Global terrorism and the state of permanent exception: The significance of Carl Schmitt’s thought today

At the end of the 1990s, Gorbachev’s adviser Arbatov declared to the Americans: ‘We are dealing you the worst blow: we are going to deprive you of your enemy’. These are significant words. The disappearance of the Soviet ‘Evil Empire’ threatened to eradicate all ideological legitimization of American hegemony over its allies. This means that, from then on, the Americans needed to find an alternative enemy, the threat, real or imaginary, of which would allow them a continued imposition of hegemony over their partners, who had been more or less transformed into vassals. In conceptualizing the notion of ‘global terrorism’ two years after the 9/11 attacks, the Americans have found their new enemy.1