Monrovian musings: Carl Schmitt’s critique of American empire and the Monroe Doctrine

The essays discusses Carl Schmitt’s writings on American empire as an important part of his indictment of the legalist jargon and universalist pretensions of liberal internationalism. Two of his essays – namely Forms of modern imperialism in international law (1933) and Großraum versus universalism: the international legal struggle over the Monroe Doctrine (1939) - indict the Monroe Doctrine as “the core of all arguments brought forth defensively or offensively in justification by the United States in international law or foreign policy for a hundred years”. One wonders if, in the process, Schmitt buys into its exceptionalist ideology and misses crucial aspects of what is, after all, an empire among empires.