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International Law as Political Theology: How to Read Nomos der Erde ?
Author(s) -
Koskenniemi Martti
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
constellations
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1467-8675
pISSN - 1351-0487
DOI - 10.1111/j.1351-0487.2004.00391.x
Subject(s) - politics , international law , commission , law , political science , citation , sociology , philosophy
Rarely in modern times have Europe and the United States drifted as far apart as they have today. It would be wrong to seek any single cause or a predominant theme for their separation. Much history and trauma, on both sides, is surely involved. A mutual ressentiment of the current intensity is not born overnight. But one of the more visible and perhaps sharper forms in which the divergence has appeared concerns thinking about international affairs. For the Americans, ever since September 11, the old truths of political realism seem to have overwhelmed any hopes for a more peaceful and united world that the end of the Cold War had brought about. The world is still as dangerous as ever, perhaps even more so, due to the extraordinary types of weapons and strategy possessed by America’s enemies. A dangerous world requires a hardening of attitudes and more determinate, less conciliatory behavior. For decades, the United States has agreed to play the diplomatic game with the Europeans and an amorphous “international community,” united often only by its implacable opposition to everything the United States stands for. Now this must stop. The European view of the world could scarcely be more different. “Nowadays . . . the United Nations Charter has almost universally been recognized as the constitutional document of the international community of states.”1 Here is Antonio Cassese, former president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia: