SCHMITT, DUGIN, VANCE, GROßRAUM

PART FOUR: SCHMITT'S SPATIAL REVOLUTION

This is the fourth in what’s anticipated to be a short series on Carl Schmitt’s analysis of what he coined as “the spatial revolution.” For an index to the series, see the first installment, here.

A couple of prefatory remarks to begin. First, this turned into a surprisingly long post. One of (if not) the longest I’ve ever posted on here. In hindsight, I probably should have broken it up into a couple of parts. But at a certain point one simply becomes committed to a course of action. In all likelihood, I won’t post anything else written the rest of this month, providing folks plenty of time to read and digest it. There are a wide range of claims and speculations entailed. That decision not to rewrite though was doubly consequential given the utterly extraordinary number of events that occurred during the couple weeks between the writing of this post and its publication which seem to provide support for the claims made here about the theoretical implications for what was then a provocative current event. Rather than rewriting, I have chosen to address these events, and their implications, in the footnotes. In fact, in this post I’ve traded in my usual proclivity for copious quotations for a display of copious notations. Hopefully they help both clarify some of the theoretical points and integrate the empirical ones of the last couple weeks. So, with those prefatory qualifications and observations noted, let’s get into it.

In the previous installment to this series on Schmitt’s spatial revolution, we examined in broad stroke summary the rise, form, and demise of the nomos of the earth, which had been based upon European public law, and its manifestation as a European international law that integrated the irreconcilable tension between the human experience of life upon the firm land and the free sea. Several factors, including the recognition of non-European states as joining the community of civilized nations; the corrosive and homogenizing impact of free trade; and the reconfiguration of military space by the innovation and implementation of air war, all contributed to the demise of that now passing nomos. Such demise, though, as Schmitt perceived it, writing from the mid-20th century, naturally provokes the question of what it was that Schmitt imagined would replace that centuries old nomos. That question is addressed in this installment.

In addition to laying out Schmitt’s options, I want to align them with some reflections on Alexander Dugin’s conception of an emergent multipolar world. Dugin does openly acknowledge a debt to Schmitt, but it was only after doing the reading for this series that I’ve come to appreciate just how deep and expansive is that debt. There is though at least one important wrinkle that, it seems to me, clearly distinguishes their ideas in this regard. And that wrinkle offers some interesting food for thought in an application of their theoretical lens in pondering some current events.

At the time I’m writing, the chattering caste – e.g., in broadcast and cable news, on X-Twitter, and YouTube – is a-buzz with dissecting the meaning and implications of U.S. Vice-President Vance’s seemingly provocative message delivered to Europe at the Munich Security Conference. Looking at that event through the lens of the Schmitt-Dugin theory, I think, goes a good ways in throwing light upon both the meaning and implications of the event and the current relevance of those two thinkers’ prognostications and prescriptions.

As discussed above, Schmitt did consider the nomos that had dominated the world for the last many centuries to be in eclipse. And indeed, from his perspective, a yet newer nomos was upon the horizon. In an article, originally published as a journal piece in 1955, which Schmitt added as an appendix to a later edition of Nomos of the Earth, he offers some reflection on what he perceived as the three most likely outcomes of the eclipse of the European public law nomos.

He also breaks the nomoi of the earth down into three phases, which incidentally doesn’t align with the periodization which he laid out earlier in the book. The earlier schema actually seems to juxtapose intriguingly with with my model of phenotype wars spirals.¹ But for purposes of our discussion, here, the three phases schema will work nicely, remembering, as discussed last post, that a nomos for Schmitt is distinguished by the legal framework that congeals around a sustainable system of land appropriation, distribution, and production.

The first of the nomoi had been the nomos of the earth which preceded the globalization of international law through the turn-to-the-sea.² The second was the nomos arising from the sea-driven spatial revolution, which now he saw as being eclipsed by circumstances. And so he would have us turn our eyes toward the horizon of a coming third nomos of the earth. Though there may be misleading periods of transition, Schmitt believed, waxing or waning, there was always a nomos at work.

In this short article he cursorily reviews much of the material addressed in the last installment to this series. He emphasizes the distinguishing characteristic of the second nomos as arising from its success at balancing the tension between the dynamics of land and sea, aided by the English domination of the sea. Writing from within the throes of the Cold War, he acknowledged a generally perceived current world division into East and West. But he likewise points out that there is conceptual confusion papered over by this kind of language: who is east or west of whom or what is largely an arbitrary conceit.

In relation to Europe, America is the West; in relation to America, China and Russia are the West; in relation to China and Russia, Europe is the West. In purely geographical terms, therefore, there is neither a definite border nor an explanation of the hostile contrast.

So, that popular Cold War dualism Schmitt finds unconvincing, and in fact what he finds when lifting the hood, is in fact the same old land and sea tension.

One need only look at the globe to see that what we today call the East is an immense mass of solid land [in other passages he cites the main elements: Russia, China, India]. In contrast, the vast areas of the western hemisphere are covered by large oceans, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Behind the contrast between East and West is therefore the deeper contrast between a continental and a maritime world, the contrast between the elements of land and sea.

So, this appeal to East versus West, he finds, is a kind of fig leaf for disguising the fact that this ostensibly new nomos is really just a retreaded version of the second. And the problem with that of course is that as we saw in the last installment to this series, the second nomos was over. There he’d emphasized the role of non-European state recognition and state homogenization of free trade practice and doctrine. In this short essay, Schmitt does not address those factors, but does emphasize the importance of the third factor discussed in our last post:

The former balance based on the separation of land and sea has been destroyed. The development of modern technology has deprived the sea of its elementary character. A new, third dimension, air space, has been added as a force field of human power and activity. Many people already believe that the entire earth, our planet, is now just an airfield or landing site, a raw materials depot and a mother ship for travel in outer space. This may be fantastic, but it shows the force with which the question of a new nomos of the earth is posed today.

So an appeal to the East versus West, Cold War, model is as obsolete as any earlier metaphorical framing of the land vs sea conflict as the basis of a new nomos.³ Even in its Cold War version, it is that second nomos which has been eclipsed and we are still left seeking the parameters of that new, third nomos of the earth.

Schmitt concludes this article with very brief nods to what he sees as three possible options for the third nomos. For my purposes, here, then, not only will I address these options in a different order than he raises them – believing that my own ordering provides a more systematic process of elimination – but I will flesh out each of the three options, based on what I know of Schmitt’s thought as developed in his other writing. In addition, I’ll rerun some of those insights back through the lens of Dugin, with his reappraisal of Schmitt’s vision.

We begin with Schmitt’s idea that perhaps the existing situation could be renewed. There might be, he suggests, “an attempt to retain the balance structure of the previous nomos, and to maintain it in a way consistent with contemporary technical means and dimensions.” Just as England effectively anchored the prior nomos with its enforcement of the open, free sea, such a development would require, in his phrase, an even “greater island,” which could likewise discipline both the sea and the air. Schmitt considered the United States as the only available force which could play this role.

It is plausible to argue that since 1955 the U.S. has filled (or at least has attempted to fill) that role. That effort though has proven decreasingly credible or plausible. Nor should such an outcome be surprising in light of Schmitt’s arguments over why the second nomos had been eclipsed: the very nature of air war and power means that any state has the capacity to exercise it and throw down upon any other country such border eradicating destruction. And indeed, a development not anticipated by Schmitt in this article, the eventual addition to his “contemporary technical means” of intercontinental ballistic nuclear weapons makes the logic of Schmitt’s argument about the corrosive role of air war upon the land-sea tension underpinning the second nomos still even more compelling. Such a retread of the second nomos seems not to be a credible or plausible long term solution.

A second option that Schmitt considers is the prospect of a world government. In such an outcome we would see the final triumph of the very universalism which Schmitt had intellectually struggled against, by this point, for decades. He does concede that this is the simplest solution, and that arguably the contemporary technical means lend themselves to such a regime of planetary management by a sole, monist sovereign. Indeed, today, 70 years later, with the arrival of the internet, mind-boggling computational powers, and the approach of ubiquitous general artificial intelligence, this option may seem more credible than ever. For Schmitt, though, it runs up against an immovable fact. As he says, “no matter how effective modern technical means may be,” they cannot destroy “the nature of man,” without simultaneously destroying themselves.

This basic precept of course was always at the core of Schmitt’s concept of the political.⁴ The entire point of the friend-enemy distinction was that there were inevitably – even under the bracketed warfare and neutralization of annihilative impulses upon the European continent amid the second nomos – going to be divisions between people, their values and interests, that reached the level of existential threat, requiring the resort to warfare.⁵ I would of course characterize the most important of these differences as being among phenotypes, but focus on national or racial traits, whatever you like; the precept was that there were inevitable, irreducible differences between peoples.

As much as the universalist aspiration to world governance may dream of a total and final homogenization of the world – and notwithstanding the undeniable effects of homogenization from forces like free trade doctrine (see here) – those innate, irreducible differences in values and interests would forever stew, constantly undermining the technocratic dream of the efficient management of global governance.⁶ So again, while Schmitt sanguinely acknowledges the proposition and case for this option, like the first mentioned option, it too for Schmitt in the final analysis must be dismissed as untenable.

This then leaves us with Schmitt’s third option for the third nomos, which clearly most resonates with his own political and philosophical sympathies: a global balance of independent Großräume. It is not for nothing I’d suggest that this is the option he says the least about – he certainly offers no critique of its plausibility. And he need not elaborate on it, for by 1955 he’d already written a very great deal about the political merits and legal foundations of such a world system. Indeed, about now, I’d probably be remiss if I didn’t propose to the present reader the surely annoying suggestion to go back and reread with some care the lengthy piece I’ve already posted here on Schmitt’s theory of the Großraum (see here).

I posted that piece prior to appreciating just how central its arguments were going to be for Schmitt in his vision of resolving the crisis of the spatial revolution’s “second” nomos. While entirely repeating the ideas and arguments examined there would be impractical here, I will offer some insight into what Schmitt had in mind. In the main article of his that I’d relied upon in composing that post, Schmitt made a distinction between open and ordered space.⁷ The open space to which he referred was what he characterized as a mathematical, geometric space – the space of empty depth available for penetration and occupation – which constituted the conception of space informing (and informed by) the spatial revolution that had underpinned the second nomos.

In contrast to that open space, though, Schmitt conceived another conception of space – and possibly even before he’d fully concluded that the second nomos was irretrievably in eclipse.⁸ He offered the analysis that the legal order’s conception of open space was not only falsely treated as the exclusive relevant understanding of space, but it was a deficient conception of space. It was in fact an excessively sea-inspired conception of space. In contrast, Schmitt’s ordered space had a better rooting in the land. And given the erosion of the distinction between land and sea materialized by air power, introducing the capacity for land power to erase the advantages of sea power, it was perfectly plausible to propose a conception of space as amendable to land.

Drawing upon some of my earlier writing on these topics, let’s recall our summary of Schmitt’s perspective on land life. In my recently republished “Nomos of the Fractals” post I observed that, from Schmitt’s perspective:

Land based culture is more inclined toward tradition, custom, and ritual. The folkways of a people are etched into the land as literal pathways: from the village path, down to the stream; to the migration trails of nomadic peoples; to the later trade routes of mercantile empires. Specific topographic features provide guideposts and ceremonial locations. The memory of a people and their way of life is etched into the physical features of the land that hosts their lives and relations. Eventually the contour lines of farmed fields, of built houses and barns, of villages and public memorials and marketplaces, delineated a people’s traditions and communal order. Their values, institutions, and community are subtly embedded in the places which have hosted and nurtured their ways of life. This is why land-based societies are more traditional societies.

That context better helps us understand Schmitt’s perspective when he elaborates the idea of ordered space, in the German context, like this:

House and court belong in this way to clan and family. The word “peasant” (Bauer) comes, from the perspective of legal history, not from the action of agriculture but rather from construction (Bau), building (Gebäude), just as “dominus” comes from “domus.” “City” (Stadt) means “site” (Stätte). A “Mark” is not a linear border, but rather a spatially determinate border zone. “Property” (Gut) is the upholder of a rule on property (Gutherrschaft), just as the “court” (Hof) is the upholder of court law (Hofrecht). “Country” (Land) is (in distinction from, for example, forest or city or sea) the legal organization of those people building on the country and those ruling the country with their spatially concrete order of peace.

Ordered space, then, is occupied space: occupied by a community and communal identity. Up to this point, such observations might appear to be little more than an appeal to an eclipsed order of landed space. In fact, though, Schmitt sees an opening in international law by which these ideas of ordered space might be manifest within a larger nomos of new land appropriation, distribution, and production (see here). That new juristic and juridical possibility Schmitt uncovers in the United States invoking in the early 19th century of the Monroe Doctrine.

This doctrine staked out an American space, with a specific emphasis upon the exclusion of intervention by outside powers. Pointedly, it was aimed at the colonial and imperial ambitions of the European powers. And more precisely still, it demarcated American space against the European self-justifying sanctification of imperial rule under the banner of what he calls the “monarchic-dynastic principle.” In this way, the Monroe Doctrine was not merely carving out a space, but a space defined through the lens of the political. America – and by this he means the hemisphere – was established by the doctrine as a space of societies defined by their aspiration for and mission of self-determination, in direct opposition to European colonial and imperial ambitions. In this sense, America was not merely a separately defined space, but a political community, with existential values and interests, in keeping with Schmitt’s friend-enemy distinction.

In this early 19th century doctrine, Schmitt identifies the original Großraum. A great politically ordered space: a space defined as ordered based upon its politically and existentially defined interests and values. Inside it, too, the space becomes ordered as it is rooted in the commonality of community and identity. Schmitt builds from there toward the idea, as so briefly alluded to in the 1955 article, that in fact a world organized around a balance of “several” such “independent Großräume” might provide a sustainable basis for the third nomos.

So, that’s the rough thumbnail, and again readers are (annoyingly, I’m sure) encouraged to review the earlier Schmittian Space post for a fuller understanding of all this. I will certainly now be doing a deeper dive into Schmitt’s Großraum writing, but at this point there are several lacunae which I perceive in his conception, which are valuably emphasized through contrast with the – clearly, highly influenced – iteration of his theory by Alexander Dugin in the latter’s model of a multipolar world.⁹ We should unpack some aspects of Dugin’s model as a means of maybe more fully fleshing out the prospects in Schmitt’s Großraum model. In any event, doing so will allow us then to apply all this as an analytical lens through which to assess the J.D. Vance speech in Munich, and what it might suggest about the current emergence of a new, third (fourth?) nomos.

Again, I may think differently after yet further reading of Schmitt’s Großraum model/theory, but at this point I’d emphasis two areas in Dugin’s version that provides us with something more to flesh out the model/theory. To begin with, Dugin offers a more granular assessment of what the world Großräume would be. He uses instead the phrase “civilizational poles,” as per the poles of the multipolar world, but is clearly describing the same thing. As opposed to Schmitt’s invocation of “several,” Dugin gives a credible breakdown of just how a distribution of such poles may shakeout: Western (or Atlantic?) civilization, Orthodox (Eurasian) civilization, Islamic civilization, Hindu civilization, Chinese (Confucian) civilization, Latin-American civilization, Buddhist civilization, and potential Japanese and African civilizations.

It’s also noteworthy that moving away from Schmitt’s grounding of Großraum in the Monroe Doctrine, Dugin is separating Latin America from Anglo- (Franco?) America, part of the Atlantic or Western civilization. There are certainly several undefined spaces in this model. I don’t think it’s entirely clear here where, e.g., Mexico, the Caribbean, even Turkey and Iran, necessarily fit. The religiously defined civilizations particularly raise questions: e.g., regarding Islamic civilization, are Morocco and Indonesia the same civilization?

Obviously the point here isn’t that Dugin has successfully put the world together into a multipolar jigsaw puzzle. Undoubtedly, actual history would work out many of these situations (perhaps this is why Schmitt seemed more reticent to be so precise). It’s also interesting too, then, considering the likelihood of such imprecision, as well as Schmitt’s claim that the old state borders of the second nomos have been erased (through free trade and air war), that rather than borders Dugin (or at least his English translators) speaks of frontiers: i.e., fuzzier edges which presumably, at least in some instances, would remain fluid and negotiable.

Another area of difference, which I’ve addressed before (see here), is that Dugin if only cursorily is more disposed to imagine the inner space of the Großraum as a decentred space, suggesting the prospects of federalism and subsidiarity. Schmitt does not seem to consider such options, and based on his earlier insistence upon the indivisibility of state sovereignty (see here), it’s quite plausible he wouldn’t have endorsed this addition to the theory by Dugin. Though it should be acknowledged that such a conclusion may not be entirely accurate. For instance, consider a passage such as this:

The profound change in our earth-spatial ideas and concepts is not intended to add new areas to the old continental centralism and to form a few hard, inwardly centralized, outwardly hermetically sealed giant blocks. If this were the case, then what has been said against the Greater Space would be true, namely that it is nothing more than an enlarged smaller space. In reality, the Greater Region can only be an area of national freedom and extensive independence and decentralization. Only then is it peace. The great global political adversary of the Greater Space is not the historically long outdated small space, but the claim to power of a universalist world power that cancels out space. ¹⁰

Does the “independence and decentralization” in this passage refer to the Großraum’s internal organization or its external relations. I am inclined to read it as the latter, but I certainly concede one could well interpret it as the former.¹¹ In any event, such equivocal phrasing hardly inspires confidence that Schmitt would have endorsed Dugin’s perspective in this regard. And, obviously, from the perspective that some expression of the pluralist constitution is required to offset the imperial project of managerial liberal universalism, and its spatialist corollary, how the inner operation of such a Großraum is structured would matter.

However, whatever one’s attitude to that claim, it is clear that an essential shared conception of the Großraum model between the two thinkers is that it is a necessary bulwark against that expansionary, interventionist, spatial imperialism of universalist (managerial) liberalism (for more on managerial liberalism, see here). As Dugin states explicitly, but is obviously manifest in Schmitt’s analysis of the historical and legal implications of the Monroe doctrine, such Großräume must be left free to pursue their own civilizational, cultural, and political solutions. It’s highly unlikely that all the Großräume, or civilizational poles, of the world will pursue or instantiate solutions that embody the values so precious to ambitious and immodest liberal universalism.

The point is that each Großraum must work out such matters on its own, in its own terms, based on its own traditions, and following its own path. The disapproval of liberal universalism does not constitute legitimate grounds for interfering in the internal affairs of any other Großraum. Only an acceptance of this principle could allow the multipolar world to become a sustainable new, third nomos.¹²

So, with that fleshing out of Schmitt’s Großraum model through Dugin’s multipolar world model, it might be interesting to reflect a little on U.S. Vice-President Vance’s recent remarks at the Munich Security Conference. Such reflection though should be prefaced with a reminder of points I’ve made on this Substack previously. As the name of this Substack (invoking its initial, now transcended, focus) ought to remind us, a ruling class is never monolithic. There are almost always going to be de facto, often openly competing, factions within a ruling class, and that is as true for our current managerial ruling class as any other. Plus, as I’ve also emphasized on this Substack, it would be a grave error to assume that just because various iterations of “wokeness” have been the justifying gloss of managerial liberalism, legitimating its technocratic ethos of social engineering and bureaucratic paternalism, there’s nothing intrinsically necessary to that justifying gloss. Other justifications have been used in the past, and likely will be in the future. (For discussions that flesh out this paragraph’s many points, see for instance, here, here and here.)

So, bear that in mind. Just because the political vector-force captured through the various lapels of Trump, America First, MAGA, national populism, etc., are opponents of the recently prevailing globalist faction of the managerial class, that doesn’t mean they are either temporalists or (heterarchical) pluralists. They could just as easily embody yet a new “America First” mode of imperial universalism.

I appreciate that many of them give lip-service to the idea that every other country should be aiming to make itself great, and indeed even within that broad vector-force there may well be conflicting ideas about just what “America First” actually means. But we can’t rule out by definition the prospect that it may mean the U.S. throwing its economic and military weight around to bully other countries into better serving U.S. interests.¹³ Of course such approaches would be framed as pursuing justice for the U.S. and its citizens; for our purposes we can put aside consideration of the validity of those justifications.¹⁴

As a brief reminder then to those who I expect will be reading this some weeks following the event, in his Munich Security Conference speech, J. D. Vance made considerable waves with barely veiled threats to the Europeans that U.S. economic and military power, which has recently been employed to advance “European” interests – or at least those of the ruling managerial elite of Europe – could very well be turned against those interests if they failed to get in line with the policy and values preferences of the new U.S. administration.

Again, whatever one thinks about the contentious issues here (e.g., censorship, immigration) is beside the point that I want to address. Whether one agrees or not that the Europeans should be adopting this new agenda of the America First movement, there’s no denying that the speech was an instance of the U.S. – even if now under the rule of a different faction of the ruling class – throwing its weight around to pressure others to manifest its policy preferences.

Given those facts on the ground, let’s consider those developments through the lens of Schmitt’s and Dugin’s Großraum theory, and more broadly the three options proposed by Schmitt for the new, third nomos of the earth. Did those events suggest the existence or emergence of any of Schmitt’s three options? For instance, Schmitt did consider the option that America might become the “greater island” that dominates sea and air. Was that what was on display at Munich?¹⁵

While it’s certainly plausible that the U.S. has served such a function, manifesting what Dugin called the unipolar world, this hardly seems a credible claim today. This new ruling class faction, if it indeed exercised such dominance, would not be in constant alert about the dangers of China invading Taiwan. That prospect simply wouldn’t be possible under such conditions of dominance. Plus, in its rhetoric aimed at resolving the Russian-Ukraine war, the current administration has repeatedly referred to Russia as “a great power.” Their own actions simply discredit any notion that we continue (if we ever did) to live in a unipolar world — certainly any claim that the U.S. exercised a dominance of sea and air comparable to England’s former dominance of the sea. So, that doesn’t strike me as a plausible interpretation of the significance of Vance’s speech.

What then about the second option we considered from Schmitt: the universalist ambitions of an aspiring world government? Certainly this weight-throwing attitude, clearly intended to intimidate the Europeans, is precisely the kind of behavior one would expect to see from such an aspiring world government. And, again, regardless of your opinions on the policy matters in dispute, trying to use one’s military and economic weight to compel others to adhere to one’s own values quite clearly would be consistent with the kind of imperial universalism that Schmitt associated to an aspiring single world monist sovereign.

The problems with this interpretation though are the same ones cited above that reasoned against the relevance of interpreting Vance’s speech as indicative of option one. U.S. rhetoric, acknowledging, explicitly or implicitly, the great power position of others – i.e., Russia and China – hardly is consistent with the posture of an aspiring world government.¹⁶ Plus, we’d still have to content with Schmitt’s observation about the decentralizing of elemental power with the rise of air war, which prevents any one, or set of, powers from monopolizing military space. So, unless of course we want to elevate the playing field to something like the usual assertion of 5D chess in matters Trumpian, speculating upon some super secret, ingenious ulterior plan, then we can turn our attention to option three.

Before we can fully unpack that option as our interpretive lens, we should address the question, if the new regime in Washington is in fact – as their rhetoric might suggest – coming to terms with a multipolar world, with a world resembling Schmitt’s system of independent Großräume, why are they trying to push around the Europeans? If they just didn’t want to any longer sponsor and subsidize the Europeans economically or militarily all they’d have to do is matter-of-factly withdraw all their relevant resources from Europe. Threatening to do so, is not the cessation of an agreement, but the leveraging of that agreement to attempt to compel behavior. But, again, why in Europe?

We’ll recall that Schmitt attributed the initial Großraum to the U.S. Monroe Doctrine – staking out the Großraum of the Americas as the model for Schmitt’s wider system, and ultimately Dugin’s multipolar world. So was Vance’s speech in fact a violation of the Großraum model, trying to intimidate a different Großraum, which again would make such a system unworkable as a new balanced and sustainable, third nomos of the earth? Schmitt might have concluded so, but Dugin would have a different perspective.

Recall that while Schmitt followed the contours of the Monroe doctrine in conceiving the Großraum of which the United States was to be the Reich, expanding through the Americas, Dugin’s much more granular attempt to puzzle piece together a patchwork of such Großräume made Latin America its own civilizational pole. From Dugin’s perspective, if the U.S. is the Reich of a Großraum, it is a “Western” or “Atlantic” Großraum. And that of course includes Western (at least Atlantic) Europe. So, if Schmitt was right about the third option being the third nomos, just tweaked by Dugin’s more detail-oriented delineation of the underlying system’s contours, what we saw in Vance’s speech was the ascendant faction of the U.S. ruling class disciplining its Großraum.¹⁷

In fact of matter, the real U.S. Großraum may well constitute both Atlantica and at least some realm of Latin America — at least Mexico and Central America. Both Schmitt and Dugin might have some aspect of the truth in their versions of the Großraum model. This interpretation of Vance’s speech, then, as a manifestation of the “Reich’s” new ruling faction re-articulating its Großraum would dovetail elegantly into a cogent explanation for many of the other foreign policy postures of the Trump presidency which, viewed in isolation, may seem erratic or muddled: imposing diverse degrees of dominance upon Panama, Greenland, and Canada. All these policy positions can be seen as a common project of enforcing the parameters of an “Atlantic” Großraum, aligning with the priorities of what Vance called “the new sheriff.”

If there are going to be Großräume, and those Großräume are going to have Reiche, surely Schmitt would have had no trouble acknowledging that those Reiche would have a ruling class, and – like any ruling class – competing factions within that class. Then it would seem a fair supposition that that was precisely what we saw playing out in Munich the other day. Again, I know that many under the broad America First umbrella have been claiming that Vance’s speech was about a decoupling from Europe, and (to use Steven Bannon’s language) the end of Europe as vassal states of the U.S.

But I repeat, if that’s all that was entailed, no speech was necessary – certainly not one fated to stir up controversy. All the U.S. would have to do is retract its economic and military resources. Making a speech, threatening such retraction, is an entirely different act, with different implications and consequences.

If this, admittedly quite cursory, analysis is correct, then the recent events at the Munich Security Conference would suggest that, while we might want to adjust the model for Dugin’s more granular detailing, it is indeed Schmitt’s third option – a system of independent Großräume (Dugin’s multipolar world) – which is emerging as the “third” nomos of the earth. As I addressed in my initial post to this Substack on the prospects of Schmitt’s Großraum world (see here), what such a development would mean for the course of the phenotype wars, and particularly as a strategic and tactical consideration for a project of recalling the pluralist constitution, remains a matter of some uncertainty, curiosity, and concern.

As we move on from this short series on Schmitt’s spatial revolution, expanding the ambit of attention, at least some of our attention will need to flesh out further the implications of such an emergent new nomos upon the course of the phenotype wars and any recalling of the pluralist constitution. That isn’t necessarily, though, where we’ll turn next, in the coming posts. That direction is presently a bit of a mystery.

So, if you like to see mysteries solved, and haven’t yet, please…

And, as always, if you know of anyone else who you think would appreciate joining us along this great intellectual journey, please…

Meanwhile: Be seeing you!

1. He ends chapter 4 of Part 1 with: “This is the sense in which the nomos of the earth is spoken of here. Every new age and every new epoch in the coexistence of peoples, empires, and countries, of rulers and power formations of every sort, is founded on new spatial dimensions, new enclosures, and new spatial orders of the earth.” Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of Jus Publicum Europaeum, trans. G. L. Ulmen (New York: Telos Press Publishing, 2006).

2. Perhaps somewhat preposterously, this nomos apparently would encompass the Roman Empire, Grossi’s agrarian reicentric customary law, and early centuries of the Hanseatic League. See the note above.

3. As an addition of a little color to such a conclusion, we can cite a passage from another Schmitt essay: “Unfortunately, it is all too natural for people to respond to the new call with the old answer, because it has proven to be correct and successful for a previous epoch. This is the danger: by believing themselves to be historical and clinging to what was once true, people forget that a historical truth is only true once. They no longer want to know that the answer to a new call of history can only be a pre-commandment from a human point of view and is usually only a blind pre-commandment. Thus the continuation of the old answer becomes unhistorical, and it is therefore all too natural that the victor of the past epoch is most likely to miss the new call of history. For how could the victor understand that his victory is only true once? And who could teach him that?” Carl Schmitt, “The historical structure of today’s world opposition between East and West,” in Staat, Grossraum, Nomos: Arbeiten Aus Den Jahren 1916-1969, ed. Gunter Maschke, 2nd edition (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot Gmbh, 2021). The reader is reminded that my access to this source is through AI translation, including the English title cited here.

4. Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition, trans. George Schwab, Enlarged edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

5. This insight, also, incidentally, as we discussed here long ago, was this core insight that led Schmitt to abandon his earlier-in-life “decisionism”: see the discussions here and here.

6. For another perspective on this aspect of the human condition and its broad political implications, from a theorist who would eventually become a major booster and interpreter of Schmitt into the English-speaking world, see Paul Piccone on artificial negativity: Michael McConkey, “Paul Piccone as Libertarian? A Canadian Proof and Rothbardian Critique,” The Independent Review 16, no. 4 (Spring 2012) (also, see here). This was written in my libertarian days, long before I understood the phenotype wars.

7. Carl Schmitt, “The Großraum Order of International Law with a Ban on Intervention for Spatially Foreign Powers,” in Writings on War, ed. Timothy Nunan, 1st edition (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity, 2015).

8. The above mentioned article was published in 1939; he seemed to work out the thesis of The Nomos of the Earth from the mid-40s onward. It’s possible this article was a step on the way to the realization of the crisis of the second nomos. I probably haven’t read enough of Schmitt’s minor and journal works to arrive at a definitive opinion on that, but from what I have read, it seems plausible.

9. Alexander Dugin, The Theory of a Multipolar World (London: Arktos Media Ltd, 2020), https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/58353014-the-theory-of-a-multipolar-world.

10. Carl Schmitt, “The Space Revolution: Through total war to total freedom,” in Staat, Grossraum, Nomos: Arbeiten Aus Den Jahren 1916-1969, ed. Gunter Maschke, 2nd edition (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot Gmbh, 2021).

11. An interesting discussion of this topic, largely relying upon conjecture as formed through the lens of Schmitt’s earlier writing from the 20s and 30s, is the discussion of the role of the state within the Großraum as provided by Mathias Schmoeckel, Die Grossraumtheorie: Ein Beitrag Zur Geschichte Der Volkerrechtswissenschaft Im Dritten Reich, Insbesondere Der Kriegszeit (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot Gmbh, 1994). See particularly section II.3.a “The metropolitan area as a political order.” A quotation from Schmoeckel providing a flavor of his discussion is: “The question arises as to why Schmitt did not argue for the complete abolition of the other states in the Greater Area [i.e., Großraum] as a consistent solution; the remaining legal personality could only lead to a reduction in the power of the Reich and its position in the Greater Area. However, Schmitt did not comment on the remaining rights of the Greater Area states. However, the greater area was to be an area of national independence and freedom. They should also be ‘states’ and not simply ‘peoples,’ because the organizational minimum of the ‘state’ was the prerequisite for a people to participate in the community of international law. A restriction of the empire's freedom of decision is thus undeniable, but this loss could no longer be perceived as such if it corresponded to the political idea of the empire.“ The reader is reminded that my access to this source is through AI translation, including the English title cited here.

12. This was the conclusion of a Schmitt scholar who dedicated a book to his Großraum theory: “The suspicion arises that Schmitt understood intervention much more broadly than the traditional doctrine of international law to mean any exertion of influence by a foreign state that was contrary to the political idea of the empire.” Schmoeckel, Die Grossraumtheorie.

13. For instance, it hardly seems to me self-evident that it’s the job of comparatively poorer Mexico or Canada to supply its own public resources on behalf of enforcing the U.S. border. If the latter is being violated by illegal aliens, drug cartels, and terrorists, enforcing the U.S. border is the responsibility of the United States government and paying for such enforcement is the responsibility of the U.S. taxpayers — not Mexican or Canadian taxpayers.

14. In the age of “popular sovereignty” ideology, that’s simply to be assumed, as per the other side’s endless appeal to the protection and promotion of “our democracy.” Our democracy and America First could very well turn out to be interchangeable slogans for a common geopolitical form – even if that form does extol some different substantive values.

15. Incidentally, I think it worth pondering whether that greater American island version of the new nomos may have existed, something like between 1989 and 2022. In which case that was the third nomos, and we’re now talking about the fourth. I’m dubious about the usefulness of such a framing, but I can’t deny that one could make a not entirely far-fetched claim along such lines.

16. Of course, as things presently stand, the U.S. has both Russia and China ensnared in a ring of military bases, many armed with nuclear weapons. A condition which the latter two most certainly do not have imposed upon the U.S. (The last time either of them tried to locate such a base close to the U.S., the latter was prepared to bring the world to the edge of nuclear war during the so-call Cuban missile crisis.) Is it possible that the talk one hears among the U.S. chattering caste and some of the ruling class's more marginal factions, about withdrawing U.S. military force from around the world, and shutting down international bases, possibly a signal of movement toward acknowledging the coming reality of such a multipolar world, and the need to maintain balance and peace within it? It’s also interesting that some America First types, such as Vivek Ramaswamy, talk about defending Taiwan from China only as long as is necessary for the U.S. to end its reliance upon the former for its microchip supply — not as a matter of strategic geopolitical principle. Nothing written here, of course, should be misunderstood as pretending to be definitive. It is all interesting though when set in such a larger framework of a potentially emerging Großraum-based world.

17. In the weeks since this post was written several astounding events have provided support for such an interpretation. To begin with, the U.S. Secretary of State has come out and publicly stated that in his estimation we are now living in a multipolar world. Even more striking though were the events, quite plausibly orchestrated from Europe, initially ignited by Zelensky’s recalcitrant attitude during a press briefing in the Oval Office, followed by defiant declarations of European leaders that they would have to go it alone in Ukraine, finally forming a European army; Trump withdrawing financial support for the Ukraine side of the war (or not); and the President of France pondering whether Ukraine, and indeed all of Europe, maybe should be brought under the protection of France’s nuclear umbrella. I’m adding this note to the post still several days before it will be posted, so who knows what else may yet happen. At this point though it seems to me that — regardless of what degree any of this turns out to be bluster — it would be a serious lacuna to not recognize that there is indeed a struggle going on over whether or not (and if so, upon what terms) Europe will remain part of the America-led Atlantic Großraum. I of course wouldn’t presume to predict the outcome of such a struggle. And one more thing, if you want an even more original take on what’s happening, check out this video chat with Tom Luongo in which he predicts that Europe (first the east, then eventually all of it) will become part of the Russian Großraum, not as some might anticipate today, due to military conquest, but as a product of great power negotiation as the U.S. consolidates its Großraum more in the Western hemisphere