War Through the Prism of International Law in Carl Schmitt's Political and Legal Teaching

Abstract

The article is devoted to the political and legal analysis of Carl Schmitt’s (1888 – 1985) conception of war. Not once did Schmitt appealed to the topic of war arguing that it might be inevitable due to the specification of political reality (according to Schmitt – the concept of the political) characterized by the division into friends and enemies and constant confrontation between them. The author presents a brief genesis of Schmitt’s predecessors’ views on war (from Antiquity to Modernity), gives evidence to the regular transit from one type of war to another (from discriminational to limited and reverse) and on the basis of Schmitt’s teaching systematizes wars according to a number of grounds (legality / acceptability, attitude to a foe and theatre (locus) of military actions). Taking this into consideration, according to Schmitt it is necessary to reconstruct an international-legal order aimed at introducing into it such limitations that could prevent a military conflict from growing into a total war. Schmitt believed that such reconstruction would be possible due to “the reign of relative human reason” rather than to the rule of people (interpreted as international law nowadays). According to Schmitt, such reign could dominate if combatants followed the rules of war fighting rather than under the influence of international organizations. Schmitt allowed the possibility of warfare limitation (by law) in case of waging a duel war only as the latter obtains a limited interstate (European) character and is considered by Schmitt as the greatest achievement of European civilization.