ABSTRACT
Reading Carl Schmitt demands an appreciation of context: that in which he wrote; the contexts through which his work has travelled and been translated; and the contexts in which we now read and apply his work. Various authors have contextualised Schmitt in different ways, through his intellectual biog - raphy (Balakrishnan, 2000), his ongoing theoretical engagements (Slomp, 2009) and the international relations of Germany (Stirk, 2005). This chapter will seek an alternative route into engaging and problematising Schmitt’s writings on the nomos. Rather than taking as its focus a person, concept or interpretation related to Schmitt, it will seek insights into his thought through examining his treatment of an institution. The League of Nations recurred as a focus of ire throughout Schmitt’s writings, culminating in the Nomos where it signified the decline of European world order, the rise of US economic imperialism and global interventionism, and a reign of ‘spatial chaos’ (Schmitt, 2003 [1950], 257). As such, the League of Nations has a synecdochical position in Schmitt’s writings. It represents for him the granting to small nations parity with the great powers, the stifling of international politics (which had previously allowed friend-enemy relationships to be resolved by bracketed wars), the occlusion of American hegemony beneath the mask of ethical-humanitarian intervention, and the ossification of European imperialist privilege through the defence of the 1919 status quo.
