"Legitimacy" in International Affairs: The American Perspective in Theory and Operation
There are two recent case studies involving Iraq where the legitimacy question has emerged most sharply. First is the question of the authority for -- and hence the legitimacy of -- the U.S.-led Coalition’s recent military action in Iraq. Let me say immediately, for those who wonder, that we had ample Security Council authority under Resolution 678, which authorized the “use of all necessary means” to uphold the relevant Security Council resolutions and to restore international peace and security in the region. Resolution 687 provided for a formal cease-fire but imposed conditions on Iraq, material breaches of which left member states with the responsibility to enforce those conditions operating consistently with the underlying authorization contained in 678.
So, you are implying that the UN is a legitimate body. If so, then there ruling that our attack on Iraq constituted an illegal aggression is also legitmate. Futhermore, any ruling that is based on doctored information (as our WMD claims unquestionably were) cannot be considered fully legitimate.
Resolution 1441 contains the Council’s specific decision that Iraq was and remained in material breach, and provided a final opportunity, which Iraq clearly failed to avail itself of.
Significantly, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has specifically said, “Unless the Security Council is restored to its preeminent position as the sole source of legitimacy on the use of force, we are on a dangerous path to anarchy.” But these sorts of statements, which the Secretary General and others have made repeatedly over the past several years, are unsupported by over fifty years of experience with the UN Charter’s operation.
Of course, Kofi Annan was right. We have proven that we have an anarchic position relative to other states by our willingness to do whatever we want. I don't have a problem with anarchy as long as the particpants are principles (and punished when they are not), but who is going to punish the US. Nobody? Then we not only have international anarchy, but also thugish and opportunistic behavior by the current regime inhabiting the White House.
What's the point of the UN, if you only listen to it when it confirms what you want to do. The fact that the UN was even approached indicates our believe that it would confer some legitimacy by approving our action. The fact then that it did not approve our action necessarily means that the UN conferred illegitimacy on our actions.
The case of Kosovo in the previous Administration alone proves this point. Since the decision to use military force is the most important decisions that any nation-state faces, limiting its decisions or transferring them to another source of authority is ultimately central to a diminution of sovereignty.
Do you consider Kosovo a success or failure? And if you consider it a failure, then how is it any more of a failure than the Iraq imbroglio.
Sovereignty implies anarchy, which I do not have a problem with, but I do have a problem with saying that we had to go in to enforce UN resolutions that the UN did not even want us to enforce! I especially have a problem with attacking a country that did not threaten us, did not wish to make war on us, and did not have any credible means of attacking us! This is called aggression. The UN was formed to fight such aggression so that there would be peace. What we have done is proven that we are driven by greed, but quite creative in generating self-serving rhetoric, and "evidence" to reconstruction of the world in our highly-flawed) image.
Importantly, there is no doubt in light of the October 17, 2002 Congressional resolution supporting the use of American force that the President had full authority, and therefore full legitimacy, to disarm the Iraqi regime under the Constitution. We should not shrink from the debate on legitimacy through concern that following our own Constitutional procedures on the use of force is somehow not “enough” to justify our actions. Indeed, there is a fundamental problem of democratic theory for those who contend, implicitly or otherwise, that the proper operations of America’s institutions of representative government are not able to confer legitimacy for the use of force. And make no mistake, not asserting that our Constitutional procedures themselves confer legitimacy will result, over time, in the atrophying of our ability to act independently.
This is like saying that if a soldier kills an innocent, the soldier is justified if he is following orders from his superior officer because the legitimate procedures have been followed.
If a Republican congress grants a Republican president authorization to make war whenever he feels like it then we should be happy because of the constitutional legitimacy of the action. First off, only Congress can declare war, so there abrogation of their responsibility is illegitmate. Secondly, the legitimacy of results coming from constitutional procedures should be highly insubordinate to the motives of those players within the system.
Second is the fundamental issue, still in dispute, of where the legitimacy of the next government of Iraq will come from. (I distinguish here “legitimacy” from actual political power or political impact. They are two separate things, and one can certainly have legitimacy without power, and vice versa.) For Americans, the basis of legitimacy for governments is spelled out in the Declaration of Independence: the just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed. It is, therefore, unequivocally the U.S. view that the legitimacy of Iraq’s next government must ultimately derive from the Iraqi populace, and not from other individuals, institutions or governments, not from theologians, not from academics, not from the United States, and not from the United Nations. This is a fundamental precondition for understanding the legitimacy of the use of any governmental power, and yet it has been fundamentally misunderstood in the UN system.
We certainly do not have the consent of the governed now. So the current Iraqi puppet government is not (yet) legitimate. It may obtain some legitimacy, but that is on
Many in the UN Secretariat, and many UN member governments, in recent Security Council debates, have argued directly to the contrary. Increasingly, they place the authority of international law, which does not derive directly from the consent of the governed, above the authority of national law and constitutions.
