HEADS WE ACT, TAILS WE ACT HARDER

LOOKING FOR LEGITIMACY IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES (Robert Kagan, Foreign Policy)

"Legitimacy" is an intangible factor in foreign policy, but like so many intangibles it can have great practical significance. Neither this nor any future American administration wants to be regarded as behaving illegitimately when it goes to war; hence President George W. Bush sought U.N. support before the conflict. A perceived pattern of illegitimate behavior can limit the cooperation other countries are willing to offer and put sand in the gears of even a sole superpower. Nor are Americans likely to be comfortable consistently acting in ways that much of the world, and especially other like-minded peoples, deem illegitimate. [...]

In addressing the problem of legitimacy, a simple institutional legalism will not avail. If the United States seeks legitimation for its actions, and it should, it will have to earn that legitimacy the old-fashioned way. It must promote and appear to promote not only its own national interest narrowly conceived, but also the common interests of the liberal democratic world. Even if the Cold War alliances cannot be re-created, this quality of American leadership during the Cold War can and should be emulated today.

The problem of legitimacy, like most international problems, can never be definitively solved. Perhaps the best test of American foreign policy in the coming years will therefore be whether, through an active and generous diplomacy and through successful actions in the common interest, the United States can win the argument that it has acted in the common good more often than it loses it.

The contradiction inherent in this argument is that if our interventions in the Middle East leave it a worse place than it is today--frightening though, eh?--the Europeans will be begging us to act more forcefully, to just annihilate the Arab world and put it out of our misery. It's not like we can foment instability and violence and then have folks tell us to walk away. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 24, 2003 7:12 PM