In the shadow of Carl Schmitt: Putin and Trump’s ideas on the division of Europe

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1. What connects Carl Schmitt, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump?

Two major powers, the USA and Russia, are negoti­ating the future of Ukraine in Riyadh. Ukraine is not at the table. Europe is left out. Are we witnessing a return to the politics of the great powers as in the 19th century? A comparison with the three allied victo­rious powers — Russia, the USA and Great Britain — who delin­eated spheres of influence and interests in Yalta in February 1945, seems more relevant than the cabinet policy of the princes of Europe.[1] However, with the difference that there is (still) no “victo­rious power” at present — in view of hundreds of thousands of dead and injured, devas­tated cities and landscapes, a demol­ished security order in Europe and the fact that Putin has not yet achieved any of his war aims despite his gigantic military machine. However, President Trump’s actions are likely to put Putin on the podium of victory.

An important ideological driving force and pioneer for Putin’s geopo­litical thinking in large areas and spheres of influence is Carl Schmitt (1888–1985), the German professor of consti­tu­tional law and apologist for inter­na­tional law of National Socialist Germany.

“The liberal idea of freedom in Western democracy is now histor­i­cally outdated.” (Carl Schmitt 1939)[2]

Schmitt is regarded as a reactionary teacher for autocrats, but also as an original thinker on the philosophy of the state and a cultural critic.[3] As part of a “Schmitt renais­sance” in the face of increased recep­tiveness to conser­v­ative thinking worldwide and the rise of right-wing populist movements, he is being inten­sively studied, partic­u­larly in Russia[4] , but also in the USA[5] . Rhetorical set pieces and thought patterns can be traced back to Schmitt in both Putin and Trump.

“... authority proves that it does not need to be right in order to be right.” (Carl Schmitt 1922)[6]

“Judges aren’t allowed to control the execu­tive’s legit­imate power.” (JD Vance)[7]

The similar­ities are striking but are not surprising because Schmitt’s theses are ideally suited to populist narra­tives due to their polemical exagger­ation.[8]

“...the ‘rule of law’ ... means nothing other than the legit­imization of a certain status quo...” (Carl Schmitt 1932)[9]

“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” (Donald Trump about Elon Musk)[10]

Essen­tially, there are five core theses from Schmitt’s oeuvre that are reflected in both Trump and Putin:

• The opposition of friend and foe as the essence of the political.
• “Sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception”[11]: The exception is the finest hour for disruptive rule-breakers and protag­o­nists of a “revolution from above”, in the USA Trump with the advocates of the “unitary executive theory”, in Russia Putin and the archi­tects of his dictatorship.
• Anti-liberal thinking directed against multi­lat­er­alism and a rules-based inter­na­tional order, which is defamed as a “tyranny of values”[12].
• Defin­ition of geopo­litical “Greater Spaces” instead of a universal order under inter­na­tional law with the estab­lishment of a strategic balance of a few great powers that divide the world among themselves, according to Schmitt a “Greater Space order under inter­na­tional law with a ban on inter­vention by powers outside the region”[13]. Trump and Putin are likely to share the basic idea but differ in their inter­pre­tation. Naturally, Putin empha­sizes the concept of a “multi­polar” world with Russia as a great power[14]. With his claims to Gaza and Greenland, Trump is circum­venting the pure Schmittian doctrine of the “prohi­bition of inter­vention by powers outside the region”[15].
• A few great powers (Schmitt: “empires”, Putin “civiliza­tions”) are at the core of the large areas they dominate. They are the only relevant subjects of inter­na­tional law with the exclusive right to define friend or foe and determine war and peace, to control the foreign and security policy alliances of the states in their sphere of influence, and the bearers of a political idea that permeates their own geopo­litical hemisphere. [16]

In Putin’s case, there is evidence of a large number of state­ments and actions over the long period since he came to power a quarter of a century ago, which take up Schmitt’s theses, but are situa­tional and context-related and also refer to a wealth of other sources and role models.[17] With Trump, unlike Putin, “no truly coherent geopo­litical strategy” is discernible. He is still in “disruption mode” without a systematic agenda[18]. However, it is also true that Trump is “prepared, aggressive, strategic” in the early phase of his second term as president, he wants a “brute revision of America’s internal consti­tution, its enemies and friends”.[19] Especially when disruption is the mode and permanent polar­ization the script for Trump’s daily actions, Schmitt’s “state of exception” and his friend-enemy opposition as the essence of the political come in handy as explanatory patterns.

It is therefore worth discussing possible overlaps, but also differ­ences, in Putin’s and Trump’s foreign policy concepts with the help of Schmitt’s termi­nology with a view to a ceasefire arrangement for Ukraine. To what extent do Putin’s war aims and his concept for the “reorga­ni­zation of Europe” presented in December 2021[20] reflect Schmitt’s ideas? Which elements are negotiable for him with regard to the demar­cation and organi­zation of the Russian “greater space”, and which are not? How do Trump’s ideas relate to this? Does a look through the prism of the “Greater Space Order  theory” help explain Trump’s departure from the initially envisaged “peace through strength” approach[21] for Ukraine and his scandalous swing towards Putin’s position even before the start of negotiations?

2. Russia and the “Greater Space Order”

On April 1, 1939, Schmitt gave a lecture in Kiel, published under the unwieldy title “Greater Spatial  Order under Inter­na­tional Law with Prohi­bition of Inter­vention by Powers Foreign to Space. A contri­bution to the concept of empire in inter­na­tional law”. The occasion was the 25th anniversary of the Institute for Politics and Inter­na­tional Law at the local university. A few days before the speech, on March 15, the Wehrmacht had invaded Czecho­slo­vakia in breach of the Munich Agreement[22] concluded just a few months earlier, on September 29, 1938. NSDAP member and anti-Semite Schmitt used the occasion to campaign in Kiel for the German “right of protection for German ethnic groups of foreign nation­ality”[23] invented by Hitler as a pretext for the occupation of independent states in violation of inter­na­tional law. Hitler’s so-called “destruction of the rest of Czecho­slo­vakia” laid the appeasement policy of Great Britain and France in ruins and finally buried the European post-war order since 1918/​19. The incor­po­ration of the neigh­boring country in the southeast was the last military milestone before Nazi Germany’s campaign of conquest and annihi­lation, which began with the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939.

Shortly before, on August 24, 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union had concluded a non-aggression treaty. As a reminder: In the secret additional protocol to the Hitler-Stalin Pact, both dictators had agreed to divide Poland, the Baltic states and Bessarabia into German and Soviet spheres of interest in the event of “terri­torial-political trans­for­ma­tions”. Today, unlike the Soviet Union in the past, Russia no longer denies the agreement with Nazi Germany with the aim of dismem­bering and dividing up sovereign states in violation of inter­na­tional law. However, Putin justifies it as an act of legit­imate protection of a “surrounded” Soviet Union, claims that Poland is also to blame for the Second World War and even goes so far as to claim that the Baltic states volun­tarily joined the Soviet Union in the fall of 1939.[24]

From this historical distortion on the 75th anniversary of the victory in the “Great Patriotic War” in 2020, a straight line leads to Putin’s essay “On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians 2021”[25], in which he denies Ukraine an independent historical-cultural identity and reduces it to a function of Russia, to the Russian presi­dent’s TV address on Day 1 of the major Russian attack on Ukraine on 24 February 2022. In it, he accuses the West of aggressive and unilateral action against Russia, above all by expanding NATO eastwards (despite the alleged promise not to move the alliance “one inch” eastwards) and accuses it of creating an “anti-Russia that is hostile to us” in Ukraine, on “Russia’s historic land”. In addition, Putin claims that the West is attempting to “destroy our tradi­tional values and impose its pseudo-values on us”, leading to “decay and degen­er­ation”. Putin thus stylized the war of aggression against Ukraine as an act of legit­imate self-defence against a threat that was putting “our future as a nation”, indeed “the existence of the state and its sover­eignty”, at risk. He adds that Moscow has no right to repeat its grave historical mistake, which consisted of waiting for the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 with a policy of appeasement. [26]

This is where Carl Schmitt comes into play again, one of the most important intel­lectual godfa­thers of Putin’s thinking in geopo­litical spaces and spheres of interest. Schmitt’s thinking is based on three premises:

• The old European order, based on sovereign states with equal rights and a rules-based order, has finally come to an end;
• the nation state as the sole embod­iment of political unity and holder of the monopoly on political decision-making has had its day;
• any “cosmopolitan”-universalist alter­native to the nation state (“world government”) would, however, only conceal the actual power politics of a hegemon. [27]

Schmitt postu­lates a multi­polar world dominated by hegemonic super­powers as a “new spatial order”. He speaks out against the global­ization of US ideals and norms. This leads to the collapse of spatial borders and contra­dicts the “idea of spatial demar­cation”.[28] In other words, for Schmitt, the post-political idea of cosmopolitan global gover­nance is the opposite of inter­na­tional order, which is consti­tuted by large areas divided and separated from one another under inter­na­tional law between major powers .[29]

Schmitt’s theories form the breeding ground for perception of the USA as a unilat­er­alist, monop­o­listic super­power with a hypocritical façade as a champion of human rights and a rules-based order that has been emerging in Russia since the early 2000s. With the start of Putin’s third term in office in 2012, his Greater Russia theory became the mainstream of foreign and security policy thinking in Moscow. The most important trans­mission belt for Schmitt’s thinking is Alexander Dugin, ultra­na­tion­alist political philosopher, chief ideologue of the Russian New Right and advocate of “Eurasian imperi­alism”. He is regarded as Putin’s “mastermind” or “whisperer” — with high-ranking connec­tions to Washington and even to Trump’s close circle.[30] Dugin, for whom Schmitt’s Greater Space Theory is the “most reliable platform for a multi­polar world, for anti-globalism and the national liber­ation struggle against global American domination[31], calls for the creation of a “new Eurasian empire”. Justi­fi­cation: The “existence of the Russian people as an organic, historical entity” is unthinkable without “empire building”. Any attempt to reduce Russia to the status of a regional power or a European nation state would mean suicide for the Russian people.[32] Dugin thus applies the concept of empire to Russia, which Schmitt defines as follows:

“Empires in this sense are the leading and supporting powers whose political idea radiates into a certain large area (Grossraum) and which funda­men­tally exclude the inter­vention of foreign powers in this large area.” (Carl Schmitt) [33]

The core meaning of the Monroe Doctrine for “Greater America” is

“...a genuine principle of a greater space, namely the combi­nation of a polit­i­cally awakened people, a political idea and a greater space that is polit­i­cally dominated by this idea and excludes foreign intervention...this core, the idea of a greater space order under inter­na­tional law, is trans­ferable to other spaces, other historical situa­tions and other friend-foe groupings.” (Carl Schmitt)[34]

Against this backdrop, Dugin identifies four global metro­politan areas or “empires” (in Schmitt’s diction, “realms”): The Atlantic Greater Space around the USA, the Asian Greater Space around China, the European Greater Space, and finally the Eurasian Greater Space around Russia. The latter three areas should expand, while the American “empire” should withdraw with its global­ization claims.[35] Russia had to be the center of power in its own hemisphere and form a strong counter­weight to the other metro­politan areas around the USA and China. Alexei Drobinin, head of the foreign policy planning department at the Russian Foreign Ministry, draws the circle of great powers or what he calls “civiliza­tions” wider than Dugin, including the global South. According to him, a “civilization” must fulfil three criteria: firstly, the capability  and will to carry out  a sovereign and independent domestic and foreign policy; secondly, compre­hensive economic, military, demographic, scien­tific and techno­logical potential; thirdly, an “authentic philosophy of devel­opment” with its own cultural and spiritual potential and its own “signature vision”  of inter­na­tional politics. These criteria were met by “civilization-states” or “civiliza­tional common­wealths” such as Russia, China, India, Southeast Asia (ASEAN community), the Arab world and the Muslim Ummah, Africa, Latin America/​Caribbean and the “Western civilization” with its Anglo-American and European compo­nents. [36]

Schmitt defines states that stand in the shadow of empires and are located in their metro­politan areas as entities with limited sover­eignty and a lack of subjec­tivity under inter­na­tional law, without the power to differ­en­tiate between friend and foe (and therefore without the ability to shape their own policies) and without the right to join inter­na­tional alliances. The claim by Vladislav Surkov, deputy head of the Kremlin admin­is­tration at the time and Putin’s Ukraine envoy from 2013–2020, that states like Ukraine have never been sovereign on a single day of their existence, fits in with this. [37]

In summary, the Russian political elite around Putin agrees on the following four core elements that define Russia as a great power:

• Russia does not define itself within its borders as a nation state, but draws its identity as a hegemonic power from a larger space that transcends its own borders;
• Russia thus exercises power over states with limited sover­eignty within its metro­politan area;
• Russia is the protag­onist of a political “idea” that “unites” the peoples in its metro­politan area;
• the Russian metro­politan area is exclusive, a military presence of third powers is inadmis­sible.[38]

However, there is an inherent contra­diction in this structure, which is concep­tually already present in Schmitt.[39] It is about the effec­tiveness or scope of the “political idea”, which, according to Schmitt, must always remain “bound” to its respective space and must not become universal. The claim of univer­sality of human rights, for example, is an expression of “imperi­alism” and could turn into a global “tyranny of values”, which would lead to the breaking of spatial borders and thus to the collapse of the inter­na­tional legal order. [40]

It was precisely along these lines that Putin argued in his memorable speech at the Munich Security Conference on February 10, 2007, accusing the West of misusing the OSCE to interfere in the internal affairs of Russia and other countries under the pretext of protecting human rights, “in order to impose on these states how they should live and develop.”[41] This narrative, often coupled with the accusation of applying “double standards” (such as “selective” verifi­cation of compliance with human rights and funda­mental freedoms only “east of Vienna”), has  been for a long time a common thread running through discus­sions in the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna or other relevant dialog forums with Russia.

At the same time, however, Russia is using the “Russian values” revived under Putin, a combi­nation of tradi­tional Christian family values, the symbiosis of the state and the Russian Orthodox Church[42] and the concept of a “strong”, author­i­tarian state as a bulwark against regime change and “color revolu­tions”, as instru­ments of criticism of the “West” and its alleged “moral decadence”. This also involves the massive use of social media to divide Western societies, strengthen right-wing populist movements[43] and undermine the political systems in the West. Russia thus contra­dicts itself when, on the one hand, it does every­thing in its power to enforce “Russian values” globally, while on the other hand questioning the validity of universal values such as human rights and funda­mental freedoms with reference to Russia’s alleged special historical and cultural position and its sphere of interest. For this reason, Putin’s justi­fi­cation for claiming Moscow’s exclusive right to determine the internal consti­tution and foreign policy orien­tation of Ukraine (protection of the “Russian idea” from the negative influence of “hostile powers”) lacks any credibility.

3. Putin, Trump and the Ukraine negotiations

Against the background of Schmitt’s Greater Space Theory, it becomes crystal clear what Putin wants:

• The “restoration” or “completion” of the “Greater Russia” on the territory of the Soviet Union
• Limited sover­eignty for Ukraine as part of the “Greater Russia”. Right of veto for Russia in the choice of foreign policy alliances and the appli­cation of external security guarantees by Ukraine. Influence or even military presence of “external powers” is undesirable. From Moscow’s point of view, NATO membership is therefore out of the question. An EU accession process, on the other hand, can be negotiated.
• Neutral, non-aligned status with permanent renun­ci­ation of nuclear weapons. At best, the military should be reduced to a minimum that could not offer Russia any serious resistance.
• Mutation of Ukraine from an “anti-Russia” into a vassal of Moscow. Selensky resigns as “illegit­imate leader” in favor of a Russia-friendly president before a ceasefire agreement is signed.
• Overcoming the schism of Russian Orthodoxy in order to make Ukraine a loyal supporter and bearer of the “Russian idea” that permeates the greater Russian region. This is one of Putin’s central political concerns. “Reuni­fi­cation” of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) (independent since 2019) with the Russian Orthodox Church, whereby the OCU is to be subor­di­nated to the Moscow Patriarchate.
• In Putin’s imperial view, Ukraine, as the cradle of Kyiv Rus, is the most important member of the Russian Greater Region (Russky Mir), without — with the exception of Crimea — having to be part of the territory of the Russian Feder­ation. As long as Ukraine as a whole submits to all the afore­men­tioned demands, terri­torial claims to parts of its territory do not play a decisive role.
• Formation of a cordon sanitaire of states without the presence of troops from NATO third countries to guarantee the integrity of the Greater Russia area. The Russian draft agreement sent to NATO on December 17, 2021 stipu­lates that the “old” NATO states (as of May 27, 1997, the date of the NATO-Russia Founding Act) undertake not to station armed forces and armaments in other European states, including the 16 “new” NATO member states (Art. 4). This would mean, for example, the withdrawal of the Bundeswehr brigade from Lithuania. Additional expansion of NATO must be stopped (Art. 6). NATO states may not conduct any military activ­ities on the territory of Ukraine, other states in Eastern Europe, the Southern Caucasus and Central Asia (Art. 7). [44]

The following are therefore non-negotiable for Russia

• Exclusion of NATO accession and “neutral­ization” of Ukraine
• Subor­di­nation of Ukrainian domestic and foreign policy to Russia, Moscow’s say in external security guarantees
• Ending or at least substan­tially reducing the NATO troop presence in Eastern Europe.

These are Putin’s central war aims. Putin currently rejects the deployment of foreign troops, including from EU states, as a security guarantee for Ukraine. However, it cannot be ruled out that he could ultimately agree to a “manageable” EU military presence (but not US troops!) west of Dnipro and possibly Chinese troops not far from the front line.

Putin is unlikely to back down on his terri­torial claims in the upcoming negoti­a­tions. Moscow declared the Ukrainian terri­tories of Kherson, Zapor­izhzhia, Luhansk and Donetsk to be part of the Russian Feder­ation by law in October 2022, although Russia has so far only occupied parts of these terri­tories in violation of inter­na­tional law. Russia “needs” its troops there to be able to escalate the conflict again at any time, even after a ceasefire in order to keep Ukraine and Europe under pressure. Never­theless, a negoti­ation scenario is conceivable in which Putin could be “flexible” with regard to Kherson or Zapor­izhia (or parts thereof), depending on what he is “offered” in return. The prereq­uisite for any reduction in Moscow’s terri­torial claims is that Ukraine, from Putin’s point of view, is irrev­o­cably “integrated” into the Russian orbit.

Against this backdrop, what does Trump’s shift from a “peace through strength” approach to a policy of appeasement, which relin­quishes almost all negoti­ating positions ab initio, mean? Until recently the approach of his Ukraine envoy, retired General Keith Kellogg, was considered a foregone conclusion:

• Continued military support for Ukraine by the USA,
• Ukraine’s partic­i­pation in peace talks,
• Postponement (“to put off”) of NATO membership for an extended period in exchange for a compre­hensive and verifiable peace settlement with security guarantees,
• Creation of a demil­i­ta­rized zone to secure the ceasefire.[45]

Instead, Trump has now fully toed Putin’s line, with the exception of the deployment of European troops in Ukraine, which Moscow rejects:

• Peace talks until further notice only at the level of the “super­powers” USA and Russia, negoti­a­tions are being conducted over the heads of Ukraine and the EU.
• Refusal of Ukraine’s accession to NATO.
• Adoption of Putin’s rhetoric, discred­iting the President of Ukraine as a “dictator without elections” and blaming Kyiv for starting the conflict (“You should never have started it”, as he said).
• Taking advantage of Ukraine’s wartime distress to achieve   a “rare earth minerals deal”,
• Under­mining the hitherto large majority within the UN framework in condemning Russia as an aggressor,bypassing the General Assembly and adopting a gutted, pro-Moscow Ukraine resolution together with Russia in the Security Council on February 24 this year. [46]

What explains this devas­tating shift in negoti­ating tactics with the abandonment of almost all indis­pensable negoti­ating positions? It is highly unlikely that Trump — for all his sympathy for Carl Schmitt’s friend-foe dichotomy or the doctrine of the state of exception  in order to undermine the separation of powers — would want to adopt Schmitt’s theory of the Greater United States as his agenda. Observers agree that the focus for him is on the business trans­action, the “deal”, and not, as for Putin, questions of sover­eignty and securing great power status. For Trump, the latter are a means to an end, but not an end in themselves. This explains why Trump is against the costly deployment of US troops or even against Ukraine joining NATO and is pursuing a “commodities deal” in order to “recoup” US budget funds spent on supporting Kyiv.  Never­theless, in terms of negoti­ating tactics, it remains inexplicable why Trump is giving away key negoti­ating positions from the outset and not using them as a “bargaining chip”. Putin would have sat down at the table with Trump even with signif­i­cantly lower advance payments.

A look at the personnel table of the negotiators involved so far also makes the asymmetry to the detriment of Ukraine and European concerns clear:

• On February 18, the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio (born 1971), National Security Advisor Michael Waltz (born 1974) and Trump’s Middle East Repre­sen­tative Steve Witkoff (born 1957) were sitting at the table in Riyadh. Rubio, Senator for Florida since 2011, and Waltz, a former Army Special Forces soldier   and member of the House of Repre­sen­ta­tives from 2019 to 2025, have no foreign policy experience in the executive branch to date, and above all no recog­nizable expertise on Russia or Ukraine. The most important person in the US delegation is lawyer, real estate mogul and close Trump confidant Witkoff, who has good connec­tions to the Russian businessman and head of Russia’s state investment fund[47] , Kirill Dmitriev (*1975), an economist, banker and consultant  who studied in the US and worked at Goldman Sachs and McKinsey. He has had close working relations with Putin for a long time.[48] Trump had sent his Ukraine and Russia envoy, former General Keith Kellogg (*1944), to Kyiv for the duration of the meeting in Riyadh.
• Dimitriyev attended the meeting in Riyadh as a member of the Russian delegation — in the second row, behind Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (*1950) and Putin’s foreign and security policy advisor Yuri Ushakov (*1947). Lavrov is an experi­enced diplomat (since 1972) and has been Foreign Minister since 2004 — with good prospects of equaling the 28-year term of office of his Soviet prede­cessor Andrei Gromyko. Ushakov had already joined the Russian Foreign Ministry in 1970, two years before Lavrov. Both have many years of US experience, Lavrov with two assign­ments at Russia’s UN repre­sen­tation in New York (1994–2004 as ambas­sador), Ushakov as ambas­sador in Washington (1998–2008). Both are intimately familiar with the details of the Ukraine dossier, Ushakov as head of the Russian negoti­ating team for the Minsk II agreement, among other things.[49]

One thing is clear: based on the compo­sition of the negoti­ating delega­tions and the current level of foreign policy expertise, the Russian side should easily outperform the USA. It speaks volumes that Trump is not focusing on foreign and security policy, but rather on business experience with the appointment of heavy­weight Witkoff. [50]

It is therefore urgent for the EU to get involved in the negoti­a­tions at a high level, force­fully and with a clear concept and prevent a US-Russian deal from being concluded over the heads of Ukraine and the European Union. The new German government must play a prominent role here, as quickly as possible and closely alongside France and Poland. In order for Putin to under­stand the message, Europe will have to prove that it also wants to and will develop into a military power­house - certainly also as a “Greater Europe”.