  These demands on legitimate international order seem to be a recipe for anarchy. Would it not have been better for Schmitt to admit that his view implies a denial of international legal order? Schmitt’s reply to this objection is twofold. On the one hand, he argues that there is at least one historical instance of a functioning international order that lived up to his criteria of legitimacy. On the other hand, Schmitt claims that the attempt to subject the use of force on the part of political communities to external legal constraint and control, apart from constituting an assault on the possibility of political existence, will only lead to greater disorder and violence than we can expect to experience in a system that recognizes the political.