The Flip Side of the Record

The United States was undoubtedly guilty of hypocrisy in some instances. But there is a difference between conduct that generally conforms to a rule while occasionally violating it and conduct that denies the authority of the norm altogether. The hypocrisy that characterized U.S. actions helps explain why many of the interventions Kagan cites (Guatemala, Iran, and the Bay of Pigs, specifically) were undertaken secretly, just as it explains why other interventions were justified on grounds (the protection of U.S. nationals in Grenada and the defense of the Panama canal zone, for example) that did not entail the public repudiation of international law. If Kagan were correct that respect for law played little to no role in the legitimization of U.S. power in the post-World War II era, there would have been no need for such disguises. So far as legitimacy is concerned, moreover, the question is not so much whether the United States violated international law in any particular instance but whether U.S. allies saw such violations as typical or exceptional. We find peculiar the idea that these episodes, many of them inglorious and with pernicious consequences, were what inspired U.S. allies to accord legitimacy to U.S. power.

The argument in "The Sources of American Legitimacy" is not that there has never been a disparity between profession and practice in U.S. diplomacy, but that it has never been wider than under George W. Bush. Nor is it that the supporters of the Bush administration have no precedents of illegality or unilateralism to rely on, but that no administration has brought these elements together in so alarming a way. Kagan is entitled to challenge these views, but it is spurious to claim that we fall into self-contradiction or knowingly distort the historical record by alleging them.

A LOSING PROPOSITION

In the great debate sparked by the prospect of American independence from the British Empire, British statesman Edmund Burke noted, "To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to depreciate the value of freedom itself; and we never seem to gain a paltry advantage over them in debate, without attacking some of those principles, or deriding some of those feelings, for which our ancestors have shed their blood."

To prove that the United States ought not to respect international law, Kagan maintains that such respect is not part of the nation's record since 1945. Such advantages as Kagan has attempted to gain over us in debate come at the expense of the U.S. reputation for lawful conduct, and he seems to relish depicting the United States' post-1945 record in terms that suggest wholesale illegality. Because present trends have a way of profoundly affecting the interpretation of the past, it may be that such a view will gain in appeal, but if it does so the prospects for the restoration of U.S. legitimacy will become yet more remote.