union or separation, of an association or dissociation. It can exist theoretically and
practically, without having simultaneously to draw upon all those moral, aesthetic, economic, or other
distinctions. The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as
an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business
transactions. But he is, nevertheless, 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 can neither be decided by previously determined general norm nor by the judgment of a
disinterested and therefore neutral third party.¶ 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. Emotionally the enemy is
easily treated as being evil and ugly, because every distinction, most of all the political, as the strongest and most intense of the distinctions and
categorizations, draws upon other distinctions for support. This does not alter the autonomy of such distinctions. Consequently, the reverse is
also true: the morally evil, aesthetically ugly or economically damaging need not necessarily be the enemy; the morally good, aesthetically
beautiful, and economically profitable need not necessarily become the friend in the specially political sense of the word. Thereby the
inherently objective nature and autonomy of the political becomes evident by virtue of its being able to treat, distinguish, and comprehend the
friend-enemy antithesis independently of other antitheses.
The Role of the ballot is to determine which acts are politically important in the context of the
political
Schmitt ’22 [Carl Schmitt – the illist of all the German Legal Philosophers, “Political Theology: Four
Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty”, published Politische Theologie: Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der
Souveranitat © 1922, accessed 6/22/13, PDF] //pheft
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
12
All these objections fail to recognize that the conception of¶ personality and its connection with formal authority arose from¶ a specific juristic
interest, namely, an especially dear awareness¶ of what the essence of the legal decision entails. Such
a decision¶ in the broadest
sense belongs to every legal perception. Every¶ legal thought brings a legal idea, which in its purity can
never¶ become reality, into another aggregate condition and adds an¶ element that cannot be derived
either from the content of the¶ legal idea or from the content of a general positive legal norm¶ that is
to be applied. Every concrete juristic decision contains a¶ moment of indifference from the perspective of content, because¶ the juristic
deduction is not traceable in the last detail to its¶ premises and because the circumstance that requires a decision¶ remains an independently
determining moment. This has nothing¶ to do with the causal and psychological origins of such a decision,¶ even though the abstract decision
as such is also of significance,¶ but with the determination of the legal value. The
certainty of¶ the decision is, from the
perspective of sociology, of particular¶ interest in an age of intense commercial activity because in
numerous¶ cases commerce is less concerned with a particular content¶ than with a calculable
certainty. (So that I can accommodate¶ myself accordingly, I am often less interested in how a timetable¶ determines times of departure
and arrival in a particular case¶ than in its functioning reliably.) Legal communication offers an¶ example of such a concern in the so-called
formal strictness of¶ the exchange law. The legal interest in the decision as such should¶ not be mixed up with this kind of calculability. It
is
rooted in¶ the character of the normative and is derived from the necessity¶ of judging a concrete fact
concretely even though what is given¶ as a standard for the judgment is only a legal principle in its¶
general universality. Thus a transformation takes place every¶ time. That the legal idea cannot
translate itself independently is¶ evident from the fact that it says nothing about who should apply¶ it.
In every transformation there is present an auctoritatis interpositio.¶ A distinctive determination of which individual person or which¶ concrete
body can assume such an authority cannot be derived¶ from the mere legal quality of a maxim. This is the difficulty¶ that Krabbe ignored.¶
That it is the instance of competence that renders a decision¶ makes the decision relative, and in
certain circumstances absolute¶ and independent of the correctness of its content. This terminates¶
any further discussion about whether there may still be some¶ doubt. The decision becomes instantly independent
of argumentative¶ substantiation and receives an autonomous value. The¶ entire theoretical and practical meaning of this is revealed in the¶
theory of the faulty act of state. A legal validity is attributed to¶ a wrong and faulty decision. The wrong decision contains a constitutive¶
element precisely because of its falseness. But what is¶ inherent in the idea of the decision is that there can never be¶ absolutely declaratory
decisions. That constitutive, specific element¶ of a decision is, from the perspective of the content of the¶ underlying norm, new and alien.
Looked at normatively, the¶ decision emanates from nothingness. The
legal force of a decision¶ is different from the
result of substantiation. Ascription is not¶ achieved with the aid of a norm; it happens the other way
around.¶ A point of ascription first determines what a norm is and what¶ normative rightness is. A
point of ascription cannot be derived¶ from a norm, only a quality of a content. The formal in the¶ specifically
legal sense contrasts with this quality of content, not¶ with the quantitative content of a causal connection. It should¶ be understood that this
last contrast is of no consequence to¶ jurisprudence.
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
13
Block Goodies
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
14
Links
Mega Generic
Defining and recognizing the other produces order and prevents conflicts from escalating
Galli ’10 [Carlo Galli teaches History of Political Thought at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy,
University of Bologna, “Carl Schmitt and the Global Age,” published in CR: The New Centennial Review
Volume 10, Number 2, Fall 2010, accessed 7/15/13, web] //pheft
Schmitt’s thought is the deconstruction of modern political theory: this is true both in internal politics
for the exception/decision theory and the “political” theory (which is a genealogy of the Hobbesian
rational state theory) and in international politics with the theory of nomos and the theory of the
partisan (which are genealogical complications of geopolitics and state-based international rights).
This means that the conflictual element in Schmitt’s political thought (the enemy has an ineradicable
role in the creation of order both in the theory of the “political,” in the theory of decision of the
secularized theologico-political matrix, and in the theory of constituent power) is not an apologia for
absolute conflict but serves the orientation of order and the political unity inherent in modern
political theory, as well as in Schmittian thought. In Schmitt, this functionality is never complete
instrumentality of the conflict of order, nor complete subordination: rather, it is the perpetual
disturbance of that order by originary, internal conflict, as well as perpetual indeterminateness of
order on the part of the conflict through which originally determines it. ¶ From the viewpoint of internal politics,
the “political”, through its friend/enemy relation, is the permanent presence of the conflict at the
origin of order and, through decision, at its interior; it is thus a radical and determinate conflict which
exists always in relation with order, inasmuch as it is a deficiency which demands and provokes a regulating political resolution.
In short, the “political” is a function of dismantling but, at the same time, it is a structuring function: it
is crisis, but also order. In this way, modern political form, in that it openly utilizes the “political,” is architectural nihilism. ¶ The
spatial difference between internal and external—corresponding to the distinction between enemy
and criminal, peace and war, police and military—which constitutes modern politics is welcomed by
Schmitt as strategic; but confining disorder to the exterior while keeping peace in the interior requires
that the state recognizes, preserves, and manages the originary disorder. For the state to be closed, capable of
setting boundaries and of separating order from disorder, it must be open to the “political”, it must therefore know how to initiate coercion to
form and the co-implication of order and disorder when deciding upon the exception.¶ The
thesis of the existence of a dialectic
of Modernity is central to Schmitt’s thought. Political, ideological and material forces—a social
interlacing of individualism, liberalism and liberal democracy, normativism and moralism, technology,
and capitalist and communist economies— form within the state, robbing it of its sovereign governing
capabilities, substituting indeterminate universality for concreteness and requiring that the “political”
take the place of economics, law, and technology (from the Hobbesian origin of state). Logics of Modernity
run from concrete to abstract, from determinate to universal, and from political to social. ¶ The evolution of the Modern requires that decision
be supplanted by reason as the origin or order. Reason, for Schmitt is as much liberal discussion as it is every attempt to completely eliminate
conflict and political action and to trust instead in rational hypotheses of automatic reconciliation. Society—most of all the political
organizations born within society, the political parties and advocacy groups that are the essence of democracy—invades the State, and ends up
transforming its own pretext of stability and form into mobilization and formlessness: the result is the “total-through-weakness state” posited
by Schmitt in 1931-32, to which he opposes the total state, then the empire and the greater space. Schmitt’s objective, already evident in his
early works, is to oppose himself to this drift from modern nihilism and this abstraction of the concrete, to delay it and combat it from the
interior, to renew the Modern’s capacity for concreteness by using its highest moments of crisis as points of departure, and to see the katechon
(the slowing, formative force of immanence processes which deals with the opening into transcendence and the irruption of the eternal, but
not a “foundation” of politics over religion) where there is danger. The various strategies that Schmitt employs over the course of his life to
interpret the state as a case determined by modern political form serve this objective, and Schmitt thinks beyond the state in order to conceive
of possible modalities of concrete political form.
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
15
DnG/Breaking Down Hierarchies
The destruction of hierarchies eliminates the “us/them” dichotomy that is crucial to politics
Rasch ‘3 [William Rasch – professor of Germanic Studies, “Human Rights as Geopolitics: Carl Schmitt and
the Legal Form of American Supremacy”, published in Cultural Critique, No. 54 (Spring, 2003), pp. 120147, accessed 6/30/13, PDF] //pheft
Let us be clear on what Schmitt is saying. Order, no matter how¶ structured, comes with a price. Hierarchical
order brings with it
a¶ domination/subordination structuring principle. When hierarchies¶ dissolve, either civil war ensues
or a new ordering principle takes the¶ old order's place. On the verge of disintegration through civil
war, on¶ the verge, as many feared, of a return to the "bad" anarchy of unlimited¶ violence in a state
of nature, Europe-and Christendom-produced¶ a "good" anarchy of controlled violence. In place of a
sovereign,¶ there reigned many sovereigns, which left the ultimate position of¶ authority open. It is
around this void that the new order organized¶ itself. To fill the void would be to reestablish the old
principle of¶ order, something that the remaining sovereign powers would refuse¶ to accept. So, to return
to the dates mentioned above, 1648 established¶ the plurality of sovereign states, 1713 their relative balance.¶ In a sense, the seemingly
infinite regress of authority that always¶ attaches to hierarchical orderings-positive law based on natural law¶ based on divine law based on ...
what? God? the rational structure of¶ the cosmos?-was halted and replaced by an "invisible hand" long¶ before that description of origin-less
emergence was theorized as such.
Free Trade
Free trade is an inherently liberal ideal that yada yada re tag this (can be reunderlined to answer
“Schmitt=neocon”)
De Benoist ’13 [Alain De Benoist – French philosopher dude, “Carl Schmitt Today: Terrorism, Just War,
and the State of Emergency”, published in 2013, accessed 7/17/13, pg. 13-15] //pheft
Each of these statements, which make one think that Schmitt and¶ Strauss fundamentally thought the same thing and that Schmitt is¶ today
the ‘secret master’ of the White House, is more surprising and¶ false than the next. They emanate from authors who often have only a¶ very
superficial knowledge of Strauss’s thought, and apparently know¶ nothing of Schmitt’s." First of all, nothing indicates that the work of¶ Schmitt
was ever truly read in American neoconservative circles.”¶ Besides, Alan Wolfe and others make a quite typical misinterpreta-¶ tion which has
several consequences: Carl
Schmitt having all his life¶ severely criticised liberalism, they think that the
neoconservatives¶ adopted his critiques of liberalism. This is to forget that the term ‘lib-¶ eralism’ has a totally
different, if not opposite, meaning in Europe than¶ in the United States. What the Europeans call ‘liberalism’ is in
fact¶ much closer to what one in America classifies as ‘conservatism’ than¶ to what one there understands by the term ‘liberalism.’ For
Schmitt,¶ as for the majority of continental European authors, ‘conservatism’¶ implies a predisposition
in favour of the state and a pessimistic con-¶ ception of human nature, whereas ‘liberalism’ is defined
by belief in¶ progress, adherence to the ideology of human rights, confidence in¶ the system of free
trade, faith in the superiority of the market, an indi-¶ vidualistic approach to society, and so on (all things
criticised by Carl¶ Schmitt). From the European point ofview, the great liberal theoreti-¶ cians are John Locke and Adam Smith, the most liberal
contemporary¶ politicians Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher or... George W. Bush. In¶ other words, in Europe, ‘liberal’ is directly opposed to
‘social,’ whereas¶ in the United States the ‘liberals’ are, on the contrary, those who are¶ favourable to social interventions of the state.
Consequently, when¶ Alan Wolfe writes, for example, ‘[T]he most important
lesson Schmitt¶ teaches is that the
differences between liberals and conservatives are¶ not just over the policies they advocate but also
over the meaning of¶ politics itself,’ and then adds, ‘Liberals think of politics as a means;¶ conservatives as
an end,“ he gratuitously leads the reader astray (and¶ proves at the same time that he himselfhas not understood anything¶ ofwhat Schmitt
says). Anne Norton commits the same mistake when¶ she writes, ‘Leo Strauss joined Carl Schmitt and Alexandre Kojéve in¶ their critique of
liberalism and liberal institutions,’" thus making it¶ appear that these authors attack an ideology that the Americans situ-¶ ate on the Left of the
political landscape, whereas in Europe it is situ-¶ ated on the Right. The very correct observation of Francis Fukuyama,¶ according to which ‘the
[American] neoconservatives do not in any¶ way wish to defend the order of things as founded on hierarchy, tradi-¶ tion and a pessimistic view
of human nature,’”‘ suffices to show how¶ much separates this tendency from the thought of Carl Schmitt, who,¶ on the contrary, explicitly
makes a ‘pessimistic’ conception of human nature one of the cornerstones of his system
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
16
Gitmo
Gitmo is the epitome of Schmitt’s “friend/enemy” distinction and the state of exception – worlds
jurists conclude this
Steyn ‘4 [Johan Steyn – South African/English Jurist, “Guantanamo Bay: The Legal Black Hole”, published
in The International and Comparative Law Quarterly, Vol. 53, No. 1 (Jan., 2004), pp. 1-15, accessed
7/17/13, JSTOR] //pheft
The most powerful democracy is detaining hundreds of suspected foot soldiers¶ of the Taliban in a
legal black hole at the United States naval base at¶ Guantanamo Bay, where they await trial on capital
charges by military¶ tribunals. This episode must be put in context. Democracies must defend¶ themselves. Democracies are
entitled to try officers and soldiers of enemy¶ forces for war crimes. But it is a recurring theme in history that in times of¶ war, armed
conflict, or perceived national danger , even liberal democracies¶ adopt measures infringing human
rights in ways that are wholly disproportionate¶ to the crisis. One tool at hand is detention without
charge or trial, that¶ is, executive detention. Ill-conceived rushed legislation is passed granting¶ excessive powers to executive
governments which compromise the rights and¶ liberties of individuals beyond the exigencies of the situation. Often the loss¶ of liberty is
permanent. Executive
branches of government, faced with a¶ perceived emergency, often resort to
excessive measures. The litany of grave¶ abuses of power by liberal democratic governments is too long to recount, but¶ in order to
understand and to hold governments to account, we do well to take¶ into account the circles of history.
// meh ignore this card maybe [needs a tag]
Johns ‘5 [Fleur Johns - Lecturer, University of Sydney Faculty of Law, Sydney, “Guantánamo Bay and the
Annihilation of the Exception”, published in The European Journal of International Law Vol. 16 no.4 ©
EJIL 2005, accessed 7/17/13, PDF] //pheft
Is Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as one scholar has described it, an ‘anomalous zone’?1 In
international legal terms, does Guantánamo Bay embody law’s absence, suspension
or withdrawal – a ‘black hole’, as the English Court of Appeal has stated?2 Is it a space
that international law ‘proper’ is yet to fill and should be implored to fill – a jurisdiction
maintained before the law, against the law or in spite of the law? These are some
of the questions with which I began the research from which this article emanates.
I commenced, too, with a sense of unease with the responses to these questions that
may be elicited from the surrounding international legal literature. Implicit or explicit
in most international legal writing on Guantánamo Bay is a sense that it represents an
exceptional phenomenon that might be overcome by having international law scale
the heights of the Bush administration’s stonewalling. Guantánamo Bay’s presence
and persistence on the international legal scene, such accounts imply, may be understood
as a singular, grotesque instance of law’s breakdown – an insurgence of ‘utter
lawlessness’ in the words of Lord Steyn of the House of Lords.3 Of this, I am not so sure.
By my reading, the plight of the Guantánamo Bay detainees is less an outcome of
law’s suspension or evisceration than of elaborate regulatory efforts by a range of
legal authorities. The detention camps of Guantánamo Bay are above all works of
legal representation and classification. They are spaces where law and liberal proceduralism
speak and operate in excess.4 This article will probe this intuition by examining
law’s efforts in constituting the jurisdictional order of the Guantánamo Bay Naval
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
17
Base (and, more specifically, Camps Delta and America at that Base). It will consider,
in particular, the claim that the jurisdictional order of Guantánamo Bay renders permanent
a state of the exception, in the sense (derived from the work of Carl Schmitt)
of a space that ‘defies codification’ and subjects its occupants to the unfettered exercise
of sovereign discretion.5 Such a claim has been put forward (usually without an
express invocation of Schmitt) by a range of international legal commentators.6 It has also been
famously put forward, with distinct and in many ways divergent implications,
in the writings of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben. This article argues
against that characterization, in both its legal scholarly and its Agamben-esque
forms.
It will be contended here that understanding Guantánamo Bay as a domain of
sovereign exception (and, as such, of political decision-making) in a Schmittian
sense is a misnomer. Rather, Guantánamo Bay may be more cogently read as the
jurisdictional outcome of exhaustive attempts to domesticate the political possibilities
occasioned by the experience of exceptionalism – that is, of operating under
circumstances not pre-codified by pre-existing norms. Far from emboldening sovereign
and non-sovereign forms of political agency under conditions of radical
doubt, the legal regime of Guantánamo Bay is dedicated to producing experiences
of having no option, no doubt and no responsibility. Accordingly, in Schmittian
terms, the contemporary legal phenomenon that is Guantánamo Bay may be read
as a profoundly anti-exceptional legal artefact. The normative regime of
Guantánamo Bay is one intensely antithetical to the forms of decisional experience
contemplated by Schmitt in Political Theology and to modes of decisional
responsibility articulated by other writers before and since.7 It is by reason of its
norm-producing effects in this respect, I would argue, that the legal regime of the
Guantánamo Bay detention camps and its replication beyond Cuba merit interrogation
and resistance.
Heg
The inherent opposition to hegemony reinforces the notion of a superior, liberal order.
Thorup ‘6 [Mikkel Thorup - Ph.D.-dissertation, Institute of Philosophy and the History of Ideas,
Department of the History of Ideas, University of Aarhus, Denmark, “In Defence of Enmity
- Critiques of Liberal Globalism”, published January 2006, accessed 7/14/13,
<https://pure.au.dk/portal/files/1125531/In_defence_of_enmity_-_pdf.pdf>] //pheft
The new barbarism in European liberalism is unilateralism. In the following, I will argue that the¶ massive
critique of the US coming from European liberal intellectuals is not, as often claimed,¶ primarily a result of antiAmericanism.93 It is, on the contrary, first and foremost a result of a¶ development in European liberalism that
interprets globalization and European integration as signs¶ of a new globalist order of post-nation
state sovereignty. I make no judgments of the good or bad¶ nature of American politics, nor do I locate the present strife in the Bush
presidency. I tend to agree¶ with the quote from Fukuyama at the top of the section, which states that the strife concerns ¶ different readings of
‘democratic legitimacy on an international level’. This does not mean that one¶ can dismiss a fictive ‘America’ in the minds of the Europeans or
a fictive ‘Europe’ in the minds of¶ the Americans (Fuglede & Bjerre-Poulsen 2004); it only means that they are not the decisive¶ factors. I’m
reproducing here a false distinction between a monolithic US and Europe that of course¶ do not correspond with reality.94 It is used simply for
purposes of clarity and should not be taken as¶ an acceptance of the view that they represent totally opposing camps or name some clearly
enclosed¶ entities. The present strife between America and Europe has given rise to a lot of articles and books,¶ only a fraction of which I can
possibly discuss. Just like every self- (and profit) respecting European¶ liberal had to have a book out on first globalization and then terror, so
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
18
now it seems to be Europe¶ and/or America (i.e. Mann 2003; Balibar 2003a; Bauman 2004a).¶ Unilateralism
is in the eyes of
European liberals becoming the strategy of stubborn nation states¶ desperately clinging to an obsolete
paradigm for international behaviour, that may have been valid¶ in the era of state sovereignty being
located from 1648 to 1945, but which is now becoming ever¶ more counterproductive and dangerous
in the era of post-state sovereignty. What we find here is a¶ faulty reflection on the European nature
of the portrayed globalization; or rather the extent to which,¶ what is being labelled globalization, is
actually an internal European (and in many ways only a West European) experience and phenomenon, that may
have little or no bearing on other countries¶ and regions. If the described globalization is only or primarily a European
phenomenon, there may¶ be less reason for the European critique of the US. They operate then legitimately and
effectively,¶ according to modern and still valid conceptions of state sovereignty and national
interests. This¶ debate between Europe and America, or rather the European debate on us and
America is a valuable¶ prism for understanding liberal globalism, because here are expressed ideas
about what Europe is¶ and isn’t. My thesis is that the European liberal critique of American foreign policy has less to do¶ with
American practice than with liberal ideas about the nature of the international first formulated¶ in the Enlightenment and now reproduced in
Europe. The aim below is to understand European¶ liberal internationalism or globalism through its exclusion of the ‘barbaric other’ from the¶
monarchic state to the US. In a strange twist of positions, America is now becoming the ‘other’ of¶ the emerging Europe, just as Europe itself
once served as the negative inspiration of the emerging¶ US (there are of course also other ‘others’, see Diez 2004).¶ America is
the new
barbarian in European liberal discourse. The defining characteristic of this¶ demarcation is the
difference between arbitrariness and predictability. The barbaric state is¶ decisionistic or
discretionary, whereas the civilized state is rule-bounded. Arbitrariness is¶ unpredictable, motivated by passions and
hidden desires; it is secretive, sudden and violent. This is¶ where the supreme political decisions are made since nothing is given. The opposite
of arbitrariness¶ is the regulated and benign. The field of possibility is narrowed beforehand and the result can in¶ principle be predicted. This is
government by laws rather than people, by rules rather than¶ decisions. The political is submitted to juridification and administration, until it
ideally overcomes¶ the political decision altogether. Civilized rule becomes now the counter image to American foreign¶ (and domestic) politics.
When the American foreign secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, divided Europe¶ up into the ‘old’ anti-American and the ‘new’ pro-American Europe
(Pertti 2004), major parts of the¶ European liberal intelligentsia responded by saying, that is was the US, with its power-politics, that¶ was oldfashioned; and that it was Europe, as EU and ‘governance beyond the nation-state’, that¶ usher in a new epoch. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
(January 24, 2003) collected a number of¶ responses from French and German intellectuals. Peter Sloterdijk wrote under the heading¶
‘Postheroische Politik’, that it is “the advanced fraction of the West which, taught by the lessons of¶ the twentieth century, has turned to a
post-heroic cultural modus – and a corresponding politics; this¶ is contrary to the US who remain stuck in the conventions of heroism“. The
great self-stylized¶ provocateur, who in a number of questions sees himself in opposition to his German or even modern age, is here in perfect
harmony with his adversary from the ‘Menschenpark’-debate, Jürgen¶ Habermas, who under the heading ‘Neue Welt Europa’ wrote, that in
Germany/Europe:¶ … a normative way of thinking has replaced old mentalities. It’s a way of thinking opposed to the realpolitical cynicism ¶ of
the hard-boiled, the conservative culture critique of the shrewd and the anthropological pessimism which relies on¶ power and power-holding
institutions. It’s a strange turn of fronts when Rumsfeld names this new Europe as ‘the old’.¶ Luc Bondy, head of the Wiener-festspiele,
summarizes under the heading ’Vive l’Europe’ the idea¶ that forms the background for the angry European responses: ”When mister Rumsfeld
now¶ contemptedly says that the peace-seeking is ’the old Europe’, then he is actually honouring us.¶ When the old Europe, who knew war,
now has the reason and good sense, to no longer want war,¶ then I’m all for this old Europe, which is the new Europe”. The attack on ’old
Europe’ gets inverted¶ to a defence for ’New Europe’, as we, for instance, see Derrida attempt: “My reaction can be stated¶ short: I find such
expressions shocking, scandalous and telling. It’s telling for the ignorance of what¶ Europe was, what it is and what it will become. Unwillingly,
the words of the American defence¶ minister make it clear just how urgent the European unification is.” Today, one also see attempts to¶ ’sell’
the European project as a counter-force to American hegemony. This is evident in a¶ controversial speech by the former Danish foreign
secretary, the social democrat Mogens Lykketoft,¶ who in august 2001 spoke about ‘The Future of Europe’ and about the important and lasting
ties¶ between Europe and the US, only to accentuate their different approaches to politics and power as ¶ an argument for European unity:
”The disorder of the world is marked by a lack of sufficiently¶ strong global organisations and agreements – and by the existence of only one
super power, which¶ currently is being governed by a very strong belief in the market forces and the national interests”.¶ Europe is to counter
the new American isolationism and its “rejection of agreements, which go¶ against narrow national economic interests” (Lykketoft 2001).¶ The
US is the new barbaric state – in a recent interview David Held called America ‘the greatest¶ rogue state in the world’ (Thorup & Sørensen
2004). This
imagery is also present in other¶ descriptions of American politics and the American
president in European debates: It is Wild West,¶ shoot-first, the Texan mad man, the hillbilly-approach
to foreign policy. These are images of an¶ irrational, dangerous behaviour from a bygone age. But it is
not anti-Americanism. It is a European¶ liberal dichotomy between barbaric, unpredictable and
violent states on the one side and civilized,¶ peaceful and predictable states on the other.
Humanitarianism
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
19
Humanitarian missions inherently deny the friend/enemy distinction because there can be no
“enemy” to humanity
Schmitt ’32 [Carl Schmitt – the illist of all the German Legal Philosophers, “The Concept of the Political”,
published as Der Begriff des Politischen in 1932, accessed 6/23/13, pg. 54-55, Print] //pheft
Humanity as such cannot wage war because it has no enemy, at least not on this planet. The concept
of humanity excludes the concept of the enemy, because the enemy does not cease to be a human
being – and hence there is no specific differentiation in that concept. That wars are waged in the name of humanity
is not a contradiction of this simple truth; quite the contrary, it has an especially intensive political meaning. When a state fights is
political enemy 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 muses peace, justice, progress, and civilization in order to claim
these as one’s own and to 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 Proudhon’s: 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 drive to the most extreme inhumanity. ¶ But
besides this highly political utilization of the
nonpolitical term humanity, there are no wars of humanity and such. Humanity is not a political
concept, and nonpolitical, and no political entity or society and no status corresponds to it. The
eighteenth-century humanitarian concept of humanity was a polemical denial of the then existing aristocratic-feudal system and the privileges
accompanying it. Humanity
according to natural and liberal individualistic doctrines is a universal, i.e., allembracing, social ideal, a system of relations between individuals. This materializes only when the
real possibility of is precluded and every friend and enemy grouping becomes impossible. In this
universal society there would no longer be nations in the form of political entities, no class struggles,
and no enemy groupings.
“Humanitarian” missions serve to depoliticize and in turn erase the dichotomy
Thorup ‘6 [Mikkel Thorup - Ph.D.-dissertation, Institute of Philosophy and the History of Ideas,
Department of the History of Ideas, University of Aarhus, Denmark, “In Defence of Enmity
- Critiques of Liberal Globalism”, published January 2006, accessed 7/3/13,
<https://pure.au.dk/portal/files/1125531/In_defence_of_enmity_-_pdf.pdf>] //pheft
This section explores Schmitt’s critique of humanitarian justifications of warfare that culminates in¶
the ‘total war’ against the enemy of humanity and where resistance to the humanitarian war will, as ¶
Schmitt said, appear as “the illegal and immoral resistance of a few delinquents, troublemakers,¶
pirates and gangsters” (quoted from Koskenniemi 2001: 434). The democratic revolution and its¶ development
into a mass democracy have meant new means of “collective passions the worst of¶ which is the easily
aroused anger towards the disturber, the plan-impediment, the saboteur. The¶ saboteur is not only a disturber of
peace, perturbateur, he is ideologically the last obstacle before¶ paradise; practically, he is an obstacle for traffic” (1991b: 197). This somewhat
hysterical and onesided¶ version of international humanitarianism will serve us as a way to illuminate what David¶ Kennedy (2004) has called
‘the dark side of virtue’. Throughout
the remainder of this text, it is¶ important to bear in mind that it is
intentionally one-sided in order to highlight, what is often¶ forgotten or hidden in the humanitarian
discourse. In the terminology of below, the text is a¶ ‘conflict partner’ with liberal humanitarianism.
So much stronger the obligation of critique.¶ Liberalism, Play and the World State¶ In a world without politics, there would be
“very interesting differences and contrasts, all kinds of¶ competitions and intrigues” but no opposition so strong “that one can demand people
to sacrifice¶ their lives or authorize them to shed blood and kill other people” (1996a: 36). Schmitt is horrified of¶ a world without substantive
values: “A life that is confronted only with death is no longer life but¶ only powerlessness and hopelessness … for the living fights not against
death and spirit not against¶ spiritlessness. Spirit fights against spirit, life against life” (1996b: 95). Schmitt’s critique of liberal¶ modernity is
based on a distinction between seriousness and play; or we could say with Peter¶ Gowan (1994: 116) that he “hails the spirit of Sparta against
the bourgeois spirit”. Schmitt’s critique¶ of the bourgeois spirit is the theme of this section, which aims to be suggestive rather than ¶
exhaustive. In an early work from 1925, Politische Romantik, Schmitt calls the romantic attitude to¶ the world ‘subjectified occasionalism’
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
20
(1982: 24) after Malebranche’s occasionalism that abolishes¶ Descartes’ dualism between the material and the spiritual by denying a causal
relationship between¶ them. Instead, it postulates God as the occasion [occasio]; God is the actual cause behind both the¶ material and the
spiritual. Romanticism takes over the occasional attitude to the world, replaces¶ causa with occasio; God is then replaced by the genius as the
prime creator. The ‘isolated and¶ emancipated individual’ takes over God’s place and becomes its own metaphysical principle. All¶ ties to
something objective, absolute, lasting, to anything outside and greater than the individual is ¶ thereby torn over. Occasionalism exempts the
romantics from the demands of the world. It has no¶ reality in itself. They have before their eyes “a world without substance and functional
obligations,¶ without firm leadership, without conclusion and without definition, without decision and an¶ ultimate court” (1982: 25). The
romantic individual creates distance between himself and reality¶ and it makes the romantic able to ironically play out realities against each
other in a Phantasiespiel¶ and thereby escape the limitation of only one reality: “In irony lies the reservation of endless¶ possibilities” (1982:
105). As the romantic doesn’t feel obligated by anything, by any absolute¶ concepts of good and bad, right and wrong, he is free to get excited
and inspired by all kinds of¶ impulses, as long as they do not come too close and start demanding commitment or effort:¶ Neither religious nor
moral, neither political decisions, nor scientific concepts is possible in the realm of the onlyaesthetic.¶ But all kinds of matter-of-fact like
oppositions and differences, good and evil, friend and enemy, Christ and¶ Antichrist can certainly become aesthetic contrasts and material to
plots in a novel and can thereby get worked into the¶ total effect of a piece of art. (1982: 21)¶ Political categories get aestheticized and are
turned into material in a novel; conflicts are dissolved¶ in a higher third; decisions are postponed indefinitely. To decide would be to abandon
the romantic¶ irony that lifts the romantic far above the tedious reality; a reality, Schmitt sees as characterized by¶ hard and pressing either-or
situations demanding a decision. The romantic is therefore unable and¶ unwilling to take a decision. The romantic action theory is passivity;
“always without own decision,¶ own responsibility and danger. Political activity is not possible, only critique” (1982: 224).¶ Discussion and
conversation, not action, is his preferred activity. And the discussion is carried on¶ indefinitely since its termination would require taking a
stand. Discussion and decision are¶ antithetical in Schmitt’s understanding. Paul Hirst is, therefore, right to argue that Politische¶ Romantik
“clearly formulates Schmitt’s decisionistic theory of ethics and political action” (1990:¶ 134). As an alternative to the political romantic, Schmitt
points to firstly the Counter-Enlightenment¶ thinkers who are “always of the conviction not to be elevated above the political battle but on the¶
contrary committed to stand up for what they perceived as right and decide upon that basis” (1982:¶ 161); and secondly to Don Quixote who,
although motivated by romantic ideas, decided to fight his¶ hopeless battle. He was a romantic politician, but not a political romantic, since he
put himself in¶ harm’s way to defend what he saw as right (1982: 207). The irresponsible romantic existence is¶ only possible in a liberal age.
Schmitt says: “Romanticism is psychologically and historically a¶ product of bourgeois security” (1982: 141). The romantic is a parasite on a
social order, where¶ unboundedness are the preferred norm; where self-determination of right and wrong is hailed as the¶ social ideal; where
‘I’ is the highest and only authority; and where political positions and opinions¶ has no serious consequence: “In this kind of society the
individual is entrusted to be his own priest.¶ But not only that; because of the central importance and consequence of the religious the
individual¶ is therefore also entrusted to be his own poet, philosopher and king, the master builder of his¶ personality’s cathedral” (1982: 26).¶
The liberal bourgeoisie took over the aesthetic ideal of romanticism and depoliticized the social ¶ order
by turning politics into endless discussion and romantic playfulness. The belief in endless¶ possibilities and the
resolution of conflicts replaced the political struggle and the political decision.¶ ‘Endless talk’, irony and play are one major side of the liberal
denial of the political; another is the¶ substitution of the decision for administration. In
Politische Theologie, Schmitt agrees
with Weber¶ (1984: 452) that the modern state has become like a big factory; “There is to be only
organizational technical¶ and economic-sociological tasks but no longer any political problems” (Schmitt
1934: 82).¶ Different political ideologies, born out of modernity, are different sides to the same depoliticization¶ endeavour – same Weberian
“’functionalization [Versachlichung]’ of all social relations” (1984:¶ 28). They see politics as a problematic diversion that pollutes the effort and
applies other measures¶ than rationality, efficiency and profitability (1984: 24-5):¶ Modern technology makes itself the servant of any purpose.
In modern economy a totally rationalized production¶ conforms to a completely irrational
consumption. A wonderfully rational mechanism serves always any demand with¶ the same
seriousness and precision irrespective of the demand is for silk blouses, poisonous gas or something
else.
I-Law
International Law serves to destabilize the friend/enemy dichotomy and normalize the quest for
ultimate “peace” – recent “humanitarian” actions prove
Roach ‘5 [Dr. Steven C. Roach is Associate Professor of International Politics in the Department of
Government and International Affairs at the University of South Florida, “Decisionism and Humanitarian
Intervention: Reinterpreting Carl Schmitt and the Global”, published in Alternatives: Global, Local,
Political, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Oct.-Dec. 2005), pp. 443-460
Political Order, accessed 6/22/13, JSTOR] //pheft
In order to theorize about the political substance of human rights, we need to understand the conceptual link between Schmitt's concept of the
political and the evolution of state sovereignty into the global realm. Let me therefore, before discussing the plausible ways of con- ceiving the
political substance of human rights vis-a-vis a global deci- sionist framework, elucidate this point by discussing the main parame- ters of
Schmitt's concept of the political and his theory of decisionism.¶ Schmitt's formulation of the concept of the political is based on three major
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
21
ideas: the rejection of the rule of law; political unity/sovereignty; and the need for distinguishing between constitutional- ism and democracy
via political sovereignty. According
to Schmitt, humanity constitutes an "essentially ideological instrument of
impe- rialist expansion . . . that excludes the concept of the enemy, because the enemy does not cease
to be a human being."27 The fact that humanity cannot wage war (since it has no enemy) suggests
that humanitarian wars are ultimately "driven by the utmost inhumanity' and potential
destructiveness."28 Curiously, some present-day human- itarian critics of the Kosovo war arrive at the same conclusion of the
destructiveness of humanitarian wars, even though none of them share the antidemocratic views of Schmitt. For instance, Robert Hay- den
argues that NATO's violation of international law transformed human rights from a protest against state violence to one of "the application of
massive violence on states deemed to be inferior."29 ¶ Schmitt's
rejection of liberalism, then, is rooted in the idea
that neutrality ultimately contradicts the purpose that it sets out to accomplish; namely, to preserve a
permanent peace among nation- states. This was illustrated by the League of Nations' prohibition of
war and aggression (the Kellog Briand Act 1928), which served to remove the constraints imposed by
the friend/enemy distinction.30 In Schmitt's view, therefore, the rule of law is another way of ex- pressing the empty, formalistic
character of a liberal positivist law, which fails to ensure that a political decision can be made under extenuating circumstances, such as an
emergency brought on by the threat of invasion by another nation-state. This is
not to say that democratic constitutional
nation-states are inherently inca- pable of waging an effective war, but rather that in times of crisis,
negotiating and debating tends to undermine decisive action. It does so by placing the rules of war (or
rights of individuals) ahead of the absolute need to preserve the unity of the people and by allowing a
leader to trump or dissolve the constitution in times of severe crisis. It was nonetheless this need for an absolute
decision to save the peoples and the constitution from unchecked power that underscored the political sovereignty of the nation-state; namely,
the convergence of the absolute power of sovereign leader and the political unity of the nation. Ultimately, for
Schmitt,
constitutional- ism sets into motion laws that restrict, and even run counter to, the political unity
(sovereignty) of the people.31 As he states in his essay on democracy and parliamentarism: An intervention based on the concept
of monarchial legitimacy is illegal in democratic theory only because it violates the principle of the people's self-determination. By contrast a
restoration of free self-determination achieved through intervention, the liber- ation of a people from a tyrant, cannot violate the principle of
Decisionism and Humanitarian Intervention non-intervention in any way, but only creates the preconditions for the principle of nonintervention.
Levinas/Ethics/Fasching/Hippies
The ideal of “humanity” and “ethics” proposes a new nomos for the world, one that erases the
“us/them” dichotomy and depoliticizes politics
Odysseos ‘8 [Dr. Louiza Odysseos- University of Sussex, Department of International Relations, “Against
Ethics? Iconographies of Enmity and Acts of Obligation in Carl Schmitt’s Theory of the Partisan”,
published 3/22/8, accessed 7/7/13, PDF] //pheft
Ethics, polemics, tactics: the discourse of humanity¶ In The Concept of the Political Schmitt had already indicted the increased usage of¶ the
terminology of ‘humanity’ by both theorists and institutional actors such as the¶ League of Nations (1996a). His initial critique allows us to
illuminate four distinct¶ criticisms against contemporary world politics’ ethical recourse to the discourse of¶ humanity (cf. Odysseos 2007b).
The first objection arises from the location of this¶ discourse in the liberal universe of values. By using
the discourse of humanity, the¶ project of a universal ethics reverberates with the nineteenth century
‘ringing¶ proclamations of disinterested liberal principle’ (Gowan 2003: 53) through which¶ ‘liberalism
quite successfully conceals its politics, which is the politics of getting rid¶ of politics’ (Dyzenhaus 1998:
14). For Schmitt, the focus of liberal modernity on¶ moral questions aims to ignore or surpass
questions of conflict altogether: it is¶ therefore ‘the battle against the political - as Schmitt defines the
political’, in terms of¶ the permanency of social antagonism in politics (Sax 2002: 501).¶ The second
criticism argues that ‘humanity is not a political concept, and no political ¶ entity corresponds to it. The
eighteenth century humanitarian concept of humanity¶ was a polemical denial of the then existing aristocratic feudal system and the¶
privileges accompanying it’ (Schmitt 1996a: 55). Outside
of this historical location,¶ where does it find concrete
expression but in the politics of a politically neutral¶ ‘international community’ which acts, we are
assured, in the interest of humanity? (cf.¶ Blair 1999). The ‘international community is coextensive with
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
22
humanity…[it]¶ possesses the inherent right to impose its will…and to punish its violation, not¶
because of a treaty, or a pact or a covenant, but because of an international need’, a¶ need which it
can only determine as the ‘secularized “church” of “common¶ humanity”’ (Rasch 2003: 137, citing James Brown
Scott).2¶ A third objection, still, has to do with the imposition of particular kind of monism: ¶ despite the
lip-service to plurality, taken from the market (Kalyvas 1999), ‘liberal¶ pluralism is in fact not in the
least pluralist but reveals itself to be an overriding¶ monism, the monism of humanity’ (Rasch 2003:
136). Similarly, current universalist¶ perspectives, while praising ‘customary’ or cultural differences, think of them ‘but as¶ ethical or aesthetic
material for a unified polychromatic culture – a new singularity¶ born of a blending and merging of multiple local constituents’ (Brennan 2003:
41).¶ One
oft-discussed disciplining effect is that, politically, the ethics of a universal¶ humanity shows
little tolerance for what is regarded as ‘intolerant’ politics, which is¶ any politics that moves in
opposition to its ideals, rendering political opposition to it¶ illegitimate (Rasch 2003: 136). This is
compounded by the fact that liberal ethical¶ discourses are also defined by a claim to their own
exception and superiority. They¶ naturalise the historical origins of liberal societies, which are no longer regarded as¶ ‘contingently
established and historically conditioned forms of organization’; rather,¶ they ‘become the universal standard against which other societies are
judged. Those¶ found
wanting are banished, as outlaws, from the civilized world. Ironically, one of¶ the
signs of their outlaw status is their insistence on autonomy, on sovereignty’ (ibid.:¶ 141; cf. Donnelly
1998).¶ Most importantly, and related to this concern, there is the relation of the concept of¶ humanity
to ‘the other’, and to war and violence. In its historical location, the¶ humanity concept had critical purchase against aristocratic
prerogatives; yet its¶ utilisation by liberal ethical discourses within a philosophy of an ‘absolute humanity’,¶ Schmitt feared, could bring about
new and unimaginable modes of exclusion (1996a,¶ 2003, 2004/2007):¶ By
virtue of its universality and abstract
normativity, it has no localizable¶ polis, no clear distinction between what is inside and what is
outside. Does¶ humanity embrace all humans? Are there no gates to the city and thus no¶ barbarians
outside? If not, against whom or what does it wage its wars? (Rasch¶ 2003: 135).
Humanitarianism can have no enemies, trying to promote “universal brotherhood” fundamentally
denies what makes us humans and creates a new nomos for the world (meh, this can either be an
impact card or a perm fails card)
--this can be combined with the card above, the paragraphs follow so it’s legit, I just broke it up
Odysseos ‘8 [Dr. Louiza Odysseos- University of Sussex, Department of International Relations, “Against
Ethics? Iconographies of Enmity and Acts of Obligation in Carl Schmitt’s Theory of the Partisan”,
published 3/22/8, accessed 7/7/13, PDF] //pheft
‘Humanity as such’, Schmitt noted, ‘cannot wage war because it has no enemy’,¶ (1996a: 54),
indicating that humanity ‘is a polemical word that negates its opposite’¶ (Kennedy 1998: 94; emphasis
added). In The Concept of the Political Schmitt argued¶ that humanity ‘excludes the concept of the
enemy, because the enemy does not cease¶ to be a human being’ (1996a: 54). However, in his 1950 book with an
international¶ focus, The Nomos of the Earth, Schmitt noted how only when ‘man appeared to be the¶ embodiment of absolute humanity, did
the other side of this concept appear in the¶ form of a new enemy: the inhuman’ (2003a: 104). It becomes apparent that,¶ historically
examined, the concept of humanity engenders a return to a ‘discriminatory¶ concept of war’, by which Schmitt meant that it reintroduces the
legitimacy and need¶ for substantive causes of justice in war (Schmitt 2003b: 37-52). This in turn disallows¶ the notion of justus hostis, of a ‘just
enemy’ – explored in section three – associated¶ with the notion of non-discriminatory interstate war which took the shape of guerre¶ en
forme (Schmitt 2003a: 142-144). The
concept of humanity, therefore, shatters the¶ formal concept of justus
hostis, allowing the enemy to now be designated¶ substantively as an enemy of humanity as such. This
leaves the enemy of humanity¶ with no value and open to dehumanisation and political and physical
annihilation¶ (Schmitt 2004: 67). In discussing the League of Nations, Schmitt highlights that,¶ compared to the kinds of wars that
can be waged on behalf of humanity, the¶ interstate European wars from 1815 to 1914 in reality were regulated; they¶ were bracketed by the
neutral Great Powers and were completely legal¶ procedures in comparison with the modern and gratuitous police actions¶ against violators of
peace, which can be dreadful acts of annihilation (Schmitt¶ 2003a: 186).¶ Enemies
of humanity cannot be considered ‘just
and equal’. Moreover, they cannot¶ claim neutrality: one cannot remain neutral in the call to be for or
against humanity or¶ its freedom; one cannot, similarly, claim a right to resist or defend oneself, in
the¶ sense we understand this right to have existed in the international law of Europe (the¶ jus
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
23
publicum Europeaum). Such a denial of self-defence and resistance ‘can presage a¶ dreadful nihilistic
destruction of all law’ (ibid.: 187). When the enemy is not accorded¶ a procedural justice and formal
equality, the notion that peace can be made with him¶ is unacceptable, as Schmitt detailed through
his study of the League of Nations, which¶ had declared the abolition of war, but in rescinding the
concept of neutrality only¶ succeeded in the ‘dissolution of “peace”’ (ibid.: 246). It is with the
dissolution of¶ peace that total wars of annihilation become possible, where ‘the other’ cannot be¶
assimilated, or accommodated, let alone tolerated: the friend/enemy distinction is not¶ longer taking
place with a justus hostis but rather between good and evil, human and¶ inhuman, where ‘the
negative pole of the distinction is to be fully and finally¶ consumed without remainder’ (Rasch 2003:
137).¶ Finally, the ethical discourse of a universal humanity can be discerned in the tendency ¶ to
normalise diverse peoples through legalisation and individualisation. The¶ paramount emphasis placed on legal
instruments and entitlements such as human¶ rights transforms diverse subjectivities into ‘rights-holders’. ‘[T]he other is stripped of¶
his otherness and made to conform to the universal ideal of what it means to be¶ human’, meaning
that ‘the term “human” is not descriptive, but evaluative. To be¶ truly human, one needs to be
corrected’ (Rasch 2003: 140 and 137; cf. Young 2002;¶ Hopgood 2000). What does this correction in its ‘multiform
tactics’, which include¶ Michel Foucault’s proper terms of discipline and training, aim to produce? The¶ answer may well be the proper, free
(masterful), equal and rational (in its self-interest)¶ subject of rights, of capitalism and the governmentalised state (Foucault 2001a). As¶ Gil
Anidjar notes, the operation of the traditional binary ‘sovereign/enemy’ is¶ transformed ‘in the disciplinary society (which signals, according to
Foucault, the¶ dissolution of sovereign power) into “disciplinary regime/criminality” (or, for that¶ second term, legal subject, subject of the law,
and, of course, “man”)’ (Anidjar 2004:¶ 42; emphasis added). Of
equally great importance is transformation that follows
in the¶ transition from a disciplinary to a governmental economy of power: this is what we¶ are at the
moment confronting and must analyse: what are the paths towards which the¶ other as enemy is
directed by (a global) governmentality and, moreover, what forms,¶ subjectivities, etc., is the ‘enemy’
encouraged to take in the form of an unavoidable¶ freedom, along the lines articulated by Foucault
under the heading of ‘selfgovernment’¶ (2007b).
The ethical endorsement of the 1AC establishes a new order for humanity. Their discourse shapes a
world that requires the production of a violent other and the extermination of that other. Instead of
an inclusive or utopian society, the affirmative will justify wars of annihilation in the name of
difference.
Odysseos 08, Dr. Louiza Odysseos, University of Sussex Department of International Relations, “Against
Ethics? Iconographies of Enmity and Acts of Obligation in Carl Schmitt’s Theory of the Partisan” Practices
of Ethics: Relating/Responding to Difference in International Politics Annual Convention, International
Studies Association, 2008//MC
In The Concept of the Political Schmitt had already indicted the increased usage of the terminology of ‘humanity’ by both theorists and
institutional actors such as the League of Nations (1996a). His initial critique allows us to illuminate four distinct criticisms against contemporary
world politics’ ethical recourse to the discourse of humanity (cf. Odysseos 2007b). The first objection arises from the location of this discourse
in the liberal universe of values. By using the discourse of humanity, the
project of a universal ethics reverberates with the
nineteenth century ‘ringing proclamations of disinterested liberal principle’ (Gowan 2003: 53) through which
‘liberalism quite successfully conceals its politics, which is the politics of getting rid of politics’ (Dyzenhaus 1998: 14). For
Schmitt, the focus of liberal modernity on moral questions aims to ignore or surpass questions of conflict
altogether: it is therefore ‘the battle against the political - as Schmitt defines the political’, in terms of the
permanency of social antagonism in politics (Sax 2002: 501). The second criticism argues that ‘humanity is not a
political concept, and no political entity corresponds to it. The eighteenth century humanitarian concept of humanity
was a polemical denial of the then existing aristocratic feudal system and the privileges accompanying it’ (Schmitt 1996a: 55). Outside of this
historical location, where does it find concrete expression but in the politics of a politically neutral ‘international community’ which acts, we are
assured, in the interest of humanity? (cf. Blair 1999). The ‘international community is coextensive with humanity…[ it]possesses
the
inherent right to impose its will…and to punish its violation, not because of a treaty, or a pact or a covenant,
but because of an international need’, a need which it can only determine as the ‘secularized “church” of
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
24
“common humanity”’ (Rasch 2003: 137, citing James Brown Scott).2 A third objection, still, has to do with the imposition of particular
kind of monism: despite the lip-service to plurality, taken from the market (Kalyvas 1999), ‘liberal pluralism is in fact not
in the least pluralist but reveals itself to be an overriding monism, the monism of humanity’ (Rasch 2003: 136).
Similarly, current universalist perspectives, while praising ‘customary’ or cultural differences, think of them
‘but asethical or aesthetic material for a unified polychromatic culture – a new singularity born of a blending and
merging of multiple local constituents’ (Brennan 2003: 41).One oft-discussed disciplining effect is that, politically, the ethics of a
universal humanity shows little tolerance for what is regarded as ‘intolerant’ politics, which is any
politics that moves in opposition to its ideals, rendering political opposition to it illegitimate (Rasch 2003:
136). This is compounded by the fact that liberal ethical discourses are also defined by a claim to their own
exception and superiority. They naturalise the historical origins of liberal societies, which are no
longer regarded as ‘contingently established and historically conditioned forms of organization’ ; rather,
they ‘become the universal standard against which other societies are judged. Those found wanting
are banished, as outlaws, from the civilized world. Ironically, one of the signs of their outlaw status is
their insistence on autonomy, on sovereignty’ (ibid.:141; cf. Donnelly 1998). Most importantly, and related to this concern, there is
the relation of the concept of humanity to ‘the other’, and to war and violence. In its historical location, the
humanity concept had critical purchase against aristocratic prerogatives; yet its utilisation by liberal ethical discourses
within a philosophy of an ‘absolute humanity’, Schmitt feared, could bring about new and unimaginable
modes of exclusion (1996a,2003,2004/2007): By virtue of its universality and abstract normativity, it has no localizable
polis, no clear distinction between what is inside and what is outside . Does humanity embrace all humans? Are there
no gates to the city and thus no barbarians outside? If not, against whom or what does it wage its wars? (Rasch2003: 135). ‘ Humanity as
such’, Schmitt noted, ‘cannot wage war because it has no enemy’ ,(1996a: 54), indicating that humanity ‘is a
polemical word that negates its opposite’ (Kennedy 1998: 94; emphasis added). In The Concept of the Political Schmitt argued
that humanity ‘excludes the concept of the enemy, because the enemy does not cease to be a human
being’ (1996a: 54). However, in his 1950 book with an international focus, The Nomos of the Earth, Schmitt noted how only when
‘man appeared to be the embodiment of absolute humanity, did the other side of this concept appear
in the form of a new enemy: the inhuman’ (2003a: 104). It becomes apparent that, historically examined, the concept of
humanity engenders a return to a ‘discriminatory concept of war’, by which Schmitt meant that it reintroduces
the legitimacy and need for substantive causes of justice in war (Schmitt 2003b: 37-52). This in turn disallows
the notion of justus hostis, of a ‘just enemy’ – explored in section three – associated with the notion of non-discriminatory interstate
war which took the shape of guerreen for me (Schmitt 2003a: 142-144). The concept of humanity, therefore, shatters the formal concept of
the enemy to now be designated substantively as an enemy of humanity as such. This
leaves the enemy of humanity with no value and open to dehumanisation and political and physical
annihilation (Schmitt 2004: 67). In discussing the League of Nations, Schmitt highlights that, compared to the kinds of wars that can be
waged on behalf of humanity, the interstate European wars from 1815 to 1914 in reality were regulated; they were bracketed by the
neutral Great Powers and were completely legal procedures in comparison with the modern and
gratuitous police actions against violators of peace, which can be dreadful acts of annihilation
(Schmitt2003a: 186). Enemies of humanity cannot be considered ‘just and equal’. Moreover, they cannot claim
neutrality: one cannot remain neutral in the call to be for or against humanity or its freedom; one cannot, similarly, claim a
justus hostis, allowing
right to resist or defend oneself, in the sense we understand this right to have existed in the international law of Europe (the jus publicum
Such a denial of self-defence and resistance ‘can presage a dreadful nihilistic destruction of
all law’ (ibid.: 187). When the enemy is not accorded a procedural justice and formal equality, the notion that peace can be
made with him is unacceptable, as Schmitt detailed through his study of the League of Nations, which had declared the
abolition of war, but in rescinding the concept of neutrality only succeeded in the ‘dissolution of “peace”’ (ibid.: 246).
It is with the dissolution of peace that total wars of annihilation become possible, where ‘the other’
cannot be assimilated, or accommodated, let alone tolerated: the friend/enemy distinction is not longer
taking place with a justus hostis but rather between good and evil, human and in human, where ‘the negative pole of the
distinction is to be fully and finally consumed without remainder’ (Rasch 2003: 137). Finally, the ethical discourse of a universal
humanity can be discerned in the tendency to normalise diverse peoples through legalisation and
Europeaum).
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
25
individualisation. The paramount emphasis placed on legal instruments and entitlements such as human rights
transforms diverse subjectivities into ‘rights-holders’. ‘[T]he other is stripped of his otherness and
made to conform to the universal ideal of what it means to be human’, meaning that ‘the term “human” is
not descriptive, but evaluative. To be truly human, one needs to be corrected’ (Rasch 2003: 140 and 137; cf. Young
2002;Hopgood 2000). What does this correction in its ‘multiform tactics’, which include Michel Foucault’s proper terms of discipline
and training, aim to produce? The answer may well be the proper, free (masterful), equal and rational (in its selfinterest)subject of rights, of capitalism and the governmentalised state (Foucault 2001a). As Gil Anidjar notes, the
operation of the traditional binary ‘sovereign/enemy’ is transformed ‘in the disciplinary society (which signals, according to
Foucault, the dissolution of sovereign power) into “disciplinary regime/criminality” (or, for that second term, legal subject,
subject of the law, and, of course, “man”)’ (Anidjar 2004:42; emphasis added). Of equally great importance is transformation that follows in the
transition from a disciplinary to a governmental economy of power: this is what we are at the moment confronting and must analyse: what are
the paths towards which the other as enemy is directed by (a global) governmentality and, moreover, what forms, subjectivities, etc., is the
‘enemy’ encouraged to take in the form of an unavoidable freedom, along the lines articulated by Foucault under the heading of ‘self
government’(2007b).
Liberalism (some are liberalism in the sense of trade, others in the sense of equality
and jazz)
The concept of increasing “trade” or “liberalism” inherently shatters the friend/enemy distinction
Roach ‘5 [Dr. Steven C. Roach is Associate Professor of International Politics in the Department of
Government and International Affairs at the University of South Florida, “Decisionism and Humanitarian
Intervention: Reinterpreting Carl Schmitt and the Global”, published in Alternatives: Global, Local,
Political, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Oct.-Dec. 2005), pp. 443-460
Political Order, accessed 6/22/13, JSTOR] //pheft
As I argue below, developing a theory of decisionism at the global level is important since it allows us to further understand the legitimacy and
range of possibilities of constructing such a regime.8 The theory of decisionism discussed in this article is derived from Carl Schmitt's concept of
the political. Schmitt,
of course, is well known for arguing that liberal neutrality and universalism had removed the constraints imposed by war between nation-states (that war is always an ever-present
possibility that can destroy the existing state).9 Liberalism, as he saw it, provided the basis for
globalizing the enemy; that is, of waging a war of total destruction in the name of humanity, which, in
turn, reflected the total elimination of the con- straints imposed by the friend/enemy distinction.10
As David Dyzen- haus states, liberalism, according to Schmitt, "quite successfully con- ceals its politics,
which is the politics of getting rid of politics."11
Liberalism aims at depoliticization and in turn denies the “us/them” dichotomy
Thorup ‘6 [Mikkel Thorup - Ph.D.-dissertation, Institute of Philosophy and the History of Ideas,
Department of the History of Ideas, University of Aarhus, Denmark, “In Defence of Enmity
- Critiques of Liberal Globalism”, published January 2006, accessed 7/3/13,
<https://pure.au.dk/portal/files/1125531/In_defence_of_enmity_-_pdf.pdf>] //pheft
My aim is to discuss the use of depoliticization as a ‘defamatory practice’ in the field of¶ international politics. I want to argue an apparently
contradictory claim: Ihat depoliticization can be¶ a revolutionary instrument – although it consistently presents itself as the opposite.
Depoliticization¶ is not reducible to a reaction against politicizations. Depoliticization revolutionized the pre-liberal¶ world through seemingly
anti-revolutionary means. What
I aim to show is that contemporary liberal¶ globalist depoliticization is in the
midst of a parallel revolutionary depoliticization. What liberal¶ globalist depoliticization aims at is the
global denial of an outside. There is no longer to be any¶ legitimate position outside the liberal order.
The denial of the enemy is the denial of the legitimate¶ outside and other. I want to trace the re-appearance of
the enemy in its ‘non-political’ forms and to¶ trace the return of the political in anti-politics. The ‘barbarian’ in its various forms
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
26
is the nonpolitical¶ enemy, the enemy not recognized as being within the same horizon as us. This
opens for a¶ wholly different arsenal of engagement.
The Liberal mindset engages in a form of normativism which is, at its core, a fundamentally flawed
idea that in turn leads to the erasure of the fundamental dichotomy.
Scheuerman ’96 [William E. Scheuerman – professor of Political Science at Indiana University, “Carl
Schmitt's Critique of Liberal Constitutionalism”, published in The Review of Politics, Vol. 58, No. 2
(Spring, 1996), pp. 299-322, accessed 7/14/13, JSTOR] //pheft
For Carl Schmitt, the essence of liberal constitutionalism is best¶ captured by a term which he uses in
an undeniably deprecatory¶ fashion throughout his Weimar-era writings: normativism.¶ Notwithstanding the
immense diversity of liberal ideas about¶ constitutional government, Schmitt claims that liberals have always¶ sought to
subject political power to a system of norms, to some type¶ of rule-based legal regulation. Whether by
means of a polemical¶ contrast between "the rule of law" and the "rule of men," or an¶ espousal of the
now commonplace view that governmental power¶ is only legitimate when derived from a fixed,
written constitution,¶ liberals repeatedly emphasize the political virtues of subordinating¶ every
conceivable expression of state authority to codified legal¶ standards. Early liberals were most rigorous in this
quest; Schmitt¶ sees them as pursuing a "consistent normativity."5T hey not only¶ aspired to regulate state power in accordance with a system
of¶ neatly codified legal and constitutional standards, but they sought¶ a higher legitimacy for positive law within a system of natural¶ right; in
turn, natural right was typically conceived in a highly¶ legalistic manner. In this early version, normativism still took an¶ expressly moral form.
Liberals believed unabashedly in the rightness and rationality of their legal and constitutional ideals. Early liberal¶ conceptions of the legal
statute best embodied this spirit. For John¶ Locke and other Enlightenment liberals, for example, state action¶ was only acceptable when based
on cogent, general laws, which¶ Locke saw as constituting an attempt by mortals to reproduce the¶ universalism of divine natural law.
Individual legal measures were¶ deemed potentially arbitrary-and utterly incompatible with early¶ liberalism's ambitious moral universalistic
worldview.6¶ Despite Schmitt's at times surprisingly flattering description of¶ early liberal constitutionalism-his argumentative strategy in the¶
1928 Constitutional Theory parallels his attempt to criticize¶ contemporaryp arliamentarismb y contrasting it unfavorably to an¶ idealized, even
romanticized interpretation of its classical¶ predecessor-he still believes that the early liberal constitutionalist¶ quest was ultimately doomed.
For Schmitt, normativism is always an¶ eminently utopian worldview. Inevitably, liberals are forced to¶
abandon consistent normativism in favor of more modest versions of¶ normativistic thinking. Modem
liberals hence ultimately surrender¶ traditional liberalism's emphasis on the sanctity of the generality
of¶ the legal norm, and liberals increasingly tolerate legal forms ¶ incompatible with the ambitious legal
ideals articulated in the theories¶ of writers like Locke, Montesquieu, and BeccariaI. n Schmitt's account,¶ the proliferation of open-ended,
vague law in our century suggests¶ that legal action today tends to an ever greater extent to take the form¶ of highly discretionary, situationoriented "power decisions," most¶ of which have little relation to the ambitious ideals of the early liberal¶ rule of law. Reminiscent of some
strands of recent liberal legal thought,¶ Schmitt believes that the contemporary administrative state conflicts¶ with traditional liberal general
law; in stark contrast to liberals like¶ Theodore Lowi or Friedrich Hayek, however, Schmitt posits
that¶ illiberal legal trends are
little more than a concrete manifestation of a¶ fundamental failing inherent in normativistic liberal
thinking. For¶ Schmitt, liberal normativism lacks political efficacy. Thus, the ongoing¶ decline of
traditional liberal law is both predetermined and¶ irreversible.¶ For Schmitt, two recent manifestations of liberal¶
constitutionalist" decay" (Verfall) possess special significance.¶ First, Hans Kelsen's legal positivism continues to envision the¶ legal system as
consisting of a set of norms, ultimately derivable¶ in Kelsen's view from a "basic norm," defined in The Pure Theory¶ of Law as "nothing more
than the basic rule, according to which¶ norms of the legal order are produced."8But Kelsen breaks with¶ traditional liberalism by demanding a
clear separation between¶ legal and moral inquiry. In this system, Schmitt
mockingly¶ comments, a legal norm is "valid if
it is valid and because it is¶ valid," but not because it refers to a more fundamental moral¶ ideal.9
Consistent normativism thereby evolves into a mode of¶ "bourgeoisr elativism."'All that remains of the utopian
pathos¶ of early liberal legalism is the meager belief that law consists of a¶ coherently structured" hierarchy" of norms. Second, Kelsen's¶
positivism exercises an unambiguously deleterious influence on¶ contemporary constitutional jurisprudence. For
Schmitt,¶ relativism
makes it impossible for jurists to conceive of a "basic¶ norm"o r even a "system" or "hierarchy of
constitutional norms¶ in even the most minimally coherent fashion; Kelsen is internally¶ inconsistent. In the
aftermath of the demise of natural law, "the¶ [liberal] constitution is transformed into a series of individual¶ positive constitutional laws. Even if
there is still talk of a 'basic¶ norm' or 'basic law'... this happens only as a result of left-over¶ formulas long emptied of their original meaning. It
is thus just as¶ imprecisea nd confusingt o speak of 'the' constitution.I n reality,¶ what is meant by this is an unsystematic majority or plurality
of constitutional regulations."" If values are relative, a constitution¶ can embody no set of core moral values, and all constitutional¶ standards
have to be seen as possessing equal worth. None then¶ deserves special protective status. A clause guaranteeing that¶ "theological faculties
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
27
should remain part of the universities," like¶ that found in Article 149 of the Weimar Constitution, can be no¶ less vital from a consistent
positivist standpoint than a basic¶ guarantee of free speech, freedom of the assembly, or free elections.¶ From the perspective of legal
positivism, constitutional¶ amendment procedures need to treat such clauses with absolute¶ neutrality. Hence, if nothing but a parliamentary
supermajority¶ is needed to amend the constitution, then parliament necessarily¶ deserves as much of a right to alter (or even abrogate) the
core¶ procedures of liberal democracy as reform the theological faculties¶ in the university. For Schmitt, this suggests the self-evident¶
incoherence of legal positivism: positivism offers no way to¶ distinguish between essential and peripheral elements of the¶ constitutional
system. Kelsen's positivism culminates in a brand¶ of nihilism unable to provide a proper defense of its own¶ purportedly liberal aspirations.
Because legal positivism can¶ provide no moral justification for liberal democracy, it unwittingly¶ equips illiberal political forces with a real
opportunity for¶ destroying the final remnants of liberal normativism: as soon as¶ illiberal political groupings garner, for example, two-thirds
of¶ legislative votes, positivists are powerless in the face of a likely¶ decision to dissolve parliament itself. In its final, relativistic form,¶
normativism arms its own enemies.'2¶ But
why did liberalism inevitably have to abandon¶ "consistent
normativity"? Why is self-destructive, nihilistic¶ legal positivism the inexorable "final offshoot" (letzten¶
Auslaufer) of classical liberalism, as Schmitt believes?13¶ Alas, Schmitt provides only the most meager historical¶ details when sketching out his
dramatic thesis about¶ normativistic constitutionalism's inevitable decay. His¶ argument is primarily
legal-philosophical in
nature. Even the¶ most coherent brand of liberal normativism is intellectually¶ flawed, and thus
normativism must undergo a long process of¶ historical deterioration. History, it seems, follows¶
jurisprudence: Schmitt assumes that the immanent conceptual¶ limits of liberal constitutional theory
can explain both its¶ intellectual decline and (alleged) real-life political ills.
The Liberal Mindset serves to homogenize difference and eliminate the enemy in the name of
“equality” – this non-innate concept takes all significance out of the political
Rasch ‘5 [William Rasch – professor of Germanic Studies, “Lines in the Sand: Enmity as a
Structuring Principle”, published The South Atlantic Quarterly 104:2, Spring 2005, accessed 6/21/13,
PDF] //pheft
With its pacific presuppositions, liberalism, according to Schmitt, dissolves¶ the specificity of the
political and hides the necessarily asymmetric¶ power relations that mark all political maneuverings. By
way of an anthropological¶ sleight of hand, liberalism represents itself as an ethos, a moral¶ and economic emancipation, and not as what it
really is, namely, a power political¶ regime with traditional power-political aims. For
Schmitt, distinctions,¶ rather than the
effacement of distinctions, structure the space within¶ which we live, including the space of the
political. Only within structured¶ space, space literally marked by human activities, by human
groupings and¶ the boundaries they draw, do terms achieve their meanings. Norms, he¶ repeatedly stated, are
derived from situations, normal situations; they are¶ not derived logically from underived first principles. Categories like ‘‘liberty’’¶
and ‘‘equality’’ can have political significance only when defined and¶ delineated within the sphere of
the political. They are neither natural nor¶ innately human qualities; they are not self-evident truths.
Consequently,¶ Schmitt’s suspicion of liberalism, pacifism, or any other -ism that denies an¶ initial and
therefore ever-present potential war of all against all is a suspicion¶ of those who wish to make their
operative distinctions invisible, and¶ thus incontestable, by claiming the immorality or illegality of all
distinction.¶ Schmitt’s insistence, then, on our ‘‘evil’’ nature is evidence neither of his¶ existential misanthropy nor even, necessarily, of his
conservative authoritarianism,¶ but rather of his desire to secure the autonomy and necessity of¶ that human mechanism called ‘‘the political.’’
To the question of whether¶ there is a war, Schmitt emphatically answers ‘‘yes’’—by which he means to¶ affirm not armed conflict or
bloodshed as a virtue in and of itself, but rather¶ the necessity of the view that the proverbial state of nature is, as Hobbes¶ knew, a state
marked by imperfection, and that this imperfection manifests¶ itself as violence and the guilt associated with it.
Mexico
Liberal cooperation with Mexico serves to break down the “friend/enemy” distinction and destroys
the identity of sovereign states (the fence was built for a reason)
Norman ‘9 [Emma R. Norman - University of the Americas Puebla, Mexico Department of International
Relations and Political Science, “Applying Carl Schmitt to Global Puzzles: Identity, Conflict and the
Friend/Enemy Antithesis”, published September 2009, accessed 7/17/13, PDF] //pheft
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
28
Grounding Existing Identity Claims: A North American Regional Identity?¶ One
recognizable contribution Schmitt can offer
to IR scholars is a coherent set of theoretical¶ claims that can underwrite, explain and further
substantiate those made in more practical studies.¶ Numerous examples come to mind here, but perhaps the most
appropriate for this brief sketch¶ concerns how Schmitt’s work enables us to arrive at a convincing explanation,
beyond the¶ prevailing views, as to why North American integration has resisted the “deepening” that
theories¶ of political economy led us to expect at the time of the launching of the North American
Free¶ Trade Agreement (NAFTA) back in 1994.41¶ One could be forgiven for initially classing matters of regional integration as a kind
of¶ ‘friend’ grouping in the Schmittian model, on a parallel with: the realist principle of forming¶ alliances on the basis of shared
interests/enemies; the liberal idea of rational cooperation; or the¶ constructivist recognition of shared interests leading to mutual
values/identification. However, in¶ North
America it seems that the exclusion-based account of identity Schmitt
offers has some part¶ to play in unraveling the complicated relations between Canada, Mexico and the
U.S.¶ At first glance, a Schmittian view opens a window on why national identity has so¶ persistently
trumped any authentic sense of regional identity in the fifteen years since NAFTA’s¶ inception.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the U.S. decision to construct a 1,500 mile¶ concrete wall along
the U.S.-Mexico border, a decided case of overkill in distinguishing the¶ “other.” But the Canadian response is
similarly telling. Views of Canadian identity are¶ exemplified by what Brian Bow calls the “‘not-America’
reflex”42 which, in certain respects, is¶ reflected in Mexican identity as well.43 The forces Schmitt
described are clearly at play in¶ statements like: “one of the most distinctive features of the Canadian
nation-building project is¶ the way that it has tended to define itself in terms of separation from, and
opposition to, the¶ United States.”44 Bow’s preliminary study is not yet grounded on an explicit theoretical¶ framework, but
Schmitt’s could well be a strong candidate. The review given earlier certainly¶ provides a set of rather coherent explanations for the claims in
the following passage (as well as¶ identifying a key inconsistency).
NAFTA
NAFTA serves to normalize the other and create a “common identity”
Norman ‘9 [Emma R. Norman - University of the Americas Puebla, Mexico Department of International
Relations and Political Science, “Applying Carl Schmitt to Global Puzzles: Identity, Conflict and the
Friend/Enemy Antithesis”, published September 2009, accessed 7/17/13, PDF] //pheft
This, it has to be said, is not the kind of argument that is borne out empirically in the North¶ American case. Since
the run-up to
NAFTA, the hope has been that integration would somehow¶ be a process of learning how to forge a
collective identity through an increasing awareness of,¶ and focus on, the shared values and
circumstances of the partner states. In practice, this premise¶ has proved to be hopelessly naïve. We are witnessing
something far closer to the Schmittian¶ model of identity-through-exclusion, even if this process has
unfolded in a rather ambivalent¶ manner. Schmitt would argue that it is the failure to fully recognize
and take advantage of the¶ identity distinctions (coupled with clinging to a liberal mode of economic cooperation49 that has¶ shown
itself incapable of intensifying the relation between rival “economic competitors” into¶ closely aligned “regional political friends”) that
explains at least partially the inability of the U. S.¶ to assume the ‘decisive’ (hegemonic) leadership role
that is still appropriate to its size and¶ international status in the 21st century. Schmitt would also tell
us that U.S. reticence in the new¶ millennium is a product of its own increasingly muddled national
identity.¶ On most accounts,50 the three North American partners are more concerned with those values¶ and interests that are NOT
shared and as a result “deeper integration,” at least in the form of¶ regional identity development, remains elusive. Although the very
desirability of such a process¶ is still hotly contested on a number of grounds, few—if any—have
brought a Schmittian¶ perspective to that particular debating table. Of the rich literature that has been
generated on the¶ subject of North American integration,51 only a few fringe opponents would rule out
the future¶ integration scenario as a successful one.52 A Schmittian perspective would not necessarily
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
29
rule out¶ success either, but it would predict that deeper integration is unlikely. In any case, Schmitt gives¶ one
answer to Bow’s query as to why there is so little support for, and even less movement¶ toward, a mutual regional identity—although there is
much room to explore just how far down¶ Schmitt’s answer may hold.
Nyquist/Terrorism link
The act of “fighting the terrorists” belittles the enmity and as manifest in recent times, detaches us
from who we are
Nyquist ‘5 [Jeffrey R. Nyquist – all American badass and writer for Financial Sense, “THE PROBLEM OF
ENMITY”, published 10/7/5, accessed 6/28/13, <
http://www.financialsensearchive.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2005/1007.html> idk what the
hell all those question marks are….] //pheft
America dismisses its enemy as �small and insignificant.� In saying our enemy is an �extremist,�
we are belittling him in a way that makes him less terrible. Somehow the teachings of the Prophet are thought to be
compatible with American sensibilities and secular civilization. But how can this be? Serious Christians tell us that secular civilization has
abandoned the teachings of Christ. Why is it so hard to believe that this same civilization is offensive to the teachings of Mohammed?¶ The
War on Terror (so called) does not signify the mobilization of the United States. The government does
not ration consumer items or draft soldiers. The consumer economy remains at center stage. The
general public (with the exception of military families) is disconnected and disengaged from a war
that is no more real to its daily concerns than an old World War II movie. We refuse to know our
enemy, and we do not know ourselves.
Peace (kinda a link but this is also an impact card)
Attempts to maintain constant peace fundamentally denies the dichotomy by being unable to face the
enemy (this can link the K to the political and then to the Schmitt cards in the framing section)
Thorup ‘6 [Mikkel Thorup - Ph.D.-dissertation, Institute of Philosophy and the History of Ideas,
Department of the History of Ideas, University of Aarhus, Denmark, “In Defence of Enmity
- Critiques of Liberal Globalism”, published January 2006, accessed 7/3/13,
<https://pure.au.dk/portal/files/1125531/In_defence_of_enmity_-_pdf.pdf>] //pheft
Real politics is first and foremost foreign politics, that is, war and the preparation for war (and¶
secondly, internal peace). He understands ordinary politics as centrifugal, as dangerously¶ weakening the state by allowing ‘total
parties’ to over-politicize the internal and make everything¶ into politics which, in turn, weakens the genuinely political. Opposed to this,
Schmitt emphasized¶ (to the point of the disappearance of everything else) ‘high politics’. The true political nation state¶ had, prior to its liberal
dissolution, pushed the political to the foreign domain: “Politics in an¶ elevated sense, great politics, was back then only foreign politics”
(1996d: 11). In contrast to¶
everyday trivial politics, he insists that “the grand moments of high politics are
… the moments¶ when the enemy is viewed in concrete clarity as the enemy” (1996a: 67). We could call it
the front¶ line battle moment of the political. Unwillingness to face up to this moment of clarity (and
action) is¶ a ‘symptom of the end of the political’ (1996a: 67). The loss of the death sacrifice is the
clearest¶ example of a disenchanted and empty world (Palaver 1995). The modern is the post-heroic age,¶ where the
death sacrifice isn’t demanded or offered. Life, the purely quantitative continuation of¶ life, is the highest standard. Life, for Schmitt
and the Counter-Enlightenment, is without meaning, if¶ it doesn’t contain anything more precious,
more sublime, than the mere continuation of the¶ individual existence. The political, for Schmitt, is
the attempt at reinstating moral seriousness¶ (Strauss 1988: 119; Norris 1998: 71, 78). Schmitt might not have said it quite
like that, but he¶ would agree with the main thrust of Helmuth Moltke, when he said: “Without war the world would¶
deteriorate into materialism” (quoted from Gat 2001: 327). The real only exists in its relation to the¶ possibility of death: “The
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
30
existential core of the political is the real possibility of being robbed of¶ one’s own being by the
enemy” (Nielsen 2003: 86). This is what gives the political its distinct¶ character and it explains Schmitt’s
repeated warnings, that those who deny the political loose their¶ independence (1982: 228; 1996a: 54): “The
concepts of friend, enemy and battle only gain their real¶ meaning because they have and always will
have a special relation to the real possibility of physical¶ killing”; “War is also today the serious case
[Ernstfall]” (1996a: 33 & 25).¶ World peace is, in contrast to the ever present possibility of combat, the ‘idyllic
goal of complete¶ and final depoliticization’ (1996a: 54); it is a world without enemies, limits, borders etc.
Total¶ depoliticization entails the non-existence of states and the idea of global organization and¶
universality at any price (1996a: 55). It is the entire world turned post-historical and based¶ ‘exclusively on economics and on
technically regulating traffic’ (1996a: 58); the whole world as the¶ first world; it is a world of ‘culture, civilization, economics, morality, law, art,
entertainment, etc.’¶ (1996a: 54). In a
footnote from 1963, he says that, inspired by Leo Strauss’s critique, he
would now¶ put ‘play’ instead of entertainment as the counterpart to seriousness (1996a: 120). A
world of play¶ is also a world without politics, without the distinction between friend and enemy. So,
in essence¶ depoliticization is denial of the existence of an enemy. A totally depoliticized entity
cannot¶ distinguish between friend and enemy (1996c: 112); nor does it even acknowledge that there
is an¶ enemy – understood as an equal but oppositional entity or actor. It is not entirely clear, whether¶ Schmitt
totally denies this pacified globe as a possibility (“If and when this condition will appear, I¶ do not know. At the moment, this is not the case”,
1996a: 54). On the whole, he must reject even¶ the possibility. There is no apolitical possibility. If the world state should come about, the
Things would not administer themselves. One would have to ask¶ “which
people this awesome power belongs to” (1996a: 58).
political¶ problem would not disappear.
Philosophy
Philosophical musings inherently ignore the enemy thus attempting to erase the “us/them”
dichotomy”
Thorup ‘6 [Mikkel Thorup - Ph.D.-dissertation, Institute of Philosophy and the History of Ideas,
Department of the History of Ideas, University of Aarhus, Denmark, “In Defence of Enmity
- Critiques of Liberal Globalism”, published January 2006, accessed 7/7/13,
<https://pure.au.dk/portal/files/1125531/In_defence_of_enmity_-_pdf.pdf>] //pheft
Gil Anidjar rightly says that “We have not sufficiently thought of the enemy” (2004: 37). In his The¶ Jew, the
Arab (2003), he sketches a preliminary history of the enemy, but it is fair to say that the¶ enemy has been systematically
ignored in philosophy and the social sciences. Philosophy has¶ consistently asked, ‘what is a friend?’,
whereas the question of the enemy has been reduced to, ‘who¶ is the enemy?’ and, ‘what to do with
the enemy?’ Schmitt is one of the few to deal with the enemy¶ from a perspective other than psychology (Riebener 1991; Volkan 1994)
or sociology (Keen 1986;¶ Aho 1994), as he tries to outline a historical and political narrative of the public enemy. Individual¶ hate or enmity
does not interest him. And most importantly, he is
one of the very few who doesn’t¶ initiate his investigation out of
moral(istic) horror. The main thesis of his work on the enemy is its¶ transformation from a
moral/religious register to a political one; a truly great humanist achievement¶ of Europe as it entails a
manageable and contained enmity and then the return of total enmity in a¶ liberal international age.
He distinguishes between a number of enmities:
Conventional enmity (or just enmity). This is the ideal according to which the other enmities are
measured. This is the great achievement of the nation state era. It is also what we here describe as
political enmity. It describes a relation of enmity between states who recognize, fight and negotiate
with each other. The conventional just enemy is recognized as an equal and the war is thus
contained through international law and a codex of honour among combatants. This concept of
enmity arises through the de-theologization and de-moralization of international relations. Silete
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
31
theologi!, as Schmitt is fond of saying. The new nation state order was conditioned upon a
‘dethronement of the theologists’ (1985: 65). Julien Freund (1996: 65) reminds us of Oldendorp, a
sixteenth century Lutheran jurist who “used to say that a just war was ultimately no war, but the
work of justice, whereas the unjust war was no war either, but a rebellion against the just order.
Thus verbal dialectic finally does away with the act of war”. But only on a verbal plane. In the
world of flesh and bone, warfare was endemic; and it was the banishment of just war in favour of
the just enemy who ultimately stopped the ferocious religious wars and created the interstate order.
It marks a transition from a discriminatory concept of war and enmity, where the enemy is a moral
or religious enemy to be destroyed, to a non-discriminatory concept, where no one can claim moral
superiority and where the political enemy is (only) to be defeated, not destroyed (2003c). In a
Schmitt-inspired text, Paul Hirst (2001a: 59) elaborates: “Reason of state limits the enmity of
interstate relations in that it makes them a matter of pure power technique: one’s enemy is not an
implacable foe but an honourable opponent in a conflict of interests”. The enemy is not a criminal.
The clear demarcations between war and peace, internal and external, combatant and
civilian/neutral help contain the enmity and its implications. It is a limited and regulated enmity, a
‘duel’ between equal sovereigns. The aim is to impose our will on the other, not to annihilate him.
In a footnote to the 1963-edition of Begriff des Politischen, Schmitt explicates the meaning of the
conventional concept of enmity as consisting not in the elimination of the enemy but in “the
prevention, in the clash of forces and in the creation of a common border” (1996a: 119).
Trade
The notion of spreading “trade” or “liberal economics” presupposes a natural liberal order that at its
core is rooted in a denial of the fundamental dichotomy.
Petito and Odysseos ‘7 [Fabio Petito - Senior Lecturer in International Relations at US, Dr. Louiza
Odysseos- University of Sussex, Department of International Relations, “The International Political
Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal War and the Crisis of Global Order”, published in 2007, accessed
7/17/13, googleEBOOK] //pheft
Finally, I want to suggest some way in which Schmitt‘s thought might con-¶ tribute to reflections on the global nature of world order or, in other
words, the¶ issue of globalization. In
The Nomos of the Earth Schmitt argues that during the¶ nineteenth century
the rise of a global economy brought about a common eco-¶ nomic law, a private international law, whose
liberal constitutional standard was¶ more important than the political sovereignty of each politically selfcontained¶ (but not economically) territorial state (2003a: 235). In other words, Schmitt had¶ seen with clarity the growing
role of economic power to the point where he¶ argued that it was ‘precisely here - in the economy [that] the old spatial order¶ of the earth lost its structure’ (ibid.: 237). importantly Schmitt observes that this¶
epoch-making revolution could not have taken place if the international law of¶ laissez-faire had not joined
together with the principle of the freedom of sea,¶ whose interpreter was the British Empire. England, which had not
developed the¶ dualism between public and civil law characteristic of the continental state, was¶ able to enter into a direct relationship with
the private component present in¶ every European state. This
reconstruction - already a powerful argument in¶ favour of an earlier
periodization of globalization to the nineteenth century¶ seems also to suggest that contemporary economic globalization cannot be¶
grasped without reference to the implicit (legal and economic) common consti-¶ tutional standard and the role
of the US as the protector and guarantor (as lord of¶ air and space technology) of the stability of the system.
Venezuela
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
32
The Venezuelan regime is the epitome of Schmitt’s sovereign dictator that clearly defines friend from
enemy and the attempt to change via “democratization” is an attempt to destroy the fundamental
dichotomy
Ramonet ‘1 [David Ramonet studied Pharmacy at the University of Barcelona (Spain) and got his Ph.D.
degree in 2003 at the School of Medicine of the same university, “Nazi Jurist Carl Schmitt Revived as
Legal Model For Venezuela’s Cha´vez”, published in EIR Volume 28, Number 17, April 27, 2001, accessed
7/17/13, PDF] //pheft
The ‘Constituent Assembly’ Process¶ The
key to the whole process employed by Chavez in¶ Venezuela is the
Constituent Assembly, inspired from beginning to end by Carl Schmitt, known in the 1930s as "the Crown Jurist of
the Third Reich."¶ Chavez ‘ s first act after assuming power in February 1999, ¶ was to issue a decree to hold
a referendum to approve the¶ creation of a Constituent Assembly that would rewrite the¶ constitution. That
referendum was held on April 25, 1999,¶ after the Supreme Court was armtwisted into providing a¶ sophist justification for legalizing the
referendum, which was¶ in clear violation of the existing constitution.¶ However, the
Supreme Court did not approve
Chavez‘s¶ attempt to include in the terms of the referendum, the condition that the Constituent Assembly would be
defined as the¶ country‘s "originating power." That is, the court rejected the¶ idea that the Constituent Assembly would have
absolute pow-¶ ers to eliminate the existing legislature and judiciary, the Congress of the Republic and Supreme Court of Justice. However,¶
Chavez simply trampled on the Supreme Court, and pro-¶ claimed that, independent of the court's
decision, the National¶ Constituent Assembly, born of the referendum, would take¶ the “sovereign" decision
to declare itself the “originating¶ power"-a carbon copy of the arguments used by Carl¶ Schmitt to justify
Hitler's coup. On July 25, the members¶ of the Constituent Assembly were elected, with 53% of the¶ electorate abstaining. Of the 131 members
elected, 137 were¶ personally designated by Chavez.¶ From the beginning, even before the referendum itself,¶ Schmitt's name began to surface
publicly as the inspiration¶ for the Assembly. On Jan. 19, 1999, lawyer Ignacio Quintana,¶ the current Venezuelan ambassador to the Vatican,
wrote an¶ article in the Caracas daily El Nacional, entitled: "Constitu-¶ tional Violence Against the Constituent Assembly." He there¶ states:
"Carl Schmitt described in his Theory of the Constitu-¶ tion, on page 225, the underlying structure of a Constitution¶ that responds to the
interests of the people, and not to the¶ interests of economic groups, of parties, of a political and¶ ideological superstructure which seeks,
through ‘constitu-¶ tional‘ text, to usurp political power and its derivatives."¶ Quintana, of course, did not feel it necessary to tell his¶ readers
that Schmitt Was a Hitlerian. And at that time, no one¶ responded publicly to Quintana, a financier whose intellectual¶ capacity is
acknowledged to be rather precarious, Who is¶ linked to the Banco Latino Which, in 1994, helped drive the¶ national banking system into
bankruptcy.
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
33
Impacts
Absolute Enmity
The liberal mindset inherent in the ethics of the 1AC is manifest in a worse form of violence that
necessitates the destruction of the other (OR The liberal mindset inherent in the ethics of the 1AC is
manifest in subjugation of the other to the self – leads to ontological damnation)
Prozorov ‘6 [Sergei Prozorov - University of Helsinki, Department of Political and Economic Studies,
“Liberal Enmity: The Figure of the Foe in the Political Ontology of Liberalism”, published in Millennium Journal of International Studies 2006 35: 75, accessed 7/15/13, mil.sagepub] //pheft
What interests us in this modality of the friend–enemy distinction is¶ the explicit requirement of equality between opponents in the common¶
space of the ‘regulated contest of forces’. Indeed,
the ontological equality¶ of the self and the enemy is a
fundamental characteristic of Schmitt’s¶ thought that strongly contrasts with the asymmetric
constellation of¶ the self–other interaction in the ‘poststructuralist ethics’ of Levinas and¶ Derrida.29
While for the latter the asymmetrical relation, whereby the¶ Other calls the Self in question, is a
prerequisite for the assumption of a¶ genuinely ethical ‘responsibility’, for Schmitt any asymmetry,
privileging¶ either the Self or the Other, paves the way for absolute enmity and the¶ actualisation of the ‘most
extreme possibility’ of existential negation. For¶ Schmitt, being called in question by the Other is not in itself an ethical
but¶ simply a horrifying experience of the possibility of violent death. What¶ makes the encounter with
the Other contingently ethical is precisely the¶ possibility of the resolution of this asymmetry in the
establishment of¶ an empirical equality that actualises the equality that is always already¶ inscribed in the transcendental function of the
friend–enemy distinction:¶ after all, in
Schmitt’s ontology of radical alterity any two subjects are equal¶ simply by
virtue of being wholly different from each other.30 Schmitt’s normative preference for the Westphalian modality of enmity
is therefore¶ conditioned both by its correspondence to the ontological condition of¶ equality-in-alterity and the desire to avoid the
absolutisation of hostility¶ that is inherent in any asymmetrical self–other interaction.What
made possible the actualisation of
ontological equality in¶ the Westphalian period was the exclusion of all substantive (moral,¶ economic or aesthetic)
criteria, on the basis of which the properties¶ or actions of any party could be deemed ‘unjust’, thus
permitting the¶ appropriation of the justa causa by the other party. In contrast, the ultrapolitical¶
constellation, discussed by Zizek, is marked precisely by the¶ presence of positive normative content in the
positions of the opponents,¶ whose incommensurability precludes the existence of a common ground¶ between them. In this
constellation, the Self inevitably perceives the¶ Other not as a legitimate existential equal, but as a
pure negation of the¶ normative principles of the Self, the otherness of the Other reduced to a¶ mere
denial of the Self. Insofar as these normative principles are treated¶ by the Self as unproblematic and unchallengeable, the enemy,
viewed in¶ solely negative terms of their refusal, becomes not merely the adversary¶ in a regulated contest but an object of hate and revulsion,
or, in Schmitt’s¶ terms, an inimicus rather than a hostis.
Bad Stuff (Crumbling of society, mass murder, shit like that)
A lack of embrasure leads to an uneventful life, a loss of being, and ultimately the destruction of
sovereignty OR A lack of embrasure leads to the breakdown of liberal society as we wage wars in the
name of peace and commit mass murder to stop “terrorists”
Thorup ‘6 [Mikkel Thorup - Ph.D.-dissertation, Institute of Philosophy and the History of Ideas,
Department of the History of Ideas, University of Aarhus, Denmark, “In Defence of Enmity
- Critiques of Liberal Globalism”, published January 2006, accessed 6/30/13,
<https://pure.au.dk/portal/files/1125531/In_defence_of_enmity_-_pdf.pdf>] //pheft
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
34
When, upon the arrival of a group of German guests, John Cleese as Basil in Fawlty Towers¶ instructs his staff: ‘Don’t mention the war’, we all
know that that is exactly what he is going to do –¶ and in the most bizarre ways. It has been the claim of this text that a similar logic pertains to
the¶ political. ‘Don’t mention the war’, that is, the denial of liberal or humanitarian warfare as war is¶ exactly what helps bring it about, just as
the denial of both the enemy and the political facilitates¶ their return in distorted forms. The contemporary literature, of which this dissertation
is inspired,¶ tends to focus on the return of the political. I’ve been more interested in the returns of the enemy¶ but it is part of the same
critical project of informing liberalism of its shadow sides. The critique¶ unfolded above has been more one of exploring possible danger than of
asserting facts on the¶ ground. The chapters above have also been inspired by the disobedience of another Fawltyan ban:¶ ‘Don’t mention Carl
Schmitt’, which is being systematically ignored these days. This dissertation¶ has followed the direction of present Schmitt-scholarship into
international politics. The work on or¶ inspired by Schmitt used to concentrate on domestic issues of parliamentarism, rule of law, the¶ essence
of the political etc. Now, the trend is to discuss international affairs using his concepts and¶ critiques, and that, not least, in what could call the
third use of Fawlty: The proper way to actually¶ mention the war as war. An aim of this text has been to highlight the dangers of mis-naming¶
exclusions and uses of force. To insist on the political nature of depoliticization is less to call ‘foul¶ play’ than to reinsert the depoliticized in a
political register, where dissent, options and decisions¶ are again relevant. Names matter.¶ This has not really been a defence of enmity; at
least not of enmity as such. Rather, it has been,¶ firstly, an insistence on enmity as an important category of scientific investigation and,
secondly, of¶ the political enmity as a critical corrective to the other forms discussed above. Only it that sense has¶ it been a defence. Enmity
is a neglected category of investigation, unless one includes the many¶ moralist denunciations. It
seems fair to presume that enmity is here to stay. If this is so, then we¶ have to find ways to live with
it. One very significant way is the liberal translation of enemies into¶ conflict partners. This is a true
humanist achievement. Yet it comes fraught with dangers or shadow¶ sides. One of those is the
uneventful life, mediocrity, the debased beings of liberal sociability;¶ another is the ossifying of
political life. I’ve been concentrating on some of the exclusionary effects¶ of this translation of enmity
and not least on the claim of a complete end of enmity proclaimed by¶ liberal internationalism and
then again by liberal globalism. In this way, the insistence on the¶ persistence or returns of enmity, and not
least on the political enmity as a contained and manageable¶ one becomes a critical tool of informing liberalism of how, paradoxically, the
embedding of its¶ project keeps undermining its proclaimed goals: Liberal globalism becomes anti-pluralist;¶
democratic peace becomes an instrument and argument of war; freedom becomes an excuse for¶
bombardment; critique of nationalism helps force the vilified into more hardened, intransigent¶
forms; critique of sovereignty becomes a new sovereigntist language; self-determination becomes¶
the recipe for neo-colonial protectorates; the war on terror produces ever more terror; legitimacy ¶
becomes an instrument of dis-recognition; establishment of a new international law institutionalizes¶
sovereign inequality; the move from politics to morality reintroduces the just war; finally, the end of¶
enmity produces new enemies, also, and not least, the moral enmity of good and evil, competent¶ and
incompetent, self-determining and other-determining.¶ This is what we’ve been trying to show, using enmity as a central
category, and taking political¶ enmity as our point of departure. Not because political enmity is inherently benign, far from it. It¶ comes with
problems of its own, which liberal globalism is set on this earth to emphasize and¶ criticize. The use of political enmity here is, so to speak, not
political but scientific. Political enmity¶ is a theoretical, not a real-historical, concept. It is implied in the logic of diplomacy, classical¶
international law and regularized warfare and it has some relevance in actual events on the¶ battleground, at least before industrialized
warfare. But, this has been no exercise in nostalgia for a¶ lost warrior ethics. Theoretically, we have to presuppose the political enmity, no
matter how much¶ it in actual practice has been contaminated by the other forms of enmity.
Basic Liberalism Bad
No inherent reason liberalism is good, in fact, it covers up history and engages in a false narrative
Thorup ‘6 [Mikkel Thorup - Ph.D.-dissertation, Institute of Philosophy and the History of Ideas,
Department of the History of Ideas, University of Aarhus, Denmark, “In Defence of Enmity
- Critiques of Liberal Globalism”, published January 2006, accessed 6/30/13,
<https://pure.au.dk/portal/files/1125531/In_defence_of_enmity_-_pdf.pdf>] //pheft
Politically, it serves as a critical corrective and, perhaps, as a minimal utopia (as one of my fellow ¶
PhD-students called it); the best to hope for. Instead of the current liberal monopolization of¶
legitimacy, we should perhaps learn to recognize “legitimate non-democratic regimes that have the¶
authority to contain tensions but can also respect a minimum of social and political rights” (Hirst ¶
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
35
2002: 8). Postmodern state or chaos and war are not the exclusive options of a global era. Most nonliberal regimes do not
engage in continuous war-making; they do not sponsor terrorism or engage in constant repression.
Most people, even in non-liberal regimes, do live good lives. Iin an interview¶ conducted by myself and Frank Beck
Lassen, John Gray said: “People can live peaceful,¶ productive, creative lives without a global liberal society” (Thorup & Lassen 2005: 12). This
is the¶ truth, which liberalism refuses to see. Paul Hirst (2002: 8) insists: “It is what regimes do that¶ matters”
and in this, liberal democracies may have less reason to claim moral superiority. Just as ¶ there is no
necessary connection between liberalism and democracy, there is none between¶ liberalism and
pacifism. This is the illusion of liberalism, radicalized by liberal globalism. And it’s¶ the illusion we’re
attempting to undermine by insisting on the political nature of post-political¶ liberalism. Politics as conflict is
not inherently despotic or violent. That is just the liberal way of¶ understanding and presenting it (like politics as technique is understood and
described as¶ inauthentic in much liberalism critique). Here,
politics as conflict has served us as a counternarrative¶ to
a hegemonic politics as technique and as a way to see the workings within politics as¶ technique of the
exact same dangers, that is being delegated to politics as conflict, that is, ¶ repression, exclusion,
creation of ‘others’, war internally and externally. The liberal-humanitarian discourse becomes the
language of intervention; and “thinking their¶ interventions benign or neutral, they intervene more
often than they otherwise might” (Kennedy¶ 2004: 23); and often in areas and ways, which doesn’t
help the ‘victims’ intended. This is not to¶ deny the need, often, of intervention of various kinds, and it is certainly no questioning of
the¶ humanitarian motive. The ideology critique of this text is not to seek the real, hard reason behind¶ the soft spoken words but to take the
humanitarian language and motivation serious and then to look¶ critically at the implications of good intentions. It’s my thesis that a not
insignificant part of the¶ problem lies in an insufficient understanding of power. David Kennedy says that the humanitarian¶ blindness
“often begins at the moment the humanitarian averts his eyes from his own power” (2004:¶ 329, my italics).
Humanitarians and liberal opinion-makers wield enormous power, also military¶ power, but this goes
unnoticed in and through the liberal-humanist discourse, which consistently¶ cast off any appearance
of own power and names power as evil and as the problem to be overcome.¶ This is the understanding of self
and power constitutive of liberalism, that I’ve told.
*Constant War
Trying to create a uniformly peaceful world justifies violence against deviants who “create
conflict”- means war is inevitable
Rasch ‘4 (William, Prof. of German Studies, Indiana U, Sovereignty and its Discontents, Birkbeck Law Press, pg. 15) my
What could be wrong with such a vision? Certainly it is neither verifiable nor deniable empirically, so one cannot object on that
ground. Ontologies are posited, not proven; and the same goes for philosophical anthropology at this level of abstraction. What we
have in Milbank, then, is an image of a primordially pacified globe, and a lovely image it is. It satisfies the demands, or so it
would seem, of a non-Kantian ethics, based on expansion rather than repression of desire,7 and a quintessentially enlightened
theology that places original goodness over sin. It also sketches the outlines for an ideal, noncapitalist economics based on collective
utilization of the commons, and links this sketch, much like recent radical histories,8 to a putatively pre-fallen stage of
history of the human race not yet marked by the doctrine of property and dominion. It conforms to the
demand for the symmetry and ‘noble simplicity’ of a classical aesthetics. And its portrayal of the political, to the extent that such a
portrayal exists, does offer a distinct alternative to Schmitt’s friend/enemy model. But, not unexpectedly, here some difficulties arise,
because the image of peaceful harmony that is found in the original text of peaceful creation is overlaid by
the more violent and imperfect second text . The question becomes: How do we move from that second text back to the
first one? How, in other words, do we convince those not already willing to participate in the coming community
to give up their ‘sinful’ ways? The question is a difficult one, because if peace is the default mode of the universe
and violence only ‘an unnecessary intrusion’ brought into the community by ‘a free subject who asserts a will
that is truly independent of God and of others, and thereby a will to the inhibition and distortion of reality’ (Milbank, 1990, p 432),
how does one combat that violence if not by violence? The exercise of a corrective violence, a ‘just’ violence,
aimed at the sinful intrusion is, of course, a traditional Christian response.9 It is not, however, Milbank’s. Instead he offers
something perhaps even more insidious. Milbank
opts for ‘ecclesial coercion’, a form of ‘noncoercive persuasion’
(Milbank, 1990, p 418) that is a collective, communal pressure expressed as ‘social anger’ or ‘calm fury’. ‘When a
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
36
person commits an evil act’, Milbank writes, ‘he cuts himself off from social peace’, because ‘an individual’s sin is never his alone … its
endurance harms us all, and therefore its cancellation is also the responsibility of all’ (Milbank, 1990, pp 421, 422). Therefore, non-
coercive persuasion is the collective pressure of the group that ideally leads to renewed voluntary
conformity, the ‘free consent of will’ (Milbank, 1990, p 418), on the part of the deviant individual. The political
as Schmitt envisions it disappears completely once one presupposes the ontological priority of non-violence.
But what takes its place? It may seem ironic, but once one renounces the political and embraces the community based on
harmonious universal inclusion of the peaceful and absolute exclusion of ‘sin’, one seems to have what Schmitt
refers to as ‘democracy’ based on homogeneity. When one excludes the political, one has to guard the
borders vigilantly against those willful intruders who deviate from God’s will – which also means that one need
be ever vigilant within those borders as well. Such an atmosphere, it seems, lends itself well to the description, cited above, of the
‘total state which no longer knows anything absolutely nonpolitical’ (Schmitt, 1976, p 25), which is to say that the political loses
its autonomy and becomes conflated with the moral. What then becomes of those who are not
‘persuaded’, who adamantly refuse to ‘participate’? Is ‘sin’ the only category available to describe their behavior? And is there no
legitimate political alternative to pure and absolute consensus? Will all dissent and all dissenters who refuse to repent
be eternally damned? We know by now what question to ask, and it is a quintessentially Schmittian question: Who decides?
Who decides on what is and what is not peace, what is and what is not violence, what is and what is not
sin? And we know the answer: the sovereign, here the far from non-coercive sovereignty of the collective known as the Christian
community. By extension, the same question can be asked of the other proponents of the ontological priority of nonviolence, that is,
of Agamben and of Hardt and Negri. Does negating the presupposition of violence negate the sovereign, or is not
the negation itself a sovereign act, one made by the theologian or the philosopher, or by a liberal order that claims to have
solved, once and for all, the nihilistic problem of the political?
Destruction of Difference
The shattering of the enmity leads to a denial of difference homogenization – turns the aff
Odysseos ‘8 [Dr. Louiza Odysseos- University of Sussex, Department of International Relations, “Against
Ethics? Iconographies of Enmity and Acts of Obligation in Carl Schmitt’s Theory of the Partisan”,
published 3/22/8, accessed 7/7/13, PDF] //pheft
‘Humanity as such’, Schmitt noted, ‘cannot wage war because it has no enemy’,¶ (1996a: 54),
indicating that humanity ‘is a polemical word that negates its opposite’¶ (Kennedy 1998: 94; emphasis
added). In The Concept of the Political Schmitt argued¶ that humanity ‘excludes the concept of the
enemy, because the enemy does not cease¶ to be a human being’ (1996a: 54). However, in his 1950 book with an
international¶ focus, The Nomos of the Earth, Schmitt noted how only when ‘man appeared to be the¶ embodiment of absolute humanity, did
the other side of this concept appear in the¶ form of a new enemy: the inhuman’ (2003a: 104). It becomes apparent that,¶ historically
examined, the concept of humanity engenders a return to a ‘discriminatory¶ concept of war’, by which Schmitt meant that it reintroduces the
legitimacy and need¶ for substantive causes of justice in war (Schmitt 2003b: 37-52). This in turn disallows¶ the notion of justus hostis, of a ‘just
enemy’ – explored in section three – associated¶ with the notion of non-discriminatory interstate war which took the shape of guerre¶ en
forme (Schmitt 2003a: 142-144).
The concept of humanity , therefore, shatters the¶ formal concept of justus
hostis, allowing the enemy to now be designated¶ substantively as an enemy of humanity as such.
This leaves the enemy of humanity¶ with no value and open to dehumanisation and political and
physical annihilation¶ (Schmitt 2004: 67). In discussing the League of Nations, Schmitt highlights that,¶ compared to the kinds of
wars that can be waged on behalf of humanity, the¶ interstate European wars from 1815 to 1914 in reality were regulated; they¶ were
bracketed by the neutral Great Powers and were completely legal¶ procedures in comparison with the modern and gratuitous police actions¶
against violators of peace, which can be dreadful acts of annihilation (Schmitt¶ 2003a: 186).¶ Enemies
of humanity cannot be
considered ‘just and equal’. Moreover, they cannot¶ claim neutrality: one cannot remain neutral in the
call to be for or against humanity or¶ its freedom; one cannot, similarly, claim a right to resist or
defend oneself, in the¶ sense we understand this right to have existed in the international law of
Europe (the¶ jus publicum Europeaum). Such a denial of self-defence and resistance ‘can presage a¶
dreadful nihilistic destruction of all law’ (ibid.: 187). When the enemy is not accorded¶ a procedural
justice and formal equality, the notion that peace can be made with him¶ is unacceptable, as Schmitt
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
37
detailed through his study of the League of Nations, which¶ had declared the abolition of war, but in
rescinding the concept of neutrality only¶ succeeded in the ‘dissolution of “peace”’ (ibid.: 246). It is
with the dissolution of¶ peace that total wars of annihilation become possible, where ‘the other’
cannot be¶ assimilated, or accommodated, let alone tolerated: the friend/enemy distinction is not¶
longer taking place with a justus hostis but rather between good and evil, human and¶ inhuman,
where ‘the negative pole of the distinction is to be fully and finally¶ consumed without remainder’
(Rasch 2003: 137).¶ Finally, the ethical discourse of a universal humanity can be discerned in the
tendency¶ to normalise diverse peoples through legalisation and individualisation. The¶ paramount emphasis
placed on legal instruments and entitlements such as human¶ rights transforms diverse subjectivities into ‘rights-holders’. ‘[T]he other is
stripped of¶ his otherness and made to conform to the universal ideal of what it means to be¶
human’, meaning that ‘the term “human” is not descriptive, but evaluative. To be¶ truly human, one
needs to be corrected’ (Rasch 2003: 140 and 137; cf. Young 2002;¶ Hopgood 2000).
What does this correction
in its ‘multiform tactics’, which include¶ Michel Foucault’s proper terms of discipline and training, aim to produce? The¶ answer may well be the
proper, free (masterful), equal and rational (in its self-interest)¶ subject of rights, of capitalism and the governmentalised state (Foucault
2001a). As¶ Gil Anidjar notes, the operation of the traditional binary ‘sovereign/enemy’ is¶ transformed ‘in the disciplinary society (which
signals, according to Foucault, the¶ dissolution of sovereign power) into “disciplinary regime/criminality” (or, for that¶ second term, legal
subject, subject of the law, and, of course, “man”)’ (Anidjar 2004:¶ 42; emphasis added). Of
equally great importance is
transformation that follows in the¶ transition from a disciplinary to a governmental economy of
power: this is what we¶ are at the moment confronting and must analyse: what are the paths towards
which the¶ other as enemy is directed by (a global) governmentality and, moreover, what forms,¶
subjectivities, etc., is the ‘enemy’ encouraged to take in the form of an unavoidable¶ freedom, along
the lines articulated by Foucault under the heading of ‘selfgovernment’¶ (2007b).
Disease
Liberal globalism results in rampant disease spread (this is probz a really shitty impact, I cut it at like
3am)
De Benoist ‘1 [Alain De Benoist – French philosopher dude, “The era of the virus”, published in The Link ,
No. 66, 2001, accessed 7/21/13, http://grece-fr.com/?p=3413] //pheft
One effect of globalization is the generalization of the viral spread. In the networking world, the virus
is everywhere: instant, widespread, diffuse. It is both a reality and virtuality a metaphor. Inexorably,
despite the measures taken to prevent its spread, the AIDS virus continues to spread around the
world. The African continent is particularly devastated. Other new diseases, some of which are
actually old diseases that were thought to have been eradicated, appear here and there, threatening
to spread across entire continents. But man is not the only one affected. Within a few years, bovine spongiform encephalopathy
(disease of "mad cow disease") has devastated farms, plunged into an economic crisis, while industry and continues to inspire the most serious
concerns about the magnitude of transmission to humans. And now the FMD outbreak that part of England, is to turn out to conquer the
world.¶ The virus is still a key concept of the new information technologies. The rapid spread of the Internet system has been associated with
the emergence of computer viruses that parties at any point of the globe, are transmitted in a few days, or even hours, the computers
worldwide. Financial markets, which now operate in "time zero" on a global scale, to reconfigure them as to conform to the viral spread. A
financial crisis localized instantly spread from across the world, resulting in a sort of "domino effect" a succession of crises that threaten at any
moment lead to a generalized meltdown. It is finally up to the ideological and religious beliefs transmitted today in a "viral" form, playing
traditional boundaries and using new communication techniques: Islamism, to name him, falls these new forms of contagion.¶ The
mode
of viral spread obeys laws of its own. The virus is spread unpredictably, but according to the principle
of polycentric networks. This is not a chain propagation of linear: each point touched becomes distribution center in turn. This
propagation acquires the same time extraordinary rapidity. She jumps over geographical barriers, political, institutional. She goes around
the earth in an endless movement.¶ To cope with the virus, the government become health
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
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38
authorities. In all areas, not only in the health sector, the most frequently used metaphors are
biological or medical type. To stop the spread of epidemics (or pandemics) are established "cordon" is
put in "quarantine". Similarly, we tend to assimilate everything you want to get rid of "germs" or "bacilli". Against an invisible
enemy, diffuse, which can be everywhere, even and especially when we do not see, we use the
precautionary principle. Whole flocks are slaughtered without being sure that the animals in them are really sick. The user, in front of
his computer, throws caution, without opening the messages that it ignores the source. This brings us to a kind of generalization of the law of
suspects: the mere possibility of infection leads to mobilize against whole categories of people. The suspicion is widespread. We
know
how, in the past, this type of attitude vis-à-vis an invisible but omnipresent considered, and therefore
even more dangerous than its visibility was no enemy could feed formidable fantasies and inspire
enduring persecution.¶ In the field of politics and ideas, the consequences are obvious. Ideas regarded as "dangerous" are also
processed by the precautionary principle. To eradicate the spread, we first magnify the threat representing imaginary perils (which divert
attention from the real dangers). Amalgam is practiced by identifying one to another phenomena that have similarities between them or
surface affinities. It then works to eliminate them, transforming those who are supposed to be representatives or holders in second class
citizens, if not subhuman. Is established around these the "cordon". Finally, monitoring
control trial of intent persecution
against those who are suspected of deviation from the norms of the dominant ideology, the whole
society becomes "Orwellian" and tends to resemble the famous Bentham's Panopticon. Thus the era
of the virus opens up a new social hygienism.
That causes extinction
Steinbruner 98, Senior Fellow @ Brookings Institution
[John D., “Biological weapons: A plague upon all houses.” Foreign Policy Winter 97/98 Issue 109, p85,
12p//EBSCOhost]
It is a considerable comfort and undoubtedly a key to our survival that, so far, the main lines of defense against this threat have not
depended on explicit policies or organized efforts. In the long course of evolution, the human body has developed physical
barriers and a biochemical immune system whose sophistication and effectiveness exceed anything we could
design or as yet even fully understand. But evolution is a sword that cuts both ways: New diseases emerge, while
old diseases mutate and adapt. Throughout history, there have been epidemics during which human
immunity has broken down on an epic scale. An infectious agent believed to have been the plague bacterium killed an
estimated 20 million people over a four-year period in the fourteenth century, including nearly one-quarter of Western Europe's population at
the time. Since its recognized appearance in 1981, some 20
variations of the HIVvirus have infected an estimated 29.4
million worldwide, with 1.5 million people currently dying of aids each year. Malaria, tuberculosis, and
cholera-once thought to be under control-are now making a comeback. As we enter the twenty-first century, changing
conditions have enhanced the potential for widespread contagion. The rapid growth rate of the total world
population, the unprecedented freedom of movement across international borders, and scientific advances that expand the
capability for the deliberate manipulation of pathogens are all cause for worry that the problem might be greater in the
future than it has ever been in the past. The threat of infectious pathogens is not just an issue of public health,
but a fundamental security problem for the species as a whole.
Exclusion and More Violence
Inclusion Necessitates Exclusions and more violence, turns the aff – the alternative is the only way to
keep wars contained and the other defined and respected
Rasch ‘5 [William Rasch – professor of Germanic Studies, “Lines in the Sand: Enmity as a
Structuring Principle”, published The South Atlantic Quarterly 104:2, Spring 2005, accessed 6/21/13,
PDF] //pheft
Schmitt, then, starts fromthe premise of imperfection and acknowledges¶ an ontological priority of violence. If, he reasons, one starts with the
rather¶ biblical notions of sin and guilt, not natural innocence, then homogeneity,¶ being contingent, historical, and not the least natural, must
be predicated¶ on heterogeneity. That
is, citizenship or participation or community must¶ be constructed, not
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
39
assumed, and can only be local, circumscribed, not¶ global. One recognizes one’s own in the face of
the other and knows the¶ comfort of inclusion only as the necessary result of exclusion—though in¶
modern, functionally differentiated society, those inclusions and exclusions¶ may be multiple,
contradictory, and not necessarily tied to place. ‘‘An absolute¶ human equality,’’ Schmitt writes in his
Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy,¶ ‘‘would be an equality without the necessary correlate of
inequality¶ and as a result conceptually and practically meaningless, an indifferent¶ equality. . . .
Substantive inequalities would in no way disappear from the¶ world and the state; they would shift
into another sphere, perhaps separated¶ from the political and concentrated in the economic, leaving
this area to¶ take on a new, disproportionately decisive importance.’’ 6 This, Schmitt’s, is¶ not a popular sentiment,
even if it echoes somewhat the Marxist distinction¶ between a political and a social democracy, between a formal and substantial¶ equality.
But if one acknowledges that at least within modernity¶ all inclusion requires exclusion, that
inclusions and exclusions in addition¶ to being unavoidable are also contingent and malleable, then
rather than¶ react with dismay, one might see in this ‘‘logical fact,’’ if fact it is, both the¶ condition for
the possibility of dissent and the condition for the possibility¶ of recognizing in the one who resists
and disagrees a fellow human being¶ and thus legitimate political opponent, not a Lyon or Tyger or
other Savage¶ Beast.¶ For it is not that exclusions are miraculously made absent once distinctions¶ are
not formally drawn. On the contrary, unacknowledged distinctions,¶ and those who are distinguished
by them, simply go underground,¶ become invisible, and grow stronger, more absolute, in their
violent and¶ explosive force. When the retrograde and condemned distinction between¶ the ‘‘Greek’’ and the ‘‘barbarian’’ becomes
a simple, sanguine affirmation¶ of humanity, this ideal affirmation actually turns out to be nothing other¶ than a distinction drawn between all
those who, by their right behavior,¶ show themselves to be truly ‘‘human’’ and those who, alas, by their perverse¶ dissent, have revealed
themselves to be evildoers, to be ‘‘inhuman.’’¶ Deliberate, visible, ‘‘external’’ distinctions that demarcate a space in which a¶ ‘‘we’’ can
recognize its difference from a ‘‘they,’’ preferably without marking¶ that difference in a necessarily asymmetrical manner, are to be preferred,¶
in Schmitt’s world, to the invisible and unacknowledged distinctions that¶ mark those who are exemplary humans from those who, by their
political¶ dissent, show themselves to be gratuitously perverse. For
reasons, then,¶ of making difference visible, Schmitt
favors lines drawn in the sand, or,¶ in the ‘‘mythical language’’ used in The Nomos of the Earth, ‘‘firm
lines’’ in¶ the ‘‘soil,’’ ‘‘whereby definite divisions become apparent,’’ and, above them,¶ on the ‘‘solid
ground of the earth,’’ ‘‘fences, enclosures, boundaries, walls,¶ houses, and other constructs,’’ so that
the ‘‘orders and orientations of human¶ social life become apparent’’ and the ‘‘forms of power and
domination become¶ visible.’’7
Genocide
The shattering of the binary leads to worse forms of dehumanization and genocide
Odysseos ‘8 [Dr. Louiza Odysseos- University of Sussex, Department of International Relations, “Against
Ethics? Iconographies of Enmity and Acts of Obligation in Carl Schmitt’s Theory of the Partisan”,
published 3/22/8, accessed 7/7/13, PDF] //pheft
‘Humanity as such’, Schmitt noted, ‘cannot wage war because it has no enemy’,¶ (1996a: 54),
indicating that humanity ‘is a polemical word that negates its opposite’¶ (Kennedy 1998: 94; emphasis
added). In The Concept of the Political Schmitt argued¶ that humanity ‘excludes the concept of the
enemy, because the enemy does not cease¶ to be a human being’ (1996a: 54). However, in his 1950 book with an
international¶ focus, The Nomos of the Earth, Schmitt noted how only when ‘man appeared to be the¶ embodiment of absolute humanity, did
the other side of this concept appear in the¶ form of a new enemy: the inhuman’ (2003a: 104). It becomes apparent that,¶ historically
examined, the concept of humanity engenders a return to a ‘discriminatory¶ concept of war’, by which Schmitt meant that it reintroduces the
legitimacy and need¶ for substantive causes of justice in war (Schmitt 2003b: 37-52). This in turn disallows¶ the notion of justus hostis, of a ‘just
enemy’ – explored in section three – associated¶ with the notion of non-discriminatory interstate war which took the shape of guerre¶ en
forme (Schmitt 2003a: 142-144).
The concept of humanity , therefore, shatters the¶ formal concept of justus
hostis, allowing the enemy to now be designated¶ substantively as an enemy of humanity as such.
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
40
This leaves the enemy of humanity¶ with no value and open to dehumanisation and political and
physical annihilation¶ (Schmitt 2004: 67). In discussing the League of Nations, Schmitt highlights that,¶ compared to the kinds of
wars that can be waged on behalf of humanity, the¶ interstate European wars from 1815 to 1914 in reality were regulated; they¶ were
bracketed by the neutral Great Powers and were completely legal¶ procedures in comparison with the modern and gratuitous police actions¶
against violators of peace, which can be dreadful acts of annihilation (Schmitt¶ 2003a: 186).¶ Enemies
of humanity cannot be
considered ‘just and equal’. Moreover, they cannot¶ claim neutrality: one cannot remain neutral in the
call to be for or against humanity or¶ its freedom; one cannot, similarly, claim a right to resist or
defend oneself, in the¶ sense we understand this right to have existed in the international law of
Europe (the¶ jus publicum Europeaum). Such a denial of self-defence and resistance ‘can presage a¶
dreadful nihilistic destruction of all law’ (ibid.: 187). When the enemy is not accorded¶ a procedural
justice and formal equality, the notion that peace can be made with him¶ is unacceptable, as Schmitt
detailed through his study of the League of Nations, which¶ had declared the abolition of war, but in
rescinding the concept of neutrality only¶ succeeded in the ‘dissolution of “peace”’ (ibid.: 246). It is
with the dissolution of¶ peace that total wars of annihilation become possible, where ‘the other’
cannot be¶ assimilated, or accommodated, let alone tolerated: the friend/enemy distinction is not ¶
longer taking place with a justus hostis but rather between good and evil, human and¶ inhuman,
where ‘the negative pole of the distinction is to be fully and finally¶ consumed without remainder’
(Rasch 2003: 137).¶ Finally, the ethical discourse of a universal humanity can be discerned in the
tendency¶ to normalise diverse peoples through legalisation and individualisation. The¶ paramount emphasis
placed on legal instruments and entitlements such as human¶ rights transforms diverse subjectivities into ‘rights-holders’. ‘[T]he other is
stripped of¶ his otherness and made to conform to the universal ideal of what it means to be¶
human’, meaning that ‘the term “human” is not descriptive, but evaluative. To be¶ truly human, one
needs to be corrected’ (Rasch 2003: 140 and 137; cf. Young 2002;¶ Hopgood 2000).
What does this correction
in its ‘multiform tactics’, which include¶ Michel Foucault’s proper terms of discipline and training, aim to produce? The¶ answer may well be the
proper, free (masterful), equal and rational (in its self-interest)¶ subject of rights, of capitalism and the governmentalised state (Foucault
2001a). As¶ Gil Anidjar notes, the operation of the traditional binary ‘sovereign/enemy’ is¶ transformed ‘in the disciplinary society (which
signals, according to Foucault, the¶ dissolution of sovereign power) into “disciplinary regime/criminality” (or, for that¶ second term, legal
subject, subject of the law, and, of course, “man”)’ (Anidjar 2004:¶ 42; emphasis added). Of
equally great importance is
transformation that follows in the¶ transition from a disciplinary to a governmental economy of
power: this is what we¶ are at the moment confronting and must analyse: what are the paths towards
which the¶ other as enemy is directed by (a global) governmentality and, moreover, what forms,¶
subjectivities, etc., is the ‘enemy’ encouraged to take in the form of an unavoidable¶ freedom, along
the lines articulated by Foucault under the heading of ‘selfgovernment’¶ (2007b).
Value to Life
The goal of constant peace fundamentally denies the political which is the only thing that gives our
life value
Thorup ‘6 [Mikkel Thorup - Ph.D.-dissertation, Institute of Philosophy and the History of Ideas,
Department of the History of Ideas, University of Aarhus, Denmark, “In Defence of Enmity
- Critiques of Liberal Globalism”, published January 2006, accessed 7/3/13,
<https://pure.au.dk/portal/files/1125531/In_defence_of_enmity_-_pdf.pdf>] //pheft
Real politics is first and foremost foreign politics, that is, war and the preparation for war (and ¶
secondly, internal peace). He understands ordinary politics as centrifugal, as dangerously¶ weakening the state by allowing ‘total
parties’ to over-politicize the internal and make everything¶ into politics which, in turn, weakens the genuinely political. Opposed to this,
Schmitt emphasized¶ (to the point of the disappearance of everything else) ‘high politics’. The true political nation state¶ had, prior to its liberal
dissolution, pushed the political to the foreign domain: “Politics in an¶ elevated sense, great politics, was back then only foreign politics”
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
41
(1996d: 11). In contrast to¶
everyday trivial politics, he insists that “the grand moments of high politics are
… the moments¶ when the enemy is viewed in concrete clarity as the enemy” (1996a: 67). We could call it
the front¶ line battle moment of the political. Unwillingness to face up to this moment of clarity (and
action) is¶ a ‘symptom of the end of the political’ (1996a: 67). The loss of the death sacrifice is the
clearest¶ example of a disenchanted and empty world (Palaver 1995). The modern is the post-heroic age,¶ where the
death sacrifice isn’t demanded or offered. Life, the purely quantitative continuation of¶ life, is the highest standard. Life, for Schmitt
and the Counter-Enlightenment, is without meaning, if¶ it doesn’t contain anything more precious,
more sublime, than the mere continuation of the¶ individual existence. The political, for Schmitt, is
the attempt at reinstating moral seriousness¶ (Strauss 1988: 119; Norris 1998: 71, 78). Schmitt might not have said it quite
like that, but he¶ would agree with the main thrust of Helmuth Moltke, when he said: “Without war the world would¶
deteriorate into materialism” (quoted from Gat 2001: 327). The real only exists in its relation to the¶ possibility of death: “The
existential core of the political is the real possibility of being robbed of¶ one’s own being by the
enemy” (Nielsen 2003: 86). This is what gives the political its distinct¶ character and it explains Schmitt’s
repeated warnings, that those who deny the political loose their¶ independence (1982: 228; 1996a: 54): “The
concepts of friend, enemy and battle only gain their real¶ meaning because they have and always will
have a special relation to the real possibility of physical¶ killing”; “War is also today the serious case
[Ernstfall]” (1996a: 33 & 25).¶ World peace is, in contrast to the ever present possibility of combat, the ‘idyllic
goal of complete¶ and final depoliticization’ (1996a: 54); it is a world without enemies, limits, borders etc.
Total¶ depoliticization entails the non-existence of states and the idea of global organization and¶
universality at any price (1996a: 55). It is the entire world turned post-historical and based¶ ‘exclusively on economics and on
technically regulating traffic’ (1996a: 58); the whole world as the¶ first world; it is a world of ‘culture, civilization, economics, morality, law, art,
entertainment, etc.’¶ (1996a: 54). In a
footnote from 1963, he says that, inspired by Leo Strauss’s critique, he
would now¶ put ‘play’ instead of entertainment as the counterpart to seriousness (1996a: 120). A
world of play¶ is also a world without politics, without the distinction between friend and enemy. So,
in essence¶ depoliticization is denial of the existence of an enemy. A totally depoliticized entity
cannot¶ distinguish between friend and enemy (1996c: 112); nor does it even acknowledge that there
is an¶ enemy – understood as an equal but oppositional entity or actor. It is not entirely clear, whether¶ Schmitt
totally denies this pacified globe as a possibility (“If and when this condition will appear, I¶ do not know. At the moment, this is not the case”,
1996a: 54). On the whole, he must reject even¶ the possibility. There is no apolitical possibility. If the world state should come about, the
Things would not administer themselves. One would have to ask¶ “which
people this awesome power belongs to” (1996a: 58).
political¶ problem would not disappear.
Embracing the fundamental dichotomy is key to developing an individual’s sense of identity and in
turn their relationship to the world
Norman ‘9 [Emma R. Norman - University of the Americas Puebla, Mexico Department of International
Relations and Political Science, “Applying Carl Schmitt to Global Puzzles: Identity, Conflict and the
Friend/Enemy Antithesis”, published September 2009, accessed 7/23/13, PDF] //pheft
In an attempt to capture conceptually the new political reality of the early 1930s, Schmitt¶ sought a category for identifying specifically political
actions and motives that did not derive¶ from reference to other criteria (such as the sovereign state). He did this by reducing the¶ foundational
distinctions in different spheres of human life to what he maintained were their¶ lowest common denominators. In The Concept of the Political
(1932), Schmitt famously argued¶ that every sphere of human endeavor is characterized by an irreducible antithesis: profitable and ¶
unprofitable in economics, beautiful and ugly in aesthetics, sacred and profane in religion, good¶ and evil in morality and friend and enemy in
the political. None of these distinctions, he said, can¶ or should be directly reduced to, or confused with, the others.14¶ The political enemy
need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic¶ competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage
with him in business transactions. But he is¶ nevertheless the other, the stranger… existentially something different and alien, so that in the
extreme¶ case conflicts with him are possible… 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.15¶ It is not difficult to see
how the political is viewed here as a result of a fundamental struggle¶ in the quest for achieving identity, where identity is based on “a relation
of negativity.”16¶ Schmitt’s clear focus on the enemy as more significant than the friend underscores the pivotal claim that while inclusion and
exclusion always logically accompany each other (to say ‘us’¶ presupposes a ‘them’), for Schmitt it is exclusion that is crucial in creating group
identities.¶ Identifying the “them” is required for the “us” to be recognizable.17 It was this very construct that¶ informed the Bush
administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003, but it also explains why so¶ few states chose to join the U.S. “coalition of the willing” in support
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
42
of this military action.¶ The
friend side of the equation is also important—not merely to preserve the
distinction, but¶ because it highlights that a people’s sense of belonging is tested by being prompted
to take sides.¶ So whenever a group engages in ‘taking sides,’ we are actively constructing our group
identities¶ and thus engaging in the political. The more intense the degree of unification or separation, the¶ more political the
group becomes.18 Yet it is the alignment and the decision about who is the¶ enemy and about whether or
not to wage war against that adversary, rather than fighting the war¶ itself, that galvanizes a collective
identity and thus constitutes the political. However, and in¶ contrast to U.S. Neo-conservative thinking and decision-making on
the Iraq invasion, Schmitt¶ was careful to emphasize that “[t]he politics of avoiding war”19 was one plausible outcome of his¶ model.20¶ The
salient idea for international relations concerns the necessary connection between identity¶ and potential conflict. While
the extreme
case (physical conflict) is not required to occur, for¶ Schmitt the possibility of inter-state relations escalating
into violence must exist if functional group identities are to be formed and preserved.21 For him, humans
are only really prepared to¶ take responsibility for their lives, values and the groups they identify with,
if the possibility of¶ losing all these things is real. To continue with the example of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, U.S.¶ arguments
about the all-or-nothing stakes in fighting the war on terror were simply not¶ compelling for the majority of countries that refused to join the
coalition of the willing.¶ But Schmitt’s tacit assumption here is even more radical. The
friend-enemy distinction is the¶ most
fundamental of human antitheses for Schmitt precisely because he felt that the threat of¶ losing one’s
identity is the strongest (if not the only) motivation for a human being to choose to¶ die for their beliefs. This
sounds inconsistent and highly contestable at first: dying, of course,¶ ends one’s identity—unless one’s particular beliefs indicate otherwise. Yet
there is a difference¶ between losing it and ending it. The idea starts to make more sense when we consider that the¶ threat of remaining alive
and yet being forced to subsume one’s identity under that of another¶ group in times of conflict has been a perennial motive for dying for one’s
“country,” nation,¶ religious or ideological views, cultural values whether one is a professional or conscripted¶ soldier, insurgent, suicidebomber, or civilian. From
Yugoslavia to Rwanda, this has been the¶ underlying force in the fragmentation
and collapse of these states amidst waves of inter-ethnic¶ violence.¶ The basic point to tease out of
Schmitt here is that “country,” nation, religion, cultural values¶ are secondary tokens of what he saw
as their underlying raison d’être: identity. “[I]t would be¶ senseless to wage war for purely religious,
purely moral, purely juristic, or purely economic¶ motives…War today is in all likelihood none of these.
This obvious point is mostly confused by the fact that religious, moral and other antitheses can intensify to political ones and can bring¶ about
the decisive friend-or-enemy constellation.”22¶ The conclusion to be drawn from this gives an interesting new twist to the centrality of¶
security in international relations theory and practice. Underlying Schmitt’s position
is the¶ assumption that it is not so
much a Hobbesian freedom from fear of violent death that motivates¶ our search for security (which rests
on an individualist assumption of self-preservation Schmitt¶ did not accept), but rather the need to belong to a clearly
defined group. The way to define any¶ group is to contrast it with an “other.” However, Schmitt’s
emphasis is on the extreme form of¶ “othering”: clear definition comes only where the “self-other”
relation can potentially intensify¶ into a “friend-enemy” one.¶ The main point is easiest to understand
in terms of the actions between nation-states, some of¶ which do escalate to war for reasons that are as
much (if not more) to do with preserving and reclarifying¶ a threatened group identity as they are pursuing
economic interests or defending a set¶ of moral values. This is, I think, precisely what underpins so much of
the global uneasiness that¶ met the “moral justifications” for the war on terror given by Bush et al. Yet it
exposes those¶ justifications from a perspective different to the familiar realist line that the moral discourse¶ merely functions to cloak “baser”
motives of economic self-interest, which are justifiable on¶ rational grounds, though not always on moral ones.23 A
Schmittian view
would add that such¶ economic motives also serve as a cloak for the more elemental motive of
preserving a threatened¶ group identity which is even less open to justification on either moral or
rational grounds.
War=Peace O.o
If the fundamental dichotomy is destroyed or ignored, war becomes equated with peace in constant
bloodshed
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
43
Cucu ’13 [Sorin Radu Cucu – some philosophy dude, I think he works at CUNY Center for Humanities or
Baruch College…or both…, “The Underside of Politics”, chapter 4: All Power to the Networks!, published
in 2013, accessed 7/16/13, projectMUSE] //pheft
Clausewitz’s famous statement, “war is nothing but a continuation¶ of political intercourse, with a mixture of
other means,”89 establishes¶ a connection between the form of violence called war and the political ¶
contract between individuals and organizations that exists only if it can¶ prevent, through rhetoric and policy, the outbreak of such
violence. Carl¶ Schmitt, who points to the utter antagonistic nature of any political relation,¶ sees Clausewitz’s thesis as a
threat to the autonomy of the political,¶ posited on the friend-enemy distinction and derived from the legal¶ bracketing of war.
Following Rodolphe Gasché, we learn what is at stake¶ in Schmitt’s critique:¶ If, indeed, there is continuity between war and
politics, then the¶ differences constitutive of classical European public law collapse.¶ The formula amounts to a
blurring of the clear distinctions made¶ between war and peace, friend and enemy, but also neutrality
and¶ nonneutrality. [Clausewitz’s] formula thus opens the way for abolishing¶ contained war. . . . It
opens the door for a state of peace¶ that has become indistinguishable from war, not only from the¶ Cold War but
also from the current undeclared war of and against¶ terrorism.90¶ If political conflicts can no longer be distinguished
from military ones,¶ this may also point out the emergence of global power relations that the¶ Schmittian
legal fiction of the jus publicum Europaeum cannot contain.¶ Michel Foucault suggests that “politics sanctions and
reproduces¶ the disequilibrium of forces manifested in war,”91 hence the reversal¶ of Clausewitz’s
formula, “politics is the continuation of war by other¶ means,”92 the core statement of Foucault’s seminar Society Must Be¶ Defended, his
most concise reflection on biopolitics and govermentality.¶ The fictional scenario created by DeLillo in Libra, particularly the idea¶ of “a society
where it’s always wartime” and where “the law has a little¶ give” (L 64) is yet another adaptation of Clausewitz’s point. In DeLillo’s¶ novel,
however, clandestine military operations and secret conspiracies,¶ not politics per se, are the “continuation of war by other means.” If this¶
hypothesis potentially indicates an underside to Foucault’s anti-sovereignty¶ narrative, it also identifies in the political myth of conspiratorial¶
power, the source of political fantasies that will not submit to govermentality,¶ “the art (and later the science) of managing bodies and things,¶
life and wealth.”93 In
the fiction of conspiracy, politics withdraws from¶ the public sphere; sovereignty—“the
power of execution or the power of finishing as such, absolutely so and without any further subordination to¶ something
else (to another end)”94—also retreats in the ambiguous zone¶ of conspiratorial power. This claim is not a speculative
remark derived¶ from reading DeLillo’s novel, but the result of “a modern mutation in the¶ thinking of war” made clear by Clausewitz’s insight;
in other words, the¶ “classical way of thinking about war as . . . extreme expression of sovereignty¶ is now set at a distance in more or less
confused manner.”95
Worse forms of enmity
The destruction of the political leads to worse forms of enmity that are not containable and lead to
more violence
Thorup ‘6 [Mikkel Thorup - Ph.D.-dissertation, Institute of Philosophy and the History of Ideas,
Department of the History of Ideas, University of Aarhus, Denmark, “In Defence of Enmity
- Critiques of Liberal Globalism”, published January 2006, accessed 7/7/13,
<https://pure.au.dk/portal/files/1125531/In_defence_of_enmity_-_pdf.pdf>] //pheft
Conventional enmity (or just enmity). This is the ideal according to which the other enmities are¶ measured.
This is the great achievement of the nation state era. It is also what we here describe as¶ political enmity. It describes a
relation of enmity between states who recognize, fight and negotiate¶ with each other. The
conventional just enemy is recognized as an equal and the war is thus¶ contained through
international law and a codex of honour among combatants. This concept of¶ enmity arises through the de-theologization and
de-moralization of international relations. Silete¶ theologi!, as Schmitt is fond of saying. The new nation state order was conditioned upon a ¶ ‘dethronement of the
theologists’ (1985: 65). Julien Freund (1996: 65) reminds us of Oldendorp, a ¶ sixteenth century Lutheran jurist who “used to say that a just war was ultimately no
war, but the¶ work of justice, whereas the unjust war was no war either, but a rebellion against the just order. ¶ Thus verbal dialectic finally does away with the act
of war”. But only on a verbal plane. In
the¶ world of flesh and bone, warfare was endemic; and it was the
banishment of just war in favour of¶ the just enemy who ultimately stopped the ferocious religious
wars and created the interstate order.¶ It marks a transition from a discriminatory concept of war and
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
44
enmity, where the enemy is a moral¶ or religious enemy to be destroyed, to a non-discriminatory
concept, where no one can claim moral¶ superiority and where the political enemy is (only) to be
defeated, not destroyed (2003c). In a¶ Schmitt-inspired text, Paul Hirst (2001a: 59) elaborates: “Reason of state limits the
enmity of¶ interstate relations in that it makes them a matter of pure power technique: one’s enemy is
not an¶ implacable foe but an honourable opponent in a conflict of interests”. The enemy is not a
criminal.¶ The clear demarcations between war and peace, internal and external, combatant and¶
civilian/neutral help contain the enmity and its implications. It is a limited and regulated enmity, a¶ ‘duel’ between equal
sovereigns. The aim is to impose our will on the other, not to annihilate him.¶ In a footnote to the 1963-edition of Begriff des
Politischen, Schmitt explicates the meaning of the¶ conventional concept of enmity as consisting not in the elimination of the enemy but in “the ¶ prevention, in the
clash of forces and in the creation of a common border” (1996a: 119). This is why he insists on the autonomy of the political decision. It is not informed by or
dependent¶ upon other criteria: “The
political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he does not¶
have to be an economic competitor” (1996a: 27). In actual politics, this is of course not true: “In¶ psychological reality the enemy is often
treated as evil or ugly because every demarcation – not¶ least the political which is the strongest and most intensive distinction and grouping – uses all¶ available
differentiations as support. But this changes nothing of the autonomy of such oppositions” ¶ (1996a: 28). To
Schmitt, this concept of enmity is
tied to the nation state and his concern for the¶ decline of the nation state is intimately connected to
the re-emergence of other kinds of enmities. As¶ Andreas Behnke (2004: 285) says: “In order to channel violence into structured conflict,
the State is¶ based on the territorialization and spatialization of the decision between Friend and Enemy”. Once¶ the connection between
state, territory and decision is loosened the conventional enmity is dissolved¶ in favour of other more
sinister and less containable forms. The paradigmatic war of conventional¶ enmity is the interstate
war.
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
45
Alternative
Embracing the enmity is key to preventing wars from escalating to the point of genocide – drawing
clear lines in the sand solves
Rasch ‘5 [William Rasch – professor of Germanic Studies, “Lines in the Sand: Enmity as a
Structuring Principle”, published The South Atlantic Quarterly 104:2, Spring 2005, accessed 6/21/13,
PDF] //pheft
What is to be done? If you are one who says there is a war, and if you¶ say it not because you glory in
it but because you fear it and hate it, then¶ your goal is to limit it and its effects, not eliminate it,
which merely intensifies¶ it, but limit it by drawing clear lines within which it can be fought, and¶ clear
lines between those who fight it and those who don’t, lines between¶ friends, enemies, and neutrals,
lines between combatants and noncombatants.¶ There are, of course, legitimate doubts about whether those ideal lines¶
could ever be drawn again; nevertheless, the question that we should ask¶ is not how can we establish perpetual peace, but rather a more
modest¶ one: Can symmetrical relationships be guaranteed only by asymmetrical¶ ones? According to Schmitt, historically this has been the
case. ‘‘The traditional¶ Eurocentric order of international law is foundering today, as is the¶ old nomos of the earth. This order arose from a
legendary and unforeseen¶ discovery of a new world, from an unrepeatable historical event. Only in¶ fantastic parallels can one imagine a
modern recurrence, such as men on¶ their way to the moon discovering a new and hitherto unknown planet that¶ could be exploited freely and
utilized effectively to relieve their struggles¶ on earth’’ (39). We have since gone to the moon and have found nothing¶ on the way there to
exploit. We may soon go to Mars, if current leaders¶ have their way, but the likelihood of finding exploitable populations seems¶ equally slim.
Salvation through spatially delimited asymmetry, even were it¶ to be desired, is just not on the horizon. And
salvation through
globalization,¶ that is, through global unity and equality, is equally impossible, because¶ today’s
asymmetry is not so much a localization of the exception as it is an¶ invisible generation of the
exception from within that formal ideal of unity,¶ a generation of the exception as the difference
between the human and the¶ inhuman outlaw, the ‘‘Savage Beast, with whom Men can have no
Society¶ nor Security.’’ We are, therefore, thrown back upon ourselves, which is to¶ say, upon those artificial ‘‘moral persons’’ who act
as our collective political¶ identities. They used to be called states. What they will be called in the future¶ remains to be seen. But, if we think to
establish a differentiated unity of discrete¶ political entities that once represented for Schmitt ‘‘the highest form¶ of order within the scope of
human power,’’ then we must symmetrically¶ manage the necessary pairing of inclusion and exclusion without denying¶ the ‘‘forms of power
We must think the possibility of roughly equivalent
power relations¶ rather than fantasize the elimination of power from the political universe.¶ This,
and domination’’ that inescapably accompany human¶ ordering.
conceivably, was also Schmitt’s solution. Whether his idea of the¶ plurality of Großräume could ever be carried out under contemporary
circumstances¶ is, to be sure, more than a little doubtful, given that the United¶ States enjoys a monopoly on guns, goods, and the Good, in the
form of a¶ supremely effective ideology of universal ‘‘democratization.’’ Still,
we would¶ do well to devise vocabularies that
do not just emphatically repeat philosophically¶ more sophisticated versions of the liberal ideology of
painless,¶ effortless, universal equality. The space of the political will never be created¶ by a bloodless,
Benjaminian divine violence. Nor is it to be confused with¶ the space of the simply human. To dream
the dreams of universal inclusion¶ may satisfy an irrepressible human desire, but it may also always
produce¶ recurring, asphyxiating political nightmares of absolute exclusion.
Giant Alt Solves Card (also solves K aff)
The alt solves the K big time AND it solves back for any “benefits” of liberalism (this can also be a bi
turns the K aff card…just retag it as such)
Thorup ‘6 [Mikkel Thorup - Ph.D.-dissertation, Institute of Philosophy and the History of Ideas,
Department of the History of Ideas, University of Aarhus, Denmark, “In Defence of Enmity
- Critiques of Liberal Globalism”, published January 2006, accessed 6/30/13,
<https://pure.au.dk/portal/files/1125531/In_defence_of_enmity_-_pdf.pdf>] //pheft
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
46
When, upon the arrival of a group of German guests, John Cleese as Basil in Fawlty Towers¶ instructs his staff: ‘Don’t mention the war’, we all
know that that is exactly what he is going to do –¶ and in the most bizarre ways. It has been the claim of this text that a similar logic pertains to
the¶ political. ‘Don’t mention the war’, that is, the denial of liberal or humanitarian warfare as war is¶ exactly what helps bring it about, just as
the denial of both the enemy and the political facilitates¶ their return in distorted forms. The contemporary literature, of which this dissertation
is inspired,¶ tends to focus on the return of the political. I’ve been more interested in the returns of the enemy¶ but it is part of the same
critical project of informing liberalism of its shadow sides. The critique¶ unfolded above has been more one of exploring possible danger than of
asserting facts on the¶ ground. The chapters above have also been inspired by the disobedience of another Fawltyan ban:¶ ‘Don’t mention Carl
Schmitt’, which is being systematically ignored these days. This dissertation¶ has followed the direction of present Schmitt-scholarship into
international politics. The work on or¶ inspired by Schmitt used to concentrate on domestic issues of parliamentarism, rule of law, the¶ essence
of the political etc. Now, the trend is to discuss international affairs using his concepts and¶ critiques, and that, not least, in what could call the
third use of Fawlty: The proper way to actually¶ mention the war as war. An aim of this text has been to highlight the dangers of mis-naming¶
exclusions and uses of force. To insist on the political nature of depoliticization is less to call ‘foul¶ play’ than to reinsert the depoliticized in a
political register, where dissent, options and decisions¶ are again relevant. Names matter.¶ This has not really been a defence of enmity; at
least not of enmity as such. Rather, it has been,¶ firstly, an insistence on enmity as an important category of scientific investigation and,
secondly, of¶ the political enmity as a critical corrective to the other forms discussed above. Only it that sense has¶ it been a defence. Enmity is
a neglected category of investigation, unless one includes the many¶ moralist denunciations. It seems fair to presume that enmity is here to
stay. If this is so, then we¶ have to find ways to live with it. One very significant way is the liberal translation of enemies into¶ conflict partners.
This is a true humanist achievement. Yet it comes fraught with dangers or shadow¶ sides. One of those is the uneventful life, mediocrity, the
debased beings of liberal sociability;¶ another is the ossifying of political life. I’ve been concentrating on some of the exclusionary effects¶ of
this translation of enmity and not least on the claim of a complete end of enmity proclaimed by¶ liberal internationalism and then again by
liberal globalism. In this way, the insistence on the¶ persistence or returns of enmity, and not least on the political enmity as a contained and
manageable¶ one becomes a critical tool of informing liberalism of how, paradoxically, the embedding of its¶ project keeps undermining its
proclaimed goals: Liberal globalism becomes anti-pluralist;¶ democratic peace becomes an instrument and argument of war; freedom becomes
an excuse for¶ bombardment; critique of nationalism helps force the vilified into more hardened, intransigent¶ forms; critique of sovereignty
becomes a new sovereigntist language; self-determination becomes¶ the recipe for neo-colonial protectorates; the war on terror produces ever
more terror; legitimacy¶ becomes an instrument of dis-recognition; establishment of a new international law institutionalizes¶ sovereign
inequality; the move from politics to morality reintroduces the just war; finally, the end of¶ enmity produces new enemies, also, and not least,
the moral enmity of good and evil, competent¶ and incompetent, self-determining and other-determining.¶ This is what we’ve been trying to
show, using enmity as a central category, and taking political¶ enmity as our point of departure. Not because political enmity is inherently
benign, far from it. It¶ comes with problems of its own, which liberal globalism is set on this earth to emphasize and¶ criticize. The use of
political enmity here is, so to speak, not political but scientific. Political enmity¶ is a theoretical, not a real-historical, concept. It is implied in the
logic of diplomacy, classical¶ international law and regularized warfare and it has some relevance in actual events on the¶ battleground, at least
before industrialized warfare. But, this has been no exercise in nostalgia for a¶ lost warrior ethics. Theoretically, we have to presuppose the
political enmity, no matter how much¶ it in actual practice has been contaminated by the other forms of enmity.¶ Politically,
it serves
as a critical corrective and, perhaps, as a minimal utopia (as one of my fellow¶ PhD-students called it);
the best to hope for. Instead of the current liberal monopolization of¶ legitimacy, we should perhaps
learn to recognize “legitimate non-democratic regimes that have the¶ authority to contain tensions
but can also respect a minimum of social and political rights” (Hirst¶ 2002: 8). Postmodern state or chaos and war
are not the exclusive options of a global era. Most nonliberal regimes do not engage in continuous war-making;
they do not sponsor terrorism or engage in constant repression. Most people, even in non-liberal
regimes, do live good lives. Iin an interview¶ conducted by myself and Frank Beck Lassen, John Gray said: “People can live peaceful,¶
productive, creative lives without a global liberal society” (Thorup & Lassen 2005: 12). This is the¶ truth, which liberalism
refuses to see. Paul Hirst (2002: 8) insists: “It is what regimes do that¶ matters” and in this, liberal democracies
may have less reason to claim moral superiority. Just as¶ there is no necessary connection between
liberalism and democracy, there is none between¶ liberalism and pacifism. This is the illusion of
liberalism, radicalized by liberal globalism. And it’s¶ the illusion we’re attempting to undermine by
insisting on the political nature of post-political¶ liberalism. Politics as conflict is not inherently despotic or violent. That
is just the liberal way of¶ understanding and presenting it (like politics as technique is understood and described as¶ inauthentic in much
liberalism critique). Here,
politics as conflict has served us as a counternarrative¶ to a hegemonic politics as
technique and as a way to see the workings within politics as¶ technique of the exact same dangers,
that is being delegated to politics as conflict, that is,¶ repression, exclusion, creation of ‘others’, war
internally and externally.¶ The liberal-humanitarian discourse becomes the language of intervention; and “thinking their¶
interventions benign or neutral, they intervene more often than they otherwise might” (Kennedy¶ 2004: 23); and often in areas and ways,
which doesn’t help the ‘victims’ intended. This is not to¶ deny the need, often, of intervention of various kinds, and it is certainly no questioning
of the¶ humanitarian motive. The ideology critique of this text is not to seek the real, hard reason behind¶ the soft spoken words but to take
the humanitarian language and motivation serious and then to look¶ critically at the implications of good intentions. It’s my thesis that a not
insignificant part of the¶ problem lies in an insufficient understanding of power. David Kennedy says that the humanitarian¶ blindness “often
begins at the moment the humanitarian averts his eyes from his own power” (2004:¶ 329, my italics). Humanitarians and liberal opinion-makers
wield enormous power, also military¶ power, but this goes unnoticed in and through the liberal-humanist discourse, which consistently¶ cast
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
47
off any appearance of own power and names power as evil and as the problem to be overcome.¶ This is the understanding of self and power
constitutive of liberalism, that I’ve told.¶ Liberal globalism dramatizes a distinction between the good and the evil, which is not liberal in¶ origin
or structure, but which has been incorporated into liberal thinking, not least on international¶ issues. What we’re witnessing is a hardening of
liberal anti-pluralism, that is, a dichotomization into¶ legitimate and illegitimate regimes based on liberal-democratic principles of legitimacy.
This is a¶ break with classical international law, where sovereign legitimacy was based on effective control.¶ Much can be said for the shift, but
one has to be aware of the dangers in this transformation, not¶ least the licence liberal societies bestow upon themselves to serve as the global
judge, jury and¶ executioner. The dichotomization is also reproduced in the distinction between liberalism on one¶ side and on the other
fundamentalism and bellicose nationalism; or as Habermas says: “There is no¶ alternative to this [post-national] development, except at the
normatively intolerable cost of ethnic¶ cleansings” (1998e: 408). This way of framing the issue depoliticizes a field of options, which¶ cannot be
reduced to either the post-national constellation or ‘new wars’; and it serves as a¶ legitimization of both the liberal globalist restructuring of the
state and for the new global sanctionand¶ intervention-regime. Liberal
anti-pluralism is a denial of political enmity, in
that it disrecognizes¶ all opposition and every alternative as inferior. But in practice, it creates a
seemingly¶ unending progression of asymmetrical enemies on which to intervene. The unconventional
enmity beyond the line is evident in the war on terror. On the one hand is a¶ replay of colonial figures, evident in the
comment of an American battalion commander in Iraq:¶ “With a heavy dose of fear and violence and a lot of money for projects, I think we can
convince¶ these people that we are here to help them” (quoted from Gregory 2004: 243). This is the modern¶ equivalent of the conquistador
who stated that the Indians had to be killed to be saved. On
the other¶ hand, we see a doubling of the line within
Western societies as anti-Muslim fears and hatreds merge¶ with anti-terrorism, progressively placing
Muslim citizens further and further beyond the line of¶ judicial and political equality and protection.
The second global repression of the borderland is¶ about remaking the world in the new image of
Europe. The borderland, that is, the areas of¶ inadequate distinctions, was pushed back in the first
global move, which pretty much universalized¶ the nation state model. Now, this model is increasingly
seen as borderland to be feared and¶ repressed. In the terminology of James Ron (in chapter 3), we see a movement from
the frontier to¶ the ghetto, the repressive turning of unmanageable borderland into controllable protectorates. The¶ postmodern,
supposedly pacifist and un-colonial, states have never been engaged in more wars at¶ once, than they
are at present. This ought to give pause for thought. When liberal globalism speaks¶ of post-politics
and an end of war, they only meant inside the West. The construction is dependent¶ upon the space
beyond the line serving as ‘the other’; and possibly also dependent upon some¶ notion of the rest of
the world as ‘free land’, borderland.¶ What cosmopolitanism and liberal globalism generally may be
doing is loosening those distinctions,¶ which held state power within some boundaries. They could be the
state philosophy for a boundless¶ world, albeit one a lot less benign than imagined. Reading the counter-enlightenment
critique may¶ alert us to the always-already strategic rhetoric of goodness and humanism, but also the
possibility¶ that distinctions presuppose each other. Their exaggerated fear of decadence and
dissolution, their¶ belief in the common fate of throne and altar, may contain the secular truth that
concepts are¶ mutually dependent, so that, for instance, the distinction combatant/civilian is
somehow¶ interconnected with the distinction foreign/domestic. Is that not what Burke and others are saying¶ with
the phrase, ‘revolution eats its own children’? That is, the rebellion against one sphere tears¶ them all down. The revolution, which may be
eating its children now, is the liberal globalist one.¶ The
celebration of endisms may also signal the end of some
distinctions, we would like to uphold:¶ Normality/emergency, attack/defence, military/civilian and so
on. Perhaps the only ‘classic’¶ distinction, which is being upheld, is that of politics/religion, which is exactly why critics of liberal¶ globalism
revels in naming it ‘postmodern just cause’, liberal crusaders’ and talk of it as a¶ ‘universalist and expansionist religion’ (Rasch 2004: 121). This
is a return of an indistinction,¶ which contemporary liberalism would like to uphold.¶ I’ve
been arguing that we’re not
witnessing a process or state of indistinction, but one of redistinction.¶ In the introduction, we spoke
of a modern ‘horror of indetermination’ (Bauman) and¶ then, in the chapter on the Counterenlightenment, of an ‘obsessive fear of mixture’ (Taguieff).¶ These seemingly similar worries need to be separated. Just
as liberal freedom is not, as Burke and¶ Maistre thought, the freedom to do whatever one likes, liberalism is not the unqualified mixture of¶
everything, and is, therefore, not meeting the worst of counter-enlightenment fears. The reactionary¶ liberalism-critique fears a liberal
indistinction. But,
what liberalism does is to dissolve some¶ distinctions and to establish others, erecting
new walls of separation. Liberalism is less universal,¶ less egalitarian, less tearing down the
hierarchies, than both its counter-enlightenment critics and¶ they themselves think. The liberal horror
of indetermination is of another kind than the counterenlightenment¶ fear of mixture (although they
have points of contact, which help explain reactionary¶ or conservative elements within liberalism,
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
48
like the fear of democracy).¶ Just as the Counter-Enlightenment dramatized features of the Enlightenment, it couldn’t or¶ wouldn’t
see itself, so has this dissertation tried to be ‘hysterical’ and one-sided in order to draw¶ attention to possible dangers in liberal globalism. And
it has tried to take the notions of limitations¶ serious, not in order to redraw to a closed past, which never was, but in order to ask for the
borders¶ of cosmopolis. Inspired by this, we could ask: Is a critical philosophy of the 21st century one of¶ borders and limitations? Is the
response to liberal globalism doomed to be one of conscious¶ particularism? Does the ‘return of the political’ and ‘post-liberalism’ signal a new
philosophy of¶ limits? Doesn’t a genuine pluralism have to know and recognize limitation?
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
49
Absolute Enmity Stuff
Liberalism leads to a new, worse form of enmity……absolute enmity.
Thorup ‘6 [Mikkel Thorup - Ph.D.-dissertation, Institute of Philosophy and the History of Ideas,
Department of the History of Ideas, University of Aarhus, Denmark, “In Defence of Enmity
- Critiques of Liberal Globalism”, published January 2006, accessed 7/7/13,
<https://pure.au.dk/portal/files/1125531/In_defence_of_enmity_-_pdf.pdf>] //pheft
Conventional enmity (or just enmity). This is the ideal according to which the other enmities are¶ measured.
This is the great achievement of the nation state era. It is also what we here describe as¶ political enmity. It describes a
relation of enmity between states who recognize, fight and negotiate¶ with each other. The
conventional just enemy is recognized as an equal and the war is thus¶ contained through
international law and a codex of honour among combatants. This concept of¶ enmity arises through the de-theologization and
de-moralization of international relations. Silete¶ theologi!, as Schmitt is fond of saying. The new nation state order was conditioned upon a¶ ‘dethronement of the
theologists’ (1985: 65). Julien Freund (1996: 65) reminds us of Oldendorp, a ¶ sixteenth century Lutheran jurist who “used to say that a just war was ultimately no
war, but the¶ work of justice, whereas the unjust war was no war either, but a rebellion against the just order. ¶ Thus verbal dialectic finally does away with the act
of war”. But only on a verbal plane. In
the¶ world of flesh and bone, warfare was endemic; and it was the
banishment of just war in favour of¶ the just enemy who ultimately stopped the ferocious religious
wars and created the interstate order.¶ It marks a transition from a discriminatory concept of war and
enmity, where the enemy is a moral¶ or religious enemy to be destroyed, to a non-discriminatory
concept, where no one can claim moral¶ superiority and where the political enemy is (only) to be
defeated, not destroyed (2003c). In a¶ Schmitt-inspired text, Paul Hirst (2001a: 59) elaborates: “Reason of state limits the
enmity of¶ interstate relations in that it makes them a matter of pure power technique: one’s enemy is
not an¶ implacable foe but an honourable opponent in a conflict of interests”. The enemy is not a
criminal.¶ The clear demarcations between war and peace, internal and external, combatant and¶
civilian/neutral help contain the enmity and its implications. It is a limited and regulated enmity, a¶ ‘duel’ between equal
sovereigns. The aim is to impose our will on the other, not to annihilate him .¶ In a footnote to the 1963-edition of Begriff des
Politischen, Schmitt explicates the meaning of the¶ conventional concept of enmity as consisting not in the elimination of the enemy but in “the ¶ prevention, in the
clash of forces and in the creation of a common border” (1996a: 119). This is why he insists on the autonomy of the political decision. It is not informed by or
dependent¶ upon other criteria: “The
political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he does not¶
have to be an economic competitor” (1996a: 27). In actual politics, this is of course not true: “In¶ psychological reality the enemy is often
treated as evil or ugly because every demarcation – not¶ least the political which is the strongest and most intensive distinction and grouping – uses all¶ available
differentiations as support. But this changes nothing of the autonomy of such oppositions” ¶ (1996a: 28). To
Schmitt, this concept of enmity is
tied to the nation state and his concern for the¶ decline of the nation state is intimately connected to
the re-emergence of other kinds of enmities. As¶ Andreas Behnke (2004: 285) says: “In order to channel violence into structured conflict,
the State is¶ based on the territorialization and spatialization of the decision between Friend and Enemy”. Once¶ the connection between
state, territory and decision is loosened the conventional enmity is dissolved¶ in favour of other more
sinister and less containable forms. The paradigmatic war of conventional¶ enmity is the interstate
war.
(The creation of absolute enmity which is an inherent part of the post political politics endorsed by
the aff leads to more violence and destruction of the other.)
(The creation of absolute enmity leads to more violence and destruction of the other)
Odysseos ‘8 [Dr. Louiza Odysseos- University of Sussex, Department of International Relations, “Against
Ethics? Iconographies of Enmity and Acts of Obligation in Carl Schmitt’s Theory of the Partisan”,
published 3/22/8, accessed 7/15/13, PDF] //pheft
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
50
Central to Schmitt’s Theory of the Partisan is the transition from real enmity¶ (discussed above in the figure of
justus hostis) to absolute enmity7 within a changing¶ global order in which the state was no longer the
‘adequate bearer of order’ (cf.¶ Colombo 2007) and in which bracketed war had collapsed, as we discussed
above;¶ Schmitt explores how ‘war finds its meaning in enmity...The question, however, is ¶ whether
the enmity can be contained and regulated, that is, whether it represents¶ relative or absolute enmity’
(Schmitt 2004: 41). ‘The consistent fulfillment of¶ absolute enmity’, which requires a ceaseless search and production of enmity itself,‘ provides
its own meaning and justification’ (Schmitt 2007: 52; 2004: 38). In this¶ statement, we can see intimations of the emerging normativity of
Schmitt’s account.¶ A.C. Goodson, for example, notes that the partisan analysis is really ‘an exemplum’, a¶ story intended to highlight a moral
lesson, ‘in the spirit of the French moralistes¶ whom he admired…Here the forlorn partisan stands larger than life, a man apart,¶ alone with his
destiny, properly singular…’ (Goodson 2004b: 146). While Goodson is¶ correct to identify a certain ‘mythic drift’ (ibid.: 153) in the
characteristics of¶ partisanship delineated by Schmitt and to point to the romanticism that plagues the¶ figure, what is important about the
normativity of Schmitt’s discussion, I argue, is its¶ anti-universal-ethical stance.¶ The
iconography of absolute enmity, then,
approaches the figure of the enemy as¶ exemplary of the emerging post-Westphalian order, which is
best understood as a¶ ‘global civil war’ (Odysseos 2008; cf. Schmitt 1995a). Global civil war is¶ characterised by
internality, the collapse of ‘Westphalian’ distinctions such as¶ rule/exception, war/peace,
domestic/foreign, and also by the fact that it is not really a¶ war at all but, rather, a ‘war-order’: that
order-producing war and war-making order¶ whose spatial and temporal bounds have been rescinded
(Odysseos 2008). In this warorder,¶ war is absolute war, properly ontologised (cf. Hardt and Negri 2004: 19).¶ Moreover, in this warorder bracketing war is impossible. As Schmitt himself argues,¶ absolute war and absolute enmity
appear coextensive
(Schmitt 2004: 35). Absolute¶ enmity, however, is elusive and entirely abstract: a spectre. It is its abstractness
that¶ allows for the enemy’s total renunciation. As Beasley-Murray argues, outside of¶ bracketing of war, in this transaction of death, what is
absent is an exchange or even a relation¶ between subjects who can recognize each other: both parties, on the ground or¶ in the air, confront
an unknowable foe…The enemy becomes abstract for both¶ sides. (2005: 220)
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
51
Liberalism Kills Politics (turns Cede the Political)
Liberal peace theory serves to take the politics out of politics (thus ceding the political)
Waltz 2k [Kenneth N. Waltz, former Ford Professor of Political Science at the University of California,
Berkeley, is a Research Associate of the Institute of War and Peace Studies and Adjunct Professor at
Columbia University, “Structural Realism after the Cold War”, published in International Security, Vol.
25, No. 1 (Summer 2000), pp. 5–41, accessed 7/15/13, PDF] //pheft
To explain war is easier than to understand the conditions of peace. If one asks¶ what may cause war,
the simple answer is ”anything.“ That is Kant’s answer:¶ The natural state is the state of war. Under
the conditions of international¶ politics, war recurs; the sure way to abolish war, then, is to abolish
international¶ politics.¶ Over the centuries, liberals have shown a strong desire to get the politics out¶
of politics. The ideal of nineteenth-century liberals was the police state, that is,¶ the state that would
conŽne its activities to catching criminals and enforcing¶ contracts. The ideal of the laissez-faire state finds many
counterparts among¶ students of international politics with their yen to get the power out of power¶ politics, the national out of international
politics, the dependence out of interdependence,¶ the relative out of relative gains, the politics out of international¶ politics, and the structure
out of structural theory.¶ Proponents
of the democratic peace thesis write as though the spread of¶
democracy will negate the effects of anarchy. No causes of conflict and war¶ will any longer be found
at the structural level. Francis Fukuyama finds it¶ ”perfectly possible to imagine anarchic state systems that are nonetheless¶
peaceful.“ He sees no reason to associate anarchy with war. Bruce Russett¶ believes that, with enough democracies in the world, it “may be
possible in¶ part to supersede the ‘realist’ principles (anarchy, the security dilemma of¶ states) that have dominated practice . . . since at least
the seventeenth century.Ӧ 8 Thus the structure is removed from structural theory. Democratic
states¶ would be so confident
of the peace-preserving effects of democracy that they¶ would no longer fear that another state, so
long as it remained democratic,¶ would do it wrong. The guarantee of the state’s proper external
behavior¶ would derive from its admirable internal qualities.
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
52
Solves K aff
The Dream of Universal Inclusion is Façade, only the alternative can prevent the ultimate form of
exclusion and annihilation (basically a tricky block thing: the K solves the K aff)
Rasch ‘5 [William Rasch – professor of Germanic Studies, “Lines in the Sand: Enmity as a
Structuring Principle”, published The South Atlantic Quarterly 104:2, Spring 2005, accessed 6/21/13,
PDF] //pheft
What is to be done? If you are one who says there is a war, and if you¶ say it not because you glory in
it but because you fear it and hate it, then¶ your goal is to limit it and its effects, not eliminate it,
which merely intensifies¶ it, but limit it by drawing clear lines within which it can be fought, and¶ clear
lines between those who fight it and those who don’t, lines between¶ friends, enemies, and neutrals,
lines between combatants and noncombatants.¶ There are, of course, legitimate doubts about whether those ideal lines¶
could ever be drawn again; nevertheless, the question that we should ask¶ is not how can we establish perpetual peace, but rather a more
modest¶ one: Can symmetrical relationships be guaranteed only by asymmetrical¶ ones? According to Schmitt, historically this has been the
case. ‘‘The traditional¶ Eurocentric order of international law is foundering today, as is the¶ old nomos of the earth. This order arose from a
legendary and unforeseen¶ discovery of a new world, from an unrepeatable historical event. Only in¶ fantastic parallels can one imagine a
modern recurrence, such as men on¶ their way to the moon discovering a new and hitherto unknown planet that¶ could be exploited freely and
utilized effectively to relieve their struggles¶ on earth’’ (39). We have since gone to the moon and have found nothing¶ on the way there to
exploit. We may soon go to Mars, if current leaders¶ have their way, but the likelihood of finding exploitable populations seems¶ equally slim.
Salvation through spatially delimited asymmetry, even were it¶ to be desired, is just not on the horizon. And
salvation through
globalization,¶ that is, through global unity and equality, is equally impossible, because¶ today’s
asymmetry is not so much a localization of the exception as it is an¶ invisible generation of the
exception from within that formal ideal of unity,¶ a generation of the exception as the difference
between the human and the¶ inhuman outlaw, the ‘‘Savage Beast, with whom Men can have no
Society¶ nor Security.’’ We are, therefore, thrown back upon ourselves, which is to¶ say, upon those artificial ‘‘moral persons’’ who act
as our collective political¶ identities. They used to be called states. What they will be called in the future¶ remains to be seen. But, if we think to
establish a differentiated unity of discrete¶ political entities that once represented for Schmitt ‘‘the highest form¶ of order within the scope of
human power,’’ then we must symmetrically¶ manage the necessary pairing of inclusion and exclusion without denying¶ the ‘‘forms of power
We must think the possibility of roughly equivalent
power relations¶ rather than fantasize the elimination of power from the political universe.¶ This,
and domination’’ that inescapably accompany human¶ ordering.
conceivably, was also Schmitt’s solution. Whether his idea of the¶ plurality of Großräume could ever be carried out under contemporary
circumstances¶ is, to be sure, more than a little doubtful, given that the United¶ States enjoys a monopoly on guns, goods, and the Good, in the
form of a¶ supremely effective ideology of universal ‘‘democratization.’’ Still,
we would¶ do well to devise vocabularies that
do not just emphatically repeat philosophically¶ more sophisticated versions of the liberal ideology of
painless,¶ effortless, universal equality. The space of the political will never be created¶ by a bloodless,
Benjaminian divine violence. Nor is it to be confused with¶ the space of the simply human. To dream
the dreams of universal inclusion¶ may satisfy an irrepressible human desire, but it may also always
produce¶ recurring, asphyxiating political nightmares of absolute exclusion.
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
53
Framing (if not read in 1NC)
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
54
2NC
The Political is the distinction between friend/enemy
Schmitt ’32 [Carl Schmitt – the illist of all the German Legal Philosophers, “The Concept of the Political”,
published as Der Begriff des Politischen in 1932, accessed 6/23/13, pg. 25-27, Print] //pheft
A definition of the political can be obtained only by discovering and defining the specifically political categories. In contrast to the various
relatively independent endeavors of human thought and action, particular the moral, aesthetic, and economic, the political has its own criteria
which express themselves in a characteristic way. The
political must therefore rest on its own ultimate distinctions,
to which all action with a specifically political meaning can be traced. Let us assume that in the realm
of morality the final distinctions are between good and evil, in aesthetes beautiful and ugly, in
economics, profitable and unprofitable. The question then is whether there is also a special distinction
which can serve as a simple criterion of the political and of what it consists. The nature of such a
political distinction is surely different from that of those others. It is independent of them and as such can speak
clearly for itself.¶ The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is
that between friend and enemy.* This provides a definition in the sense of a criterion and not as an
exhaustive definition or one indicative of substantial content.** Insofar as it is not derived from other
criteria, the antithesis of friend and enemy corresponds to the relatively independent criteria of other
antithesis: good and evil in the moral sphere, beautiful and ugly in the aesthetic sphere, and so on. In
any event it is independent, not in the sense of a distinct new domain, but in that it can neither be based on any one antithesis or any
combination of other antitheses, nor can it be traced to these. If the antithesis of good and evil is not simply identical with that of beautiful and
ugly, profitable and unprofitable, and cannot be directly reduced to the others, then the antithesis of friend and enemy must even less be
confused with or mistaken for the others. The
distinction of friend and enemy denotes the utmost degree of
intensity of a union or separation, of an association or dissociation. It can exist theoretically and
practically, without having simultaneously to draw upon all those moral, aesthetic, economic, or other
distinctions. The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as
an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business
transactions. But he is, nevertheless, 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 can neither be decided by previously determined general norm nor by the judgment of a
disinterested and therefore neutral third party.¶ 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. Emotionally the enemy is
easily treated as being evil and ugly, because every distinction, most of all the political, as the strongest and most intense of the distinctions and
categorizations, draws upon other distinctions for support. This does not alter the autonomy of such distinctions. Consequently, the reverse is
also true: the morally evil, aesthetically ugly or economically damaging need not necessarily be the enemy; the morally good, aesthetically
beautiful, and economically profitable need not necessarily become the friend in the specially political sense of the word. Thereby the
inherently objective nature and autonomy of the political becomes evident by virtue of its being able to treat, distinguish, and comprehend the
friend-enemy antithesis independently of other antitheses.
The Role of the ballot is to determine which acts are politically important in the context of the
political
Schmitt ’22 [Carl Schmitt – the illist of all the German Legal Philosophers, “Political Theology: Four
Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty”, published Politische Theologie: Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der
Souveranitat © 1922, accessed 6/22/13, PDF] //pheft
All these objections fail to recognize that the conception of¶ personality and its connection with formal authority arose from¶ a specific juristic
interest, namely, an especially dear awareness¶ of what the essence of the legal decision entails. Such
a decision¶ in the broadest
sense belongs to every legal perception. Every¶ legal thought brings a legal idea, which in its purity can
never¶ become reality, into another aggregate condition and adds an¶ element that cannot be derived
either from the content of the¶ legal idea or from the content of a general positive legal norm¶ that is
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
55
to be applied. Every concrete juristic decision contains a¶ moment of indifference from the perspective of content, because¶ the juristic
deduction is not traceable in the last detail to its¶ premises and because the circumstance that requires a decision¶ remains an independently
determining moment. This has nothing¶ to do with the causal and psychological origins of such a decision,¶ even though the abstract decision
as such is also of significance,¶ but with the determination of the legal value. The
certainty of¶ the decision is, from the
perspective of sociology, of particular¶ interest in an age of intense commercial activity because in
numerous¶ cases commerce is less concerned with a particular content¶ than with a calculable
certainty. (So that I can accommodate¶ myself accordingly, I am often less interested in how a timetable¶ determines times of departure
and arrival in a particular case¶ than in its functioning reliably.) Legal communication offers an¶ example of such a concern in the so-called
formal strictness of¶ the exchange law. The legal interest in the decision as such should¶ not be mixed up with this kind of calculability. It
is
rooted in¶ the character of the normative and is derived from the necessity¶ of judging a concrete fact
concretely even though what is given¶ as a standard for the judgment is only a legal principle in its¶
general universality. Thus a transformation takes place every¶ time. That the legal idea cannot
translate itself independently is¶ evident from the fact that it says nothing about who should apply¶ it.
In every transformation there is present an auctoritatis interpositio.¶ A distinctive determination of which individual person or which¶ concrete
body can assume such an authority cannot be derived¶ from the mere legal quality of a maxim. This is the difficulty¶ that Krabbe ignored.¶
That it is the instance of competence that renders a decision¶ makes the decision relative, and in
certain circumstances absolute¶ and independent of the correctness of its content. This terminates¶
any further discussion about whether there may still be some¶ doubt. The decision becomes instantly independent
of argumentative¶ substantiation and receives an autonomous value. The¶ entire theoretical and practical meaning of this is revealed in the¶
theory of the faulty act of state. A legal validity is attributed to¶ a wrong and faulty decision. The wrong decision contains a constitutive¶
element precisely because of its falseness. But what is¶ inherent in the idea of the decision is that there can never be¶ absolutely declaratory
decisions. That constitutive, specific element¶ of a decision is, from the perspective of the content of the¶ underlying norm, new and alien.
Looked at normatively, the¶ decision emanates from nothingness. The
legal force of a decision¶ is different from the
result of substantiation. Ascription is not¶ achieved with the aid of a norm; it happens the other way
around.¶ A point of ascription first determines what a norm is and what¶ normative rightness is. A
point of ascription cannot be derived¶ from a norm, only a quality of a content. The formal in the¶ specifically
legal sense contrasts with this quality of content, not¶ with the quantitative content of a causal connection. It should¶ be understood that this
last contrast is of no consequence to¶ jurisprudence.
-The Political is the distinction between friend/enemy
Stanford ’10 [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Carl Schmitt”, published 8/7/10, accessed 6/22/13,
< http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schmitt/#ConPolCriLib> ] //pheft
The sovereign dictator has the power, in taking the decision on the exception, to set aside the positive legal and constitutional order in its
entirety and to create a novel positive legal and constitutional order, together with a situation of social normality that fits it. It follows that the
sovereign dictator cannot base his claim to be acting in the name of the people on any kind of formal authorization. If the old constitution no
longer exists and the new one is not yet in force, there is no formal procedure for generating a public will. And yet, the sovereign dictator claims
to exercise the constituent power of the people. What is more, the constitutional order he is to create is to be considered as legitimate since it
rests on the people's right to give itself a constitution (CT 136–9). Schmitt's view assumes that it is possible to speak of the existence of a people
in advance of the creation of any positive constitutional framework. Schmitt therefore has to explain what it means for a people to exist prior to
any constitutional framework, and he has to give an account of how the people's political existence prior to any constitutional framework can
ground a sovereign dictatorship.¶ Schmitt's The Concept of the Political phrases the answer to this question as an account of the nature of ‘the
political.’ (Sartori 1989; Gottfried 1990, 57–82; Meier 1998; Hofmann 2002, 94–116; Kennedy 2004, 92–118; Slomp 2009, 21–37) Schmitt
famously claims that “the specific political distinction … is that between friend and enemy.” (CP 26)
The distinction between friend and enemy, Schmitt elaborates, is essentially public and not private.
Individuals may have personal enemies, but personal enmity is not a political phenomenon. Politics
involves groups that face off as mutual enemies (CP 28–9). Two groups will find themselves in a
situation of mutual enmity if and only if there is a possibility of war and mutual killing between them.
The distinction between friend and enemy thus refers to the “utmost degree of intensity … of an
association or dissociation.” (CP 26, 38) The utmost degree of association is the willingness to fight and die for and together
with other members of one's group, and the ultimate degree of dissociation is the willingness to kill others for the simple reason that they are
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
56
members of a hostile group (CP 32–3).¶ Schmitt believes that political enmity can have many different origins. The
political differs
from other spheres of value in that it is not based on a substantive distinction of its own. The ethical,
for example, is based on a distinction between the morally good and the morally bad, the aesthetic on
a distinction between the beautiful and the ugly, and the economical on a distinction between the
profitable and the unprofitable. The political distinction between friend and enemy is not reducible to
these other distinctions or, for that matter, to particular any distinction — be it linguistic, ethnic,
cultural, religious, etc. — that may become a marker of collective identity and difference (CP 25–7). It is
possible, for instance, to be enemies with members of a hostile group whom one judges to be morally good. And it is equally possible not to be
engaged in a relationship of mutual enmity with a group whose individual members one judges to be bad. The same holds, Schmitt thinks, for
all other substantive distinctions that may become markers of identity and difference.
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
57
2NR
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
58
Overview(s)
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
59
2NC
Absent specific link: First, extend the first Rasch ‘5 card from the 1NC, liberal politics are rooted in
notions of “equality” and other non-innate concepts that require forms of alternative politics, or in
this case, depolitization to acquire value. This depolitizication occurs by fundamentally denying the
“us/them” dichotomy or, as Leonard Cohen stated, the aff is on the side of the war that says there
isn’t even one.
Second, extend the second Rasch ‘5 card, he indicates that a denial of the enmity leads to worse forms
of violence because we seek to maintain constant peace and anyone that upsets this order is not just
deemed aggressive, rather, they are an enemy to humanity and thus are dehumanized more. When
we create clear lines in the sand defining us from them, wars are isolated and rules are set to stop
genocides. Absent our investigation these safeguards are destroyed.
Third, extend the alternative which is “to draw clear lines in the sand defining “us” from “them”. This
is manifest in a rejection of the affirmative’s liberal policies.”
Fourth, extend the third piece of Rasch evidence which indicate that historically when sovereign
states define an enemy this allows wars to be contained because we know what we are fighting. This
then prevents quagmires and “unconventional” wars.
Finally, extend the last Rasch card which is amazing and indicates that absent the embrasure and
investigation of enmity, any “threat” to the liberal peace is deemed as deviant or evil ie. A threat to
humanity as a whole, and this in turn leads to the words forms of dehumanization and violence which
fundamentally turns the aff.
--
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
60
Framing 2NC (if read in the 1NC)
And extend the Schmitt ’32 evidence – Schmitt indicates that the political is inherently made up of the
distinction between friend and enemy and absent this distinction we cannot truly interact with the
political in any meaningful way.
And extend the Schmitt ’22 evidence – this evidence indicates that the job of a legal and political
philosopher is to determine which actions are significant in the context of the political itself. This
means that the role of the ballot much be centered around the political itself and as per the previous
Schmitt evidence – the K is the only way to access that. In a word, the K comes first.
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
61
2NR
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
62
Framing 2NR (if read in the 1NC)
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
63
A/Ts
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
64
Enmity Inevitable
*Violence is inevitable but it can be controlled- the worst instances are moral violence
Rummel 77 (R.J., professor of political science, Chapter 9 Opposition, Determinism, Inevitability, And Conflict,
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/CIP.CHAP9.HTM) my
If conflict is inevitable in human society, what about violence? Is violence inevitable?
Violence is the use of force, when
coercion fails, or the application of deprivations attendant to coercion ("terrorist activities will continue until the regime submits to
our demands"). If one accepts the need for coercion, even on a minimal basis to protect people's rights, then the use of
force is inevitable. Force is the ultima ratio. Unless occasionally used, the threat of sanctions undergirding the law-norms of
society is empty. If those who prey on others could do so with impunity, they could protect their illegal gains
simply by using force. It would be unreasonable to expect all to refrain from operating outside the law. But violence takes many
forms. Some acts of violence accompany the functioning of law-norms (such as the force applied by the police to
restrain a prisoner). Others ensue from collective social conflict, such as terrorism, guerrilla warfare, riots, terrorism,
revolutions, or war. If we consider all kinds of violence, we must conclude it is inevitable that some kind of violence
will be used at some time. Based on unavoidable social differentiation and differences among people in
their values and interests, surely that kind of violence attendant on enforcing even minimal law-norms is
a social inevitability. But what about collective violence? At the outset, we must understand that some types of collective
violence are limited to certain societies. For example, war is violence between states in the international society; revolution
is a violent, direct attempt to change the elite and their policies within a state-society; civil war is an attempt to
violently create a separate state-society. Thus although we could eliminate one form of violence by
altering the social system within which it is defined (as by, some argue, eliminating war through the institution of world
government), we may create another form congenial to the new society (such as civil war or revolution under a world
government).7 The upshot is that we must deal with collective violence generally, for if the occurrence of one form is not
inevitable, some form or another may be. Revolutions, uprisings, riots, wars, coups, assassinations,
terrorism have been the lot of all civilizations, cultures, and nations. Toynbee's (1936-1954) massive historical study,
Durant's comprehensive survey,8 or Wells' (1922) popular outline all show that collective violence has always been with us. For the
statistical taste, there are Sorokin's (1957) historical tabulations. Our societies have evolved; knowledge has grown, science has
developed, technology has expanded and matured. Only our collective violence has not evolved. The forms we know
now were there at the beginning of recorded history , and although I know of no quantitative survey, I have the
impression that the extent of violence today is little different from ancient times.9 But history is the record of phenomena, of
manifestations, of observations. That a phenomenon has always been part of the human record does not prove inevitability. This is not
true of slavery that has historically plagued humanity, but is now virtually eradicated; nor is it true of our presumed physical limits ("we
will never fly" or "leave the earth"). Is collective violence different? Is something virtually intrinsic to society usually
reflected in the historical record, mirroring our free will and nature? I believe that for all practical purposes, and
especially in modern times, there is. This is our morality, our practical reason, our superego. Collective violence is now
generally organized violence between collective oughts. We who share similar interests about how
society ought to be structured, about the best policies of government, or how to improve our lot,
organize into groups. Whether ideological, theological, nationalistic, or racial, violence between groups is ultimately
altruistic or fraternal. It is violence over what ought to be .10 It is believed wrong that some are wealthy
while many are poor, that private property be taken away, that a minority elite rule, that workers be
exploited, that people live in sin, that they have our land, just to give a partial historical list representing
human values. It is true that many, like international mercenaries, participate in collective violence for selfish gain and profit,
because of frustrations or to satisfy a need for adventure. But usually the basis of such collective violence is ultimately a
question of which ought will prevail. Today, collective violence is generally righteous violence .
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn't.”
Thorup ‘6 [Mikkel Thorup - Ph.D.-dissertation, Institute of Philosophy and the History of Ideas,
Department of the History of Ideas, University of Aarhus, Denmark, “In Defence of Enmity
- Critiques of Liberal Globalism”, published January 2006, accessed 7/3/13,
<https://pure.au.dk/portal/files/1125531/In_defence_of_enmity_-_pdf.pdf>] //pheft
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
65
Real politics is first and foremost foreign politics, that is, war and the preparation for war (and ¶
secondly, internal peace). He understands ordinary politics as centrifugal, as dangerously¶ weakening the state by allowing ‘total
parties’ to over-politicize the internal and make everything¶ into politics which, in turn, weakens the genuinely political. Opposed to this,
Schmitt emphasized¶ (to the point of the disappearance of everything else) ‘high politics’. The true political nation state¶ had, prior to its liberal
dissolution, pushed the political to the foreign domain: “Politics in an¶ elevated sense, great politics, was back then only foreign politics”
(1996d: 11). In contrast to¶
everyday trivial politics, he insists that “the grand moments of high politics are
… the moments¶ when the enemy is viewed in concrete clarity as the enemy” (1996a: 67). We could call it
the front¶ line battle moment of the political. Unwillingness to face up to this moment of clarity (and
action) is¶ a ‘symptom of the end of the political’ (1996a: 67). The loss of the death sacrifice is the
clearest¶ example of a disenchanted and empty world (Palaver 1995). The modern is the post-heroic age,¶ where the
death sacrifice isn’t demanded or offered. Life, the purely quantitative continuation of¶ life, is the highest standard. Life, for Schmitt
and the Counter-Enlightenment, is without meaning, if¶ it doesn’t contain anything more precious,
more sublime, than the mere continuation of the¶ individual existence. The political, for Schmitt, is
the attempt at reinstating moral seriousness¶ (Strauss 1988: 119; Norris 1998: 71, 78). Schmitt might not have said it quite
like that, but he¶ would agree with the main thrust of Helmuth Moltke, when he said: “Without war the world would¶
deteriorate into materialism” (quoted from Gat 2001: 327). The real only exists in its relation to the¶ possibility of death: “The
existential core of the political is the real possibility of being robbed of¶ one’s own being by the
enemy” (Nielsen 2003: 86). This is what gives the political its distinct¶ character and it explains Schmitt’s
repeated warnings, that those who deny the political loose their¶ independence (1982: 228; 1996a: 54): “The
concepts of friend, enemy and battle only gain their real¶ meaning because they have and always will
have a special relation to the real possibility of physical¶ killing”; “War is also today the serious case
[Ernstfall]” (1996a: 33 & 25).¶ World peace is, in contrast to the ever present possibility of combat, the ‘idyllic
goal of complete¶ and final depoliticization’ (1996a: 54); it is a world without enemies, limits, borders etc.
Total¶ depoliticization entails the non-existence of states and the idea of global organization and¶
universality at any price (1996a: 55). It is the entire world turned post-historical and based¶ ‘exclusively on economics and on
technically regulating traffic’ (1996a: 58); the whole world as the¶ first world; it is a world of ‘culture, civilization, economics, morality, law, art,
entertainment, etc.’¶ (1996a: 54). In a
footnote from 1963, he says that, inspired by Leo Strauss’s critique, he
would now¶ put ‘play’ instead of entertainment as the counterpart to seriousness (1996a: 120). A
world of play¶ is also a world without politics, without the distinction between friend and enemy. So,
in essence¶ depoliticization is denial of the existence of an enemy. A totally depoliticized entity
cannot¶ distinguish between friend and enemy (1996c: 112); nor does it even acknowledge that there
is an¶ enemy – understood as an equal but oppositional entity or actor. It is not entirely clear, whether¶ Schmitt
totally denies this pacified globe as a possibility (“If and when this condition will appear, I¶ do not know. At the moment, this is not the case”,
1996a: 54). On the whole, he must reject even¶ the possibility. There is no apolitical possibility. If the world state should come about, the
Things would not administer themselves. One would have to ask¶ “which
people this awesome power belongs to” (1996a: 58).
political¶ problem would not disappear.
Violence is inevitable and the affirmative’s liberal policies make it worse – this is especially true in the
context of Latin America**
Sanchez ‘6 [Magaly Sanchez R., Senior Researcher at the Office of Population Research at Princeton
University, “Insecurity and Violence as a New Power Relation in Latin America”, published in Annals of
the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 606, Chronicle ofa Myth Foretold: The
Washington Consensus in Latin America (Jul., 2006), pp. 178-195, accessed 7/14/13, JSTOR] //pheft
Violence has been a prominent social response¶ to the application of structural adjustment¶ policies
throughout Latin America. As the nation¶ state has become less able to negotiate socially¶ and
politically with mobilized sectors of society,¶ it has increasingly imposed violent measures of¶ social
control. The nation-state refers to a particular segment of global geography characterized¶ by distinct cultural forms, social structures,
political alliances, societal negotiations, and market¶ interventions (Poulantzas 1978). Increasingly,¶ states have had to resort
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
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66
to violence to maintain¶ order or simply to justify their own legitimacy, as¶ indicated by the growing
presence ofthe military¶ in the streets of Latin American cities. The appli¶ cation of state force is inherent in the politics
of¶ economic austerity, and its ubiquity throughout¶ the region suggests that, at the very least, it con¶ stitutes a necessary condition for the
incorpora¶ tion of nations into the global market economy¶ under neoliberalism.¶ As
the coercive power of the state has
come to be applied more widely, it¶ inevitably has affected the interests and well-being of the middle
and profes¶ sional classes, whose members, in turn, have risen in resistance along with other ¶
segments of the population that historically have been segregated and excluded¶ in Latin America. Their
opposition takes diverse forms, ranging from quiet pub¶ lic protests (e.g., Argentina's Mothers ofthe Plaza de Mayo) to massive political¶
mobilizations (The anti-Toledo demonstrations in Peru) to radical expressions of¶ violence through terrorism and armed revolt (the Zapatista
uprising in Mexico).¶ A
paradoxical consequence of structural reform thus appears to be that to maintain
"democratic order" in the face of unpopular economic and fiscal policies,¶ regimes turn to force. As a
result, nominally "democratic" states find themselves¶ relying on violence to maintain political control
and achieve stability, contracting¶ their own ideology of democracy and human rights and ultimately
undermining¶ their own legitimacy.
War inevitable
Kant 1795 [Immanuel Kant – this chill philosopher dude, “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch”,
published in 1795, accessed 7/15/13, < https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kant/kant1.htm>]
//pheft
These are dishonorable stratagems. For
some confidence in the character of the enemy must remain even in the
midst of war, as otherwise no peace could be concluded and the hostilities would degenerate into a
war of extermination (bellum internecinum). War, however, is only the sad recourse in the state of nature
(where there is no tribunal which could judge with the force of law) by which each state asserts its right by violence and
in which neither party can be adjudged unjust (for that would presuppose a juridical decision); in lieu of such a decision, the
issue of the conflict (as if given by a so-called "judgment of God") decides on which side justice lies. But between states no punitive
war (bellum punitivum) is conceivable, because there is no relation between them of master and
servant.
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
67
A/T Cede the Political
This makes absolutely zero sense in the context of the kritik, we argue that the erasing of the
friend/enemy distinction depoliticizes politics and takes all inherent meaning out of the political itself.
That’s the first Rasch card from the 1NC.
Also, the Schmitt evidence checks back – first Schmitt explicitly says that the political is made up of
the distinction between friend and enemy and when you try to erase that distinction you removed
from the body politik. This is the worst thing you can do.
All this means that in the world of the aff, depolitization is inevitable and the Schmitt evidence is a
functional link turn – say goodbye to your impacts, they’re ours.
Liberal peace theory serves to take the politics out of politics, there’s only a risk of the neg solving
Waltz 2k [Kenneth N. Waltz, former Ford Professor of Political Science at the University of California,
Berkeley, is a Research Associate of the Institute of War and Peace Studies and Adjunct Professor at
Columbia University, “Structural Realism after the Cold War”, published in International Security, Vol.
25, No. 1 (Summer 2000), pp. 5–41, accessed 7/15/13, PDF] //pheft
To explain war is easier than to understand the conditions of peace. If one asks¶ what may cause war,
the simple answer is ”anything.“ That is Kant’s answer:¶ The natural state is the state of war. Under
the conditions of international¶ politics, war recurs; the sure way to abolish war, then, is to abolish
international¶ politics.¶ Over the centuries, liberals have shown a strong desire to get the politics out¶
of politics. The ideal of nineteenth-century liberals was the police state, that is,¶ the state that would
conŽne its activities to catching criminals and enforcing¶ contracts. The ideal of the laissez-faire state finds many
counterparts among¶ students of international politics with their yen to get the power out of power¶ politics, the national out of international
politics, the dependence out of interdependence,¶ the relative out of relative gains, the politics out of international¶ politics, and the structure
out of structural theory.¶ Proponents
of the democratic peace thesis write as though the spread of¶
democracy will negate the effects of anarchy. No causes of conflict and war¶ will any longer be found
at the structural level. Francis Fukuyama finds it¶ ”perfectly possible to imagine anarchic state systems that are nonetheless¶
peaceful.“ He sees no reason to associate anarchy with war. Bruce Russett¶ believes that, with enough democracies in the world, it “may be
possible in¶ part to supersede the ‘realist’ principles (anarchy, the security dilemma of¶ states) that have dominated practice . . . since at least
the seventeenth century.Ӧ 8 Thus the structure is removed from structural theory. Democratic
states¶ would be so confident
of the peace-preserving effects of democracy that they¶ would no longer fear that another state, so
long as it remained democratic,¶ would do it wrong. The guarantee of the state’s proper external
behavior¶ would derive from its admirable internal qualities.
*Oh, and I forgot to mention, this is kinda nonUQ - Political engagement is dead and the spectacular
nature of the 1AC killed it
Farrar and Warner 2008 (Margaret Farrar is Associate Professor and Chair of Political Science at
Augustana College. Jamie Warner is Associate Professor of Political Science at Marshall University.
"Spectacular Resistance: The Billionaires for Bush and the Art of Political Culture Jamming"
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/polity/journal/v40/n3/full/2300104a.html)
Numerous commentators have bemoaned what they diagnose as a perpetual malaise that hangs over
U.S. politics. Political theorists and popular pundits alike can recite a litany of problems; scandals, corruption, attack ads,
and partisan vitriol all contribute to a political culture that at best alienates people from—and at worst actively
discourages participation in—political life. Declining rates of voter turnout, political awareness, and trust
in government are frequently cited to demonstrate citizens' growing frustration with a political process
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that does not address their needs or speak to their hopes for the future. By any measure, it would seem difficult to say
that democracy is thriving.2 There are many causes for our political ennui, but one of the most often cited in political science
literature is the ascension of political spectacle. For many critics, spectacle
is the antithesis to authentic
political action. Spectacle robs citizens of their individual and collective agency,
dampens their political efficacy, and transforms them into a passive audience for the
histrionic dramas that are staged for them by political elites . Moreover, some critics charge, the steady
stream of political spectacle, especially as it is made available through the advent of the 24-hour news cycle, leads not
only to apathy but also to a deadening cynicism that can eviscerate a democratic polity.
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
69
A/T Nationalism Bad
Naw, first there’s the second Rasch ‘5 card from the 1NC which indicates that a denial of the enmity
and a strong sense of national unity leads to worse forms of violence because we seek to maintain
constant peace and anyone that upsets this order is not just deemed aggressive, rather, they are an
enemy to humanity and thus are dehumanized more. When we create clear lines in the sand defining
us from them, wars are isolated and rules are set to stop genocides. Absent our investigation these
safeguards are destroyed.
Second, multiple reasons nationalism is good
Stanford ’10 [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Nationalism”, First published Thu Nov 29, 2001;
substantive revision Tue Jun 1, 2010, accessed 7/20/13,
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nationalism/#ArgFavNatDeeNeeForCom> ] //pheft
Consider now the particular arguments from the first set. The first argument depends on assumptions that also appear in the subsequent ones,
but it ascribes to the community an intrinsic value, while the following ones point more towards an instrumental value of nation derived from
the value of individual flourishing, moral understanding, firm identity and the like.¶ (1) The
Argument From Intrinsic Value.
Each ethno-national community is valuable in and of itself since it is only within the natural
encompassing framework of various cultural traditions that important meanings and values are
produced and transmitted. The members of such communities share a special cultural proximity to each other. By speaking
the same language and sharing customs and traditions, the members of these communities are
typically closer to one another in various ways than they are to those who don't share the culture. The
community thereby becomes a network of morally connected agents, i.e., a moral community, with special, very strong ties of obligation. A
prominent obligation of each individual concerns the underlying traits of the ethnic community, above all language and customs: they ought to
be cherished, protected, preserved and reinforced. The general assumption that moral obligations increase with cultural proximity is often
criticized as problematic. Moreover, even if we grant this general assumption in theory, it breaks down in practice. Nationalist
activism
is most often turned against close (and substantially similar) neighbors rather than against distant strangers,
so that in many important contexts the appeal to proximity will not work. It might however retain its potential
force against culturally distant groups.¶ (2) The Argument from Flourishing. The ethno-national community is
essential for each of its members to flourish. In particular, it is only within such a community that an
individual can acquire concepts and values crucial for understanding the community's cultural life in
general and the individual's own life in particular. There has been much debate on the pro-nationalist side about whether
divergence of values is essential for separateness of national groups. The Canadian liberal nationalists, Seymour (1999), Taylor, and Kymlicka,
pointed out that the ‘divergences of value between different regions of Canada’ that aspire to separate nationhood are ‘minimal’. Taylor (1993,
155) concluded that it is not separateness of value that matters. This result is still compatible with the argument from flourishing, if ‘concepts
and values’ are not taken to be specifically national, as communitarian nationalists (MacIntyre 1994, Margalit 1997) have claimed.¶ (3) The
Argument from Identity. Communitarian philosophers emphasize nurture over nature as the principal
force determining our identity as persons — we come to be the persons we are because of the social
settings and contexts in which we mature. The claim certainly has some plausibility. The very identity of each person depends
upon his/her participation in communal life (see MacIntyre 1994, Nielsen, 1998, and Lagerspetz 2000). For example, Nielsen writes:¶ We are, to
put it crudely, lost if we cannot identify ourselves with some part of an objective social reality: a nation, though not necessarily a state, with its
distinctive traditions. What we find in people — and as deeply embedded as the need to develop their talents — is the need not only to be able
to say what they can do but to say who they are. This is found, not created, and is found in the identification with others in a shared culture
based on nationality or race or religion or some slice or amalgam thereof…. Under modern conditions, this securing and nourishing of a national
consciousness can only be achieved with a nation-state that corresponds to that national consciousness (1993, 32).¶ Given
that an
individual's morality depends upon their having a mature and stable personal identity, the communal
conditions which foster the development of such personal identity have to be preserved and
encouraged. The philosophical nationalists claim that the national format is the right format for
preserving and encouraging such identity-providing communities. Therefore, communal life should be organized
around particular national cultures. The classical nationalist proposes that cultures should be given their states,
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while the liberal nationalist proposes that cultures should get at least some form of political
protection. (For a discussion of linguistic issues, often tied to identity, see Kymlicka and Patten 2003 and Patten 2003.)¶ (4) The
Argument from Moral Understanding. A particularly important variety of value is moral value. Some
values are universal, e.g. freedom and equality, but these are too abstract and “thin”. The rich, “thick” moral values are
discernible only within particular traditions, to those who have wholeheartedly endorsed the norms
and standards of the given tradition. As Charles Taylor puts it, “the language we have come to accept articulates the issues of the
good for us” (1989, 35). The nation offers a natural framework for moral traditions, and thereby for moral understanding; it is the primary
school of morals. (I note in fairness that Taylor himself is ambivalent about the national format of morality.) An often-noticed problem with this
line of thought is that particular nations do not each have a special morality of their own. Also, the detailed, “thick” morality may vary more
across other divisions, such as class or gender divisions, than across ethno-national groups. (For a sophisticated and intriguing recent discussion
of some surprising consequences of the claim that there are “national values” and of what happens when classical liberal values are counted as
“national values” see Laegard (2007).)¶ (5) The
Argument from Diversity. Each national culture contributes in a
unique way to the diversity of human cultures. The most famous twentieth century proponent of the idea, Isaiah Berlin
(interpreting Herder, who first saw this idea as significant) writes:¶ The ‘physiognomies’ of cultures are unique: each presents a wonderful
exfoliation of human potentialities in its own time and place and environment. We are forbidden to make judgments of comparative value, for
that is measuring the incommensurable. (1976, 206)¶ The carrier of basic value is thus the totality of cultures, from which each national culture
and style of life that contributes to the totality derives its own value. The argument from diversity is therefore pluralistic: it ascribes value to
each particular culture from the viewpoint of the totality of cultures available. Assuming that the (ethno-)nation is the natural unit of culture,
the preservation of cultural diversity amounts to institutionally protecting the purity of (ethno-)national culture. The plurality of styles can be
preserved and enhanced by tying the styles to ethno-national “forms of life”. A pragmatic inconsistency might threaten this argument. The
issue is who can legitimately propose ethno-national diversity as ideal: the nationalist is much too tied to his or her own culture to do it, while
the cosmopolitan is too eager to preserve intercultural links that go beyond the idea of having a single nation-state. Moreover, is diversity a
value such that it deserves to be protected whenever it exists? Should the protection of diversity be restricted to certain aspects of culture(s) of
proposed in full generality? (For a more restricted moderate version of the argument from diversity, appealing to the analogy with bio-diversity,
but focusing exclusively upon linguistic diversity see François Grin in Kymlicka and Patten (2003)).¶ The line of thought (1) is not individualistic.
And (5) can be presented without reference to individuals: Diversity may be good in its own right, or may be good for nations. But other lines of
thought in the set just presented are all linked to the importance of community life in relation to the individual. They emerged from the
perspective of “deep” communitarian thought, and a recurrent theme is the importance of the fact that membership in the community is not
chosen but rather involuntary. In each argument, there is a general communitarian premise (a community, to which one has no choice whether
or not to belong, is crucial for one's identity, or for flourishing or for some other important good). This premise is coupled with the more narrow
nation-centered descriptive claim that the ethno-nation is precisely the kind of community ideally suited for the task. However, liberal
nationalists do not find these arguments completely persuasive. In their view, the premises of the arguments may not support the full package
of nationalist ambitions, and may not be unconditionally valid. Still, there is a lot to these arguments, and they might support liberal
nationalism and a more modest stance in favor of national cultures.
The impact level work can probz be answered with some of the “you cause war” answers
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A/T Perm
First, the link proves the perm is impossible, the point at which they concede the ___________ card
means that they fundamentally deny the enemy and triggers the impact. Until they answer the link
they have no perm.
Second, liberal society cannot coexist with the concept Schmittian enmity
-this is the link from the Levinas/Ethics/Fasching/Hippies section
Odysseos ‘8 [Dr. Louiza Odysseos- University of Sussex, Department of International Relations, “Against
Ethics? Iconographies of Enmity and Acts of Obligation in Carl Schmitt’s Theory of the Partisan”,
published 3/22/8, accessed 7/7/13, PDF] //pheft
Ethics, polemics, tactics: the discourse of humanity¶ In The Concept of the Political Schmitt had already indicted the increased usage of¶ the
terminology of ‘humanity’ by both theorists and institutional actors such as the¶ League of Nations (1996a). His initial critique allows us to
illuminate four distinct¶ criticisms against contemporary world politics’ ethical recourse to the discourse of¶ humanity (cf. Odysseos 2007b).
The first objection arises from the location of this¶ discourse in the liberal universe of values. By using
the discourse of humanity, the¶ project of a universal ethics reverberates with the nineteenth century
‘ringing¶ proclamations of disinterested liberal principle’ (Gowan 2003: 53) through which¶ ‘liberalism
quite successfully conceals its politics, which is the politics of getting rid¶ of politics’ (Dyzenhaus 1998:
14). For Schmitt, the focus of liberal modernity on¶ moral questions aims to ignore or surpass
questions of conflict altogether: it is¶ therefore ‘the battle against the political - as Schmitt defines the
political’, in terms of¶ the permanency of social antagonism in politics (Sax 2002: 501).¶ The second
criticism argues that ‘humanity is not a political concept, and no political¶ entity corresponds to it. The
eighteenth century humanitarian concept of humanity¶ was a polemical denial of the then existing aristocratic feudal system and the¶
privileges accompanying it’ (Schmitt 1996a: 55). Outside
of this historical location,¶ where does it find concrete
expression but in the politics of a politically neutral¶ ‘international community’ which acts, we are
assured, in the interest of humanity? (cf.¶ Blair 1999). The ‘international community is coextensive with
humanity…[it]¶ possesses the inherent right to impose its will…and to punish its violation, not¶
because of a treaty, or a pact or a covenant, but because of an international need’, a¶ need which it
can only determine as the ‘secularized “church” of “common¶ humanity”’ (Rasch 2003: 137, citing James Brown
Scott).2¶ A third objection, still, has to do with the imposition of particular kind of monism: ¶ despite the
lip-service to plurality, taken from the market (Kalyvas 1999), ‘liberal ¶ pluralism is in fact not in the
least pluralist but reveals itself to be an overriding¶ monism, the monism of humanity’ (Rasch 2003:
136). Similarly, current universalist¶ perspectives, while praising ‘customary’ or cultural differences, think of them ‘but as¶ ethical or aesthetic
material for a unified polychromatic culture – a new singularity¶ born of a blending and merging of multiple local constituents’ (Brennan 2003:
41).¶ One
oft-discussed disciplining effect is that, politically, the ethics of a universal¶ humanity shows
little tolerance for what is regarded as ‘intolerant’ politics, which is¶ any politics that moves in
opposition to its ideals, rendering political opposition to it¶ illegitimate (Rasch 2003: 136). This is
compounded by the fact that liberal ethical¶ discourses are also defined by a claim to their own
exception and superiority. They¶ naturalise the historical origins of liberal societies, which are no longer regarded as¶ ‘contingently
established and historically conditioned forms of organization’; rather,¶ they ‘become the universal standard against which other societies are
judged. Those¶ found
wanting are banished, as outlaws, from the civilized world. Ironically, one of¶ the
signs of their outlaw status is their insistence on autonomy, on sovereignty’ (ibid.:¶ 141; cf. Donnelly
1998).¶ Most importantly, and related to this concern, there is the relation of the concept of¶ humanity
to ‘the other’, and to war and violence. In its historical location, the¶ humanity concept had critical purchase against aristocratic
prerogatives; yet its¶ utilisation by liberal ethical discourses within a philosophy of an ‘absolute humanity’,¶ Schmitt feared, could bring about
new and unimaginable modes of exclusion (1996a,¶ 2003, 2004/2007):¶ By
virtue of its universality and abstract
normativity, it has no localizable¶ polis, no clear distinction between what is inside and what is
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outside. Does¶ humanity embrace all humans? Are there no gates to the city and thus no¶ barbarians
outside? If not, against whom or what does it wage its wars? (Rasch¶ 2003: 135).
Third, Nope – there can be no neutrality, you either embrace the enmity of deny it
Odysseos ‘8 [Dr. Louiza Odysseos- University of Sussex, Department of International Relations, “Against
Ethics? Iconographies of Enmity and Acts of Obligation in Carl Schmitt’s Theory of the Partisan”,
published 3/22/8, accessed 7/7/13, PDF] //pheft
‘Humanity as such’, Schmitt noted, ‘cannot wage war because it has no enemy’,¶ (1996a: 54),
indicating that humanity ‘is a polemical word that negates its opposite’¶ (Kennedy 1998: 94; emphasis
added). In The Concept of the Political Schmitt argued¶ that humanity ‘excludes the concept of the
enemy, because the enemy does not cease¶ to be a human being’ (1996a: 54). However, in his 1950 book with an
international¶ focus, The Nomos of the Earth, Schmitt noted how only when ‘man appeared to be the¶ embodiment of absolute humanity, did
the other side of this concept appear in the¶ form of a new enemy: the inhuman’ (2003a: 104). It becomes apparent that,¶ historically
examined, the concept of humanity engenders a return to a ‘discriminatory¶ concept of war’, by which Schmitt meant that it reintroduces the
legitimacy and need¶ for substantive causes of justice in war (Schmitt 2003b: 37-52). This in turn disallows¶ the notion of justus hostis, of a ‘just
enemy’ – explored in section three – associated¶ with the notion of non-discriminatory interstate war which took the shape of guerre¶ en
forme (Schmitt 2003a: 142-144).
The concept of humanity , therefore, shatters the¶ formal concept of justus
hostis, allowing the enemy to now be designated¶ substantively as an enemy of humanity as such.
This leaves the enemy of humanity¶ with no value and open to dehumanisation and political and
physical annihilation¶ (Schmitt 2004: 67). In discussing the League of Nations, Schmitt highlights that,¶ compared to the kinds of
wars that can be waged on behalf of humanity, the¶ interstate European wars from 1815 to 1914 in reality were regulated; they¶ were
bracketed by the neutral Great Powers and were completely legal¶ procedures in comparison with the modern and gratuitous police actions¶
against violators of peace, which can be dreadful acts of annihilation (Schmitt¶ 2003a: 186).¶ Enemies
of humanity cannot be
considered ‘just and equal’. Moreover, they cannot¶ claim neutrality : one cannot remain neutral in
the call to be for or against humanity or¶ its freedom; one cannot, similarly, claim a right to resist or
defend oneself, in the¶ sense we understand this right to have existed in the international law of
Europe (the¶ jus publicum Europeaum). Such a denial of self-defence and resistance ‘can presage a¶
dreadful nihilistic destruction of all law’ (ibid.: 187). When the enemy is not accorded¶ a procedural
justice and formal equality, the notion that peace can be made with him¶ is unacceptable, as Schmitt
detailed through his study of the League of Nations, which¶ had declared the abolition of war, but in
rescinding the concept of neutrality only¶ succeeded in the ‘dissolution of “peace”’ (ibid.: 246). It is
with the dissolution of¶ peace that total wars of annihilation become possible, where ‘the other’
cannot be¶ assimilated, or accommodated, let alone tolerated: the friend/enemy distinction is not ¶
longer taking place with a justus hostis but rather between good and evil, human and¶ inhuman,
where ‘the negative pole of the distinction is to be fully and finally¶ consumed without remainder’
(Rasch 2003: 137).¶ Finally, the ethical discourse of a universal humanity can be discerned in the
tendency¶ to normalise diverse peoples through legalisation and individualisation. The¶ paramount emphasis
placed on legal instruments and entitlements such as human¶ rights transforms diverse subjectivities into ‘rights-holders’. ‘[T]he other is
stripped of¶ his otherness and made to conform to the universal ideal of what it means to be¶
human’, meaning that ‘the term “human” is not descriptive, but evaluative. To be¶ truly human, one
needs to be corrected’ (Rasch 2003: 140 and 137; cf. Young 2002;¶ Hopgood 2000).
What does this correction
in its ‘multiform tactics’, which include¶ Michel Foucault’s proper terms of discipline and training, aim to produce? The¶ answer may well be the
proper, free (masterful), equal and rational (in its self-interest)¶ subject of rights, of capitalism and the governmentalised state (Foucault
2001a). As¶ Gil Anidjar notes, the operation of the traditional binary ‘sovereign/enemy’ is¶ transformed ‘in the disciplinary society (which
signals, according to Foucault, the¶ dissolution of sovereign power) into “disciplinary regime/criminality” (or, for that¶ second term, legal
subject, subject of the law, and, of course, “man”)’ (Anidjar 2004:¶ 42; emphasis added). Of
equally great importance is
transformation that follows in the¶ transition from a disciplinary to a governmental economy of
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power: this is what we¶ are at the moment confronting and must analyse: what are the paths towards
which the¶ other as enemy is directed by (a global) governmentality and, moreover, what forms,¶
subjectivities, etc., is the ‘enemy’ encouraged to take in the form of an unavoidable¶ freedom, along
the lines articulated by Foucault under the heading of ‘selfgovernment’¶ (2007b).
*Fourth, every instance must be rejected
Pourciau 6 (Sarah, Johns Hopkins University, “Bodily Negation: Carl Schmitt on the Meaning of Meaning” MLN 120.5, Project Muse MGE)
If we were to halt the discussion right here, it might appear that Schmitt indeed accomplishes the extraordinarily ambitious task
he
sets for himself, overcoming the liberal bifurcation of experience with a theory of relation that avoids the powerasymmetry of oppositional dichotomies like passive and active, matter and form, body and spirit. The
decision on the enemy that defines the political entity manages the logically unthinkable feat of imposing form on
itself, in accordance with rules derived directly from the experience of relation, and without the oppressive assistance of external norms. And
yet, the simplest of all possible questions—who decides?—threatens to pull apart the elegant fabric of the Schmittian solution. The sovereign
self only transcends the liberal paradigm of form-giving agency when it manages to join a plurality of concrete, bodily selves in a relationship of
non-arbitrary belonging. Such
a relationship is only possible, however, if the decision of the sovereign can be
viewed as a manifestation of the will of an entire people, for as long as the members of a political unity are
only the passive, bodily recipients of the decision that gives them form, the bifurcation between form and matter remains
firmly in place.
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A/T Perm Doublebind
The perm doublebind fails for a few reasons:
a) The conceded link means that the perm gets coopted by the systems we kritik means it adds
more for the alt to solve.
b) This is argument is stupid because it’s like agreeing that rape is wrong and then raping
someone because the status quo kritiks of rape can overcome you moral pervasion.
c) And every instance matters means that there’s only a risk of disadd.
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A/T Perm – Reject in all other instances
1. Other instances are irrelevant, this is the only issue we are debating in this round. The only debate
here is how you should frame our discussion – whether in a view of the world that is entirely too black
& white or a view of the world that sees things in shades of gray.
2. Every instance is key –THIS ISN'T A COUNTER PLAN DEBATE, this decision is between competing
philosophies, not competing actions. It’s like saying, “We agree with nonviolence, except when we
don’t”.
3. And, the ideas matter most – discursive framing affects policy implementation
Frameworks Institute ‘03 [“The FrameWorks Perspective: Strategic Frame Analysis”,
http://www.frameworksinstitute.org/strategicanalysis/perspective.shtml]
This interdisciplinary work is made possible by the fact that the concept of framing is found in the literatures of numerous academic disciplines
across the social, behavioral and cognitive sciences. Put simply, framing refers to the construct of a communication — its language, visuals and
messengers — and the way it signals to the listener or observer how to interpret and classify new information. By
framing, we mean
how messages are encoded with meaning so that they can be efficiently interpreted in relationship to
existing beliefs or ideas. Frames trigger meaning. The questions we ask, in applying the concept of frames to the arena of social
policy, are as follows: How does the public think about a particular social or political issue? What is the public discourse on the issue? And how
is this discourse influenced by the way media frames that issue? How do these public and private frames affect public choices? How
can an
issue be reframed to evoke a different way of thinking, one that illuminates a broader range of
alternative policy choices? This approach is strategic in that it not only deconstructs the dominant
frames of reference that drive reasoning on public issues, but it also identifies those alternative
frames most likely to stimulate public reconsideration and enumerates their elements (reframing). We use the term
reframe to mean changing "the context of the message exchange" so that different interpretations and probable outcomes become visible to
the public (Dearing & Rogers, 1994: 98). Strategic
frame analysis offers policy advocates a way to work
systematically through the challenges that are likely to confront the introduction of new legislation or
social policies, to anticipate attitudinal barriers to support, and to develop research-based strategies to overcome public
misunderstanding. What Is Communications and Why Does It Matter?The domain of communications has not changed markedly since 1948
when Harold Lasswell formulated his famous equation: who says what to whom through what channel with what effect? But what many social
policy practitioners have overlooked in their quests to formulate effective strategies for social change is that communications merits their
attention because it is an inextricable part of the agenda-setting function in this country. Communications plays a vital role in determining
which issues the public prioritizes for policy resolution, which issues will move from the private realm to the public, which issues will become
pressure points for policymakers, and which issues will win or lose in the competition for scarce resources. No organization can approach such
tasks as issue advocacy, constituency-building, or promoting best practices without taking into account the critical role that mass media has to
play in shaping the way Americans think about social issues. As William Gamson and his colleagues at the Media Research and Action Project
like to say, media is "an arena of contest in its own right, and part of a larger strategy of social change." One source of our confusion over
communications comes in not recognizing that each new push for public understanding and acceptance happens against a backdrop of longterm media coverage, of perceptions formed over time, of scripts we have learned since childhood to help us make sense of our world, and folk
beliefs we use to interpret new information. As we go about making sense of our world, mass media serves an important function as the
mediator of meaning — telling us what to think about (agenda-setting) and how to think about it (media effects) by organizing the information
in such a way (framing) that it comes to us fully conflated with directives (cues) about who is responsible for the social problem in the first place
and who gets to fix it (responsibility). It is often the case that nonprofit organizations want communications to be easy. Ironically, they want
soundbite answers to the same social problems whose complexity they understand all too well. While policy research and formulation are given
their due as tough, demanding areas of an organization's workplan, communications is seen as "soft." While program development and practice
are seen as requiring expertise and the thoughtful consideration of best practices, communications is an "anyone can do it if you have to" task.
It is time to retire this thinking. Doing communications strategically requires the same investment of intellect and study that these other areas
of nonprofit practice have been accorded. A Simple Explanation of Frame Analysis In his seminal book Public Opinion (1921:16), Walter
Lippmann was perhaps the first to connect mass communications to public attitudes and policy preferences by recognizing that the "the
way
in which the world is imagined determines at any particular moment what men will do." The modern
extension of Lippmann's observation is based on the concept of "frames." People use mental shortcuts to make
sense of the world. Since most people are looking to process incoming information quickly and efficiently, they rely upon cues within that new
information to signal to them how to connect it with their stored images of the world. The "pictures in our heads," as Lippmann called them,
might better be thought of as vividly labeled storage boxes - filled with pictures, images, and stories from our past encounters with the world
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and labeled youth, marriage, poverty, fairness, etc. The incoming information provides cues about which is the right container for that idea or
experience. And the efficient thinker makes the connection, a process called "indexing," and moves on. Put another way, how
an issue is
framed is a trigger to these shared and durable cultural models that help us make sense of our world. When a
frame ignites a cultural model, or calls it into play in the interpretation, the whole model is operative. This allows people to reason about an
issue, to make inferences, to fill in the blanks for missing information by referring to the robustness of the model, not the sketchy frame.
4. Our argument deals with the in-round interactions in which we as debaters conceptualize action
through certain modes of knowledge-production.
5. This is not an argument – you wouldn’t accept racism in one instance because you can't solve every
instance – if we prove the aff is undesirable then you should vote negative.
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A/T Realism
First, we are the essence of realism, we recognize that the nature of nation states is such that their
relationship is inherently agonistic which means the K embraces the anarchic order of realism.
Second, Schmitt’s philosophy is probably realist in nature.
Prozorov ‘6 [Sergei Prozorov - University of Helsinki, Department of Political and Economic Studies,
“Liberal Enmity: The Figure of the Foe in the Political Ontology of Liberalism”, published in Millennium Journal of International Studies 2006 35: 75, accessed 7/15/13, mil.sagepub] //pheft
This article will concentrate on two foundational aporias relating¶ to liberal ideals of pluralism and
freedom, whose actualisation in liberal¶ governmental practices remains dependent on the recourse
to their opposites, i.e. monistic universalism and governmental intervention. As¶ we shall argue below, this entails that the ‘illiberal’
excess of liberalism,¶ whose contemporary manifestation is evident in the present politics of the¶ ‘war on terror’, is in no way a deviation from
whatever we may consider a¶ liberal ‘standard’. Consequently, nothing is gained by banishing what we¶ shall term the ‘ultra-politics of the foe’
from liberalism as a wholly alien¶ element, conveniently ascribed to Schmitt as the paradigmatic ‘enemy¶ of liberalism’. Rather
than
attempt to ‘purify’ liberalism and thereby¶ reinforce the opposition between realism and liberal
internationalism, a¶ critical engagement with this extreme form of enmity must engage with¶ the
ontological foundations of liberalism itself. While today’s IR realism¶ increasingly resembles a wearily
defensive orthodoxy,13 a Schmittian¶ deconstruction of liberalism arguably exemplifies the possibility
of¶ another, rather more heterodox kind of realism that would attain the¶ critical force of classical
realism in disturbing the self-evidences of¶ contemporary world politics.
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A/T Schmitt=Nazi
While Schmitt may have identified with the National Socialists he was merely an opportunist only
protecting his own skin, while not ideal, he was no Göring.
Stanford ’10 [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Carl Schmitt”, published 8/7/10, accessed 6/22/13,
< http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schmitt/#ConPolCriLib> ] //pheft
Carl Schmitt's early career as an academic lawyer falls into the last years of the Wilhelmine Empire. (See for Schmitt's life and career: Bendersky
1983; Balakrishnan 2000; Mehring 2009.) But Schmitt wrote his most influential works, as a young professor of constitutional law in Bonn and
later in Berlin, during the Weimar-period: Political Theology, presenting Schmitt's theory of sovereignty, appeared in 1922, to be followed in
1923 by The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, which attacked the legitimacy of parliamentary government. In 1927, Schmitt published the
first version of his most famous work, The Concept of the Political, defending the view that all true politics is based on the distinction between
friend and enemy. The culmination of Schmitt's work in the Weimar period, and arguably his greatest achievement, is the 1928 Constitutional
Theory which systematically applied Schmitt's political theory to the interpretation of the Weimar constitution. During the political and
constitutional crisis of the later Weimar Republic Schmitt published Legality and Legitimacy, a clear-sighted analysis of the breakdown of
parliamentary government Germany, as well as The Guardian of the Constitution, which argued that the president as the head of the executive,
and not a constitutional court, ought to be recognized as the guardian of the constitution. In these works from the later Weimar period,
Schmitt's declared aim to defend the Weimar constitution is at times barely distinguishable from a call for constitutional revision towards a
more authoritarian political framework (Dyzenhaus 1997, 70–85; Kennedy 2004, 154–78).¶ Though
Schmitt had not been a
supporter of National Socialism before Hitler came to power, he sided with the Nazis after 1933.
Schmitt quickly obtained an influential position in the legal profession and came to be perceived as
the ‘Crown Jurist’ of National Socialism. (Rüthers 1990; Mehring 2009, 304–436) He devoted himself, with undue enthusiasm,
to such tasks as the defence of Hitler's extra-judicial killings of political opponents (PB 227–32) and the purging of German jurisprudence of
Jewish influence (Gross 2007; Mehring 2009, 358–80). But
Schmitt was ousted from his position of power within legal
academia in 1936, after infighting with academic competitors who viewed Schmitt as a turncoat who
had converted to Nazism only to advance his career. There is considerable debate about the causes of
Schmitt's willingness to associate himself with the Nazis. Some authors point to Schmitt's strong
ambition and his opportunistic character but deny ideological affinity (Bendersky 1983, 195–242;
Schwab 1989). But a strong case has been made that Schmitt's anti-liberal jurisprudence, as well as his fervent anti-semitism, disposed
him to support the Nazi regime (Dyzenhaus 1997, 85–101; Scheuerman 1999). Throughout the later Nazi period, Schmitt's work focused on
questions of international law. The immediate motivation for this turn seems to have been the aim to justify Nazi-expansionism. But Schmitt
was interested in the wider question of the foundations of international law, and he was convinced that the turn towards liberal
cosmopolitanism in 20th century international law would undermine the conditions of stable and legitimate international legal order. Schmitt's
theoretical work on the foundations of international law culminated in The Nomos of the Earth, written in the early 1940's, but not published
before 1950. Due to his support for and involvement with the Nazi dictatorship, the obstinately unrepentant Schmitt was not allowed to return
to an academic job after 1945 (Mehring 2009, 438–63). But he nevertheless remained an important figure in West Germany's conservative
intellectual scene to his death in 1985 (van Laak 2002) and enjoyed a considerable degree of clandestine influence elsewhere (Scheuerman
1999, 183–251; Müller 2003).¶ Unsurprisingly, the significance and value of Schmitt's works is subject to heated controversy (Caldwell 2005). A
group of authors sympathetic to Schmitt argue that Schmitt's analysis of liberal constitutionalism
during the Weimar period is separable from his support for National Socialism and that it constitutes
an insightful and important analysis of the political presuppositions of a well-functioning liberal
constitutional system (Bendersky 1983; Schwab 1989; Gottfried 1990; Kennedy 2004). From the left,
Schmitt's work is sometimes taken to illustrate the affinities between a purely economic liberalism and political authoritarianism (Mauss 1980;
Cristi 1998). The view that the Schmitt of the Weimar period can be read as a defender of liberal order has been questioned by authors who
stress the continuity between Schmitt's conceptions of law, sovereignty, and democracy and fascist ideology (Wolin 1992; Dyzenhaus 1997;
Scheuerman 1999). However, engagement with Schmitt is nevertheless considered to be important. It has been argued that Rawlsian political
liberalism is vulnerable to Schmitt's critique of liberalism due to its unwillingness to base itself explicitly on a liberal conception of the good
(Dyzenhaus 1997, 218–58) or due to its refusal to recognize the antagonistic nature of politics (Mouffe 1999b). Moreover, Schmitt's views on
sovereignty and emergency powers are often seen as the intellectual basis of contemporary calls for a strong executive power unhampered by
constraints of legality (Dyzenhaus 2006, 35–54; Scheuerman 2006). Finally, there are an increasing number of authors who make a more
eclectic use of Schmitt, by focusing on particular arguments of Schmitt's that are seen as worth developing in a systematic context. Two focal
points of recent interest are Schmitt's theory of popular sovereignty (Kalyvas 2008) and his conception of international order (Odysseos and
Petito 2007; Slomp 2009).
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
79
Analytic – Schmitt Didn’t Like the way Hitler came to power legality but his writings against this were
stifled.
Hell, the SS agrees, Schmitt was an opportunist who’s theory can be divorced from National Socialism
Wikipedia lol [Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia, “Carl Schmitt”, I have no idea when this was
published, accessed 6/23/13, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Schmitt ] //pheft
Nevertheless, in December 1936, the SS publication Das schwarze Korps accused Schmitt of being an
opportunist, a Hegelian state thinker and basically a Catholic, and called his anti-semitism a mere
pretense, citing earlier statements in which he criticized the Nazis' racial theories. After this, Schmitt resigned
from his position as "Reichsfachgruppenleiter" (Reich Professional Group Leader), although he retained his post as a professor in Berlin, and his
post as "Preußischer Staatsrat". Although
Schmitt continued to be investigated into 1937, further reprisals were
stopped by Göring.[17][18]
Better: Scholars Prove, Schmitt was an opportunist who’s theory can be divorced from National
Socialism
*use wiki sources
Even so, the philosophy of the enmity that we advocate is not compatible with Hitler – Hitler wanted
total destruction of a peoples but we argue that defining the enemy is necessary to preventing wars
from reaching that point. That’s the Rasch evidence.
And, Schmitt’s theories can be divorced from Nazism – scholars prove.
Thorup ‘6 [Mikkel Thorup - Ph.D.-dissertation, Institute of Philosophy and the History of Ideas,
Department of the History of Ideas, University of Aarhus, Denmark, “In Defence of Enmity
- Critiques of Liberal Globalism”, published January 2006, accessed 7/3/13,
<https://pure.au.dk/portal/files/1125531/In_defence_of_enmity_-_pdf.pdf>] //pheft
Carl Schmitt is both an enigmatic and controversial figure. One is often mandated an explanation¶ and a ‘democratic oath’ of ideological
distance, when dealing with his work. This is, so we are told,¶ no innocent or harmless preoccupation. Without
rebuffing this as
true and without ignoring the¶ often well-founded critiques and warnings, in the following we’ll limit
our comments on his¶ commitments and actions during the Nazi-era to the absolute minimum,
concentrating on his¶ critiques and conceptualizations. Hopefully, it is clear from the text, that it
doesn’t share his politics¶ and that the incorporation of his work in the overall critical theory of the
text is painstakingly¶ alerted to the possible dangers lurking in his concepts. In the following, we’ll zoom in on a
few key¶ themes in his work useful for our further investigations. Instead of a systematic presentation and ¶ discussion of Schmitt’s thoughts,
we’ll present a more focused exploration highlighting features and¶ themes in his work not commonly discussed together. The
main
absence in this exploration is his¶ Nomos der Erde from 1950, which are fast becoming the main work
of the Schmitt-reception. I’ve¶ chosen to disregard the work in order to concentrate on his numerous
smaller pre-war and war¶ writings on international politics, which hasn’t received quite the same
amount of attention as the¶ Nomos-book; and we’ll se a bit closer than usual on his concept(s) of
enmity.
And, Schmitt’s critiques of global liberalism can be divorced from his Nazism, he wrote during the
Weimar period before the rise of Hitler – means your turns don’t apply – cool French philosopher
proves
De Benoist ‘3 [Alain De Benoist – French philosopher dude, “Carl Schmitt and slobs”, published in
Elements 110, 2003, accessed 7/21/13, http://grece-fr.com/?p=3433] //pheft
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
80
It is under the Weimar Republic that Carl Schmitt has published most of his major books: his essay
against political romanticism (1919), his book about the dictatorship (1921), his study of political theology
(1922) parliamentarism (1923), the political form of the Roman Church (1923), the concept of policy (1928),
without forgetting its constitutional doctrine manual (1928) and his book on the concepts of legality and
legitimacy (1932) .¶ Contrary to what is often said, it is not itself the Conservative Revolution. At Ernst Niekisch, great destroyer of the
Roman, he said: "I am a Roman in origin, tradition and law." Hostile to any form of organicist thought he rejects also a large part of the German
political tradition for inspiration of French authors (Joseph de Maistre), Italian (Machiavelli), Spanish (Donoso Cortés) and English (Thomas
Hobbes ). His Catholicism, of Augustinian inspiration, and has a strong focus on cons-revolutionary tradition, is the basis of his philosophy of
government. It is the political dimension of human life directly related to the intensity of conflicting reports. But it is also a theorist of
democracy, and it is in his name he denounced liberalism and his ideal of a "government by discussion" liberalism, economic and moral
doctrine is incompatible with the background democracy, political doctrine based on the equality of citizens. This design is quite similar to that
of Rousseau (the identity of views between government and the governed). His definition of constituent power is also inherited from
Emmanuel Sieyes.¶ In
all his works published before 1933, there is not the slightest trace of anti-Semitism.
In his political Romanticism , Schmitt denounces also unambiguously any form of racial ideology. When he speaks of
the need for "uniformity" of the people as one of the presuppositions of democracy, he never for ethnic homogeneity, but a political
homogeneity referring to the general will of Rousseau. This does not prevent Zarka estimate, after Raphael Gross, that anti-Semitism is
everywhere in his work! A camouflaged anti-Semitism, of course. Camouflaged as probably the imaginary brother, "Georg Schmitt" (sic), that
assigns Gross in his book 29 .¶ At
this time, Schmitt has also many Jews among his pupils. In 1928, he dedicated
his Verfassungslehre Fritz Eisler, dead on the front in 1914, and has admiration for Hugo Preuss, co-editor of the
Weimar Constitution, to whom he also dedicated a book in 1930. It is also one of the few authors of "right" in Germany whose thought, in
Weimar, has ceased to be taken seriously by the authors of the left and extreme left.¶ Walter Benjamin, in particular, is "intensely confronted"
the work of Carl Schmitt, in the words of Jacob Taubes. This interest has been shown in him in 1923, reading passages from the first political
theology related to the concept of sovereignty, he cites two years later in one of the chapters of his famous essay on the origin of German
Tragic Drama 30 . December 9, 1930 Walter Benjamin wrote elsewhere to Carl Schmitt to announce the shipment, on the recommendation of
his friend Albert Solomon, this book, he stresses he owes his "presentation of the theory of sovereignty to the XVII th century. " He then added:
"Maybe I can tell you also that I also learned of your later works of dictatorship mainly a confirmation of my methods of research in philosophy
of art by those who are yours Philosophy of the State " 31 . Benjamin then shares a large part of Carl Schmitt's ideas on liberalism, while
disagreeing with his critique of romanticism. In Gershom Scholem, he will say that the notion of policy is the most important political book of its
time. Numerous studies have been devoted to this significant relationship 32 . Carl Schmitt, who has never forgotten, spend later in the book of
Walter Benjamin an appendage of his essay on Hamlet and Hecuba (1956).¶ Albert Salomon, a friend of Walter Benjamin, is a sociologist who
ruled from 1928 to 1931 the Social Democratic journal Die Gesellschaft . He emigrated in 1933 and settled two years later in the United States.
The 4 th chapter of his book The Tyranny of Progress , published in German under the title Fortschritt und als Schicksal Verhängnis 33 , is also in
the wake of the political theology of Carl Schmitt.¶ Carl
Schmitt called for the prohibition of the Nazi party ¶ among
his interlocutors at the time of the Weimar Republic, Schmitt also has many members authors (or
relatives) of the Frankfurt School, as Herbert Marcuse, Otto Bauer, Franz L . Neumann, Otto Kirchheimer, Hans Mayer, etc.. 34 . In the
summer of 1931, Kirchheimer and Franz Neumann (whose relationship with Schmitt have been extensively studied by Volker Neumann, Alfons
Söllner and Rainer Erd) participate in a seminar on constitutional issues organized under his direction at the Graduate School of Commerce
Berlin. If the Marxist Otto Kirchheimer is particularly interesting. After working in Paris from 1936 to 1937 on behalf of the Institute for Social
Research, he emigrated to the United States, lived in New York until 1942, then worked until 1955 for the U.S. government before teaching
until his death in 1965 at the New School for Social Research and Columbia University. Upon his return to Germany after the war, he had
nothing better to do than to go to Carl Schmitt, whom he will regularly visit in November 1949 to the summer of 1961 (testimony of Rainer Erd).
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
81
A/T Schmitt=Neocon
First, neo-conservativism is a reaction to the liberalism the aff endorses. Absent the cause of
liberalism there is no neo-conservatism.
*Second, Schmitt’s critique of liberalism makes neo-conservative imperialism impossible.
Bishai and Behnke ‘7 (Linda S. Bishai is Senior Program Officer in the Education Program at the United States Institute of Peace where
she focuses on university education in international relations, conflict resolution, human rights and peace studies. Andreas Behnke is a Lecturer
in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Reading. Writing in The international political thought of Carl
Schmitt: Terror Liberal War and the Crisis of Global Order pg 107)
Recent academic trends have associated the work of Carl Schmitt in general, and his concept of the political in particular,
with the excesses of George W. Bush’s foreign policy. Lon Troyer, for example, argues that Schmitt’s friend–enemy distinction is
the inspiration for President Bush’s ‘bi-furcation’ of the inter- national system: ‘The friend–enemy distinction in the sphere of international
relations is ordered, in Bush’s words, according to the great divide in our time ... not between religions or cultures, but between civilisation and
barbarism’ (Troyer 2003: 262). Another intellectual, German historian Hans August Winkler, sees Schmitt’s critique of liberalism vindicated
through the influence of Leo Strauss on work in the neo-conservative Project for the New American Century think-tank in Washington, DC
(Winkler 2003: 1). Both of these perceptions of Schmitt suffer from some severe misconceptions. While Troyer at
least understands the distinction between friend and enemy, his observation of certain hallmarks of the Bush administration’s foreign policy
mistakes Schmitt’s acerbic criticism of liberalism and its universalist rhetoric for an endorsement of these policies. As for Winkler’s assertion, it
is surely oversimplification to reduce Leo Strauss to a mere ‘conduit’ for Schmitt’s ideas. More significantly, though, it
is paradoxical and
utterly ironic to refer to the great ‘enemy of liberalism’ (Lilla 1997) as the conspiratorial source of the
current ‘imperial liberalism’ (Rhodes 2003: 131–154) that constitutes the basis of the Bush administration’s
foreign policy.
Third, the Bush argument makes no sense – Schmittian theory thinks that invading other countries
with the logic of “spreading democracy” or whatever is probably bad.
Fourth, liberalism is inherently tied to neo-conservativism, rejecting one means rejecting both
Eland ‘8 [Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent
Institute, “Good Bye Neoconservatives. Hello to Their Liberal Brethren?”, published 11/9/8, accessed
7/15/13, < http://original.antiwar.com/eland/2008/11/08/good-bye-neoconservatives-hello-to-theirliberal-brethren/>] //pheft
The media and the Washington foreign policy elite breathed a sigh of relief when Barack Obama thumped John McCain in the election. Had
John McCain won, there was always the chance that the neoconservatives would have beaten out the Republican realists for his foreign policy
soul. With a victory by the liberal Obama, however, the stake would finally be driven into the heart of the "jingoistic" neoconservative
vampire.¶ Yet even after Obama takes power, an evil foreign policy ghoul will still hover over the White House – this time wearing the benign
clothes of a compassionate angel. Obama’s top foreign policy advisors include Susan Rice, a member of the "muscular liberal" crowd – you
know, the same crew that includes the bombing progressives Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke. In a National Public Radio interview
during the campaign, Rice decried President George W. Bush’s invasion and nation-building adventure in Iraq, while at the same time
advocating U.S. intervention and nation-building in Darfur, Sudan.¶ Muscular
liberals and neoconservatives hate each
other only because they are so much alike. Although neoconservatives feel less favorable toward any
U.N. or other multilateral veneer for the mailed U.S. fist than muscular liberals, they still love to
invade other nations for righteous reasons – that is, to save the world or make it more like us.¶ But I
should not criticize a president – whether Democratic or Republican – before he even takes office and actually does something. Perhaps Obama
will directly address the foreign policy demons in his own party. He originally had good instincts about a rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces from
Iraq, but over the course of the campaign, tempered his position as the U.S. surge seemed to "work." No doubt, behind the scenes, his foreign
policy "experts" have warned him of all the alleged pitfalls of such an expedited exit.¶ By
paying off, arming, and training the
Sunni militias in Iraq (the U.S. had previously done the same thing with the Iraqi forces, which had
been infiltrated by Kurdish and Shi’a militias), the Bush administration has tamed down the violence
until it is safely out of office, but this also likely will make a future civil war among the groups even
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
82
more intense. Obama should pay attention to his instincts – not his advisers – and take advantage of
the lull in violence to get out while the gettin’s good.¶ Also, Obama should avoid a confrontation with Russia over
deploying a U.S. missile defense in Europe. The ham-handed Russians have not made it easy. Without even first publicly congratulating Obama
on his election victory, the Russians threatened to deploy short-range missiles that have the range to hit the defense facilities in Poland. This
response from Russia seems to fulfill Vice President-elect Joe Biden’s prediction that the young, inexperienced president would be rapidly
tested in an international crisis.¶ Although Russia’s reaction to the proposed deployment of missile defense is somewhat understandable given
its suffering from repeated U.S.-led expansions of the historically hostile NATO alliance right up to its borders, the blustering Russia has now
made it hard for the neophyte president to abandon the system without fulfilling John McCain’s prediction of his foreign policy weakness.
Instead, the Russians should have quietly waited to see what the new president would do about such defenses; Obama previously had
expressed some skepticism about the need for rapid U.S. deployment of the costly and questionable system. Publicly calling out Obama on the
issue before he even took office made it hard for the new president to wisely terminate deployment plans without seeming to have backed
down. Nevertheless, Obama has many legitimate excuses to abandon the expensive and unneeded system without referring to Russian
opposition.¶ The cutback of this unnecessary weapon system should be just one of many. At minimum, the Defense Department should also cut
the Army’s Future Combat Systems, the Navy’s new destroyer, and the Air Force’s Joint Strike Fighter. Barney Frank, the Democratic Chairman
of the House Financial Services Committee, is on the right track by advocating a 25 percent reduction in the defense budget.¶ More
generally, two endless foreign quagmires and the U.S. financial and economic crisis have brought
home, like a cold slap in the face, the fact that U.S. imperial and interventionist foreign and defense
policies, advocated by both neoconservatives and muscular liberals, have brought strategic
overextension that is unaffordable in times of yawning budget deficits and economic frailty. Obama
should fight off the ghosts of foreign policy past, even within the Democratic Party, and opt for
"change." More restrained and affordable foreign and defense policies would be politically saleable to
the nation in times of economic peril. "Yes, we can" (retract the empire).
Meh, Schmitt’s ideology isn’t mega compatible with Bush’s neoconism.
Norman ‘9 [Emma R. Norman - University of the Americas Puebla, Mexico Department of International
Relations and Political Science, “Applying Carl Schmitt to Global Puzzles: Identity, Conflict and the
Friend/Enemy Antithesis”, published September 2009, accessed 7/23/13, PDF] //pheft
The friend side of the equation is also important—not merely to preserve the distinction, but¶ because it highlights that a people’s sense of
belonging is tested by being prompted to take sides.¶ So whenever a group engages in ‘taking sides,’ we are actively constructing our group
identities¶ and thus engaging in the political. The more intense the degree of unification or separation, the¶ more political the group
becomes.18 Yet it is the
alignment and the decision about who is the¶ enemy and about whether or not to
wage war against that adversary, rather than fighting the war¶ itself, that galvanizes a collective
identity and thus constitutes the political. However, and in¶ contrast to U.S. Neo-conservative thinking and
decision-making on the Iraq invasion, Schmitt¶ was careful to emphasize that “[t]he politics of
avoiding war”19 was one plausible outcome of his¶ model.20¶ ¶ The salient idea for international
relations concerns the necessary connection between identity¶ and potential conflict. While the extreme case
(physical conflict) is not required to occur, for¶ Schmitt the possibility of inter-state relations escalating into violence must exist if functional
group identities are to be formed and preserved.21 For him, humans are only really prepared to¶ take responsibility for their lives, values and
the groups they identify with, if the possibility of¶ losing all these things is real. To
continue with the example of the U.S.
invasion of Iraq, U.S.¶ arguments about the all-or-nothing stakes in fighting the war on terror were
simply not¶ compelling for the majority of countries that refused to join the coalition of the willing.
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
83
A/T Schmitt=Realist
*//meh// Schmitt’s not a realist. – I don’t like this card anyway…
Zarmanian, 06 – University of Milan (Thalin, “Carl Schmitt and the Problem of Legal Order: From
Domestic to International”, Leiden Journal of International Law, 19 (2006), pp. 49)
Schmitt’s theoretical move was, therefore, to accept the challenge and to assume plurality, conflict, and chaos as ontologically given and to
take charge of what Galli28 calls the ‘tragedy of modernity’29 – the fact that on the one hand, after the collapse of medieval Christian unity, an
ultimate and uncontested foundation for legitimacy is no longer possible and that, on the other hand, such legitimacy is unavoidable for any
order. What makes Schmitt’s thought unique and so interesting, then, is that it is entirely set within the modern tragedy but it looks at it from
without.30 Unlike postmodernists, he never gave up seeking an Archimedean point
– the legal order – in which the
tension between the idea of law (die Rechtsidee) and empirical reality could converge. In order to do this, however, he had
to renounce the legacy of modern juridical and political thought. He is therefore no realist, as Koskenniemi31 recently
suggested by likening him to (the second) Morgenthau. Far from thinking that ‘law is a mere ratification of a concrete order’,
he always argued that no order can exist if it is not shaped by law in the first place. He is no idealist, either, because he
confronted every a-priori definition of justice or law. He is no formalist because, unlike Kelsen, he refused to recoil from empirical reality and to
seek comfort in transcendental pureness. He is no anti-formalist either, because far from regarding ‘the question of valid law’ as
‘uninteresting’,32 he considered it central: as has been mentioned above, formalization is to him the means through which the idea of law can
be transposed into empirical reality. Schmitt’s quest for the possibility of a legal order started, therefore, from none of those ‘fixed points’ –
power, idea, form, and norm – from which modern political thought had moved to construct legal science. Having pointed out the unbridgeable
chasm which separates them, he chose to start his quest for the possibility of a legal order from there – that is, from disorder.
Or
So? Turn, Realism is probably net good – preserves peace
Ferraro no date  [Vincent Ferraro - The Ruth C. Lawson Professor of International Politics at Mount
Holyoke College, “Political Realism”, can’t find a date :/, accessed 7/15/13, <
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pol116/realism.htm>] //pheft
Realism is an approach to the study and practice of international politics. It emphasizes the role of the
nation-state and makes a broad assumption that all nation-states are motivated by national interests,
or, at best, national interests disguised as moral concerns.¶ At its most fundamental level, the national
interest is generic and easy to define: all states seek to preserve their political autonomy and their
territorial integrity. Once these two interests have been secured, however, national interests may take different forms. Some states may have an interest in securing more resources or land; other states
may wish to expand their own political or economic systems into other areas; some states may merely wish to be left alone. ¶ Generally speaking, however, the national interest must be defined in terms of power. National power
has an absolute meaning since it can be defined in terms of military, economic, political, diplomatic, or even cultural resources. But, for a realist, power is primarily a relative term: does a state have the ability to defend itself
This emphasis on relative, and not absolute
power, derives from the realist conception of the international system which is, for the realist, an
anarchical environment. All states have to rely upon their own resources to secure their interests, enforce whatever agreements they may have entered into with other states, or to maintain a
desirable domestic and international order. There is no authority over the nation-state, nor, for the realist, should there be.¶ The implications of this refusal to recognize
greater authority are important to recognize. The political realist fears centralized authority, unless
that authority is derived from the power of his or her own state. The decentralization of the
international system permits greater diversity than would be the case with, say, an empire. Since,
however, the natural tendency of states is to increase their power, the preservation of a decentralized
system must be purchased with force.¶ The use of force to preserve the decentralized system is
regulated by a system called the balance of power. Such a system works only if the major powers agree, at least tacitly, that they agree that the preservation of state
autonomy is an important objective. If the major powers do agree, wars will still occur within the system, but those wars
will be constrained by the limited objectives of each major state. If one major power does not agree
with the limited objectives, then wars will be much larger and more open-ended.
against the power of another state? Does a state have the ability to coerce another state to change that state's policies?¶
Realism Good//
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
84
Waltz 2k [Kenneth N. Waltz, former Ford Professor of Political Science at the University of California,
Berkeley, is a Research Associate of the Institute of War and Peace Studies and Adjunct Professor at
Columbia University, “Structural Realism after the Cold War”, published in International Security, Vol.
25, No. 1 (Summer 2000), pp. 5–41, accessed 7/15/13, PDF] //pheft
Every time peace breaks out, people pop up to proclaim that realism is dead.
That is another way of saying that international politics has been transformed.
The world, however, has not been transformed; the structure of international
politics has simply been remade by the disappearance of the Soviet Union, and
for a time we will live with unipolarity. Moreover, international politics was
not remade by the forces and factors that some believe are creating a new
world order. Those who set the Soviet Union on the path of reform were old
Soviet apparatchiks trying to right the Soviet economy in order to preserve its
position in the world. The revolution in Soviet affairs and the end of the Cold
War were not brought by democracy, interdependence, or international institutions.
Instead the Cold War ended exactly as structural realism led one to
expect. As I wrote some years ago, the Cold War “is firrmly rooted in the
structure of postwar international politics and will last as long as that structure
endures.”89 So it did, and the Cold War ended only when the bipolar structure
of the world disappeared.
Structural change affects the behavior of states and the outcomes their
interactions produce. It does not break the essential continuity of international
politics. The transformation of international politics alone could do that. Transformation,
however, awaits the day when the international system is no longer
populated by states that have to help themselves. If the day were here, one
would be able to say who could be relied on to help the disadvantaged or
endangered. Instead, the ominous shadow of the future continues to cast its
pall over interacting states. States’ perennial uncertainty about their fates
presses governments to prefer relative over absolute gains. Without the
shadow, the leaders of states would no longer have to ask themselves how
they will get along tomorrow as well as today. States could combine their
efforts cheerfully and work to maximize collective gain without worrying
about how each might fare in comparison to others.
Occasionally, one finds the statement that governments in their natural,
anarchic condition act myopically—that is, on calculations of immediate inter-est—while hoping that the
future will take care of itself. Realists are said
to suffer from this optical defect.90 Political leaders may be astigmatic, but
responsible ones who behave realistically do not suffer from myopia. Robert
Axelrod and Robert Keohane believe that World War I might have been
averted if certain states had been able to see how long the future’s shadow
was.91 Yet, as their own discussion shows, the future was what the major
states were obsessively worried about. The war was prompted less by considerations
of present security and more by worries about how the balance
might change later. The problems of governments do not arise from their
short time horizons. They see the long shadow of the future, but they
have trouble reading its contours, perhaps because they try to look too far
ahead and see imaginary dangers. In 1914, Germany feared Russia’s rapid
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
85
industrial and population growth. France and Britain suffered from the same
fear about Germany, and in addition Britain worried about the rapid growth
of Germany’s navy. In an important sense, World War I was a preventive war
all around. Future fears dominated hopes for short-term gains. States do not
live in the happiest of conditions that Horace in one of his odes imagined for
man:
Happy the man, and happy he alone, who can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.92
Robert Axelrod has shown that the ”tit-for-tat“ tactic, and no other, maximizes
collective gain over time. The one condition for success is that the game
be played under the shadow of the future.93 Because states coexist in a self-help
system, they may, however, have to concern themselves not with maximizing
collective gain but with lessening, preserving, or widening the gap in welfare
and strength between themselves and others. The contours of the future’s
shadow look different in hierarchic and anarchic systems. The shadow may
facilitate cooperation in the former; it works against it in the latter. Worriesabout the future do not
make cooperation and institution building among
nations impossible; they do strongly condition their operation and limit their
accomplishment. Liberal institutionalists were right to start their investigations
with structural realism. Until and unless a transformation occurs, it remains
the basic theory of international politics.
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
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A/T Truth Claims
Their appeals to rationality and truth obscure the fact that power is always involved in
representations and legal decision making.
Wetters 06 (Kirk Wetters, The Rule of the Norm and the Political Theology of "Real Life" in Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben, in Diacritics,
received his PhD from New York University in 2004, Professor at the Yale Department of German)
Taken in the purely juridical sense, however, it is well known that Schmitt
is no friend of theories of law that seek to
identify law in general (Recht) with a system of positive laws (Gesetze). In the introduction to Legality and Legitimacy,
for example, he describes the "legislative state" (Gesetzgebungstaat) as a state that sees itself as a legislative-parliamentary system for the
production of legal norms (Normierungen) that correspond with the general will of the commonwealth [LuL 9–18]. The legislative state
sets up norms that are "meant to last" ("für die Dauer gedachten Normierungen")—whereas rules, regulations, and emergency
measures (and in particular those allowed for in Article 48 of the Weimar constitution) would have an entirely different status. By permitting
decrees, laws, and executive actions to acquire the "force of law,"2 Article 48 undermines the legitimacy of the parliament and opens the way
for dictatorship. Schmitt outlines the self-legitimation of parliamentary systems as follows: The "rule of law" prevails rather than the rule by
men, authorities or superiors. And even more precisely: The laws do not rule, but are only valid as norms. Domination and sheer power do not
exist at all anymore. Whoever exercises power and domination acts "based on a law" or "in the name of the law." He does nothing but enforce a
valid norm in accordance with his own responsibilities. [LuL 8] If Schmitt sounds a bit skeptical in this passage, the tone is entirely in accord
with chapters 1 and 2 of Political Theology, which aggressively underscore the inadequacy of legal-parliamentary systems when it comes to
emergencies and exceptional cases in which someone must take responsibility for deciding. Legal
and constitutional systems can
guarantee their ongoing "normal" function only during conditions of normality; in order for the legal
order to be restored in a state of exception (or for laws to be applicable in the first place), a "normal
situation" must be created; law in this sense can never apply or enforce itself automatically, but can do
so only through representative agents invested with the power of decision. These claims of Political Theology are
compatible with those of Legality and Legitimacy insofar as the earlier text insists that even systems that found their legitimacy on the "rule of
law" must occasionally have recourse to extralegal measures in order to preserve the law. But if such
measures themselves begin
to acquire the status, duration, and the very name of law, then the law's claim to legitimacy within a
parliamentary-legal system is undermined in a way which, for Schmitt, is appallingly at odds with this
system's self-evident interest in its own stability and survival. What is also at stake here—in the most theoretically
ambitious argument of Political Theology—is that all governmental systems need to have recourse to and represent some kind of transcendent
value that serves to legitimate rule. (Schmitt himself never goes so far as to believe in these representations but is primarily interested in the
mechanics of authority.) Parliamentary
systems legitimate themselves by appealing to the sublime "rule of
law," whereas the medieval sovereigns (and the Catholic Church) claimed their authority from God by
way of tradition. In comparison with the latter models, Schmitt perceives an acute legitimacy-deficit in
modern systems' claim to "rationality." Rationalist and positivist legal and political theories are
denounced by Schmitt as the (political) "theology" of the existing system of rule, the necessity of which
was motivated by a historical shift in underlying metaphysical presuppositions. A new "sociology of concepts" has
invalidated sovereignty's traditional modes of legitimation but failed to adequately justify rule according to reason. Thus according to the
dynamic claims of the first chapter of Political Theology, sovereignty
remains factually ineradicable in all modern
systems. Schmitt argues that contemporary political and legal theory is neither as purely descriptive nor
scientific as it would claim, but serves to legitimate an existing rule within a prevailing worldview. This
legitimating function becomes ideological, however, as long as the underlying legitimacy-deficit remains3 —and it is precisely the inability (or
unwillingness) to theoretically and practically account for the problem of sovereignty that keeps this deficit alive.
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
87
A/T You Cause Violence and Genocide
Tons of reasons you’re wrong, get ready:
First, Schmittian concepts of “us/them” are derived solely to define a nation from its enemies, there’s
no precedent for enemy definition equaling genocide.
Second, the second Rasch card in the 1NC checks back any risk of this – he indicates that when you try
to define a constant state of peace, all who act against that peace are deemed less than human and
that is what opens up the door to mass killings.
Third, extend the third Rasch card from the 1NC which also checks back – it indicates that embracing
the concept of enmity is key to setting limits on wars and stopping them from getting to the point of
genocides because we have clear distinction on who we’re fighting and how – empirics prove this. The
fourth Rasch card also speaks to this point.
Fourth, The Dream of Universal Inclusion is Façade, only the alternative can prevent the ultimate form
of exclusion and annihilation, turns the arg
Rasch ‘5 [William Rasch – professor of Germanic Studies, “Lines in the Sand: Enmity as a
Structuring Principle”, published The South Atlantic Quarterly 104:2, Spring 2005, accessed 6/21/13,
PDF] //pheft
What is to be done? If you are one who says there is a war, and if you¶ say it not because you glory in
it but because you fear it and hate it, then¶ your goal is to limit it and its effects, not eliminate it,
which merely intensifies¶ it, but limit it by drawing clear lines within which it can be fought, and¶ clear
lines between those who fight it and those who don’t, lines between¶ friends, enemies, and neutrals,
lines between combatants and noncombatants.¶ There are, of course, legitimate doubts about whether those ideal lines¶
could ever be drawn again; nevertheless, the question that we should ask¶ is not how can we establish perpetual peace, but rather a more
modest¶ one: Can symmetrical relationships be guaranteed only by asymmetrical¶ ones? According to Schmitt, historically this has been the
case. ‘‘The traditional¶ Eurocentric order of international law is foundering today, as is the¶ old nomos of the earth. This order arose from a
legendary and unforeseen¶ discovery of a new world, from an unrepeatable historical event. Only in¶ fantastic parallels can one imagine a
modern recurrence, such as men on¶ their way to the moon discovering a new and hitherto unknown planet that¶ could be exploited freely and
utilized effectively to relieve their struggles¶ on earth’’ (39). We have since gone to the moon and have found nothing¶ on the way there to
exploit. We may soon go to Mars, if current leaders¶ have their way, but the likelihood of finding exploitable populations seems¶ equally slim.
Salvation through spatially delimited asymmetry, even were it¶ to be desired, is just not on the horizon. And
salvation through
globalization,¶ that is, through global unity and equality, is equally impossible, because¶ today’s
asymmetry is not so much a localization of the exception as it is an¶ invisible generation of the
exception from within that formal ideal of unity,¶ a generation of the exception as the difference
between the human and the¶ inhuman outlaw, the ‘‘Savage Beast, with whom Men can have no
Society¶ nor Security.’’ We are, therefore, thrown back upon ourselves, which is to¶ say, upon those artificial ‘‘moral persons’’ who act
as our collective political¶ identities. They used to be called states. What they will be called in the future¶ remains to be seen. But, if we think to
establish a differentiated unity of discrete¶ political entities that once represented for Schmitt ‘‘the highest form¶ of order within the scope of
human power,’’ then we must symmetrically¶ manage the necessary pairing of inclusion and exclusion without denying¶ the ‘‘forms of power
We must think the possibility of roughly equivalent
power relations¶ rather than fantasize the elimination of power from the political universe.¶ This,
and domination’’ that inescapably accompany human¶ ordering.
conceivably, was also Schmitt’s solution. Whether his idea of the¶ plurality of Großräume could ever be carried out under contemporary
circumstances¶ is, to be sure, more than a little doubtful, given that the United¶ States enjoys a monopoly on guns, goods, and the Good, in the
form of a¶ supremely effective ideology of universal ‘‘democratization.’’ Still,
we would¶ do well to devise vocabularies that
do not just emphatically repeat philosophically¶ more sophisticated versions of the liberal ideology of
painless,¶ effortless, universal equality. The space of the political will never be created¶ by a bloodless,
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
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88
Benjaminian divine violence. Nor is it to be confused with¶ the space of the simply human. To dream
the dreams of universal inclusion¶ may satisfy an irrepressible human desire, but it may also always
produce¶ recurring, asphyxiating political nightmares of absolute exclusion.
Fifth, yet again, you are wrong. Schmitt’s concept of conventional enmity views the other as equal not
to be annihilated but to fight.
Thorup ‘6 [Mikkel Thorup - Ph.D.-dissertation, Institute of Philosophy and the History of Ideas,
Department of the History of Ideas, University of Aarhus, Denmark, “In Defence of Enmity
- Critiques of Liberal Globalism”, published January 2006, accessed 7/7/13,
<https://pure.au.dk/portal/files/1125531/In_defence_of_enmity_-_pdf.pdf>] //pheft
Conventional enmity (or just enmity). This is the ideal according to which the other enmities are¶ measured.
This is the great achievement of the nation state era. It is also what we here describe as¶ political enmity. It describes a
relation of enmity between states who recognize, fight and negotiate¶ with each other. The
conventional just enemy is recognized as an equal and the war is thus¶ contained through
international law and a codex of honour among combatants. This concept of¶ enmity arises through the de-theologization and
de-moralization of international relations. Silete¶ theologi!, as Schmitt is fond of saying. The new nation state order was conditioned upon a ¶ ‘dethronement of the
theologists’ (1985: 65). Julien Freund (1996: 65) reminds us of Oldendorp, a ¶ sixteenth century Lutheran jurist who “used to say that a just war was ultimately no
war, but the¶ work of justice, whereas the unjust war was no war either, but a rebellion against the just order. ¶ Thus verbal dialectic finally does away with the act
of war”. But only on a verbal plane. In
the¶ world of flesh and bone, warfare was endemic; and it was the
banishment of just war in favour of¶ the just enemy who ultimately stopped the ferocious religious
wars and created the interstate order.¶ It marks a transition from a discriminatory concept of war and
enmity, where the enemy is a moral¶ or religious enemy to be destroyed, to a non-discriminatory
concept, where no one can claim moral¶ superiority and where the political enemy is (only) to be
defeated, not destroyed (2003c). In a¶ Schmitt-inspired text, Paul Hirst (2001a: 59) elaborates: “Reason of state limits the
enmity of¶ interstate relations in that it makes them a matter of pure power technique: one’s enemy is
not an¶ implacable foe but an honourable opponent in a conflict of interests”. The enemy is not a
criminal.¶ The clear demarcations between war and peace, internal and external, combatant and¶
civilian/neutral help contain the enmity and its implications. It is a limited and regulated enmity, a¶ ‘duel’ between equal
sovereigns. The aim is to impose our will on the other, not to annihilate him .¶ In a footnote to the 1963-edition of Begriff des
Politischen, Schmitt explicates the meaning of the¶ conventional concept of enmity as consisting not in the elimination of the enemy but in “the ¶ prevention, in the
clash of forces and in the creation of a common border” (1996a: 119). This is why he insists on the autonomy of the political decision. It is not informed by or
dependent¶ upon other criteria: “The
political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he does not¶
have to be an economic competitor” (1996a: 27). In actual politics, this is of course not true: “In¶ psychological reality the enemy is often
treated as evil or ugly because every demarcation – not¶ least the political which is the strongest and most intensive distinction and grouping – uses all¶ available
differentiations as support. But this changes nothing of the autonomy of such oppositions” ¶ (1996a: 28). To
Schmitt, this concept of enmity is
tied to the nation state and his concern for the¶ decline of the nation state is intimately connected to
the re-emergence of other kinds of enmities. As¶ Andreas Behnke (2004: 285) says: “In order to channel violence into structured conflict,
the State is¶ based on the territorialization and spatialization of the decision between Friend and Enemy”. Once¶ the connection between
state, territory and decision is loosened the conventional enmity is dissolved¶ in favour of other more
sinister and less containable forms. The paradigmatic war of conventional¶ enmity is the interstate
war.
Sixth, we respect the other as an oppositional force not to be eliminated, but to be treated as a
sharpening stone to improve the self. Only the alternative can solve a acceptance of alterity which
neither converts the other to sameness nor violently obliterates the other
Hatab, 02 (Prospects For A Democratic Agon: Why We Can Still Be Nietzscheans, Lawrence J. Hatab, The
Journal of Nietzsche Studies 24 (2002) 132-147, Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Old
Dominion University).
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Leonard Cohen
89
How can we begin to apply the notion of agonistics to politics in general and democracy in particular?
First of all, contestation and competition can be seen as fundamental to self-development and as an
intrinsically social phenomenon. Agonistics helps us articulate the social and political ramifications of Nietzsche's concept of will to
power. As Nietzsche put it in an 1887 note, "will to power can manifest itself only against resistances ; it seeks
that which resists it" (KSA 12, p.424). Power, therefore, is not simply an individual possession or a goal of action;
it is more a global, interactive conception. For Nietzsche, every advance in life is an overcoming of
some obstacle or counterforce, so that conflict is a mutual co-constitution of contending forces.
Opposition generates development. The human self is not formed in some internal sphere and then secondarily exposed to external relations
and conflicts. The
self is constituted in and through what it opposes and what opposes it; in other words,
the self is formed through agonistic relations. Therefore, any annulment of one's Other would be an
annulment of one's self in this sense. Competition can be understood as a shared activity for the sake
of fostering high achievement and self-development, and therefore as an intrinsically social activity.
Seventh, Violence is weakness taking the form of eliminating the opponent. Agonism requires a
respect for the Other but does not preclude struggle between ideals
Hatab, 02 (Prospects For A Democratic Agon: Why We Can Still Be Nietzscheans, Lawrence J. Hatab,
The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 24 (2002) 132-147, Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Old
Dominion University).
In the light of Nietzsche's appropriation of the two forms of Eris, it
is necessary to distinguish between agonistic conflict
and sheer violence. A radical agonistics rules out violence, because violence is actually an impulse to
eliminate conflict by annihilating or incapacitating an opponent, bringing the agon to an end. In a later
work Nietzsche discusses the "spiritualization of hostility (Feindschaft)," wherein one must affirm both the
presence and the power of one's opponents as implicated in one's own posture (TI "Morality as Antinature," 3).
And in this passage Nietzsche specifically applies such a notion to the political realm. What this implies is
that the category of the social need not be confined to something like peace or harmony. Agonistic
relations, therefore, do not connote a deterioration of a social disposition and can thus be extended
to political relations.
More Cards (some can probably be tacked on as extra impacts)
The negs embracement of the “us/them” dichotomy is key to bracket off wars and prevent genocides
– this is another impact for us.
-note, this is distinct from stopping all wars ever
Odysseos ‘8 [Dr. Louiza Odysseos- University of Sussex, Department of International Relations, “Against
Ethics? Iconographies of Enmity and Acts of Obligation in Carl Schmitt’s Theory of the Partisan”,
published 3/22/8, accessed 7/14/13, PDF] //pheft
That thinking about the enemy is important to Schmitt is a statement that requires ¶ little justification.3 ‘The
enemy is not
something to be eliminated out of a particular¶ reason, something to be annihilated as worthless. The
enemy stands on my own¶ plane…’ (Schmitt 2004: 61). So contends Schmitt in Theory of the Partisan¶ (1963/2004/2007). Given
Schmitt’s critique of the ethics of a universal humanity¶ outlined above, as well as his involvement with the National Socialists in 1930s, one¶
may be forgiven for not attributing to this statement about the enemy an ethical intent¶ and they would be correct in not doing so. This paper
argues that Schmitt’s¶ iconographies of enmity engender not an ethical discourse about the other as enemy¶ but an anti-ethical stance
contributing to the variable reinstatement of the political.¶ An iconography of limited enmity: the figure of justus hostis¶ As
argued
elsewhere (Odysseos 2007b; Odysseos and Petito 2007) the figure of justus¶ hostis, the procedurally just and equal
enemy emerged within the order Schmitt called¶ ‘the nomos of the Earth’ and which we in IR call
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‘Westphalia’. However, this figure¶ can no longer obtain in a post-Westphalian era, the advent of
which Schmitt dates as¶ early as 1899 with the Hague War Conventions and which becomes inescapable with¶ the outbreak of
World War I in 1914. ‘Westphalia’, by contrast, was that interstate¶ order which existed until 1914 and which
had sought, through the spatiality of the jus¶ publicum Europaeum, its international law, ‘to prevent
wars of annihilation, i.e. to the¶ extent that war was inevitable, to bracket it’ (Schmitt 2003a: 246). This
‘bracketing’¶ 3 But not obviously to the exclusion of concerns with the decicion and with concrete order (cf.¶ Prozorov 2007b; Zarmanian
2006).¶ of war refers to the limitation, rationalisation and, contentiously, the ‘humanisation’ ¶ of war:
what Schmitt called eine Hegung des Krieges, which he regarded with great¶ nostalgia to be a major
achievement of this interstate order.¶ It is important to distinguish such ‘bracketing’ from attempts to
abolish or banish war,¶ that is, to end war as such, which are a characteristic of both classical and¶
contemporary liberalism (Joas 2003). Schmitt, nostalgic regarding the bracketing of¶ war, distinguishes sharply and critically from ‘of
the modern drive to contain war¶ through indiscriminate legal provision’ (Goodson 2004b: 148). ‘Bracketing’ in the¶ proper sense
of Hegung is not only a delimitation but also a ‘pruning’, a constant¶ maintenance, a politics rather
than a singular and spectacular act of law. This is¶ because the jus publicum Europaeum recognised
that ‘any abolition of war without¶ true bracketing resulted only in new, perhaps even worse types of
war, such as¶ reversions to civil war and other types of wars of annihilation’ (Schmitt 2003a: 246).¶ It accepted
war as an inevitable occurrence of international political order; it was the¶ form of war which had to be invigilated and contained. Doing so, laid
a foundation for¶ ‘a bracketing of war’: ‘[t]he essence of such wars was a regulated contest of forces¶ gauged by witnesses in a bracketed
space. Such wars are the opposite of disorder’¶ (ibid.: 187).
Defining the enemy in terms of the political keeps wars from escalating to the point of genocides
because the enemy is a nation and could not have a war of conviction waged against it
Odysseos ‘8 [Dr. Louiza Odysseos- University of Sussex, Department of International Relations, “Against
Ethics? Iconographies of Enmity and Acts of Obligation in Carl Schmitt’s Theory of the Partisan”,
published 3/22/8, accessed 7/14/13, PDF] //pheft
Importantly for Schmitt’s iconography of limited enmity, the bracketing of war¶ requires that the figure of the enemy be appropriate for such a
pluriversal¶ understanding of politics, that is, what Schmitt would later call ‘the relativisation of¶ enmity’ (2004). In
fact, the
achievement of this type of regulated but limited warfare¶ on European soil was enabled by (better:
predicated on) the recognition of the¶ opponent as an equal and just enemy. The development of the notion of
justus hostis,¶ associated with the denigration of justa causa (just cause) in the commencement and¶ waging of war, may be considered to be
the second achievement of the Westphalian¶ order. The
concept of an ‘equal and just enemy’ evolved alongside the
emergence and¶ consolidation of the modern state as the predominant political entity (see Teschke¶ 2003 for
a contrary account), as well as the weakening of the moral authority of the¶ Church. Under these conditions,
warfare became divorced from substantive causes of¶ justice. Since war was the means by which land
could change ownership status, ‘war¶ came to be judged in terms of its outcome’ and, indeed, became
a type of political¶ relation amongst states (Schmitt 2003a: 100). Any enemy which had the form of a¶ state
was a just enemy and war could be waged against it. This avoided wars of¶ conviction, creed and
religion (that is, based on a justa causa) which had historically¶ taken war to an extreme, seeking the enemy’s
annihilation. For Schmitt, whose belief¶ was that war was an inevitable part of world-political life, this regulation of war¶ without
substantive cause meant a ‘rationalization, humanization and legalization’ of¶ war; regarding an enemy as both just and as an equal partner
meant that peace could¶ be made with that enemy. His ultimate destruction was not sought, but conflict with¶ him was possible and regulated
by established norms and rules. The development of¶ the notion of justus hostis and the elimination of just cause, moreover, also indicated¶ an
order of relations and a system of war which recognized the enemy’s ‘right’ to¶ resistance and self-defence.¶ Schmitt
associates the
‘nomos of the earth’ with the emergence of limited and¶ regulated wars that sought balance and the
avoidance of preponderance, rather than¶ the extermination of the enemy in the name of a just cause.
William Rasch explains¶ that the ‘medium’ of Westphalian¶ self-organization was violence (war); yet, by virtue of mechanisms of¶ reciprocity,
by virtue, that is, of a similarly emergent self-regulation of¶ violence called international law (the jus publicum Europaeum of which¶ Schmitt
sings his praises), the conduct of warfare among European states was¶ restrained and controlled (2005: 257).¶ What
is important in
the development of the figure of justus hostis, is not a¶ celebratory denial of the drawbacks and
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repercussions of the Westphalian order in¶ which it emerged, especially its colonisation of the non-European world.
Rather, what¶ is important is the possibility to which it points: a ‘relativisation’ of enmity that allows ¶ for
a delimitation of war. As Schmitt would write in Theory of the Partisan, ‘with the bracketing of war, European
humanity had achieved something extraordinary:¶ renunciation of the criminalization of the
opponent, i.e. the relativization of enmity,¶ the negation of absolute enmity’ (Schmitt 2007: 90). For
Schmitt, ‘renouncing the¶ discrimination and defamation of their enemies’ was a significant and rare¶
achievement, in fact, a most ‘human’ development (Schmitt 2004: 64).¶ It is the dissolution of this limited
enmity what confronts us today and structures the¶ field of possibilities of engaging with others as
enemies. The dangers of this¶ dissolution can be seen clearly in the re-emergence of just cause and
unlimited,¶ interminable war in international politics, as well as the renewed designation of¶ enemies
as absolute and unjust. We turn to this second iconography of absolute¶ enmity below.
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A/T “You’re Racist”
Naw – we condemn racism in favor of a more agonistic approach to humans
De Benoist ’74 [Alain De Benoist – French philosopher dude, “Against all forms of racism”, published in
Elements No. 8-9, 1974, accessed 7/21/13, http://grece-fr.com/?p=3385]*all this is translated from
French* //pheft
Elements : ¶ So
there is no superior races?¶ Alain de Benoist: ¶ No. More precisely, all races are superior. All
have their own genius. Let me explain. Human race is not only a zoological unit. It is also a becoming, that is to say, a past,
a culture, a history, a destiny. It is obvious that an individual who was born into a culture, whatever it is, is
an advantage to understand and to incorporate, compared to someone who sees it from the outside.
Personally, I have always had great sympathy and admiration for the civilizations of China and Japan. The
contacts I have had with the blacks in the United States, the Arab Middle East were fascinating. But my interest in these cultures,
so bright it may be, will never allow me to appreciate the interior. Yet this is where I could really
understand. We must therefore resign ourselves to admit the existence of a threshold in understanding
"intercultural". In this sense, generally speaking, any racial group is an advantage compared to specific race
values to which we belong: here, the sociologist and anthropologist join hands. So we can say that every race is
superior to others in the implementation of its own achievements. Talking about the "superior race" in absolute
terms, as if they ranked scholastic entities, has absolutely no sense. And it is precisely when a membership is an absolute that racism begins ...¶
Elements : ¶ So
you condemn racism?¶ Alain de Benoist: ¶ I condemn without exception, all forms of racism.
Including, of course, those who hide under the mask of "anti-racism" convenience.¶ Elements : ¶ What do you
mean by that?¶ Alain de Benoist: ¶ In his fine work on the ideological pollution (Calmann-Levy, 1971), Raymond Ruyer wrote: "An
intelligent racism, with a sense of the diversity of ethnic groups, is less harmful than racism
intemperate leveler and assimilation. " He added: "The racist and egalitarian ideologies are responsible
for genocide and ethnic killings as racist ideologies themselves." It may surprise, and yet ... Nietzsche already said that
in the story is wanting or believing do well we did the most harm to humanity.
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
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A/T Various War/Bad Stuff
Naw, the Rasch evidence indicates that this isn’t true because…. Read the block above
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
94
A/T Zizek
Zizek’s claim of “ultra-politics” is yet another misreading of Schmitt
Prozorov ‘6 [Sergei Prozorov - University of Helsinki, Department of Political and Economic Studies,
“Liberal Enmity: The Figure of the Foe in the Political Ontology of Liberalism”, published in Millennium Journal of International Studies 2006 35: 75, accessed 7/15/13, mil.sagepub] //pheft
Thus, the enemy is neither an unproblematic empirical given nor¶ a contingent effect of a belligerent fantasy, done away with through the¶
global progress of cosmopolitanism. Enmity as such is a perennial feature¶ of the human condition, being, in its transcendental function,
nothing ¶ more than a vigilant receptivity to the existence of the Other.24 However,¶ the concrete form that relations of enmity take is
historically variable and¶ dependent on the distinction at work at concrete historical moments.¶ Ironically,
yet another misreading
of Schmitt, particularly evident in¶ today’s discussion, consists precisely in attributing to him a highly¶
intense and violent construct of enmity.¶ Having dropped the charge of essentialism, Zizek is quick to¶ press
another charge against Schmitt: disavowing the ‘proper’ political¶ antagonism through a paradoxical
act of depoliticisation through¶ ‘extreme’ politicisation that Zizek refers to as ‘ultra-politics’:¶ In ultrapolitics, the ‘repressed’ political returns in the guise of¶ the attempt to resolve the deadlock of
political conflict by its false¶ radicalisation – by reformulating it as a war between Us and Them, our¶
enemy, where there is no ground for symbolic conflict. … The clearest¶ indication of this Schmittian disavowal of the political is the primacy of¶
external politics (relations between sovereign states) over internal politics¶ (inner social antagonism) on which he insists.25¶ We
have
argued elsewhere that, despite this type of criticism,¶ Schmitt’s thought may be read as properly
deconstructive with respect to¶ the ‘domestic’ social order, highlighting its ‘inner antagonism’
precisely¶ through the insistence on the aporetic foundations of any order that¶ preclude its
consolidation into a self-immanent system.26 What interests¶ us presently is Zizek’s notion of ultra-politics, understood in
terms of an¶ intense conflict, in which there is no common ground that would permit¶ recasting conflict in symbolic terms, i.e. as an internal
structure of regulated¶ antagonism that sustains a certain order rather than destroys it.¶ In
contrast to Zizek’s diagnosis,
Schmitt’s work on international¶ relations has persistently articulated both a possibility and the
actual¶ historical existence of such a ‘common ground’. The most famous example¶ is of course the
Westphalian states’ system and the juridical arrangement¶ of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, which
established a structure of¶ managing antagonism that Schmitt termed the ‘bracketing’ (Hegung)¶ of war:
its limitation through rationalisation and humanisation.27¶ The Westphalian system delegitimised the recourse to the
theological¶ discourse of ‘just war’, responsible for the intense violence of the ‘wars of religion’, and
instead relegitimised interstate war, as long as both sides¶ in such a conflict approached each other as a ‘just enemy’ (justus
hostis),¶ existentially equal to the Self. The mutual recognition of the principle of¶ sovereignty among European powers
created the possibility of limiting¶ the violence and intensity of military conflicts by virtue of the
absence of¶ any possibility that either party could appropriate the title of ‘just war’¶ for its own actions and
thereby stigmatise, demonise or criminalise the¶ enemy, depriving it of equal status and permitting its indiscriminate¶ treatment. War was
therefore by definition treated as ‘just on both sides’¶ and whatever was permitted to one party was also permitted to the other:¶ ‘The essence
of such wars was a regulated contest of forces gauged by¶ witnesses in a bracketed space. Such wars are the opposite of disorder.’28
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
95
Theory
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
96
Framework
2NC
1) There is no best policy option – these arguments are merely attempts to exclude other forms of
argumentation which has no grounding in reality. The only role of the ballot is to decide a winner, you
can’t look to the framework argument because of this.
Counter interpretation: We get to test the philosophical underpinnings of the affirmative.
Offense:
1)Prefer our interpretation, it’s best for education and that’s the reason we are debating.
2) Time skew: We are wasting time answering a huge theory argument that they can read in 30 seconds while I
need to waste my 2NC time.
3) Fairness: It is only fair that we run alternate ideas seeing as the aff has infinite prep time. They limit out all
critical arguments thus they can win on racist, sexist etc advantages every round if we cannot challenge them.
4) K comes first: debate is about changing how we think and before we can do that in a policy setting we must
change the underlying assumptions in our argumentation.
5) Education: We win on education because debate is about learning the most and with the K we learn about
kritikal arguments as well as policy arguments.
6) Short circuit policy argument: Only by addressing the flaws in the AFF’s view can we make effective policy
options.
7) “Negation theory justifies- we just have to prove the aff is a bad idea, there are no rules that say we need a
policy option- if we win they are philosophically wrong then it’s a reason not to vote for that policy.”
8) Their framework argument is a reactionary response by the conservative side of our community that attempts
to isolate and destroy our advocacy.
Shanahan ‘5 [Bill Shanahan - debate coach and debate Jesus, deleted scene from Debate Team, 2005, “Shanahan on the
Magic of Debate,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rESjqZsIi5Q, the punctuation may be off, I transcribed this from the
video] //pheft
I don't know if you hear it, but there's
a real respect for the Michigan States and the Northwesterns¶ and the
Harvards you know what I mean? What they do is great and old school policy debating is a¶ phenomenal activity
but when it confronts difference, it tends to confront difference the way so many¶ hegemonies do, it
runs over it, it annihilates it, it marginalizes it, and it does violence to it. ¶ And from what I heard speaking to
the debaters that I coach after that last debate that's what that was¶ about: it was about being rude, it
was about excluding, it was about doing violence and, and you know, shutting your ears. ¶ And you can't debate
effectively if you're not open to the possibility of being changed in a given¶ debate round, which is, I think,
magical.
9) turn: Excluding framing questions from policy makes their framework arbitrary and less effective for
policymaking. Limiting decisions to explicit policy options impoverishes analysis.
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
97
Graeme Cheeseman, Snr. Lecturer @ New South Wales, and Robert Bruce, ‘96
(Discourses of Danger & Dread Frontiers, p. 5-9)
This goal is pursued in ways which are still unconventional in the intellectual milieu of international
relations in Australia, even though they are gaining influence worldwide as traditional modes of theory
and practice are rendered inadequate by global trends that defy comprehension, let alone policy. The
inability to give meaning to global changes reflects partly the enclosed, elitist world of professional
security analysts and bureaucratic experts, where entry is gained by learning and accepting to speak a
particular, exclusionary language. The contributors to this book are familiar with the discourse, but
accord no privileged place to its ‘knowledge form as reality’ in debates on defence and security. Indeed,
they believe that debate will be furthered only through a long overdue critical re-evaluation of elite
perspectives. Pluralistic, democratically-oriented perspectives on Australia’s identity are both required
and essential if Australia’s thinking on defence and security is to be invigorated.¶ This is not a
conventional policy book; nor should it be, in the sense of offering policy-makers and their academic
counterparts sets of neat alternative solutions, in familiar language and format, to problems they pose.
This expectation is in itself a considerable part of the problem to be analysed. It is, however, a book
about policy, one that questions how problems are framed by policy-makers. It challenges the
proposition that irreducible bodies of real knowledge on defence and security exist independently of
their ‘context in the world’, and it demonstrates how security policy is articulated authoritatively by the
elite keepers of that knowledge, experts trained to recognize enduring, universal wisdom. All others,
from this perspective, must accept such wisdom or remain outside the expert domain, tainted by their
inability to comply with the ‘rightness’ of the official line. But it is precisely the official line, or at least its
image of the world, that needs to be problematised. If the critic responds directly to the demand for
policy alternatives, without addressing this image, he or she is tacitly endorsing it. Before engaging in
the policy debate the critics need to reframe the basic terms of reference. This book, then, reflects and
underlines the importance of Antonio Gramsci and Edward Said’s ‘critical intellectuals’.15¶ The demand,
tacit or otherwise, that the policy-maker’s frame of reference be accepted as the only basis for
discussion and analysis ignores a three thousand year old tradition commonly associated with Socrates
and purportedly integral to the Western tradition of democratic dialogue. More immediately, it ignores
post-seventeenth century democratic traditions which insist that a good society must have within it
some way of critically assessing its knowledge and the decisions based upon that knowledge which
impact upon citizens of such a society. This is a tradition with a slightly different connotation in
contemporary liberal democracies which, during the Cold War, were proclaimed different and superior
to the totalitarian enemy precisely because there were institutional checks and balances upon power.¶ In
short, one of the major differences between ‘open societies’ and their (closed) counterparts behind the
Iron Curtain was that the former encouraged the critical testing of the knowledge and decisions of the
powerful and assessing them against liberal democratic principles. The latter tolerated criticism only on
rare and limited occasions. For some, this represented the triumph of rational-scientific methods of
inquiry and techniques of falsification. For others, especially since positivism and rationalism have lost
much of their allure, it meant that for society to become open and liberal, sectors of the population
must be independent of the state and free to question its knowledge and power. Though we do not
expect this position to be accepted by every reader, contributors to this book believe that critical
dialogue is long overdue in Australia and needs to be listened to. For all its liberal democratic trappings,
Australia’s security community continues to invoke closed monological narratives on defence and
security.¶ This book also questions the distinctions between policy practice and academic theory that
inform conventional accounts of Australian security. One of its major concerns, particularly in chapters 1
and 2, is to illustrate how theory is integral to the practice of security analysis and policy prescription.
The book also calls on policy-makers, academics and students of defence and security to think critically
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
98
about what they are reading, writing and saying; to begin to ask, of their work and study, difficult and
searching questions raised in other disciplines; to recognise, no matter how uncomfortable it feels, that
what is involved in theory and practice is not the ability to identify a replacement for failed models, but
a realisation that terms and concepts – state sovereignty, balance of power, security, and so on – are
contested and problematic, and that the world is indeterminate, always becoming what is written about
it. Critical analysis which shows how particular kinds of theoretical presumptions can effectively exclude
vital areas of political life from analysis has direct practical implications for policy-makers, academics
and citizens who face the daunting task of steering Australia through some potentially choppy
international waters over the next few years.¶ There is also much of interest in the chapters for those
struggling to give meaning to a world where so much that has long been taken for granted now
demands imaginative, incisive reappraisal. The contributors, too, have struggled to find meaning, often
despairing at the terrible human costs of international violence. This is why readers will find no single,
fully formed panacea for the world’s ills in general, or Australia’s security in particular. There are none.
Every chapter, however, in its own way, offers something more than is found in orthodox literature,
often by exposing ritualistic Cold War defence and security mind-sets that are dressed up as new
thinking. Chapters 7 and 9, for example, present alternative ways of engaging in security and defence
practice. Others (chapters 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8) seek to alert policy-makers, academics and students to
alternative theoretical possibilities which might better serve an Australian community pursuing security
and prosperity in an uncertain world. All chapters confront the policy community and its counterparts in
the academy with a deep awareness of the intellectual and material constraints imposed by dominant
traditions of realism, but they avoid dismissive and exclusionary terms which often in the past
characterized exchanges between policy-makers and their critics. This is because, as noted earlier,
attention needs to be paid to the words and the thought processes of those being criticized. A close
reading of this kind draws attention to underlying assumptions, showing they need to be recognized and
questioned. A sense of doubt (in place of confident certainty) is a necessary prelude to a genuine search
for alternative policies. First comes an awareness of the need for new perspectives, then specific
policies may follow.¶ As Jim George argues in the following chapter, we need to look not so much at
contending policies as they are made for us but at challenging ‘the discursive process which gives
[favoured interpretations of “reality”] their meaning and which direct [Australia’s]
policy/analytical/military responses’. This process is not restricted to the small, official defence and
security establishment huddled around the US-Australian War Memorial in Canberra. It also
encompasses much of Australia’s academic defence and security community located primarily though
not exclusively within the Australian National University and the University College of the University of
New South Wales. These discursive processes are examined in detail in subsequent chapters as authors
attempt to make sense of a politics of exclusion and closure which exercises disciplinary power over
Australia’s security community. They also question the discourse of ‘regional security’, ‘security
cooperation’, ‘peacekeeping’ and ‘alliance politics’ that are central to Australia’s official and academic
security agenda in the 1990s. This is seen as an important task especially when, as is revealed, the
disciplines of International Relations and Strategic Studies are under challenge from critical and
theoretical debates ranging across the social sciences and humanities; debates that are nowhere to be
found in Australian defence and security studies. The chapters graphically illustrate how Australia’s
public policies on defence and security are informed, underpinned and legitimised by a narrowly-based
intellectual enterprise which draws strength from contested concepts of realism and liberalism, which in
turn seek legitimacy through policy-making processes. Contributors ask whether Australia’s policymakers and their academic advisors are unaware of broader intellectual debates, or resistant to them,
or choose not to understand them, and why?
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
99
2NR
First, there is no “role of the ballot”- these arguments are always arbitrary and self serving. Debate is
a competitive game; the only role of the judge is to decide a winner. The ballot says “the team who
did the better debating is X” , not “the team who made up the most arbitrary BS reason to exclude the
other teams arguments”. The only question the judge needs to grapple with is which side DEBATED
better- measured by argument quality and presentation. The affirmative gets infinite prep to select
their justifications, if they can’t defend them they deserve to lose
And extend the C/I - We get to test the philosophical underpinnings of the affirmative.
That’s best for education because we get to learn about things we can actually affect. You can cross
apply the fiat argument here that says that since the plan doesn’t actually pass IRL we need to look to
discourse and representations first because that is the only thing we as students can affect right now.
This means that the K is a prior question because it challenges the justifications of the affirmative and
that’s key to education. That’s the Shanahan card.
And, you can reject their framework arg because it skews my time – they can rattle off framework in
15 seconds or less but I need to spend my time answering every point. This means that if side with the
neg on framework even a little, you should err to letting the K be heard because this is a silver bullet
for the aff.
And, we’re best for fairness – the aff gets the first and last speech and infinite prep time. They choose
their aff means they should be prepared to defend the justifications of it. Their framework argument
is akin to me going up to a black person and saying “I hate black people” and they ask why and I “hey
hey hey, I don’t need to justify myself”. This type of thinking allows them to win on unjustified and
racist, sexist, etc, args every round.
And, we would all agree that debate is about education and before that can ever take place in a policy
setting, you must change the way you think on a personal level. You don’t just go out and vote
without having some ideology in your head and that is what the K does. It gives you the knowledge
the make informed decisions IRL.
And, the K short circuits the aff – only by addressing flaws in the affirmative’s justifications can we
hope to create effective policy, if we don’t we are doomed to serial policy failure.
And, negation theory justifies the K – there are no rules in the magic book of policy debate that say
we need a policy option, for the neg it only says that we need to negate the affirmative and that is
what we do. Just because we do it in an unconventional way doesn’t mean it’s bad.
And that’s not a voter.
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
100
Condo
2NC
Counter Interpretation: We get 1 CP and 1 K.
A. Offense
1. Most real world – conditionality is necessary to test the desirability of the plan versus other
options.
2. Critical thinking and education – conditionality forces strategic 2ac choices to adapt the strategy
knowing the K could be kicked. The goal of debate is to respond to an intellectual challenge – answer
the K and quit whining.
3. C/I is best because it allows us to test the affirmative in their framework and in ours.
4. Hard debate is good debate – they need to prove we make debate impossible.
B. Defense
1. Potential abuse is not a voter – we didn’t do it and it’s impossible to quantify. Since the ballot
doesn’t set a precedent, in-round abuse is the fairest way to judge theory.
2. Reject the argument, not the team – the punishment paradigm rewards theory over substance,
decreasing education.
3. Err neg on theorya. Structural side bias – the aff has first and last speech, and has infinite prep.
b. Topic specific side bias – infinite things that could be detained and lack of kritik links off of a
decrease in authority guts neg ground.
C. Line by line
Time skew arguments are laughable:
a. it’s inevitable – every 1ar is pressed for time; that’s part of being aff. We could run 16 disads and
skew their time just as much.
b. 2NR time outweighs 1ar time – skews my time worse. I have to go for both theory and substance
when the 2AR can go for either.
Our interp solves multiple worlds:
a. we only get 1 K and the status quo.
b. 2NR checks – we can only go for one world.
c. disads make multiple worlds inevitable.
Argumentative irresponsibility is a stupid argument: forcing us to defend a bankrupt position is
irresponsible.
Dispo doesn’t check: Dispo is conditionality – smart neg teams will write counterplans that force
perms or read net benefits in the block that require a permutation.
Unconditionality doesn’t check: it’s strategic suicide for the neg and destroys any competitive
advantage to running a counterplan.
Doesn’t cause aff conditionality:
a. aff conditionality is bad no matter what the neg does.
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
101
b. aff conditionality is uniquely worse – it crushes the 1nc strat. Our interp shows the aff that we will
either go for the status quo or the K, whereas aff conditionality is totally unpredictable and justified
absolutely anything
2NR
First extend the C/I – we get one CP and one K. This is the most fair because it allows for prime neg
flex.
A. Offense:
1. Conditionality is the most real world because law makers always try to question the
legitimacy of government action in many different ways and debate is a game in which we
criticize the plan.
2. Condo is best for critical thinking and education – the 2ac needs to adapt knowing that the k
could be kicked at any time and it forces strategic 2ac time allocation which is a key skill in
debate.
3. You should prefer our C/I because we get test the plan in their policy centric framework and in
our kritikal framework. This is best for education because we learn about more things.
4. Hard debate is good debate – they don’t prove that we make debate impossible; we just make
it hard which makes it fun.
B. Defense:
1. Potential abuse isn’t a voter, they can’t articulate a way in which we uniquely abused them so
don’t look to this argument. The ballot doesn’t set a precedent-means you err neg.
2. Err neg on theory, the aff has first and last speech and infinite prep, they should be prepared
for anything. Don’t punish us for them being lazy.
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
102
Misc Cards
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
103
Schmitt and Radical Democracy
Genealogy of Schmitt’s radical democracy and the state
Ette ‘12 [Ndifreke Ette - B.A., Louisiana State University, 2008, A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate
Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in The Department of Political Science, “CARL
SCHMITT’S RADICAL DEMOCRACY: SCHMITT, HOBBES AND THE RETURN TO POLITICAL IDENTITY”,
published May, 2012, accessed 7/23/13, PDF //pheft
Even with these imprudent affiliations, Schmitt is worth studying, for among other things, his concept
of radical democracy. By radical democracy, Schmitt means a return to the essence of the political,
which is rooted in the collectivity of a particular people. The political as an identity exists, for Schmitt,
when such a collectivity determines who are its friends and enemies. Once this initial identity is made,
the group chooses a form of government to adopt. At this point, it transforms into a state.¶ Schmitt uses
Hobbes both to engineer his primordial form of politics, and also to bolster his critique of the liberal features of the modern democratic state.
Schmitt proceeds from Hobbes’ conception of the state of nature to show how a group of people can
come together to enhance their security. These people then choose a sovereign who guarantees them
protection from enemies and demands in return their unconditional obedience. Schmitt then argues
that the liberal right to conscience undermines the unity and security of the state by encouraging the
growth of hidden groups. These groups by themselves are not political, but they harness the legislative
process to achieve desirable political results. In so doing, these hidden groups pursuing special interests obstruct the people
from wielding their original sovereignty. Hamstrung by feuds among these groups, the state quits being the bearer of the identity of the people
and the guardian of their security. Instead it becomes a playground of conflicting interests and a mechanism operating at the behest of the
most powerful group.¶ This project is divided into two parts. The
first part examines Schmitt’s criticism of Hobbes’ Leviathan. It compares
how Schmitt tackles Hobbes in a concrete sense, not merely as a
philosopher, but as a thinker concerned with the world as it exists. Schmitt decries “the superficial labeling of Hobbes as a
Schmitt’s analysis to other thinkers and shows
rationalist, mechanist, sensualist, individualist, or any other ‘ist.’” Instead in his reckoning, Schmitt sees “[Hobbes] as a theorist of political
action who takes pains to present a political reality and whose writings are political action tracts, not systems of thought about general
concepts.”1¶ This part also
looks at Schmitt’s separation of the leviathan into three symbols: a mortal god,
a sovereign representative and a machine. In Schmitt’s view, while Hobbes used the symbol of the
mortal god for rhetorical purposes, the leviathan as sovereign representative was a symbol viable in
the age of princes and constitutional monarchies. The leviathan as machine was a product of its epoch, the age of
technicity. The conclusion of part one charts how the leviathan changed historically and legally from the sovereign-representative to a machine.
Schmitt argues that by distinguishing between public expression of belief and private conscience, Hobbes paved the way for the eventual rise of
the mechanistic constitutional state.¶ The
second part of this thesis integrates Schmitt’s analysis of the Leviathan
with his own ideas on democracy. The purpose of the integration is to reveal that Schmitt’s reliance
on Hobbes is not limited to one text, and secondly to provide a link between similar themes related to democracy among
Schmitt’s varied texts. Schmitt’s radical democracy is contingent on his concept of the political and essential
to his critique of liberalism and the constitutional state. By elevating the individual above the
collectivity, liberalism diminishes the essence of the radical democracy, the foundation of the state.
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
104
A/T Hobbesian Critique of Schmitt
Scholars prove, Schmitt is the Hobbes of the 20th century
Ette ‘12 [Ndifreke Ette - B.A., Louisiana State University, 2008, A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate
Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in The Department of Political Science, “CARL
SCHMITT’S RADICAL DEMOCRACY: SCHMITT, HOBBES AND THE RETURN TO POLITICAL IDENTITY”,
published May, 2012, accessed 7/23/13, PDF //pheft
Schmitt and Hobbes: A Relationship¶ As shown in the previous section, eclectic and passionate opinions abound regarding Schmitt’s writings. If,
as Oakes contends, Schmitt is a polemicist attacking in print hidden and exposed enemies, a good way to burrow into his thought will be
through the authors he relies on to make philosophical points.11 In
that case, the most recognizable and visible source
associated with Schmitt is Thomas Hobbes. At other times, and in several texts, Schmitt does refer to Donoso
Cortes, Joseph de Maistre and Max Weber; but of them all, Hobbes is the thinker he identifies with and
returns to, again and again. Indeed, Hobbes’ influence on Schmitt has not gone unnoticed. Given
Schmitt’s understanding of the state as the provider of security and the symbiotic nexus of protection and obedience,
Schwab contends “Schmitt deserves to be called the Hobbes of the twentieth century.” Not to be outdone,
Holmes dispels the implied cross-fertilization between both men, noting “the conclusion that Schmitt is a modern disciple of Hobbes remains at
best a half-truth.”12¶ Wherever
one stands on the debate, if Hobbes serves as a weapon in Schmitt’s
theoretical and rhetorical arsenals, then certain questions deserve to be asked? Where, how and why is Hobbes
appropriated by Schmitt and what are the possible consequences of the appropriation?¶ How Schmitt marshals Hobbes will be shared shortly,
but a review of the literature on Hobbes’ political theory is in order. Various thinkers are attracted to Hobbes for different reasons and they
utilize him for different ends. As Johan Tralau asserts “Interpretations of Hobbes are very often, of course, not just interpretations, but political
choices.”13
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
105
Democracy and the State of Nature
Possible perm card?
Ette ‘12 [Ndifreke Ette - B.A., Louisiana State University, 2008, A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate
Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in The Department of Political Science, “CARL
SCHMITT’S RADICAL DEMOCRACY: SCHMITT, HOBBES AND THE RETURN TO POLITICAL IDENTITY”,
published May, 2012, accessed 7/23/13, PDF //pheft
Democracy and the State of Nature¶ Schmitt depicts
Hobbes’ theory of state in these terms: “A representative
person is designated or a corporation comes into being by way of a covenant between individuals. For
its part the individual or corporation elevates those that entered into the covenant to a unified person, namely the state.”61 There are two
movements occurring here. For
the first movement, individuals come together in a covenant to designate a
representative entity. With the second movement, the representative entity elevates the participants
of the covenant to a state. These events point to a question of sovereignty. Where does power reside: Is it with
the people or the state? It is in answering this question that we see Schmitt as a radical democrat. By proceeding along these lines
we can return to his treatment of Hobbes.¶ Hobbes explains that all men are inclined not only to
procure, but also to assure themselves, a contented life. These desires are amplified in the state of
nature, where “Competition of riches, honor, command, or other power, inclineth to contention, enmity, and war; because the way of one
competitor to the attaining of his is to kill, subdue, supplant, or repel the other.” In this initial state of nature, everyone is
equal, not in strength, nor in intelligence, but in ability to achieve favorable results in any endeavor. “From this equality of ability
ariseth equality of hope in the attaining of our ends. And therefore, if any two men desire the same
thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their end .
. . endeavor to destroy or subdue one another.”62 Men gauge the strength of their enemies and exploit opportunities to
dispossess them of objects of mutual interests. A David recognizes that he cannot fight Goliath alone, so he recruits his family to serve as
support orrelies on his superior intellect and subterfuge. Once the fight is over, the family members can return to ignoring each other,
dispersing to their various sojourns.¶ The desire for ease and sensual delight prompts men to obey a common power. This is because “Fear of
oppression disposeth a man to anticipate or to seek aid by society; for there is no other way by which a man can secure his life and liberty.”63
Therefore, for
Schmitt, “the starting point of Hobbes’ construction of the state is fear of the state of
nature.” Schmitt continues, “In the state of nature, everyone can slay everyone else . . . . In respect to posing
and carrying out this threat all are equal . . . . To this extent ‘democracy’ prevails in the state of
nature.”64 What Schmitt alludes to is that his notion of democracy is not antithetical to the state of nature; democracy actually begins
within this state.¶ In opposition to the state of nature, where fear is palpable and existence depends on a clash of interests between individuals,
Schmitt imagines “In the ‘civil,’ stately condition all citizens are secure in their physical existence; there reign peace, security and order.”
Schmitt hints at the state’s maintenance of order. Whereas previous theories of the state appealed to institution by a god or discovery from
nature, Hobbes declared the state to be fashioned by man for the sole purpose of guaranteeing peace and security. Schmitt explains “The
ingenuity of Hobbes’ theory of the state lies in the rejection of the ‘medieval conception of an existing commonwealth forged by God and of a
preexistent natural order’ and replaces it with the ‘product of human work,’ the result of a covenant made and executed by men.” Schmitt
continues, “The state as order and commonwealth is the product of human reason and human inventiveness and comes about by the virtue of
the covenant.”65¶ Schmitt
ties the existence of the state to a preexisting covenant. This is the foundation
of Schmitt’s theory of democracy. It begins with an original position of equality. Individuals can only
enter the covenant as equals. If not, there would be a natural monarchy – the strongest would be
king. A covenant is unnecessary in an unequal society as a power already exists to maintain order.¶ In
chapter XIV of the Leviathan, Hobbes traces how the scattered mass of individuals obtains their sovereign representative. Hobbes concedes
that individuals have a right to preserve their lives with whatsoever means available, and yet, as a general rule, it is to the benefit of the
individual to pursue peace and leave war as the last resort. From this observation, he concludes “that a man be willing, when others are so too,
as far-forth as for peace and defense of himself he shall it necessary, to lay down the right to all things, and be contented with so much liberty
against other men, as he would allow other men against himself.”66¶ Hobbes begins from absolute liberty in a state of nature to diminished
liberty in a civil condition. Peace is only achieved when each man renounces or transfers some part of his natural and unconditional right to
self-preservation which would limit harm to others. Hobbes’ considers such a transfer to be a selfish act, beneficial to the safety of the
individual and necessary to the advancement of the community. When these men gather together and mutually transfer their natural rights,
they have entered into a social contract.67¶ In
Schmitt’s anarchic state of nature, these individuals then make a
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
106
group. Schmitt explains that “Fear brings atomized individuals together. A spark of reason flashes and
a consensus emerges about the necessity to submit to the highest power.” By reason, the individuals decide on
the cost of submitting to a higher power. It is reason that drives these individuals toward a consensus. After all, no one needs to be convinced
of the superiority of safety over peril. It is at this moment that an identity of individuals in a group exists. This is what Schmitt referred to as
democracy. It is obvious that Schmitt’s use of the term is idiosyncratic. ¶ This
democratic identity as a group remains inert
until the group transfers its security to another entity capable of maintaining law and order. “The
assemblage of men gathered together by the fright of fiends cannot, from the presuppositions of their
gathering, overcome hostility.” Schmitt warns such consensus does not equal a state:¶ The construction of the covenant, which
enabled Hobbes to render a juristic interpretation of the sovereign representative person, did not suggest the totality of the state. The
indecisiveness that appears in the otherwise consistent train of Hobbes’ thought occurs at the juristically decisive point, an observation that has
already been noted, namely, in the legal explanation of the foundation of the state as a covenant entered into by individuals.68¶ Indeed, the
only way a common power can defend a group against foreigners is if all members of the group confer “their power and strength upon one
man, or upon one assembly of men, that may reduce all their wills, by plurality of voices unto one will.” Schmitt is in accord with Hobbes who
emphasizes that his agreement is “more than consent or concord; it is a real unity of them all, one and the same person, made by covenant of
every with every man, in such manner as if every man should say to every man I authorize and give up my right of governing myself to this man,
or to this assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy right to him, and authorize all his actions in like manner.”69¶
Democracy might be a starting point, yet it remains an inchoate form of social power, and nothing more. As Schmitt puts it,
“Even though a consensus of all with all has been achieved, this agreement is only an anarchio-social,
not a state covenant. What comes about as a result of this social covenant, the sole guarantor of
peace, the sovereign-representative person, does not come about as a result of but because of this
consensus.”70 Schmitt claims that democracy can serve as handmaiden to almost any political form. The people might affirm a monarchy,
a parliamentary system, a class-based dictatorship without it being at odds with the democratic foundation, one based on an identity between
the governing and the governed. Schmitt explains, “A democracy can be militarist or pacifist, absolutist or liberal, centralized or decentralized,
progressive or reactionary, and again different at different times without ceasing to be a democracy.”71¶ To reiterate, Schmitt
says “The
sovereign-representative is much more than the sum total of all the participating particular wills. To
be sure, the accumulated anguish of individuals of who fear for their lives brings a new power into the
picture: the leviathan. But that affirms rather than creates this new god.”72 Schmitt, like Hobbes, is noncommittal
about the particular political form a people can choose.
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Aff Answers
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Alt = Genocide and stuffz
The alternative is more genocide and violence – empirics prove
Boersma ‘5 [Jess Boersma teaches courses in Peninsular literatures, critical thought, and Spanish
language at U of NC, “What About Schmitt? Translating Carl: Schmitt’s Theory of Sovereignty as Literary
Concept”, published in Discourse, 27.2&3, Spring & Fall 2005, pp. 215-227 (Article), accessed 7/16/13,
projectMUSE] //pheft
It would be too hasty to conclude that Schmitt’s current critical¶ standing indicates any kind of resolution of the polemics between¶ left and
right regarding the legacy of his legal thought and¶ his political association with the Nazi party. It almost goes without¶ saying that the
extreme right has taken pains to revive the friendenemy¶ distinction, developed in Schmitt’s The
Concept of the Political¶ and, in many cases, has reduced it further to a friend-foe distinction¶ in order
to justify strategies of total war and cultural, religious,¶ and ethnic cleansing.3¶ On the other side of the
spectrum, Giorgio Agamben, in his¶ Homo Sacer series argues that the possibly tyrannical consequences ¶ of
Schmitt’s thinking on the friend-enemy distinction and¶ the sovereign decision are not isolated to the
followers of the¶ ‘‘Crown Jurist of the Third Reich,’’ but rather are only too alive and well within the practices
of present day liberal democratic¶ states.4 Let me give one quick example of Agamben’s line of¶ thought in the form of
biopolitics and the sovereign decision. In¶ Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life Agamben argues that the¶
state of exception is fast becoming the rule, with the consequence¶ that the state of nature and the
state of law are nearly indistinguishable¶ (38). Rather than a pure Hobbesian state of nature of all¶ against all, the sovereign
state maintains the monopoly over violence¶ and yet the demand for obedience is no longer contingent¶ upon the guarantee of protection. In
Remnants of Auschwitz, the¶ Nazi concentration camp is shown to be the end result of a legal¶ process
which produces a separation between the living being (zoe)¶ and the speaking being (bios) with the
aim ‘‘no longer to make¶ die or to make live, but to survive’’ (155). Agamben then seeks to¶ illustrate how states of
exception have played out in American history¶ by following the sovereign decisions of presidents Abraham¶ Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson,
Franklin D. Roosevelt, and George W.¶ Bush. In the last case, he states that as a result of September 11¶ ‘‘Bush is attempting to produce a
situation in which the emergency¶ becomes the rule, and the very distinction between peace and war¶ (and between foreign and civil war)
becomes impossible’’ (State of¶ Exception 22). Evidence for Agamben’s claims would appear to be¶ provided externally by the suspended legal
status of the Guanta´-¶ namo prisoners; and internally by the recent ethical and legal battles¶ over the coma case of Terri Schiavo (whose last
name happens¶ to mean slave in Italian), along with the present debates between¶ the legislative and the executive branches in which Attorney
General¶ Alberto Gonzales has defended the constitutional legality of¶ President Bush’s decision to not fully disclose matters regarding¶
domestic spying.5
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Alt =/= Solve
The alternative can’t solve because it will never spill over—the international community has rejected
the notion of enmity.
Scheppele 04 (Kim Lane Scheppele, John J. O'Brien Professor of Comparative Law and Professor of
Sociology at University of Pennsylvania, 6 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 1001, Lexis Nexus, May 2004, LEQ)
In this Article, I have tried to explain why the logic of Schmitt's analyses no longer work as a practical matter to justify states of
exception, even when it is clear to the international community that something fundamental has changed in the world system since
9/11. The institutional elaboration of a new international system that has occurred since Schmitt's time make his ideas seem
all the more dangerous, and yet all the more dated. There are simply fewer states in the world willing to tolerate either
Schmitt's conception of politics or his conception of the defining qualities of sovereignty. Schmitt's philosophy has, in short, been
met with a different sociology. For his ideas to be either persuasive or effective, they must be more than internally coherent or even
plausible; they must be loosed in a context in which they can win against other competing ideas. Precisely because of the
horrors of the twentieth century, much of the international community that has entrenched both democracy and the
rule of law has turned away from these extra-legal justifications for states of exception. Instead, such states have attempted to
embed exceptionality as an instance of the normal, and not as a repudiation of the [*1083] possibility of normality. Only the United States,
with its eighteenth-century constitution and Cold War legacy of exceptionalism, seems to be soldiering on in this new legal space of conflict
unaware that the defining aspect of the new sovereignty is that even the new sovereign is bound by rules.
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A/T Gitmo
Even if Gitmo is link, it’s still probz bad – turns any chance stopping war
-don’t let them weasel out of this by saying “we think war is good”
Kain ’13 [Erik Kain writes about politics at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen, and technology and video
games at Forbes, “Obama Is Right About Gitmo: It's Bad for Us All”, published 4/30/13, accessed
7/22/13, http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/04/guantanamo-bay-war-on-terror-justice] //pheft
"It's not a surprise to me that we are having problems at Guantanamo," President Obama said on Tuesday,
reiterating that the prison needs to be closed. It makes cooperation with allies more difficult, he said, also noting that
Guantanamo is unsafe and too expensive. "I am going to go back at this," he said, "I am going to reengage with Congress that this is not in the
best interest of the American people."¶ America's so-called war
on terror has always been fundamentally flawed.
Even the invasion of Afghanistan, which struck many as a sensible response to 9/11, felt like the
beginning of something terrible: a war against an idea, rather than a global crime-fighting effort against a particularly
ruthless organized crime organization. The notion that waging a war could put an end to the phenomenon of terrorism has always been naive,
and it's left many innocents dead in its wake.¶ One
side effect of this never-ending war has been our nation's
collective failure in our definition of justice. Fear and the desire for revenge have given rise to everything from the Patriot Act
to warrantless wiretapping to state-sanctioned torture. When the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing
was captured, you couldn't spend more than five minutes watching Fox News before someone would
begin lamenting the fact that the bomber has Miranda rights, or demanding that he be sent to
Guantanamo Bay rather than face trial on US soil.¶ Is our justice system so frail that trying a terrorist
here at home would somehow threaten the very foundation of our society? What existential risk is there
in giving a suspect in a terrorism case the same due process and rights given every other suspect in a
criminal case? Do we distrust our courts so much that we must hand over this fiat to our military?¶ Justice is precious. It makes
civilization possible. And usually we start abandoning it when we drag out the word "war" to describe things that aren't, or shouldn't
be, considered war at all. (The "war on drugs" is another.)¶ War is the opposite of civilization. That may be a crude duality, but
that's how I like to think of it. Where one sets out to build prosperity and preserve life, the other tears it down,
regardless of the cause. There may be "just wars"—but even a just war can leave a people scarred and defeated. And while the
international community has set up some clear rules on how war ought to be conducted, the nature of war itself goes against rules or
international ethics guidelines. War
is rarely about justice, and even the "good guys" in a conflict will often find
themselves participating in unthinkable horrors. The Civil War is widely perceived as a just war (or at least a necessary step
in ending slavery) but it was filled with death and destruction and many of its victims were innocents.¶ Over the past decade, we've
discovered something about ourselves. Our troops have carried out torture in the name of security
and vengeance. We've locked up hundreds of suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay, many of whom
are now on hunger strike, and refused them due process because we're more concerned with security
than we are with justice. What we forget is that the two are inextricably linked. Without adequate
justice for all, how can we ever hope to protect what we hold dear? We'll lose the war on terror by abandoning our
principles and values faster than we will on the battlefield. If the terrorists really do "hate our freedom," as many conservatives have suggested,
why are we so willing to assist them in the destruction of it?¶ I watch the talking heads on Fox and elsewhere complaining about the tenets of
our justice system when applied to "bad guys" and I realize what their problem is: They are cowards. They're liars, too: invoking the
Constitution as though it were scripture, but then editing out the parts they dislike when its useful to their agenda. They sling stones at all those
dreadful liberals, at the president, at some fictional legion of anti-patriots who want to "apologize for America," and in the same breath they
advocate policies which gut many things about this country that, in theory at least, really do make it great. They loudly proclaim that we're the
greatest country on the face of the earth, nay in the history of mankind, and then they push the hideous notion that the only way to keep us on
top is to essentially do away with all of it. (All of it, that is, except our right to own guns.)¶ The
only reason to keep Guantanamo
Bay open is because we're afraid, because we care more about a false sense of security than we do
about our values and, dare I say it, our Constitution. Every day we fail to close Gitmo down is a day we
admit that the terrorists have already won. It's a moral failing we may not recover from for a very long time.¶ When Roosevelt
said that the only thing to fear was fear itself, he defined it as a "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to
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convert retreat into advance." It was a rallying cry for a war effort. Maybe this time around we can use it as a call to a different kind of
advance—toward what is right, even though there will be more moments when we will face "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror."
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Cede the Political
Theorizing is a direct trade-off with political action – that causes a resurgence of the genocidal
atrocities of the 20th century
Wolin 4 (Richard, distinguished professor of intellectual history at Graduate Center, City University of New
York, The Seduction of Unreason: the intellectual romance with fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism,
pg. 8-9)JFS
The Seduction of Unreason is an exercise in intellectual genealogy. It seeks to shed light on the uncanny
affinities between the Counter-Enlightenment and postmodernism. As such, it may also be read as an
archaeology of postmodern theory. During the 1970s and 1980s a panoply of texts by Derrida, Foucault,
Deleuze, and Lyotard were translated into English, provoking a far-reaching shift in American intellectual
life. Many of these texts were inspired by Nietzsche’s anticivilizational animus: the conviction that our
highest ideals of beauty, morality, and truth were intrinsically nihilistic. Such views found favor among a
generation of academics disillusioned by the political failures of the 1960s. Understandably, in despondent
times Nietzsche’s iconoclastic recommendation that one should “philosophize with a hammer ”—that if
something is falling, one should give it a final push—found a ready echo. Yet, too often, those who rushed
to mount the Nietzschean bandwagon downplayed or ignored the illiberal implications of his positions.
Moreover, in retrospect, it seems clear that this same generation, many of whose representatives were
comfortably ensconced in university careers, had merely exchanged radical politics for textual politics:
unmasking “binary oppositions” replaced an ethos of active political engagement. In the last analysis it
seems that the seductions of “theory” helped redirect formerly robust political energies along the lines
of acceptable academic career tracks. As commentators have often pointed out, during the 1980s, while
Republicans were commandeering the nation’s political apparatus, partisans of “theory” were storming
the ramparts of the Modern Language Association and the local English Department. Ironically, during the
same period, the French paradigms that American academics were so busy assimilating were undergoing an
eclipse across the Atlantic. In France they were perceived as expressions of an obsolete political
temperament: gauchisme (“leftism”) or “French philosophy of the 1960s.”21 By the mid-1980s French
intellectuals had passed through the acid bath of antitotalitarianism. Under the influence of Solzhenitsyn’s
pathbreaking study of the Gulag as well as the timely, if slick, anticommunist polemics of the “New
Philosophers” such as André Glucksmann and Bernard Henri-Lévy, who were appalled by the “killing fields”
of Pol Pot’s Cambodia (the Khmer Rouge leader had been educated in Paris during the 1950s) and the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, French intellectuals began returning to the indigenous tradition of
democratic republicanism—thereby leaving the 1960s leftists holding the bag of an outmoded
philosophical anarchism. The tyrannical excesses of Third Worldism—China’s Cultural Revolution, Castro’s
Cuba, Idi Amin’s Uganda, Mobutu’s Zaire, Duvalier’s Haiti—finally put paid to the delusion that the
“wretched of the earth” were the bearers of a future socialist utopia . Suddenly, the nostrums of Western
humanism, which the poststructuralists had emphatically denounced , seemed to merit a second look.
This depolitization is exactly what they kritik – this turns the K
Lakeland ’93 [PAUL LAKELAND, professor of religious studies at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Conn,
“Preserving The Lifeworld, Restoring the Public Sphere, Renewing Higher Education”, published in 1993,
accessed 7/18/13, < http://www.crosscurrents.org/lakeland2>] //pheft
How did we get from a democratic society in which the citizens--no matter how small a minority of the total
community they constituted--truly felt they owned it, to one in which so many are alienated from the political
process? One reason is that in the earlier years the expansion of citizenship and the subsequent increase in educational opportunities did
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not lead to the admission of these newly educated classes into the dialogue. Educational reform and improvement in the standard of living took
place within European societies whose class, gender, and race-based social constraints underwent no serious change; a little learning did not a
gentleman make. Another, more
recent reason is that democratization was accompanied by capitalization,
so that the passive consumption of culture and commodities with its attendant apolitical sociability was the path
preferred by, or at least open to, the vast majority. In other words, there are just a lot more citizens; but many of these citizens are
the victims of structural oppression, and all are lured by the blandishments of material ease. Again, to return to Habermas's forms of
expression, all this amounts to the progressive colonization of the lifeworld by the system.¶ If,
in the past two hundred years,
the public sphere has so completely failed to fulfill its promise as a market-place for the discourse of a
free society, the project must be to restore it through the revival of true communicative action, that is,
to persuade people to talk to one another with respect, to listen fairly, to argue cleanly, and to move towards consensus
on norms for action. That way lies a democratic future. Any other way leads to one or another form of
totalitarianism, including the totalitarianism of mass consumption culture whose victims are so easily
persuaded to pursue its spurious salvation and ersatz heaven. However, the character of our modern world requires that steps
taken to transform the public sphere respect and reflect the complexity of modern society. We are not just so many individuals sorted into
different social classes. We are rather members of a number of sub-groups, perhaps defined by race, class, gender or religion, as well as
members of the larger body politic. What will be needed is a confluence of these autonomous publics or distinct interest groups coming
together in common concern for the preservation of democratic life. The public sphere will have to include many more voices than it did in the
time of Samuel Johnson, and the consensus on social goods may seem even more elusive; but the dynamics of the process, so argues
Habermas, will help ensure the preservation of a human society.
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Framework Cards
Deliberation requires a predetermined subject—they over-determine the rez more than us by
assuming debates are the ultimate arbiter of its value as opposed to a means to facilitate clash
Adolf G. Gundersen, Associate Professor of Political Science, Texas A&M, 2000
POLITICAL THEORY AND PARTISAN POLITICS, 2000, p. 104-5. (DRGNS/E625)
Indirect political engagement is perhaps the single most important element of the strategy I am recommending here. It is also the most
emblematic, as it results from a fusion of confrontation and separation. But what kind of political engagement might conceivably qualify as
being both confrontational and separated from actual political decision-making? There is only one type, so far as I can see, and that is
deliberation. Political deliberation is by definition a form of engagement with the collectivity of which one is a member. This is all the more true
when two or more citizens deliberate together. Yet deliberation
is also a form of political action that precedes the
actual taking and implementation of decisions. It is thus simultaneously connected and disconnected,
confrontational and separate. It is, in other words, a form of indirect political engagement. This
conclusion, namely, that we ought to call upon deliberation to counter partisanship and thus clear the
way for deliberation, looks rather circular at first glance. And, semantically at least, it certainly is. Yet
this ought not to concern us very much. Politics, after all, is not a matter of avoiding semantic
inconveniences, but of doing the right thing and getting desirable results. In political theory, therefore,
the real concern is always whether a circular argument translates into a self-defeating prescription.
And here that is plainly not the case, for what I am suggesting is that deliberation can diminish partisanship, which
will in turn contribute to conditions amenable to continued or extended deliberation. That "deliberation promotes deliberation" is surely a
circular claim, but it is just as surely an accurate description of the real world of lived politics, as observers as far back as Thucydides have
documented. It may well be that deliberation rests on certain preconditions. I am not arguing that there is no such thing as a deliberative "first
cause." Indeed, it seems obvious to me both that deliberators
require something to deliberate about and that
deliberation presumes certain institutional structures and shared values. Clearly something must get
the deliberative ball rolling and, to keep it rolling, the cultural terrain must be free of deep chasms and
sinkholes. Nevertheless, however extensive and demanding deliberation's preconditions might be, we
ought not to lose sight of the fact that, once begun, deliberation tends to be self-sustaining. Just as
partisanship begets partisanship, deliberation begets deliberation. If that is so, the question of limiting
partisanship and stimulating deliberation are to an important extent the same question.
Competition through fair play is a dialogical process that encourages argumentative testing and
mutual recognition of personhood
Rawls 58 – a leading figure in moral and political philosophy (John, Justice as Fairness, Philosophical
Review, April, JSTOR)
Similarly, the
acceptance of the duty of fair play by participants in a common practice is a reflection in
each person of the recognition of the aspirations and interests of the others to be realized by their
joint activity. Failing a special explanation, their acceptance of it is a necessary part of the criterion for their
recognizing one another as persons with similar interests and capacities, as the conception of their relations in the
general position supposes them to be. Otherwise they would show no recognition of one another as persons with
similar capacities and interests, and indeed, in some cases perhaps hypothetical, they would not recognize one another
as persons at all, but as complicated objects involved in a complicated activity. To recognize another
as a person one must respond to him and act towards him in certain ways; and these ways are
intimately connected with the various prima facie duties. Acknowledging these duties in some degree, and so having the
elements of morality, is not a matter of choice, or of intuiting moral qualities, or a matter of the expression of feelings or attitudes (the three interpretations
between which philosophical opinion frequently oscillates); it is simply the possession of one of the forms of conduct in which the recognition of others as
persons is manifested. These remarks are unhappily obscure. Their main purpose here, however, is to forestall, together with the remarks in Section 4, the
misinterpretation that, on the view presented, the
acceptance of justice and the acknowledgment of the duty of fair
play depends in every day life solely on there being a de facto balance of forces between the parties. It would
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indeed be foolish to underestimate the importance of such a balance in securing justice; but it is not the only
basis thereof. The recognition of one another as persons with similar interests and capacities engaged in a
common practice must, failing a special explanation, show itself in the acceptance of the principles of justice and
the acknowledgment of the duty of fair play.
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Free Trade Good
Free and liberal trade is a good thing – laundry list of reasons
Tupy ‘6 [Marian L. Tupy is assistant director of the Project on Global Economic Liberty specializing in the
study of Europe and sub-Saharan Africa at the Cato Institute, “Free Trade Benefits All”, published 1/3/6,
accessed 7/23/13, < http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/free-trade-benefits-all>] //pheft
Trade liberalization talks in Hong Kong ended with a deal to further liberalize access for poor
countries’ exports to rich countries’ markets. Urged on by the misguided nongovernmental organizations, poor countries
wasted an excellent opportunity to enhance their own prosperity by opening their markets to foreign competition, however.¶ Therefore,
benefits of trade liberalization for many poor countries, especially those in Africa, are likely to be severely limited. So it is worthwhile to again
restate the case for free trade and to back it with evidence countries open to trade tend to be more prosperous than protectionist countries.¶
There is ample evidence people have been trading with one another since earliest times. As
economists James Gwartney of Florida State University and Richard Stroup of Montana State University put it in their book
“What Everyone Should Know about Economics and Prosperity,” the motivation for trade can be
summed up in the phrase, “If you do something good for me, I will do something good for you.”¶ There
are three important reasons voluntary exchange is good not only for the contracting parties but the
world as a whole:¶ (1) Trade improves global efficiency in resource allocation. A glass of water may be of little
value to someone living near the river but is priceless to a person crossing the Sahara. Trade delivers goods and services to
those who value them most.¶ (2) Trade allows partners to gain from specializing in the producing
those goods and services they do best. Economists call that the law of comparative advantage. When producers create goods
they are comparatively skilled at, such as Germans producing beer and the French producing wine, those goods increase in abundance and
quality.¶ (3) Trade allows consumers to benefit from more efficient production methods. For example, without
large markets for goods and services, large production runs would not be economical. Large production runs, in turn, are instrumental to
reducing product costs. Lower production costs lead to cheaper goods and services, which raises real living standards.¶ Evidence
supports the idea nations more open to trade tend to be richer than those that are less open.
Columbia University economist Arvind Panagariya wrote in a paper “Miracles and Debacles: Do Free-Trade Skeptics Have a
Case?”: “On the poverty front, there is overwhelming evidence that trade openness is a more
trustworthy friend of the poor than protectionism. Few countries have grown rapidly without a
simultaneous rapid expansion of trade. In turn, rapid growth has almost always led to reduction in
poverty.”
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Heg Turn
Liberalism is key to hegemony
Nash 6-Retired US Army Major General [William, “The ICC and the Deployment of U.S. Armed Forces”,
2006, http://www.amacad.org/publications/icc9.aspx]
Thus U.S. military power is more effectively employed when its actions are endorsed as consistent with international norms and broadly shared
objectives and when U.S. forces act in coalition and in conjunction with nations and institutions that undertake political, social, and economic
efforts. Securing
international support, while not determining, has become increasingly important for
advancing U.S. security interests. The overwhelming vote against the U.S. proposal to allow states to shelter their nationals form
the ICC shows that most nations, including some of the strongest allies of the United States, recoil at what
they perceive as an open display of U.S. exceptionalism. This perception is dangerous. Over the long term, it
undermines the capacity of the United States to lead. The ICC unfortunately is not the only issue fueling this perception.
But because it goes to the heart of accountability international norms and because it is the first new international security institution in
decades, it is a particularly resonant issue by which to measure U.S. attitude toward global leadership. This places a heavy burden on opponents
of the ICC to demonstrate why it is not in U.S. interests to join the Court. The United States does not conduct coalition operations because it
could not achieve its military objectives without the assistance of other nations. Put bluntly, the United States can accomplish virtually any
strictly military task it is ordered to carry out. Rather, the United States works in partnership with others to accomplish a variety of objectivesand political objectives are at the forefront. Leading coalitions can be trying, time-consuming, and resource intensive. The associated costs and
uncertainties cannot be predicted. But leadership
of the United States, and its ability to sustain its credibility and
effectiveness as a leader in the twenty-first century, hinges in no small part on its willingness to lead with
and through other nations. In addition, the ICC is the first security-related international institution since the United Nations. U.S.
absence from the Court would be a significant and supremely isolating act. It will underscore U.S. ambivalence about joining in collective efforts
and institutions to enhance security, an attitude that, however reasonably presented, weakens the claim of the United States to international
leadership. Other nations increasingly question the intentions of a leading power that appears willing to lead exclusively on its own terms. The
United States loses leverage and credibility by fueling impressions that its cooperation in international
politics requires an exemption from the rules. From a purely pragmatic standpoint, the United States can do more to advance
national interests (and the interests of U.S. servicemembers) by signing the Treaty than it could by continuing to -oppose the ICC. To no small
degree, the Court's efficacy and impact will hinge on the appointment of capable, fair, and apolitical officials. The United States has everything
to gain from helping to choose those individuals. The United States will be in a better position to ensure an appropriate U.N. Security Council
role regarding the definition of aggression if ever the Assembly of States Parties were to entertain discussions on that contentious issue.
Ignoring the Court accomplishes little. It seems, on balance, prudent to sign the Treaty. The United States has lost much of the moral high
ground in the effort to shape the ICC. While much time can be spent lamenting U.S. actions and rhetoric before, during, and after the Rome
Conference, the future offers the only possibility for change. The sources of military concern are understandable, but they hinge on a need to
believe the absolute worst of an institution and a process instead of on a commitment to ensure that it works as intended. Moreover, by
trumpeting its uniqueness and appearing to demand special treatment, the United States corrodes its
own power and authority.
Hegemony is key to access global stability and every major impact – multiple warrants
Kaplan ’13 [Robert D. Kaplan is Chief Geopolitical Analyst at Stratfor, a geopolitical analysis firm, and
author of the bestselling book The Revenge of Geography, “The World Still Needs American Muscle”,
published 5/23/13, accessed 7/23/13, <
http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2013/05/23/the_world_still_needs_american_hard_power_10
5179-2.html>] //pheft
Hard power has not been in vogue since the Iraq War turned badly in about 2004. In foreign policy journals and at elite
conferences, the talk for years has been about "soft power," "the power of persuasion" and the need to revitalize the U.S. State Department as
opposed to the Pentagon: didn't
you know, it's about diplomacy, not military might! Except when it isn't;
except when members of this same elite argue for humanitarian intervention in places like Libya and
Syria. Then soft power be damned.¶ The fact is that hard power is supremely necessary in today's
world, for reasons having nothing to do with humanitarian intervention. Indeed, the Harvard professor and former government official,
Joseph S. Nye, Jr., who, in 2004, actually coined the term "soft power" in an eponymous book, has always been subtle enough in his own
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thinking to realize how relevant hard power remains.¶ As
I write, the two areas of the world that are most important
in terms of America's long-term economic and political interests -- Asia and Europe -- are undergoing
power shifts. The growth of Chinese air and naval power is beginning to rearrange the correlation of forces in Asia,
while the weakening of the European Union in geopolitical terms -- because of its ongoing fiscal crisis -- is providing an
opportunity for a new Russian sphere of influence to emerge in Central and Eastern Europe. Of course, both challenges
require robust diplomacy on America's part. But fundamentally what they really require is a steadfast commitment
of American hard power. And the countries in these two most vital regions are not bashful about
saying so.¶ Security officials in countries as diverse as Japan and Poland, Vietnam and Romania
desperately hope that all this talk about American soft power overtaking American hard power is merely that -- talk.
For it is American warships and ground forces deployments that matter most to these countries and their
officials. Indeed, despite the disappointing conclusions to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, rarely before has American hard power been so
revered in places that actually matter.¶ Asia is the world's demographic and economic hub, as well as the region where the
great sea lines of communication coalesce. And unless China undergoes a profound political and economic
upheaval -- of a degree not yet on the horizon -- the Middle Kingdom will present the United States with its
greatest 21st century competitor. In the face of China's military rise, Japan is shedding its quasi-pacifistic
orientation and adopting a positive attitude toward military expansion. In a psychological sense, Japan no longer takes
the American air and naval presence in Northeast Asia for granted. It actively courts American hard power in the face of a territorial dispute
with China over islands in the East China Sea. Japan knows that, ultimately, it is only American hard power that can balance against China in the
region. For
South Korea, too, American hard power is critical. Though the South Korean military can ably
against North Korea's, again, it is America's air and naval presence in the region that provides
for a favorable balance of power that defends Seoul against Pyongyang and its ally in Beijing. As for Taiwan, its very
defend itself
existence as a state depends on the American military's Pacific presence.¶ Don't tell officials in the Philippines that American hard power is any
less relevant than in previous decades. Like Japan, after years of taking the U.S. Navy and Air Force for granted, Manila
is literally
desperate for American military support and presence against China, with which it disputes potentially
resource-rich islands and geographical features in the South China Sea. Like Japan and South Korea, the Philippines
is a formal treaty ally of the United States: that is to say, these countries matter. As for Taiwan, it is arguably one of the finest examples of a
functioning democracy in the world beyond the West, as well as geopolitically vital because of its position on the main sea lines of
communication. Thus, Taiwan too, matters greatly.¶ Vietnam, for its part, has emerged as a critical de facto ally of the United States. It is the
single most important Southeast Asian country preventing China's domination of the strategically crucial South China Sea. And what is Vietnam
doing? It is refitting Cam Ranh Bay as a deep-water harbor, officially to attract navies from India, Russia and elsewhere; but especially to attract
the U.S. Navy.¶ Malaysia plays down its close relationship with the United States, as part of a delicate diplomatic minuet to get along with both
China and the Muslim world. Nevertheless, the number of visits of American warships to Malaysian ports has jumped from three annually in
2003 to well over 50. As for Singapore, one of its diplomats told me: "We see American hard power as benign. The U.S. Navy defends
globalization by protecting the sea lanes, which we, more than any other people, benefit from. To us, there is nothing dark or conspiratorial
about the United States and its vast security apparatus."¶ In 1998, the Singaporeans built Changi Naval Base solely to host American nuclearpowered aircraft carriers and submarines. In 2011, there were 150 American warship visits to Singapore. Then there are the four American
littoral combat ships that, it was announced in 2011, would be stationed in Singapore.¶ At the other end of Eurasia, whatever their public
comments, diplomats from countries in Central and Eastern Europe are worried about any American shift away from hard power. In the 1990s,
the security situation looked benevolent to them. They were in the process of joining NATO and the European Union, even as Russia was
weakened by chaos under Boris Yeltsin's undisciplined rule. Following centuries of interminable warfare, they were finally escaping history, in
other words. Now NATO and the European Union -- so vigorous and formidable in the 1990s -- look fundamentally infirm. Meanwhile, Russia
has been, for the moment, revitalized through a combination of natural gas revenues and Vladimir Putin's dynamic authoritarianism-lite. Russia
once again beckons on the doorstep of Europe, and the Poles, Romanians and others are scared.¶ Forget
NATO. With declining
defense budgets of almost all European member states, NATO is to be taken less and less seriously. The
Poles, Romanians and so on now require unilateral U.S. hard power. For years already, the Poles and Romanians have
been participating in U.S. military missions in Afghanistan, Iraq and sub-Saharan Africa. They have been doing so much less because they
actually believe in those missions, but in order to prove their mettle as reliable allies of the United States -- so that the United States military
will be there for them in any future hour of need.¶ As
for the Middle East, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries all
desperately require U.S. hard power: If not specifically for an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, then
certainly in order to promote a balance of power unfavorable to Iran's regional hegemony. ¶ Soft
power became a trendy concept in the immediate wake of America's military overextension in Iraq and
Afghanistan. But soft power was properly meant as a critical accompaniment to hard power and as a shift
in emphasis away from hard power, not as a replacement for it. Hard power is best employed not when America invades
a country with its ground troops but when it daily projects military might over vast swaths of the earth, primarily with
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air and naval assets, in order to protect U.S. allies, world trade and a liberal maritime order. American hard power, thus, must never go out of
fashion.
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Impact Answer
The type of neoliberalism that Schmitt advocates causes structural violence and poverty – this is
especially true in the context of Latin America
Sanchez ‘6 [Magaly Sanchez R., Senior Researcher at the Office of Population Research at Princeton
University, “Insecurity and Violence as a New Power Relation in Latin America”, published in Annals of
the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 606, Chronicle ofa Myth Foretold: The
Washington Consensus in Latin America (Jul., 2006), pp. 178-195, accessed 7/14/13, JSTOR] //pheft
Violence has been a prominent social response¶ to the application of structural adjustment¶ policies
throughout Latin America. As the nation¶ state has become less able to negotiate socially¶ and
politically with mobilized sectors of society,¶ it has increasingly imposed violent measures of¶ social
control. The nation-state refers to a particular segment of global geography characterized¶ by distinct cultural forms, social structures, political alliances, societal negotiations, and market¶ interventions (Poulantzas
1978). Increasingly,¶ states have had to resort to violence to maintain ¶ order or simply to justify their own
legitimacy, as¶ indicated by the growing presence ofthe military¶ in the streets of Latin American cities.
The appli¶ cation of state force is inherent in the politics of¶ economic austerity, and its ubiquity throughout¶ the region suggests that, at the very least, it con¶ stitutes a necessary condition for the incorpora¶ tion of nations
As the coercive power of the state has come to be applied more widely, it¶
inevitably has affected the interests and well-being of the middle and profes¶ sional classes, whose
members, in turn, have risen in resistance along with other¶ segments of the population that
historically have been segregated and excluded¶ in Latin America. Their opposition takes diverse forms, ranging from quiet pub¶ lic protests (e.g.,
into the global market economy¶ under neoliberalism.¶
Argentina's Mothers ofthe Plaza de Mayo) to massive political¶ mobilizations (The anti-Toledo demonstrations in Peru) to radical expressions of¶ violence through terrorism and armed revolt (the Zapatista uprising in Mexico). ¶
A paradoxical consequence of structural reform thus appears to be that to maintain "democratic
order" in the face of unpopular economic and fiscal policies,¶ regimes turn to force. As a result,
nominally "democratic" states find themselves¶ relying on violence to maintain political control and
achieve stability, contracting¶ their own ideology of democracy and human rights and ultimately
undermining¶ their own legitimacy.¶ The social expression of violence in Latin America occurred in three historical¶ moments, each characterized by its own form of violence. First
came structural¶ violence, the rampant economic inequality, social exclusion, and persistent poverty ¶
arising from the imposition of neoliberal economic policies. In response came¶ two other kinds of collective violence, one political and the other criminal.
As the¶ urgency of circumstances facing middle- and working-class people increased,¶ many turned to radical violence, leading to successive waves of strikes, demon¶ strations, and insurrections throughout the region. At the
same time, the situa¶ tion ofthe poor and the young deteriorated, and many of them turned to criminal ¶ violence in the form of youth gangs, criminal mafias, and drug cartels. If "unstable ¶ social equilibrium" refers to the
tenuous stability under which the powerful nego¶ tiate political compromises with diverse interests to maintain social control, then ¶ rising violence and growing insecurity suggest a new "social disequilibrium" and ¶ a progressive
This situation has created a¶ self-feeding cycle
whereby neoliberal policies¶ generate high rates of inequality, exclusion, poverty, and alienation,
which yield a¶ rising tide of both radical and criminal violence, which triggers more state coer¶ cion,
which, in turn, encourages more violent resistance from below. The end¶ result is a militarized elite facing a mobilized and hostile population made
loss of control throughout Latin America. In the region's largest cities,¶ disorder and violence become part of daily life.¶
up not¶ just of the urban poor and unemployed but also disaffected technical, manager¶ ial, and professional classes who have found their living standards eroded by the¶ devaluation of wages and the accompanying decrease in
Under these conditions of generalized discontent and instability, the institutions¶ of
democracy lose flexibility, and the paternalistic state of old reemerges to offer¶ models of
authoritarian repression and militarized violence to establish order.¶ Thus, a situation marked by poverty and exclusion leads increasingly to
purchasing power.¶
urgent¶ circumstances and radicalized responses, causing people and classes to intercon¶ nect and integrate in multiple ways to oppose the structural violence ofthe state. ¶ Neoliberalism thus ends up producing more
polarization and less democracy¶ than the state-centered development models prominent in Latin America during ¶ earlier periods (Portes and Hoffman 2003). Understanding popular violence as a ¶ consequence of structural
Rather than demanding harsher¶ and more repressive
measures to "restore law and order" and "punish lawbreakers,"¶ a structural perspective views the
reform of the state itself as the best means to¶ reduce violence and restore social stability; but it
requires policy makers to abandon¶ journalist dichotomies such asformality-informality, legalityillegality, victim-attacker,¶ and criminal-citizen (Galtung 1998; Hernandez 2002).
violence focuses attention away from the repercussions¶ of violence toward its social and economic causes.
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Lank Turns
Generic
The United States’ policy towards Latin America are made up of homogenization – this turns the K
Petras ‘2 [James Petras – writer for The Monthly Review (a quasi-Marxist think tank) and professor of
Sociology at the State University of New York, “U.S. Offensive in Latin America
Coups, Retreats, and Radicalization”, 2002, Volume 54, Issue 01 (May), accessed 7/16/13,
<http://monthlyreview.org/2002/05/01/u-s-offensive-in-latin-america#top> ] //pheft
Introduction¶ The
worldwide U.S. military-political offensive is manifest in multiple contexts in Latin
America. The U.S. offensive aims to prop up decaying client regimes, destabilize independent regimes,
pressure the center-left to move to the right, and destroy or isolate the burgeoning popular
movements challenging the U.S. empire and its clients. We will discuss the particular forms of the U.S. offensive in each
country, and then explore the specific and general reasons for the offensive in contemporary Latin America. In the concluding section we will
discuss the political alternatives in the context of the U.S. offensive.¶ Military-Political Offensive: Diverse Approaches, Singular Goal¶ The
most striking aspect of the U.S. military-political offensive in Latin America is the diverse tactics
utilized to establish or consolidate client regimes and defeat popular socio-political movements
opposed to imperial domination.¶ The focus of high intensity U.S. intervention is in Colombia and
Venezuela. In both countries, Washington has high stakes, involving political, economic, and
ideological interests, as well as geopolitical considerations. Each country faces both the Caribbean and the Andean
countries, as well as Brazil. The emergence of a revolutionary regime in Colombia or the stabilization of a nationalist regime in Venezuela could
inspire similar transformations in the adjoining regions and undermine U.S. control via its client regimes. Moreover, significant political changes
could affect U.S. control over oil production and supply, not only in Venezuela and Colombia, but also in Mexico and Ecuador, where pressure
might build against the privatization process. Washington, at all costs, wants to maintain a secure supply of oil in the current period of
undeclared war against the Gulf Oil producers—namely Iraq and Iran—and in the face of an increasingly vulnerable Saudi Arabia.¶
Geopolitically, socio-political transformations in Colombia and Venezuela could ultimately lead to an integration pact with revolutionary Cuba,
Washington’s ultimate nightmare. At risk is Washington’s forty-year embargo of Cuba and the fate of the primary new instrument of imperial
control of Latin America—the U.S.-sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).¶ Washington
has adopted different
strategies in each of the two countries. To defeat the popular insurgency in Colombia, it has embraced
a total war strategy. In Venezuela, it pursues a combined civil political-economic destabilization
strategy planned to culminate in a military coup.¶ Washington’s counterinsurgency strategy in Colombia has operated
under cover of an anti-narcotics campaign. The anti-narcotics campaign has centered on regions where the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC) has been strongest, while virtually ignoring the areas controlled by paramilitary clients of the Colombian Armed Forces. The
political-military advance of the FARC in the late 1990s forced the Colombian government to the negotiating table and increased its
dependence on the United States for military aid and advisors. In Washington (and in Colombia) the “peace negotiations” were seen as a
temporary tactic to forestall a full-scale FARC assault on the urban centers of power, gain time to build up the military capability of the
Colombian Armed Forces, and strengthen and extend the scope and depth of U.S. military influence on the military-paramilitary forces and
military strategy. The government peace negotiators also hoped to entice or split the FARC by offering them an electoral option, as was done in
El Salvador and Guatemala. The FARC, cognizant of the brutal assassination of more than four thousand leftist political activists in the mid-tolate 1980s and of the abject failure of the Central American guerrillas turned electoral politicians to bring about any meaningful social changes,
refused to surrender. They insisted on basic reforms of state structures and the economy as preconditions for any durable peace settlement.
These proposals for democratic and socioeconomic reforms were totally unacceptable to the United States and the regime of President Andrés
Pastrana, which instead aimed at greater militarization of political life and liberalization of the economy.¶ Throughout the period of peace
negotiations, Washington and Pastrana combined peace rhetoric with funding and promotion of paramilitary groups (via the Colombian
military), which were involved in the capture and destruction of villages and towns, displacing millions of peasants and trade unionists and
killing thousands of peasants suspected of having leftist sympathies. The idea was to isolate the FARC within the demilitarized zone; to train,
arm, and mass troops on the borders; to carry on high tech electronic surveys to identify strategic targets; and then to break off negotiations
abruptly and blitz the region with a land and air attack, capturing or killing the FARC leaders and demoralizing the fleeing insurgents. Needless
to say, the tactics failed. The guerrillas continue to be active outside of the peace zone; they strengthened their forces within the demilitarized
zone; and they suffered no serious losses when Pastrana broke off peace negotiations.¶ Washington has made Colombia the test case for its
political-military offensive in Latin America. This is because the FARC is the most powerful anti-imperialist formation contending for state power
and also because the FARC controls territory bordering on Venezuela, and is perceived as an ally of President Hugo Chavez. Defeating the FARC
would allow Washington to increase the external pressure on Venezuela and reinforce the internal destabilization campaign.¶ As the political
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base of the Colombian regime erodes—due to the prolonged recession and social cutbacks resulting from the huge military budget—the United
States escalates its military support. The entire Colombian economy is now subordinated to the U.S. military strategy; and the military strategy
is directed by a scorched earth, total war policy. This means that all Colombian civilian and economic considerations are secondary to
Washington’s primary interests in winning the war against the FARC.¶ Given the strength and experience of the FARC and the formidable
strategic capacity of its leader, Manuel Marulanda, and his general staff, the U.S.-Colombian war promises to be prolonged and bloody, marked
by a continuous major escalation of U.S. intervention, increased use of paramilitary terror, and greater indiscriminate bombing of civilian
targets. Nonetheless a military victory by the United States is very doubtful; the end result may be nearer to Vietnam than Afghanistan.¶ The
first signs that Washington’s offensive may have a boomerang effect are visible in Colombia. Less than two weeks after Washington pressured
President Pastrana to end the peace talks and declare the demilitarized area a war zone, the first general to lead troops into the zone resigned.
He publicly declared that military victory was impossible. The FARC’s successful military offensive following the end of the peace talks led the
U.S. Ambassador to Colombia to admit that Plan Colombia was a failure.¶ In contrast to the scorched earth military strategy in Colombia,
Washington is implementing a civil-military approach to overthrow President Chavez in Venezuela. Chavez is a liberal nationalist; he has
followed a fairly orthodox domestic economic policy while pursuing an independent nationalist foreign policy. U.S. strategy is multiphased and
combines media, civic, and economic attacks with efforts to provoke fissures in the military, all aimed at encouraging a military coup.¶ The
first phase of this struggle is to destabilize the economy, via closely coordinated actions with client
business and professional groups, and corrupt right-wing trade union bosses. The purpose is to
mobilize public opposition, and focus mass media attention on the instability of the country, thus
inhibiting investment from less politicized capitalists, who are fearful of declining profits in a
conflictual situation. The mass media are engaged in a systematic propaganda campaign to overthrow
the Chavez regime, advocating a violent seizure of power. Government and public protests against the
subversive behavior of the mass media allows Washington to orchestrate an international campaign
against “violations of free speech,” particularly via the U.S.-influenced Inter-American Press
Association.¶ The second phase of the Bush Administration’s strategy is to move from destabilization directly toward a military coup. This
involves two steps. The first is to mobilize U.S. intelligence assets, retired officials and those labeled “dissidents” among the active military
officers from the more reactionary branches of the military—in the case of Venezuela, the air force and navy. The idea is to force a political
discussion in the military command, provoke other like-minded officials to come out in defense of the expelled officers, and to reinforce the
mass media-business message of the instability and imminent fall of Chavez, thus further stimulating capital flight. The second step is to
organize authoritarian navy and air force officials to put pressure on the army—the main bulwark of Chavez’s support—to gain adherents,
neutralize apolitical officers, and isolate Chavez loyalists. Washington’s two step approach is to culminate in a military coup with active U.S.
military support, in which a “transitional civic-military junta” rules.¶ Linked with its internal strategy, Washington has implemented an external
strategy. Secretary of State Colin Powell has publicly denounced Chavez as authoritarian, and both Powell and the IMF have publicly stated
their support for a “transitional government”—a clear signal of U.S. support for those hoping to stage a coup. U.S. Special Forces now operate
in Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Panama, Afghanistan, Yemen, the Philippines, Georgia, Uzbekistan, and other Central Asian client states. It is more
than likely that, in the event of a coup attempt, the Pentagon will send tactical operatives and political advisers to guide the coup and ensure
that the appropriate configuration of civilian personalities emerges for propaganda purposes.¶ The dangers facing the Venezuelan regime is
that in Washington’s war of political attrition, where daily propaganda barrages and provocative actions abound, Chavez cannot depend on
constant mass mobilizations. He must actually implement immediate radical redistributive socioeconomic policies to sustain mass
commitments and active organized support. The U.S.-orchestrated offensive is geared to creating permanent tension as a psychological weapon
to exhaust popular support and undermine army morale.¶ Chavez’s independent foreign policy is what antagonizes the United States: his
opposition to Plan Colombia; his criticism of the U.S. war in Afghanistan and the worldwide imperial offensive; his cordial relations with Iraq,
Libya, Iran, and Cuba; and his refusal to allow the United States to colonize Venezuelan airspace. Unfortunately, this foreign policy has not been
adequately complemented by a series of comprehensive socioeconomic reforms affecting the welfare of millions of his unemployed and poorly
paid supporters living in the slums and shanty towns.¶ U.S. efforts to overthrow Chavez are based on his refusal, in early October, to back
Washington’s worldwide imperial offensive—the so-called war against terrorism. Close advisers to President Chavez informed me that a
delegation of high officials from Washington visited Chavez and bluntly informed him that he would “pay a high price for his opposition to
President Bush.” Shortly thereafter the local business federation and trade union bosses launched their campaigns—even though President
Chavez had introduced a very modest tax reform (mostly affecting foreign oil companies), put in place a compensated land purchase plan, and
privatized the major publicly-owned electrical enterprise company in Caracas.¶ Clearly, Chavez’s attempt to ride two horses—an independent
foreign policy and liberal reform domestic policy—makes him very vulnerable to the U.S.-designed coup strategy. U.S. imperial tactics in
Venezuela differ substantially from Colombia, largely because in one case it is defending a client state against a popular insurgency, and in the
other trying to create a civilian movement to provoke a coup. Strategically, however, the political goal is the same: to consolidate a client
regime which will subordinate the country to the imperial project embodied in the FTAA, and which will become a willing vassal in policing the
Latin American empire, perhaps supplying mercenaries for new overseas wars.¶ Argentina is the third country in which Washington is
intervening. Following the mass popular uprising of December 19–20, 2001 and the fall of five client presidents, Washington began to work
through a multiphased strategy which was designed to continue the transfer of billions of dollars in assets to U.S. companies, prejudice
European competitors, and resecure a privileged position in the Argentine political and economic system. The collapse of the client regime of
Fernando De la Rua and the weakness of the regime of Eduardo Duhalde have led Washington to turn to its wholly controlled civilian clients
(former President Carlos Menem and former minister of economy Ricardo Lopez Murphy) and the military intelligence apparatus—relatively
intact since the days of the bloody dictatorship.¶ Washington’s problem with the Duhalde regime is not his rectification of populist measures
(he has agreed to partial debt payments, has sworn unconditional support of the U.S. global offensive, proposes to limit spending, etc.). The
U.S. problem is that Duhalde cannot forcefully fulfill his commitments to the IMF and Wall Street. The popular movements are growing in size
and activity and they are more organized and radical. In their assemblies they are raising fundamental issues as well as immediate concerns.
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Their demands include repudiating the foreign debt, nationalizing the banks and strategic economic sectors, and redistributing income—in a
word repudiating the neoliberal model, at a time when the United States is pushing to extend and deepen its control via the FTAA.¶ There is
little doubt that the Duhalde regime is prepared to meet most of the demands of the IMF—but he lacks the power to implement the whole
austerity package and bailout of the banks in the time frame and under the conditions which Washington and the IMF demand. Budget cuts
ignite more demonstrations among teachers and public employees; the bailout of the foreign banks requires the continued confiscation of
private savings; and slashing the provincial budgets provokes greater unemployment, hunger, and revolts. The Duhalde regime has already
increased the level of repression and unleashed its street thugs, but the movements still proliferate and the thin veneer of legitimacy is
dissolving. The director of the CIA, George J. Tenet, has already pointed out the U.S. “preoccupation” with instability in Argentina. The U.S.
assets in the Argentine intelligence apparatus are floating trial balloons, evaluating the response to rumors of a military coup. These tentative,
exploratory moves are designed to secure a consensus among the military, financial, and economic elites—together with the U.S. and
European, especially Spanish, bankers and multinationals. The U.S. and European mass media have begun to resonate with Washington’s
evolving strategy—writing of chaos, breakdown, and chronic instability of the civilian regime.¶ Washington is pointing toward a civic-military
regime, if and when Duhalde resigns or is overthrown. Washington’s strategy is to decapitate the popular opposition. The plan can be
summarized as the three “m’s”: a regime configured with Menem, Murphy, and the military. Their lack of any social support among the middle
and urban poor means that they would constitute a regime of force.¶ In summary, Washington is working on two tracks: on the one hand,
pressuring Duhalde to conform to its demands by assuming full dictatorial powers; and on the other hand, preparing the conditions for a new
authoritarian torture regime.¶ The reversion to client military dictatorships with a civic facade will not prevent the Bush Administration from
claiming to be defending democracy and free markets. The U.S. mass media can and will embellish on this and any variety of related motifs.¶
Washington’s militarization strategy is also evident in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Paraguay, where client regimes, stripped of any popular legitimacy,
impose Washington’s formula of free markets in Latin America and protectionism and subsidies in the United States.¶ In Brazil and Mexico,
Washington relies heavily on political and diplomatic instruments. In the case of Mexico, Washington has direct entrée to the administration of
Vicente Fox in economic policy, and a virtual agent in the Foreign Minister, Jorge Castaneda. The goal of Mexican subordination to U.S. policy is
not in question, as Fox and Castaneda are in total agreement. What is in question is the effectiveness of the regime in implementing that policy.
Fox’s effort to convert southern Mexico and Central America into one big U.S. assembly plant, tourist, and petroleum center (the PueblaPanama Plan) has run into substantial opposition. The massive shift of U.S. capital to cheaper labor in China has provoked large-scale
unemployment in Mexican border towns. The so-called reciprocal benefits of integration are glaringly absent. U.S. dumping of corn and other
agricultural commodities has devastated Mexican farmers and peasants. The U.S. takeover of all sectors of the Mexican economy (finance,
telecommunications, services, etc.) has led to massive outflows of profits and royalty payments. In foreign affairs, Washington’s influence has
never been greater, as Castaneda crudely mouths the policies of the U.S. Defense Department and CIA—declaring unconditional support for the
U.S. policy in Afghanistan and any future military interventions, and grossly intervening in Cuban internal politics, provoking the worst incident
in Cuban-Mexican diplomatic relations in recent history. Castaneda’s anti-Cuban interventions on behalf of Washington backfired, with the
great majority of the Mexican political class calling for his censure or resignation. Yet, it is clear that the mere presence of such an unabashed
promoter of U.S. policy in the Fox Administration is indicative of Washington’s aggressive conquest of space in the Mexican political system.
The powerful presence of U.S. corporations, banks, and numerous regional and local client politicians facilitates the recolonization of Mexico—
against an increasingly restive and impoverished labor force.¶ In Brazil, the U.S. has been active in both the political and economic sphere. Its
backing of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso produced unprecedented results: the virtual sell-off of the principle public
telecommunications, financial, natural resource, and commercial sectors. More significantly, the linkup between U.S. and European capital, and
Brazilian media empires, and big business sectors has had a powerful influence on the political class and on shaping electoral politics. This
power bloc has succeeded in turning center-left electoral politicians to the right in order to secure the media access and financial support to
win national elections. U.S. hegemony over Brazil is a political process. Influence moves through local and regional power brokers and national
media monopolies. The U.S. offensive’s most recent conquest is the leadership of the so-called Worker’s Party and in particular its presidential
candidate, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In response to the U.S. offensive, Lula selected a millionaire textile magnate from the right-wing Liberal
Party as his vice presidential candidate. He has tried to ingratiate himself by seeking a meeting with Henry Kissinger, declaring loyalty to the IMF
and pledging to honor the foreign debt and the privatized industries. The right turn of Lula and the Workers Party means that all major electoral
parties remain within the U.S. orbit, and guarantees uncontested U.S. hegemony over the political class.¶ In
summary, the U.S.
imperial offensive has adopted a variety of tactics and approaches in different countries in a variety of
military-political contexts. While giving greater primacy to military intervention and military coups
(always with some sort of civilian facade), Washington continues to instrumentalize its political and
diplomatic clients, and turn its political adversaries.¶ The strategic goal of constructing an empire
based on direct economic domination faces a great variety of political, social, and military obstacles,
particularly evident in Colombia, Venezuela, and Argentina. In other words, the imperial projection of
power is far from realized. It is enmeshed in a series of conflictual relations, in a context where the
past socioeconomic failures of the empire do not create a favorable terrain for easy advance or
provide any justification for assuming an inevitable victory. On the contrary, the current imperial
offensive is in part the result of severe setbacks in recent years, and the growth of opponents among
previous supporters in the middle class in some countries.
Venezuela
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The US has and continues to view Latin America as its backyard and Venezuela has historically been at
the forefront – this is especially true with Chavez dead now – this attempt at domination turns the
agonism of the K
Greene ‘5 [Cort Greene – Writer for US Hands Off Venezuela, “The Monroe Doctrine, US Imperialism
and Venezuela”, published 11/8/5, accessed 7/16/13, <
http://www.handsoffvenezuela.org/monroe_doctrine_venezuela.htm>] //pheft
US Hands Off Venezuela Campaign organizer Cort Greene writes: This December marks the anniversaries of two of the
most important documents of the United States ruling class’ imperialist policy. These documents
epitomize the American imperialists’ paternalistic worldview, which they use to maintain their
political and economic interests, and to expropriate the markets, raw materials and labor of the
peoples of not only the western hemisphere but of the world.¶ The Monroe Doctrine of December 2, 1823, and the
Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine of December 6, 1904, are the bedrocks of expansionism and intervention which has caused so
much misery, death and impoverishment for millions across Latin America.¶ The
country of Venezuela has played no small
part in this history.¶ In the early decades of the 19th century, the South American Wars of Liberation were raging against Spanish
domination in Chile, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela.¶ One figure who rose to international prominence during these struggles was
Simon Bolivar. His vision of freedom from foreign domination, as well as the necessity of economic and social integration of the region has
become the inspiration for Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution¶ But he was not just a man of words.¶ At the Battle of Carabobo on June 24, 1821,
his brilliant military maneuvers sealed the fate of the Spanish forces in Venezuela, and shortly thereafter, assured the demise of their empire in
the region.¶ The
Monroe Doctrine was created to project the United States’ sphere of influence into the
Americas and fill the void left by Spain. It was also due to the upstart nation’s fear of Latin American
colonization by other more powerful European imperialists. In short, they saw Latin America as their own
"backyard" and field for exploitation. Even before setting out to impose their will on the peoples of Latin America, one of the
first applications of the spirit of the doctrine was the "internal imperialism" against the indigenous peoples of North America, oppressing and
obliterating entire civilizations in the country’s move westward. Hundreds of thousands of square miles belonging to Mexico were "acquired" as
well.¶ A
succession of presidents invoked the Monroe Doctrine in the annexations of Texas, California,
Oregon and to fend off European interest in the Yucatan and Mexico, and it was used as the
justification for the building a canal in Central America to control shipping and commerce. President
Cleveland used it to force a settlement in land dispute between Venezuela and Britain in 1895.¶ The Roosevelt Corollary¶ In 1902,
Venezuela could no longer placate the demands of European bankers and pay back its debt, so the
navies of Great Britain, Italy and Germany blockaded and fired on its coastal fortifications. Theodore
Roosevelt became fixated on the prospects of re-colonization of the hemisphere, and in 1903, he matched
threat with threat, warning the combatants that Admiral Dewey’s fleet would intervene. The navies
withdrew, and negotiations returned to the field of diplomacy.¶ Roosevelt’s Corollary, in an address to Congress, became an
amendment to the Monroe Doctrine which launched the era of the US as an international police force
through the use of its infamous "big stick." This opened the bloody history of US involvement on a grand scale, which haunts
the peoples of the region and the world to this day.¶ Though it has gone through many ideological contortions including
"dollar diplomacy," the "good neighbor" policy, the "Reagan Doctrine" and most recently, the "Bush Doctrine," the content has
remained the same. Some of the mechanisms of control include the School of the Americas, the Organization of American States, the
Inter-American Defense Board, Plan Colombia, the IMF and World Bank, NAFTA, CAFTA, and now the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. It
is clear from the above how the
Monroe Doctrine has been used to dominate the cultures, political life, and
economics of the Latin America, all the while integrating the labor, natural resources, productive and
financial structures into a system of capital accumulation for the benefit of US hegemony. ¶ As Karl Marx
explained, "The profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois civilization lies unveiled before our eyes, turning from its home, where
it assumes respectable forms, to the colonies, where it goes naked."¶ The
US has long considered Latin America its own
backyard and has tried to keep a stranglehold on the region. But through its own policies, a beacon of light has
appeared: Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution. Hugo Chavez and above all the Venezuelan grass roots movement have shown the masses of Latin
America a way out. Revolutionary waves are sweeping the region, and working people are engaged in a war with the exploiters on a mass scale.
The masses have shown an unquenchable fighting spirit: there is not one stable pro-US regime from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego, and
Washington is terrified of the implications.¶ From
1798 to 1993, the US used its armed forces to intervene in other
countries 234 times. Since then we seen the bombings of Yugoslavia and Sudan, the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and the US intervention in Haiti which was aimed also at Venezuela and Cuba.¶ In
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Venezuela the US has been waging a protracted covert struggle, fighting what the US Army manuals
call "fourth generational warfare" by using the National Endowment for Democracy, AID, the AFL-CIO’s
Solidarity House, some NGOs, corporations and others.
Mexico
Trade with Mexico is always associated with domination and imperialism – best source proves
Shor ’12 [FRANCIS SHOR is a professor in the History Department at Wayne State University, “U.S.
Economic Imperialism and Resistance from the Global South: A Prelude to OWS”, published in
NewPolitics Summer 2012 Vol:XIV-1 Whole #: 53, accessed 7/17/13, <http://newpol.org/content/useconomic-imperialism-and-resistance-global-south-prelude-ows>] //pheft
The devastation and disruption wrought by U.S. economic imperialism was obviously co-determined
by willing ruling classes in certain countries. In numerous instances, foreign governments and their colluding political and
economic elites helped to construct financial and political arrangements conducive to the array of domestic and foreign economic interests and
detrimental to the poor majority. For example, in
between the near bankruptcy in 1982 and the financial collapse in
the mid-1990s, the Mexican Government and various bankers aided a "Washington Consensus" that
tied the Reagan and Clinton Treasury Departments together with the IMF and private banks. Under Clinton’s
Secretary of Treasury, Robert Rubin, a former Citibank and Wall Street manager, private banks, including Citibank, used both the Mexican and
U.S. governments to salvage their bad economic investments. With the full participation of the Mexican presidents during this time, but
especially by Carlos Salinas de Gortari, neoliberal policies and programs were adopted that, among other changes, privatized former communal
farms and, in the process, forced Mexican peasants into the cities or across the U.S. border. Furthermore,
in taking away land
that had been used for subsistence farming and the growing of corn, U.S. corn imports, primarily the less nutritious
and even GMO yellow corn, flooded the Mexican markets. NAFTA accelerated U.S.-subsidized agricultural
imports, in particular, even though it did lead to the emergence and resistance by the Zapatistas and
others in Mexican civil society.¶ ¶ While primarily a response to the debt crisis and neoliberal policies
in Mexico, including the implementation of NAFTA, which, in turn, drove those on the margins into further economic and
political deprivation, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional—EZLN) opened a
significant front against U.S. economic imperialism and global neoliberalism. Embracing the legacy of political
struggles from the Mexican past, the Zapatistas also looked forward to creating a new and better world. In the January 1 missive that
accompanied their occupation in Chiapas, the legacy of past conflicts acknowledged the role of the
poor, despised, and marginalized: "We are the product of 500 years of struggles: first against slavery, in the
War of Independence against Spain led by the insurgents, then to keep from being absorbed by U.S.
expansionism, then to enact our Constitution and expel the French Empire from our land, then the
Porfiro Diaz dictatorship prevented the just application of the Reform laws and the people rebelled,
developing their own leadership, Villa and Zapata emerged, poor men like ourselves." After close to a year of public engagement
that saw the intervention of the Mexican army and the establishment of a wary truce, the EZLN issued another declaration about their political
intentions: "The Zapatista plan today remains the same as always: to change the world to make it better, more just, more free, more
democratic, that is, more human."
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
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Liberalism Good
Default to a liberal perspective, even Schmitt concedes movement has priority over
substance
Botwinick 5-PhD in Political Philosophy @ Princeton [Aryeh, “Same/Other versus Friend/Enemy:
Levinas contra Schmitt,” Telos Press, pg. 60]
In what from a liberal perspective must appear as the very perversity and wrong-headedness of his
stance, Schmitt unwittingly confirms liberalism: that movement (what is enshrined in the notion of procedure) has
priority over substance. As I suggested earlier, one way of making sense of Schmitt's understanding of the
political as a decisionistic leap pursuant to the collective delineation of and psychological mobilization
for doing combat with an enemy is by following the skeptical nominalistic and conventionalistic
premises that he shares with liberalism. If the relationship between words and things (theory and fact) is as
underdetermined as nominalism and conventionalism stipulate, then the triumph of skepticism gets
figured as an irrational leap (a baptism through fire, or at least the readiness to enter the fire) which becomes the
hallmark of the political. I have argued how the most coherent reconstruction of liberal thought highlights how at this point it makes a detour. In order to remain consistent, skepticism must be reformulated as a
generalized agnosticism which dis- enchants the inverted certainty attendant to full-fledged
skepticism and legitimates deferral and “procedure” (the endless deferral encoded in the priority assigned to “procedure”)
as the constitutive categories in the formation and maintenance of the state. The way that Schmitt
inadvertently attests to the validity of liberal understandings is that in his rejection of a generalized
agnosticism, he becomes a gnostic. “He affirms the political [in his sense] because he realizes that
when the political is threatened, the seriousness of life is threatened.”1° There is no middle ground for
Schmitt. When he rejects a generalized agnosticism, he does not move to some middle ground
between not knowing with certainty (but still claim- ing to know) and passionately knowing. His very
arguments that establish his jettisoning of a generalized agnosticism are the ones that communicate
to us his intoxication with the certainty born of passionate commitment. Schmitt thereby
unconsciously dramatizes for us a teaching that is central to the priority that liberalism assigns to
procedure: that the movement is all - whether for good or for evil.
You can probz also read answers to the neolib K here eg. Liberalism good (I’m sure they’re in the files
that the camp sent out)
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
127
Liberalism solves
Liberalism actually creates an “us/them” dichotomy – Schmittian source
Thorup ‘6 [Mikkel Thorup - Ph.D.-dissertation, Institute of Philosophy and the History of Ideas,
Department of the History of Ideas, University of Aarhus, Denmark, “In Defence of Enmity
- Critiques of Liberal Globalism”, published January 2006, accessed 6/30/13,
<https://pure.au.dk/portal/files/1125531/In_defence_of_enmity_-_pdf.pdf>] //pheft
Liberal globalism dramatizes a distinction between the good and the evil , which is not liberal in¶
origin or structure, but which has been incorporated into liberal thinking, not least on international ¶
issues. What we’re witnessing is a hardening of liberal anti-pluralism, that is, a dichotomization into¶ legitimate and illegitimate regimes
based on liberal-democratic principles of legitimacy. This is a¶ break with classical international law, where sovereign
legitimacy was based on effective control.¶ Much can be said for the shift, but one has to be aware of the dangers in this
transformation, not¶ least the licence liberal societies bestow upon themselves to serve as the global judge, jury and¶ executioner. The
dichotomization is also reproduced in the distinction between liberalism on one¶ side and on the other
fundamentalism and bellicose nationalism; or as Habermas says: “There is no¶ alternative to this
[post-national] development, except at the normatively intolerable cost of ethnic¶ cleansings” (1998e:
408). This way of framing the issue depoliticizes a field of options, which¶ cannot be reduced to either the postnational constellation or ‘new wars’; and it serves as a¶ legitimization of both the liberal globalist restructuring of
the state and for the new global sanctionand¶ intervention-regime. Liberal anti-pluralism is a denial of political
enmity, in that it disrecognizes¶ all opposition and every alternative as inferior. But in practice, it creates a seemingly¶ unending progression of
asymmetrical enemies on which to intervene.
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Peace is inevitable
Peace and harmony, not enmity, are the natural state of the human condition
Witzsche ‘3 [Rolf Witzsche – science researcher and writer, “War is not inevitable Peace is”, published
2/2/3, accessed 7/22/13, http://nuclear.rolf-witzsche.com/nuclear_peace.html] //pheft
It has been our experience as humanity throughout our long history that peace is inevitable. Nothing
has ever been gained by war for which war would be an essential element of civilization. In all cases,
war has brought on the destruction of the society that wages war.¶ The Roman Empire is a classical example.
Its existence was built on war to subdue and loot the surrounding nations. But it collapsed. It lasted for half a millennium in which
civilization was nearly destroyed, but it collapsed. Contrary to popular notions, Rome was not defeated. It died in a
whimper brought on by the pain of the imperial disease. When the barbarians invaded the trash that was left of it, the invading
ruler couldn't even be bothered to declare himself Caesar - Caesar of what?¶ The next big war was the Venice instigated war, a string of wars
launched in the 16th Century to destroy the Renaissance, that ended with the infamous Thirty Years War. This colossal warfare ended a century
and a half later, after half of the population of Europe was killed in an orgy of destruction unequalled in history until the 20th Century. Nothing
was gained by this war. It ended out of necessity, in a great peace, the Peace of Westphalia. Peace was inevitable.¶ All
of these great
historic tragedies could have been avoided. They were unleashed by fools, and a foolish society failed
to stop them before they unfolded.¶ World War I was likewise not inevitable as the American economist Lyndon
LaRouche pointed out in his 2003 State of the Union address. He pointed out that World War I occurred, because
fools allowed it to happen. ¶ Only the peace that followed was inevitable. Once the feuding nations
had destroyed their civilization to the point that they could only whimper, peace was once again
resumed. No victors emerged from this war. The destruction of Europe was the only legacy that came
out of this war, which was so immense that the effects of it in terms of cultural destruction are still
felt to the present day.¶ World War II was not inevitable either. It too, occurred, because fools allowed
it to happen. Only the peace that followed was inevitable. ¶ Fortunately for humanity, the 1932 elected U.S. President,
Franklin D. Roosevelt, was able to revive the productive capacity of the USA at this time. This grand revival enabled a coalition of nations to be
formed, and enabled it to intervene and stop that war before the total destruction of civilization had occurred. Because of this intervention, the
destruction of Europe and the world became not as severe as it would have been, as indeed, that of World War I had been.¶ None
of the
wars of the 20th Century had been inevitable, which had, because of needless folly, become the worst century of war in
human history, while nothing was accomplished except the destruction of human culture and civilization. Nor will anything be accomplished by
the great war that is presently planned, the war against Iraq, that is set up to be more destructive than all the wars in history combined. It is a
war designed to become a war of civilizations, more than a war of nations, in which nuclear weapons will play a role as we have been virtually
assured by the American administration.¶ By its design, this war is set up to be an imperial war that plays a role in a much larger game than
most people are will to acknowledge, in which the United States of America itself, is the real target. Most likely, the designed outcome cannot
be avoided. This once great nation, that had long been revered in the world as a beacon of hope, has been set up to destroy itself by its
foolishness as it submits itself to the presently staged imperial game into which it is being dragged by the stooges that have been recruited for
this purpose. Indeed, the destruction of this nation has been the imperial goal ever since it declared its independence from the imperial world
in 1776. It had been forced to defend itself time and time again against the onslaught of imperial wars; first on the battle field, then on the
economic front, then against internal subversion, and finally against a complete political takeover. ¶ "Let us be blunt," warns the Lyndon
LaRouche organization in this regard, "This war has absolutely nothing to do with Saddam Hussein, or Iraq, or weapons of mass destruction.
This is the Clash of Civilizations conflict, promoted by British Arab Bureau old spook Bernard Lewis and his American dwarf, Samuel Huntington-to breakup any possibility of Eurasian integration and development. Only a sucker believes that this war drive has anything to do with Iraq. So
President Bush has to stop being a sucker--before he finds his Presidency ruined. This is Bush's {real crisis}, brought on by the toleration for a
Sharonist war party inside the Administration." (issued Jan. 30, 2003)¶ When
the dust settles over the world, after the
presently planned war has played itself out, there will be peace once again. This peace is inevitable.
The destruction of humanity and civilization that is planned to occur before this peace unfolds again, will necessarily be in proportion to the
dynamics of the new war, designed to be a war of civilizations, a religious war, an ideological war, and a nuclear war. Even without this war,
already today, by its economic and strategic policies, the USA finds itself to have become the most hated nation on the planet. That illustrates
the trend. How many people will remain alive to eventually see the peace that inevitably follows after a war runs its course, cannot be
determined.¶ World War II was not easily stopped. It would not have been stopped as quickly as it was stopped, without Franklin D. Roosevelt's
humanist revival which created the physical resources to force an end to this war. The United States had been gripped in the jaws of a deep
depression at this time, which too, could have been avoided, but wasn't. But when Roosevelt came to power with the promise to end the
depression, the USA was still a relatively moral and economically strong nation that could be developed, and was developed into becoming a
bulwark against this war. Nothing similar exists in today's world. The world economy is bankrupt. The dollar is disintegrating. South America,
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Africa, and other nations are subjected to genocide by policy.¶ A war of the kind that is presently contemplated cannot likely be stopped in mid
stream once it unfolds, as World War II was stopped. The moral and economic strength does not exist anywhere in the world that would be
required to marshal the resources to stop such a war in its course. Nor is this war designed to be won. No exit strategy exists; no victory
strategy; nor do the economic resources exist in the current age of the worst financial and economic disintegration in history, to support the
new world war in a conventional way, that is, without nuclear weapons. (see economic reality) In this sense, Saddam's warning is valid when he
pointed out that the invading forces won't likely return home alive. In a theatre into which nuclear weapons are planned to be used, the chance
for human survival drops to very low levels. But none that has to happen. War is not inevitable. It has never been inevitable that humanity
allows itself to be dragged into the worst nightmare in its history, by a bunch of fools, and by its own foolishness.¶ War
can be avoided.
War is not inevitable. Peace alone is inevitable. And, as has always been the case throughout history,
this peace can be won before the pains of war destroy the fabric of human society. By winning the
peace for once, before the war unfolds, humanity would be winning the war. This is the only way in
which a war can be won. No other option exists. It is one's hope therefore, that the urgency of the
hour will inspire humanity to muster the courage to win this war in this manner, and to score for itself
a victory that leaves the field wide open for a bright and prosperous future.
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Leonard Cohen
130
Perm
Permutation: Even if the friend-enemy distinction is good, using it exclusively causes conflict.
The perm is the best option.
Thorup 6 (Mikkel Thorup, Ph.D. dissertation @ the Institute of Philosophy and the History of Ideas, January, 2006, “In Defence of Enmity –
Critiques of Liberal Globalism,” p. 39-40, TH) NAR
This text is mainly about the potential dangers of the liberal approach to politics. But this is not turning it into an unqualified defence
or advocacy of the conflict perspective. As an illustration of the dangers of what we can call ‘manichean decisionism’, I’ll briefly
mention an article on Schmitt’s concept of the political by Bernard Willms (1991), in which he classifies two traditions of political
thinking: political realism and political fictionalism (try to guess his position!). Political fictionalism “subordinates politics
to ‘higher’ principles or ‘truths’”, whereas political realism is “the permanently repeated attempt to
conceive of politics as what in fact it is” (1991: 371). It is a (unintended) caricature on the self-professed realist’s sense of
superiority because of their courage and ability to confront the really real reality: Political fictionalisms help to satisfy
man’s need for consolation, edification, hope and sense, tending to veil real conditions of government. The political
realist seeks to identify necessities – irrespective of their severity and without consideration for any need for deceit under
the existing government. (1991: 371-2) This is the kind of reductionism of the political that I want to avoid. Working with
Schmitt’s categories and critiques entails a danger of falling in th e (very self-comforting) trap of proclaiming
only one true and ‘hard’ version of the political and of dismissing all others as fictions and wishful thinking. Primacy of
the political becomes primacy of foreign policy, organized violence etc. The political is effectively reduced to a few areas –
which is just what liberalism is criticized for doing. The friend/enemy distinction or conflictuality may often be a
dominant feature of the political, but that is not to say that it is then the political. As Ankersmit (1996: 127)
says, that would be the same as making the unavoidability of marital disagreements into the very foundation of marriage as such. I
want instead to argue that the political contains a number of styles, sides, variants (or whatever one want to call it)
that can very loosely and ideal-typically be grouped in two main forms: Politics as conflict and politics as technique, where neither of
them can claim exclusivity. So, I want to avoid a sterile discussion of what the political really is. My interest is far more the various
styles of the political that are operative in political debate. Schmitt and many other conflict theoreticians do not see
the other face of the political as anything other than a ‘secondary’, ‘dependent’, ‘corrupted’ expression of
politics. Liberals tend to exclude politics as conflict, confining it to other spaces in time or geography, as aberration or
relapse. What the two concepts each do is to highlight a certain aspect of the political, and my claim is that
they are elements of a unity. There’s a certain pendulum process at work and I’ll give that a number of expressions,
which basically states the not very controversial thought that the political world is located between the extremes of repetition and
break, stability and change, regime and revolution, or, as I prefer to call them, technique and conflict. Depoliticization, then, is a
way to describe the attempts to or methods of making repetition, stability and regime universal and eternal – to
place areas, practices and actors beyond change and critique – whereas repoliticization describes the opposite movement – disruption,
change, recreation of the entire social space.
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131
Schmitt=Nazi
Schmitt was kinda a Nazi….oh….and an anti-Semite
Stanford ’10 [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Carl Schmitt”, published 8/7/10, accessed 7/18/13,
< http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schmitt/#ConPolCriLib> ] //pheft
Carl Schmitt's early career as an academic lawyer falls into the last years of the Wilhelmine Empire. (See for Schmitt's life and career: Bendersky
1983; Balakrishnan 2000; Mehring 2009.) But Schmitt wrote his most influential works, as a young professor of constitutional law in Bonn and
later in Berlin, during the Weimar-period: Political Theology, presenting Schmitt's theory of sovereignty, appeared in 1922, to be followed in
1923 by The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, which attacked the legitimacy of parliamentary government. In 1927, Schmitt published the
first version of his most famous work, The Concept of the Political, defending the view that all true politics is based on the distinction between
friend and enemy. The culmination of Schmitt's work in the Weimar period, and arguably his greatest achievement, is the 1928 Constitutional
Theory which systematically applied Schmitt's political theory to the interpretation of the Weimar constitution. During the political and
constitutional crisis of the later Weimar Republic Schmitt published Legality and Legitimacy, a clear-sighted analysis of the breakdown of
parliamentary government Germany, as well as The Guardian of the Constitution, which argued that the president as the head of the executive,
and not a constitutional court, ought to be recognized as the guardian of the constitution. In these works from the later Weimar period,
Schmitt's declared aim to defend the Weimar constitution is at times barely distinguishable from a call for constitutional revision towards a
more authoritarian political framework (Dyzenhaus 1997, 70–85; Kennedy 2004, 154–78).¶ Though
Schmitt had not been a
supporter of National Socialism before Hitler came to power, he sided with the Nazis after 1933.
Schmitt quickly obtained an influential position in the legal profession and came to be perceived as
the ‘Crown Jurist’ of National Socialism. (Rüthers 1990; Mehring 2009, 304–436) He devoted himself , with undue
enthusiasm, to such tasks as the defence of Hitler's extra-judicial killings of political opponents (PB
227–32)
and the purging of German jurisprudence of Jewish influence
(Gross 2007; Mehring 2009, 358–80). But
Schmitt was ousted from his position of power within legal academia in 1936, after infighting with academic competitors who viewed Schmitt
as a turncoat who had converted to Nazism only to advance his career. There is considerable debate about the causes of Schmitt's willingness
to associate himself with the Nazis. Some authors point to Schmitt's strong ambition and his opportunistic character but deny ideological
affinity (Bendersky 1983, 195–242; Schwab 1989). But a
strong case has been made that Schmitt's anti-liberal
jurisprudence, as well as his fervent anti-semitism, disposed him to support the Nazi regime (Dyzenhaus
1997, 85–101; Scheuerman 1999). Throughout the later Nazi period, Schmitt's work focused on questions of international law. The immediate
motivation for this turn seems to have been the aim to justify Nazi-expansionism. But Schmitt was interested in the wider question of the
foundations of international law, and he was convinced that the turn towards liberal cosmopolitanism in 20th century international law would
undermine the conditions of stable and legitimate international legal order. Schmitt's theoretical work on the foundations of international law
culminated in The Nomos of the Earth, written in the early 1940's, but not published before 1950. Due
to his support for and
involvement with the Nazi dictatorship, the obstinately unrepentant Schmitt was not allowed to
return to an academic job after 1945 (Mehring 2009, 438–63). But he nevertheless remained an important figure in West
Germany's conservative intellectual scene to his death in 1985 (van Laak 2002) and enjoyed a considerable degree of clandestine influence
elsewhere (Scheuerman 1999, 183–251; Müller 2003).¶ Unsurprisingly, the significance and value of Schmitt's works is subject to heated
controversy (Caldwell 2005). A group of authors sympathetic to Schmitt argue that Schmitt's analysis of liberal constitutionalism during the
Weimar period is separable from his support for National Socialism and that it constitutes an insightful and important analysis of the political
presuppositions of a well-functioning liberal constitutional system (Bendersky 1983; Schwab 1989; Gottfried 1990; Kennedy 2004). From the
left, Schmitt's work is sometimes taken to illustrate the affinities between a purely economic liberalism and political authoritarianism (Mauss
1980; Cristi 1998). The view that the Schmitt of the Weimar period can be read as a defender of liberal order has been questioned by authors
who stress the continuity between Schmitt's conceptions of law, sovereignty, and democracy and fascist ideology (Wolin 1992; Dyzenhaus
1997; Scheuerman 1999). However, engagement with Schmitt is nevertheless considered to be important. It has been argued that Rawlsian
political liberalism is vulnerable to Schmitt's critique of liberalism due to its unwillingness to base itself explicitly on a liberal conception of the
good (Dyzenhaus 1997, 218–58) or due to its refusal to recognize the antagonistic nature of politics (Mouffe 1999b). Moreover, Schmitt's views
on sovereignty and emergency powers are often seen as the intellectual basis of contemporary calls for a strong executive power unhampered
by constraints of legality (Dyzenhaus 2006, 35–54; Scheuerman 2006). Finally, there are an increasing number of authors who make a more
eclectic use of Schmitt, by focusing on particular arguments of Schmitt's that are seen as worth developing in a systematic context. Two focal
points of recent interest are Schmitt's theory of popular sovereignty (Kalyvas 2008) and his conception of international order (Odysseos and
Petito 2007; Slomp 2009).
Schmitt helped spawn the fascist movement in America…
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Leonard Cohen
132
VERSLUIS ‘6 [ARTHUR VERSLUIS – writer for CounterPunch, “How Carl Schmitt Spawned Fascist
America”, published 8/10/6, accessed 7/18/13, < http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/08/10/how-carlschmitt-spawned-fascist-america-nbsp/>] //pheft
At the insistence of the White House, the
Pentagon publicly asserted in 2006 what has already become selfevident, that the United States would not observe the protocols of the Geneva Conventions
concerning some prisoners. Coming as the announcement did on the heels of revelations about the prisons at Abu Ghraib,
Guantánamo, and various secret locations to which the CIA had prisoners flown for interrogation and torture, it would seem that American
citizens had lost their capacity for outrage or even indignation. But
the fact remains that the selective abrogation of the
Geneva Conventions, the George W. Bush administration’s attempts to assert “unitary executive”
power, has an instructive precedent.¶ As is well known, 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. This theory of the “unitary executive” meant, in practice, that the White House attached “signing statements” to hundreds of pieces of
legislation enacted by Congress. Instead of vetoing bills, the Bush Jr. administration issues these statements asserting the administration’s
unilateral rejection of or re-interpretation of the legislation.¶ This asserted “unitary executive power” is not only a rationale for “signing
statements.” It underlies nearly everything that the George W. Bush administration has done. To take the most historically important example,
the invasion and occupation of Iraq took place without the authorization of Congress (that is, without any official Declaration of War, and of
course without the imprimatur of the United Nations). A violation of both American and international law, the invasion of Iraq was, in fact, the
unilateral abrogation of law by the American executive power.¶ The invasion of Iraq is, of course, not the only example, just the one with the
most far-reaching and visible consequences. There are others. Consider the abrogation of FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, whose
purpose was to limit the abuse of federal uses of wiretaps or other forms of surveillance after the abuses of the 1960s and 1970s had been
revealed. The scope of the wiretapping and other invasions of American citizens’ privacy is not yet fully known, but no doubt eventually many
abuses will be revealed. Only long after the election shenanigans of November, 2004, did Americans even learn that the Bush Jr. administration
once again had unilaterally abrogated American law, asserting here too the “power of the unitary executive.” What very few people have
realized is that this notional “unitary executive” power has an instructive precedent, which is outlined in the works of the German legal theorist,
Carl Schmitt. In the 1920s, Schmitt sharply criticized the parliamentary system of the Weimar Republic, in an analysis that has a striking
resonance with the contemporary American Congress’s morass of ineptness, paralysis, and manifest corruption. When National Socialism came
to power in the 1930s, Schmitt defended the Third Reich and its right to peremptory justice by reference to the juridical example of the
Inquisition.¶ According
to Schmitt, the ultimate power of government is not to be found in legislation, but
in the executive power to abrogate or suspend legislation. What matters is not the rule, but the
exception, and “sovereign is he who decides the exception.” Schmitt’s aphorism describes how Hitler in fact took
power, with the unilateral abrogation of civil liberties in Germany. Hitler imposed a “state of exception” on those whom
he deemed alien to or a danger to the regime, and those in such a state of exception no longer have the rights of citizens.
This state of exception, willed by the German unitary executive power, was the juridical basis for the
Nazi death camps. The assertion of notional “unitary executive power” in part results from officials’ prior disgust at the inherent
weakness of a parliamentary system to forcefully address long-term problems facing society, like a weak fiat currency, economic crisis, or
terrorism. A
“unitary executive power” appeals to the “Right,” to which Schmitt and purportedly the
Bush Jr. administration belong, but, one has to note, it also could have appeal for the “Left.” Such executive
powers no doubt appeal to all who are certain of their own rectitude, certain that they are guided by destiny or by God to act, to be decisive.
Thus one
characteristic of fascism is said to be “decisionism.” “At least we’re doing something,” a
decisionist says – even if what “we’re” doing is in fact despotic and destructive. George W. Bush is, he
tells us, “the decider.”¶ In The New Inquisitions: Heretic-hunting and the Origins of Modern Totalitarianism (Oxford UP, 2006), I detail
inquisitional pathologies that have haunted the West for a very long time. These pathologies are clearly visible today – and not only in various
Bush Jr. administration policies – but especially in the attempted abrogation, by executive fiat, of the Geneva Conventions. It surprises me that
there is comparatively little written about such attempts, let alone about their historical precedents in National Socialism, but perhaps that is
only to be expected in what a growing number of observers from across the political spectrum recognize as the proto-fascist ambience of the
contemporary United States.
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
133
The K Isn’t Special
Sorry to burst your bubble but you’re not special, the K isn’t anything petty reformism that fails to
solve anything
Seem ’72 [Mark Seem, Intro to Anti-Oedipus, xvi-xvii, PRINT] //pheft
Such a set of beliefs, Deleuze and Guattari demonstrate, such a¶ herd instinct, is based on the desire
to be led, the desire to have someone¶ else legislate life. The very desire that was brought so glaringly
into¶ focus in Europe with Hitler, Mussolini, and fascism; the desire that is¶ still at work, making us all
sick, today. Anti-Oedipus starts by reviving¶ Reich's completely serious question with respect to the rise of fascism:¶ 'How could the masses
be made to desire their own repression?' This is¶ a question which the English and Americans are reluctant to deal with¶ directly, tending too
often to respond: "Fascism is a phenomenon that¶ took place elsewhere, something that could only happen to others, but¶ not to us; it's their
problem." Is it though? Is fascism really a problem¶ for others to deal with? Even
revolutionary groups deal gingerly with
the¶ fascisizing elements we all carry deep within us, and yet they often¶ possess a rarely analyzed but
overriding group 'superego' that leads¶ them to state, much like Nietzsche's man of ressentiment, that
the other¶ is evil (the Fascist! the Capitalist! the Communist!), and hence that they¶ themselves are
good. This conclusion is reached as an afterthought and a¶ justification, a supremely se//-righteous rationalization for a politics that¶ can only
"squint" at life, through the thick clouds of foul-smelling air¶ that permeates secret meeting places and "security" councils. The man¶ of
ressentiment, as Nietzsche explains, "loves hiding places, secret paths¶ and back doors, everything covert entices him as his world, his security,¶
his refreshment; he understands how to keep silent, how not to forget,¶ how to wait, how to be provisionally self-deprecating and humble."2¶
Such a man, Nietzsche concludes, needs very much to believe in some¶ neutral, independent "subject"—the ego—for he is prompted by an¶
instinct of self-affirmation and Jeff-preservation that cares little about¶ preserving or affirming life, an instinct "in which every lie is sanctified."¶
3 This is the realm of the silent majority. And
it is into these back¶ rooms, behind the closed doors of the analyst's
office, in the wings of the¶ Oedipal theater, that Deleuze and Guattari weave their way, exclaiming¶ as
does Nietzsche that it smells bad there, and that what is needed is "a¶ breath of fresh air, a
relationship with the outside world."
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
134
Theorizing Trades off with action
Theorizing the usual whinning directly trades off with engaging the political, depoliticizes politics
and turns the K
Dean ‘9 [Jodi Dean – professor of poly sci at Hobart and William Smith College, “Politics without
Politics”, published 2009, accessed 6/20/13, PDF] //pheft
The arguments for post-politics and de-democratization are at best unconvincing and at worst misleading to a
left seeking to undo thirty years of neoliberalization. The claim that we are in a post-political time,
that politics has been foreclosed, excluded, prevented from emerging, is childishly petulant. It’s like the left is saying,
“if we don’t get to play what we want, we’re not going to play.” The failure of left politics to win, or even score, is equated
with a failure of politics as such, rather than acknowledged in the specificity of left defeat. Leftists assume that our lack of
good ideas means the end of the political. If the game isn’t played on our terms, we aren’t going to play at all. We aren’t even
going to recognize that a game is being played. To this extent, the claim for post-politics erases its own standpoint of
enunciation. Why refer to a formation as post-political if one does not have political grounds for doing
so? If one already has such grounds, then how exactly is the situation post-political? If one lacks them, then what is the purpose of the claim if
not to draw attention to or figure this lack for the sake of political struggle?
“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say that there isn’t.” –
Leonard Cohen
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