  Two important consequences for international theory of Schmitt’s conception of politics are immediately obvious. First, it implies that every true political community must claim a legally unrestricted ius ad bellum. If the distinction between friend and enemy that constitutes a group’s political existence is not drawn by the group itself but by someone else, or if the decision whether to go to war in a concrete situation is no longer taken by the group but by some third party — be it a hegemonic state, an international organization, or an international court — the group no longer exists as an independent political community (CP 45–53). The second key consequence of Schmitt’s conception of politics for international theory follows from the claim that the political existence of a group must be based on a particular identity that serves as the substance of a friend-enemy distinction. Such an identity, of course, must differ from the identity of any other political community for the group in question to achieve a political identity of its own. It would be impossible for there to be a plurality of political communities — and hence, since political community is only possible where a group has enemies, for there to be any political community — if there were only one legitimate form of social organization or communal life (CP 53–8). These two consequences of Schmitt’s conception of politics imply two conditions of the legitimacy of international order, at least if one makes the assumption, with Schmitt, that political communities have an unconditional right to preserve their existence (CP 48–9; CT 75–7).  Given this assumption, a legitimate international order must be able to accommodate a plurality of political communities with different, self-determined political identities. What is more, it must recognize as legitimate the ius ad bellum claimed by all groups that have successfully constituted themselves as political communities. A conception of international order that violates any of these two conditions would be incompatible with political existence and therefore illegitimate.