Reflection: Ender's Game

I admit, this entire post will be colored by the fact that I just finished Carl Schmitt's The Concept of the Political. After finishing Schmitt's work, I find it entirely impossible avoid applying its concepts directly to the human-Bugger conflict found in Ender's Game. Ah, where to begin...

I think one of the larger subjects not covered in class on Thursday was the political environment on Earth during Ender's time at the Battle School. Although the political maneuvering of Peter and Valentine as Locke and Demosthenes was no doubt a subplot to Orson Scott Card, the reactions on Earth to the Bugger wars are largely predictable by Schmitt's writings. Although Card presents a scenario which Schmitt largely believed was impossible, a force opposing all of humanity that is distinctly non-human, the logical extensions of arguments presenting in The Concept of the Political are present within Card's universe. Let's take a look at the political subplot, and compare it with the conclusions Schmitt makes when the political environment is defined by friend and enemy.

Card's descriptions of the Earth geographic and political environments are written with varying degrees of detail. From what we're told, the geopolitical environment post first invasion has resulted in the founding of the International Fleet, a worldwide space-operating military organization. From the descriptions Card gives, the organization draws its forces from a number of "super-states", essentially large territories that have resulted from the integration of states in regions of the world. These territories are united under the three leaders of "the League", the Hegemon, Strategos, and Polemarch (interestingly, George Schwab, translator, utilized the word polemic often within Schmitt's passages).

The Cold War influences on Card's political universe are pretty obvious (read more on Card and Cold War influences with Morgan's recent post). Of the states in the tenuous League, the "Second Warsaw Pact" are the most noticeably belligerent. Clearly by the time Ender's Game is taking place, the IF's warnings of an impending third Bugger invasion has taken a backseat to inter-league conflicts, specifically between the Second Warsaw Pact and the American territory. This, of course, plays at Schmitt's declaration that, "Humanity as such cannot wage war because it has no enemy, at least not on this planet. The concept of humanity excludes the concept of the enemy, because the enemy does not cease to be a human being..." The essence of Schmitt's critique lies in his hypothesis that it would take an extraterrestrial threat in order to unite humanity under the same banner. This has clearly occurred within the context of the League and the IF, but as the threat of the Buggers seems to pass, there is no longer an enemy in which humanity may unite against. Peter and Valentine Wiggin, posing as Locke and Demosthenes, utilize this tumultuous political landscape to begin their rise in Earth's political ring.

On one hand, Peter knew Russia and the Second Warsaw Pact were preparing for the post-Bugger war conditions: "Valentine, things are coming to a head. I've been tracking troop movements in Russia... In the last six months, they've stepped up, they're getting ready for war. Land war." And Peter definitely predicted the collapse of the League post Bugger wars: "When the Bugger wars are over, all that power will vanish, because it's all built on fear of the Buggers. And suddenly we'll look around and discover that all the old alliances are gone, dead and gone, except one, the Warsaw Pact." Peter's intentions were predicted from the first establishment of the two pseudonyms, and confirmed when Valentine revealed to Ender that Peter had utilized Demosthenes mob-appealing belligerence and Locke's "influence with the intelligentsia" to prevent the League War (which ensued after Ender's annihilation of the Buggers). In essence, Peter recognized the same political philosophy put forth by Schmitt and utilized it to his advantage. Knowing that a structure of government already existed that allowed for world hegemony allowed Peter to step in, but holding together Earth in the post-Bugger era required a deviation from Schmitt's political thinking. While Schmitt would predict that states would return upon the absence of a common enemy for humanity, Peter manages to keep the world united under a very different banner. Here, Peter defies the political philosophy of Schmitt - instead of uniting humanity under the threat of a common enemy, Peter manages to define his state not by external forces, but by an internal push towards the stars and colonization. And while Peter is implicitly implying that humanity needs to defend against any more external threats that could hurt it like the Buggers, there is no longer a single explicit enemy for humanity to unite against. Peter brought humanity past the political as defined by friend and enemy.