Bay Dr. Dritan HOTI
The contemporary international system appears increasingly resistant to the normative
architectures designed to regulate it. Wars conducted outside established legal frameworks,
unilateral military actions, and the erosion of institutional authority all suggest a structural
transformation rather than a temporary deviation. In this context, the political and legal
theory of Carl Schmitt—long regarded as controversial yet diagnostically incisive—offers a
framework through which current global dynamics may be more clearly interpreted. His
seminal work, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum
Europaeum, provides concepts that resonate strongly with the present moment, particularly
his critique of “empty normativism” and his advocacy of spatially grounded orders organized
around spheres of influence.
Schmitt’s core insight is that international order is never sustained by norms alone. In The
Nomos of the Earth, he argues that every durable legal order rests upon a concrete spatial
and political foundation—a nomos, understood as an original act of land appropriation,
distribution, and the production of order. Law, in this conception, does not precede power;
rather, it crystallizes from historically contingent political equilibria. When legal norms are
detached from such equilibria, they become what Schmitt described as empty normativism:
a formalistic system of rules lacking both the authority and the material capacity necessary
for enforcement.
The ambition to regulate international relations through normativism is not a contemporary
invention. Its intellectual and political origins can be traced back to the Peace of Westphalia
in 1648, which inaugurated the modern state system based on sovereignty, territorial
integrity, and juridical equality among states. Westphalia did not eliminate war, but it sought
to contain it within a shared legal and spatial framework. Over the subsequent three
centuries, nearly every attempt to stabilize the international system involved not only a
reconfiguration of power relations but also the establishment of supranational or quasi-
supranational structures designed to embody and supervise normative principles.
This historical pattern is particularly evident in the Congress of Vienna of 1815. Emerging
from the devastation of the Napoleonic Wars, the Vienna settlement remains the most
successful attempt to reconcile normativity with power. Its principal architect, Klemens von
Metternich, recognized that stability required restraint rather than moral absolutism, balance
rather than ideological expansion. The Concert of Europe that resulted did not abolish
rivalry among the great powers, but it institutionalized mutual recognition and self-limitation.
For nearly a century, Europe avoided systemic great-power war—an achievement
unmatched by later normative experiments.
By contrast, the League of Nations and, subsequently, the United Nations represent efforts
to universalize normativism beyond the conditions that Schmitt deemed sustainable. Both
institutions sought to transcend power politics through legal equality, collective security, and
the moral stigmatization of aggression. Yet, in Schmittian terms, they lacked a
corresponding nomos: there was no shared spatial order, no accepted hierarchy of power,
and no autonomous capacity for enforcement. Their authority therefore remained derivative,
dependent upon the political will of dominant states rather than upon law itself.
Recent international developments strongly reinforce this assessment. Russia’s war in
Ukraine, conducted in open defiance of the post–Cold War European security architecture;
the bombing campaign against Iran during the summer of last year; the ongoing and
expanding conflict in the Middle East; and the rapid, elite-driven operation by U.S. forces
aimed at the overthrow and arrest of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela all illustrate a profound
erosion of respect for international normativism. These actions were not merely violations of
international law; they were executed with minimal concern for institutional legitimation. The
United Nations continues to exist formally, but its role has increasingly been reduced to
procedural symbolism, incapable of shaping outcomes where vital strategic interests are
involved.
From Schmitt’s perspective, this erosion is neither accidental nor anomalous. As he argued
in The Nomos of the Earth, when a legal order ceases to correspond to the actual
distribution of power, it forfeits its binding force. The persistence of legal discourse under
such conditions does not signify resilience, but exhaustion. Norms are invoked precisely
because they no longer command obedience.
Schmitt’s proposed alternative was not global disorder, but a pluralistic system structured
around large spatial units (Großräume), each dominated by a leading power and shielded
from external intervention. Within such regional spheres of influence, order could be
maintained through geographic proximity, shared interests, and credible authority, rather
than abstract universalism. This vision directly challenges the post–1945 aspiration toward
a single, homogeneous international legal order.
Nevertheless, Schmitt’s framework does not fully converge with the contemporary
geostrategic outlook of the United States. Official American strategic documents do not
conceptualize the United States as merely a regional power presiding over a delimited
sphere, but as a superpower with globally interwoven interests. The prevailing American
vision of world order is vertical rather than horizontal. It prioritizes the Western
Hemisphere—from Canada through Latin America, stretching from the Arctic to
Antarctica—while simultaneously identifying the Indo-Pacific, particularly China, as the
principal arena of long-term strategic competition. Beyond these core zones, the United
States selectively engages in various regions and states perceived as structurally aligned
with American interests, irrespective of geographic continuity.
This approach diverges from Schmitt’s emphasis on spatial containment and reciprocal
recognition among great powers. Rather than accepting a multipolar equilibrium of distinct
Großräume, American strategy seeks to preserve freedom of action across multiple regions,
maintaining operational presence wherever strategic imperatives arise. Normativism is
neither abandoned nor fully embraced; it is instrumentalized—affirmed when it reinforces
strategic objectives and circumvented when it constrains them.
At a deeper level, this behavior reflects a historical logic intrinsic to superpower status. For
a superpower to fulfill its historical cycle, it cannot afford the posture of a gentle or passive
hegemon. Continuous operational readiness, strategic decisiveness, and the willingness to
act unilaterally when required are structural imperatives rather than policy anomalies. This
logic has manifested, in varying forms and rhetorics, across successive American
administrations. Each has adapted its methods to changing circumstances, yet all have
operated within a durable tradition of foreign policy that privileges action over abstraction.
In this sense, Carl Schmitt does not offer a blueprint to be adopted wholesale, but a
conceptual lens through which prevailing illusions may be dismantled. His critique of empty
normativism exposes the fragility of a system that confuses moral aspiration with political
order. His insistence on spatially grounded authority underscores the limits of universal
governance in a world marked by unequal power and divergent interests. While
contemporary strategies—particularly those of the United States—do not conform neatly to
his prescriptions, the trajectory of the international system increasingly validates his central
warning: where law is unmoored from power, it becomes ceremonial; and where order
ignores geography, it dissolves into rhetoric.
The present era thus appears not as the end of international order, but as the end of a
particular illusion regarding how such order can be sustained.
The author completed a PhD dissertation in the history of international relations at
the University of Vienna, Austria; an MA in Geopolitical Studies at the University of
Toulouse, France; and a degree in International Relations from the University of Graz,
Austria.
