The way in which, since the 1990s, the Chinese authorities, claiming to have ‘Asian values’, have rejected criticism in the name of the human rights ideology is significant. In January 2021, at the Davos Forum, Xi Jinping said, ‘Just as no two leaves in the world are the same, no two histories, no two cultures, no two social systems are the same. Each country is unique in all these areas, and no country is superior to another. There is no need to worry about differences, but rather about attempts to impose a hierarchy between civilisations or to force some of them to align themselves with another in terms of history, culture or social system.’
The recognition of the crisis of universalism and Western hegemonism thus goes hand in hand with the feeling that the era of the international order based on the conflicting balance of nation-states has ended, as Carl Schmitt foresaw as early as the 1930s. The rise of civilisational states signals the entry into an era in which the world order is no longer reduced to the unstable equilibrium of nation-states. As civilisational norms become a pivotal point in geopolitics, the main competition is no longer the traditional one between nation-states but the one between civilisations. Civilisational states give rise to a new mode of sovereignty that is no longer that of nation-states.
» The logic of great spaces does not have a universalist scope. The paradigm is no longer national, but spatial.’ «
Carl Schmitt, 1941.
The recognition of the crisis of universalism and Western hegemonism thus goes hand in hand with the feeling that the era of the international order based on the conflicting balance of nation-states has ended, as Carl Schmitt foresaw as early as the 1930s. The rise of civilisational states signals the entry into an era in which the world order is no longer reduced to the unstable equilibrium of nation-states. As civilisational norms become a pivotal point in geopolitics, the main competition is no longer the traditional one between nation-states but the one between civilisations. Civilisational states give rise to a new mode of sovereignty that is no longer that of nation-states.
[...] The notion of the civilisational state is even more reminiscent of the ‘great space’ (Großraum) theorised by Carl Schmitt to rethink international relations beyond the codification of relations between nation-states. A ‘great space’, Schmitt says, requires a ‘great people’, a vast territory and an autonomous political will. ‘Empires’, he writes, ‘are those ruling powers that carry a political idea radiating out into a determined great space from which they exclude, as a matter of principle, the interventions of foreign powers.’ And he adds this essential reminder: ‘The empire is more than an enlarged state, just as the great space is not just an enlarged micro-space.’ ‘The logic of great spaces does not have a universalist scope. It only integrates the historical evolution of the great territorial powers influencing third countries. The paradigm is therefore no longer national, but spatial.’
See also:
Carl
Schmitt (1941) - Völkerrechtliche Großraumordnung mit
Interventionsverbot für raumfremde Mächte. Ein Beitrag zum Reichsbegriff
im Völkerrecht. (Great Space International Law with a ban on
intervention by powers alien to the area. A contribution to the concept
of empire in international law.)
Carl Schmitt (1940) - Großraum gegen Universalismus. (Great Space vs. Universalism.)
Carl Schmitt (1940) - Großraum gegen Universalismus. (Great Space vs. Universalism.)