Carl Schmitt is one of the most contentious political theorists of the twentieth century. His complicity in Nazi Germany left him discredited yet he has continued to attract widespread attention as an insightful, if flawed, critic of the modern democratic order and its global ambitions. His assertion that 'whoever invokes humanity is trying to cheat' has been revived as a indictment of western especially American, intervention in the affairs of other countries. As a German philosopher Jurgen Habermas has noted Schmitt's arguments potentially have a fatal appeal in the contemporary world. The...