Carl Schmitt's enemy and the rhetoric of anti-interventionism.

Abstract

This article explores Carl Schmitt's concept of the enemy against the backcloth of the international agenda from the 1920s into the Second World War. More specifically it argues for his abiding antipathy to the Anglo-Saxon powers. It identifies his concern with the right of intervention and his strategies for deflecting claims of a right of intervention in the affairs of states. It also explores the tension between his concept of domestic order and international order in the late 1930s and suggests that his attempt to reconcile the two fails. It concludes by suggesting that the rhetorical arguments he deployed are instructive, for they remain the favourite resort of those who have engaged in a continuous and manifest abuse of sovereignty.