Letters to the Editor

Legitimacy debated

In response to Brady Kiesling's remark to the Princeton Middle East Society (quoted in "Kiesling criticizes foreign policy of Bush White House," The Daily Princetonian, Sept. 29, 2003) that "neoconservatives insist that legitimacy is nice, but power is all we need," I must ask: What is it that Mr. Kiesling considers "legitimacy"?

If by legitimacy he means the assent of Congress and the American people to make war on a threatening, terrorist regimes, then the war against Saddam is certainly legitimate. Of course, the "legitimacy" cherished by Mr. Kiesling and other learned legitimacy mavens comes not from the American people but from the approval of the United Nations and our vaunted European "allies."

There is little reason why it should. As a former Foreign Service officer, Mr. Kiesling should know that governments pursue their own ends at the U.N., just as they do outside of it. Too often we forget that the U.N. does not grant Security Council approval. Rather a collection of foreign governments meeting in a building with a blue flag on top vote to do so. When France, Russia, and others opposed our actions in Iraq, their ambassadors did not act as judges, applying some scripture of international legitimacy, but as agents of Russian and French policy.

The legitimacy cult of the U.N. provides our adversaries a useful tool for balancing our dominance in every other sphere of international contention. To yield to this sort of legitimacy would be to submit our security, not to the rules of an ordered world, but to the manipulations of Russia, France, Syria, Germany or whatever combination of rival and jealous powers might command a vote in the Security Council. Were President Bush to do such a thing, he would be illegitimate indeed. Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky '04