ABSTRACT
My aim in this chapter is to foreground the importance of the thought of Carl Schmitt for an understanding of the situation in which we find ourselves today after the end of the bipolar world order. Contrary to all those who claim that the end of the Cold War has opened up the possibility for the universalization of liberal democracy and the establishment of a cosmopolitan new world order, I will argue, using Schmitt’s insights, that it is the fact that we are now living in a unipolar world, with the unchallenged hegemony of the United States, which is at the origin of our current predicament, and that the only way out lies in the establishment of a multipolar world order.
