Carl Schmitt and geopolitics

 

Carl Schmitt’s work has a geopolitical dimension that many people don’t know. And that’s what we’re going to see here.

 

Introduction

 

Today, I want to speak to you about what Carl Schmitt said about geopolitics. Although he stood out as a jurist, he made some contributions to geopolitics. In some way, it was the result of a turbulent age in which many different authors wrote about geopolitics. Schmitt wasn’t the exception in the interwar period.

Naturally, he never was an outstanding thinker in geopolitics, but it doesn’t make him irrelevant in this field. On the contrary, it is an overlooked dimension of this author insofar as his main works were about political and law issues.

Yet, to address this aspect of Schmitt’s work, we have to differentiate between the two periods. On the one hand, the interwar period in which he wrote about geopolitics under the influence of the German geopolitical mainstream. On the other hand, we have to highlight the postwar period in which he developed some geopolitical reflections that deserve attention. That’s going to be the structure of this discussion.

 

The interwar period

 

If we want to understand what Schmitt said about geopolitics, we have to outline the historical context. That means to make some remarks about the theoretical contributions at that time. I refer to the most famous authors in this field because their ideas influenced Schmitt.

Due to the German defeat, the most influential intellectuals started to develop different ideas about how their country should confront the new international scenario. It was hard for Germans to come to terms with their situation as a defeated great power. For this reason, different authors began to pose their views before the public opinion. They discussed how Germany should manage its foreign relations to recover from the traumatic experience of the Great War and get back its great power status. In this context, these authors, such as Karl Haushofer, devised new ideas to justify an expansionist foreign policy. They took different concepts from geographers and political scientists, such as Friedrich Ratzel or Rudolf Kjellen.

That’s the case of “Raum,” which means space. This concept became very popular in geopolitical speeches of that time in Germany. It turned out to be helpful to endorse with a scientific veneer the expansionist aspirations of Germany. This geopolitical formulation worked as a propagandistic artifact that allowed the new geopolitical ideas to penetrate a broad range of venues during the Weimar era. Indeed, this concept spread widely across German society up to the point of becoming a daily term in many conversations.

In this intellectual environment, Carl Schmitt outlined his concept of “Grossraum,” or greater space, in the 1930s. Schmitt differentiated his use of the term from geopolitics, arguing that it emphasized the dominant political idea of a given region rather than geographical determinism. However, Schmitt’s application of Raum concepts to international law and State relations had its antecedents in the 1920s geopolitical thinkers. He wasn’t alone on this. Manfred Langhans-Ratzeburg tried to bring geographic considerations into legal theorizing. Indeed, his thought had similarities with the Grossraum legal theoretics of Carl Schmitt.

Schmitt’s intellectual stance on this matter was similar to the Monroe Doctrine for the US. In this regard, he advocated for an exclusive sphere of influence for Germany. There is a connection with this view and the speech of Hitler before the Reichstag on April 28, 1939, when he subscribed to a new doctrine for the territory and the interests of the Greater German Reich similar to the Monroe Doctrine. By that time, Schmitt had already postulated a German Grossraum based on the Monroe Doctrine, and he had set it forth at the beginning of that month. It entailed the same concept that the US had adopted in the nineteenth century but for Germany.

 

The post-war period

 

During WWII, Schmitt wrote an essay titled Land and Sea. It didn’t have a public impact until the end of the war. In that work, he posed different reflections about the contradictory and conflictive relationship between land and sea. He considered the world history as a permanent fight between land and sea. Indeed, in one sentence, he claimed that history is the fight between land powers and sea powers.

In general, this work has a lyrical flavor in the way Schmitt wrote it. However, he developed a series of different reflections on history, but also on the role of space in international politics. In this respect, Schmitt addressed the influence of new means of transport and communication in the shape of world space, and how it affects its distribution. That connects with his following reflections in Nomos of the Earth.

In that essay, he described the origin of the Eurocentric global order, which he dated from the discovery of the New World. Aside from analyzing its specific character and contribution to civilization, he addressed the reasons for its decline at the end of the nineteenth century and made some prospects about its future. Besides, he stressed the leading role of the New World by replacing the Old World as the center of the earth and becoming the arbiter in world politics.

In addition to this, Schmitt combined these reflections with his analysis of the Cold War and the confrontation between the East and the West. He wasn’t much original in his observations, and most of his geopolitical ideas had antecedents in other authors’ works. Despite that, this particular dimension in Schmitt’s work is still unknown for many, and it contributes to shedding new light on this controversial figure of the twentieth century.

 

Question of the day

 

Question of the day! What is your opinion about Carl Schmitt and its involvement in the Nazi regime? Post it in the comments section below, and I’ll check it out.

Bibliography used:

Schmitt, Carl, The Concept of the Political

Schmitt, Carl, Land and Sea: A World-Historical Meditation

Schmitt, Carl, Nomos of the Earth

Schwab, George, “Contextualising Carl Schmitts concept of Grossraum” in History of European Ideas 19(1-3), 1994, pp. 185-190

Murphy, David T., The Heroic Earth: Geopolitical Thought in Weimar Germany, 1918-1933

Bendersky, Joseph W., Carl Schmitt: Theorist for the Reich

Gowan, Peter, “The Return of Carl Schmitt” in Debatte 2(1), 1994, pp. 82-127

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