Carl Schmitt's International Order: A Decolonial Reappraisal

The article interrogates Schmitt’s conceptualisation of the modern international order, highlighting its Eurocentric and colonial premises. While Schmitt’s spatial conception of world order is framed primarily as a juridical effort to regulate war through international law – even as it acknowledges the extra-legal character of colonial confrontations – a decolonial reading reveals an intertwined logic of exclusion, racialisation, and genocidal practice embedded within it, operating from the outset alongside war and beneath modern spatial structures. In a period of profound international transformation, Schmitt’s geopolitical reflections have regained prominence. A critical reappraisal can assess whether they remain a useful, if uncomfortable, framework for understanding ongoing change, while also highlighting aspects of his analysis that have historically been overlooked.