It's Good to Be the King

It's also good to be President of University of Louisville.  Heck, to prove this, the University even commissioned a study by a consultant:

In a report that cost the university about $23,000, Verisight Inc. of Chicago found that [President James] Ramsey’s total annual of compensation of $1.1 million is 60 to 80 percent above the median pay for presidents at similar universities.

Those numbers don't include deferred compensation and other benefits.

In any case, despite this high level of compensation, I should say that it used to be good to be President of University of Louisville. However, recent events have muddied the waters tremendously. Lately, President James Ramsey has been under fire by some elements of the faculty -- and by a number of Board of Trustees members. My College, Arts & Sciences, overwhelmingly supported a "no confidence" vote in a survey of faculty.

Why all the recent troubles?

As noted, President Ramsey's salary is very high compared to other University presidents, while faculty and staff salaries are relatively low. The salary problem, by the way, is particularly acute in Arts and Sciences. Some members of the community are angry about the decision to withhold the men's basketball team from this year's NCAA tournament. A whistleblower has alleged serious executive misconduct. The medical school apparently had some recent trouble with accreditation. The array of concerns is large and diverse and I won't discuss them thoroughly here.

Let's focus on one rarely discussed issue.

Some members of the University community are especially unhappy about the business model UofL has adopted under Ramsey's leadership. There are a number of implications of this, but this post will focus on merely one: consider the University's relationship with Texas Roadhouse, a local company (despite the name):

Texas Roadhouse and U of L have enjoyed a close relationship in the past, most notably in 2010, when the university opened its Texas Roadhouse Student Center at the College of Business. This 1,840-square-foot lounge is designed to look just like a Texas Roadhouse restaurant, complete with signage and branding, though there’s no kitchen. It cost a reported $200,000 to build.

Why should this matter? Well, President Ramsey is a highly-compensated member of the Texas Roadhouse Board -- paid primarily in valuable shares of common stock:

On Jan. 7, the University of Louisville president received 8,500 shares of stock from Texas Roadhouse, where he serves on the board of directors. The acquisition brings his current reported total up to 97,418 shares. The next day, he received an additional 25,500 restricted stock units from the steak giant, which he can collect over the next three years but doesn’t own yet.

Texas Roadhouse stock shares closed Jan. 15 at $33.67, meaning Ramsey’s 97,418 shares were worth $3.28 million at that time.

The newest 25,500 shares are restricted, meaning they are incentives for him to stay on at the company as a director. The shares of the stock were broken into three separate tranches of 8,500 shares of restricted common stock. They were granted as part of the firm’s 2013 Long-term Incentive Plan.

The stock price is now $44 per share, meaning that merely the 34,000 shares of stock Ramsey received or was promised in January 2015 are currently worth almost $1.5 million. Then again, he must continue to serve on the Board through January 8, 2018, to receive the final 17,000 shares. Half (8500 shared) will be awarded January 2017 and the other half on that January day in 2018.

Ramsey's full SEC disclosures as a Board member can be found here -- and lots of other places on the web. These are required by federal law under "insider trading" regulations.

Interestingly, however, for many years President Ramsey apparently did not disclose these ties as part of the ordinary "conflict of interest" form that all UofL faculty must file.

This story summarizes President Ramsey's legitimacy crisis among many members of the faculty -- extravagant compensation, use of position and privilege for personal gain, double standards vis-a-vis the rest of the University community, and at least a whiff of unethical behavior.


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Prior to War: Debate, then Vote

Interesting exchange about the legitimacy of America's wars, from the October 1, 2014, The Colbert Report.

Stephen: Can I tell you why I think the American people might be tired of it? And want to go back to bed? And I’m speaking for myself, and, therefore, the American people. We’re asked to be afraid of it. You get to think about it all the time or you did get to think about it all the time and say to yourself, “You know what? That little corner of the desert looks like it could blow up real good. Let’s go over there.” Whereas, we’re asked to be afraid of it and we’re reminded to be afraid of it, but we no longer have much of a voice in it because our Congressional representatives won’t vote on whether we’re supposed to do anything about it. We’re not asked to sacrifice that much for it. Very few of us go fight. And we’re also not told all that much about what’s happening over there. So, all we have is the fear and none of the action. And so we eventually want to stop thinking about it. And that’s why that 25,000-man mercenary army starts to sound good. We also want to stop caring about what happens to our men and women who go over there, because we don’t want them to sacrifice for something that we don’t think is right. And yet we don’t have much voice in it anymore. 

Adm. Mike Mullen: So, you bring up a concern that I have with respect to a growing disconnect between the men and women who serve in this all-volunteer force, who are the best I’ve ever seen. They’re less than 1% of the population. They come from fewer and fewer places in America. And the American people who didn’t have to buy into these wars, as you said – and I agree with that – and certainly the vast, vast majority didn’t have to fight in them, don’t know who we are as a military. And in fact – and I’ve said this many times – what I actually do worry about is that we become some version of something like the French Foreign Legion, which is please go off and fight our dirty little wars and let us get on with our lives. And I think that’s a disaster for America. We need to be connected to the American people and we need to do that through the system that’s here; those that are elected. And I certainly agree that those who are elected ought to vote on what we do. And we ought to have a fulsome, raging debate about that in this country.

Mullen is absolutely correct. Where is the public and legislative debate -- followed by a congressional vote?

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IR in Fast Five

I watched "Fast Five" on DVD last night, though I haven't seen any of the prior "Fast" films. The movie received decent reviews and is a heist film, a genre that I enjoy, so I gave it a try. It's a bit long and has some stupid dialogue, but the film is generally entertaining. I'd have cut much of the long fight sequence between Vin Diesel and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

About 25 minutes into the movie, the affluent Brazilian crime boss Hernan Reyes gives a speech that sounds like an out-take from Empire-Building 101:

Reyes: Let me tell you a true story.

Five hundred years ago, the Portuguese and the Spanish came here, each trying to get the country from their natives. The Spaniards arrived, guns blazing, determined to prove who was boss. The natives killed every single Spaniard.

Personally, I prefer the methods of the Portuguese. They came bearing gifts. Mirrors, scissors, trinkets. Things that the natives couldn’t get on their own, but to continue receiving them, they had to work for the Portuguese.

And that’s why all Brazilians speak Portuguese today.

Now, if you dominate the people with violence, they will eventually fight back because they have nothing to lose. And that’s the key.

I go into the favelas and give them something to lose. Electricity, running water, school rooms for their kids. And for that taste of a better life, I own them.

I put the key passage in bold.


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War Burden-Sharing

I just completed some work on "cooperative security" as grand strategy. Hopefully, in October (during my sabbatical!!!), I'll be able to deliver a paper on this topic in London at Millennium's annual conference. The 2011 theme is "Out Of The Ivory Tower: Weaving the Theories and Practice of International Relations." The proposal I submitted evaluates "cooperative security" as a critical IR theory -- particularly given its contemporary emphasis on consensual decision-making and human security concerns.

While the multilateral approach has obvious implications for nonproliferation and "the war on terrorism", policymakers should also keep in mind that it likewise has significance for the use of force.

Arguably, the Libyan operation is an example of cooperative security in practice, as was the first Persian Gulf War.

Though I have blogged about this point previously, even scholars and policy analysts in the security field sometimes forget on important dimension of the first Gulf war. Put simply, U.S. contributions were mostly financed by other states.

The most recent Iraq war has cost the U.S. more than $1 Trillion by some measures. In contrast, the UN Security Council-approved 1991 Persian Gulf War, which involved over 500,000 U.S. troops and associated equipment, directly cost only a small fraction of that total. The overwhelming majority of the $61 billion cost was paid by contributions from Gulf States (primarily Saudi Arabia and Kuwait), Japan, and Germany in 1990 and 1991. In total, international payments towards U.S. costs amounted to $53 billion, or 86.9% of the costs.

The U.S. also benefited from many indirect in-kind contributions from Saudi Arabia -- and the world certainly viewed the operation as legitimate.

For full details, see Appendix P, Department of Defense, Final Report to Congress, Conduct of the Persian Gulf War, April 1992, p. P-2, 3.


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The future of Iraq

In July, I was interviewed about Iraq by Northwestern graduate student/journalist Jessica Harbin. University PR people set it up after she contacted them, so we expected the piece would eventually appear on the Medill News websites. Instead, the piece appeared on Harbin's blog, Mid-East Meets Midwest.

I'm quoted many times throughout the piece and she also apparently talked to Raed Jarrar and Professor Daniel Byman, among others.

Here's a taste:

University of Louisville Political Science Professor Rodger Payne says allowing Iraq’s fledgling democracy to establish its legitimacy with its people is critical to its long-term success.

Payne said, “A new democracy, like Iraq, that’s not fully democratic, those are among the most vulnerable government types in the world.”

As such, it is important that the United States take a step back politically, as well as militarily, for a democratic Iraq to become legitimate enough to survive domestically and internationally.

“I think the worst thing that can happen from the U.S. point of view is for Iraq to be perceived as essentially a client state for the U.S., with a government that’s basically approved by the U.S., and that would essentially let the U.S. do whatever it wants,” Payne said, warning that this scenario could turn into a reality if the U.S. didn’t scale back its interference in Iraq.

Read the whole thing. Harbin asked very good questions and did a good job reporting.


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New publications

Nayef Samhat and I have an essay in the latest Peace Review, "American Foreign Policy Legitimacy and the Global Public Sphere." 2006, v. 18 #2. I can send an electronic offprint (pdf), but please request it from my University email address.

Readers might also be interested in Dan Reiter's latest monograph, "Preventive War and Its Alternatives: The Lessons of History," published by the US Army's Strategic Studies Institute. I'm fairly certain that this is an outgrowth of Dan's previous piece on "The Osiraq Myth and the Track Record of Preventive Military Attacks." The pdf is available as a free download.

Finally, my Duck of Minerva posts from the last month or so:

I offered a "Homework assignment" on critical IR theory, May 23. George W. Bush is a funny guy.

Check out "Know your enemies, 2006 edition" from May 15. The post contrasts evolutions in US policy towards Muammar Qaddafi's Libya and Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.

See "US carrots for Iran" from May 3. There are plenty of tools available to influence Iran.

For your amusement, "The Decider," May 1. Koo-Koo-Ka-Choo!

Finally, see "The Paradox of Humanitarian Action" about 2006 Grawemeyer winner Fiona Terry, which was posted April 21.


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Crisis of Global Governance?

Professor John Ikenberry of American Abroad has written an excellent post on the "Crisis of Global Governance." After outlining a litany of recent institutional failings -- the unsuccessful efforts to reform and modernize the UN, the collapse of the EU constitutional process, and the weakening of various other institutions, rules and norms (including NATO, the NPT and WTO) -- Ikenberry asks:

where are the vibrant and growing global and regional institutions that are in place to help us collectively tackle the great problems of our age?

And:

Are we in an era where the demand for cooperative mechanisms and institutionalized collective action is growing but its supply is dwindling?

Ikenberry posits a lot of possible answers, but he certainly believes this is a central issue for the future of world politics:

it is all too clear that something is very wrong, big time, with the current system of governance. Looking into the future – with the growing complexities and dangers associated with continued globalization of economies, societies, and cultures and the privatization of technologies of violence – it is all too clear that the world will need more not less institutionalized cooperation. If we are in an age of declining institutionalized cooperation, well, ergo – we do have a growing problem or, yes, crisis.

Ikenberry suggests that America may be largely to blame for this crisis (though he addresses the neo-utilitarian concern with "hegemonic stability"):

a lot of it may have to do with shifts in American policy....today, the U.S. just doesn’t have an interest or inclination to sponsor, support, fund, and enforce global rules and institutions.

Some of my own scholarship has placed blame for the "crisis" on the US as well. However, my concern was primarily ideational, rather than material.

In May 2001, I wrote a short piece asking, "Is an Outlaw State Calling the Shots?" During the late Clinton administration, the US staked out selfish positions to justify its rejection of the Land Mine Ban Treaty, Kyoto, the CTBT (in the Senate anyway) and the ICC.

As a scholar sympathetic to the ongoing social constructivist "turn" in international studies, I view these real-world policy actions by the U.S. as quite troubling. Constructivists claim that a given norm reflects the international community’s shared understanding of "legitimate social purpose." Thus, logically, if an important member state refuses to commit to various agreements and perhaps even considers them inappropriate, this dissent indicates norms that do not reflect widely shared understandings.

Ultimately, I rejected the material realist explanation:

realists remain hard-pressed to explain the creation and wide acceptance of numerous international norms that generally do not serve the narrow interests of powerful states.

Generally, the US claims to share the ideals expressed in these agreements -- it just disagrees with specific provisions in the negotiated outcome. Plus, Kyoto , the ICC and the Mine Ban Treaty have had some success even without full US participation.

Ikenberry also discusses an ideational problem near-and-dear to my scholarship:

it might be that there is a crisis of governance driven by a more complex problem associated with the inability to infuse international regimes and institutions with democratic accountability and legitimacy.

In Democratizing Global Politics, Nayef Samhat and I explore the implications of the so-called "deficit of democracy" plaguing far too many international institutions and regimes. We conclude that burgeoning "discourse" norms requiring more extensive participation and transparency in these institutions can promote their legitimacy.

My "Outlaw" piece also favored discursive solutions to the global crisis:

[The] challenge is to convince American representatives of a shared international interest in normative ideals. Unfortunately, as current experience reveals, persuasion, social learning, and other consensual mechanisms of change can often fail to garner agreement.

Conceivably, norm-builders could borrow creative ideas from the policy-relevant toolkit employed by conflict resolution practitioners. These experts have long grappled with the problem of crafting consensus in the face of intransigent power and self-interest. Parties to disputes must be encouraged to engage in open dialogue in order to reveal and discuss their basic needs and concerns. Ultimately, the most important problems are dissected so that workable solutions might be mutually constructed. In practice, international negotiations would be supplemented with informal exchanges where powerful actors would find the veracity of their arguments challenged by other members of the global community. Could selfish U.S. claims withstand such close, discursive scrutiny? I doubt it.

Obviously, I don't have time to write a more complete answer, and by no means is dialogue a complete answer to the problems at hand, but I do believe that transnational public spheres can promote democracy and public accountability in world politics.

In turn, more democracy and public accountability should help resolve the crisis in global governance.

This doesn't mean a "second superpower" can simply balance American material clout, but it might mean that those seeking to build and promote international institutions and regimes can work effectively to create the circumstances allowing a fair hearing for their persuasive arguments.

If this were a class, I'd assign some homework: What does it mean if the Pentagon (the domestic player most responsible for US rejection of the ICC and Mine Ban Treaty) accepts the idea that global warming is a serious national security threat?

Bolton on the Legitimacy of US Foreign Policy

I have occasionally blogged about the legitimacy of American foreign policy. Moreover, I have often discussed new Ambassador to the UN John Bolton -- and his hawkish unilateralism.

Only recently, however, did I discover this speech by Bolton to the Federalist Society, Washington, DC, November 13, 2003: "Legitimacy" in International Affairs: The American Perspective in Theory and Operation." At the time, Bolton was serving as Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security.

Bolton began by acknowledging that "many voices question the legitimacy of our policies." His task? To explain, especially to critics, "how and why we consider our actions around the world as legitimate."

Head first combatant that he apparently is, Bolton first takes on critics of the Iraq war. Bolton argues that the war was legitimate because it was authorized by Congress in October 2002. In other words, it was legal domestically, so it was OK internationally.

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.

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.

Does this mean the US is free to violate international law? Consider Article VI, Clause 2 of the US constitution:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

Moreover, legitimacy is a social understanding implying reasonable, acceptable, or appropriate. If most other states view a single state's action as illegitimate, then it is, by definition.

Bolton then considers the legitimacy of the Proliferation Security Initiative and the US decision to opt out of the International Criminal Court, despite its apparent mandatory jurisdiction clauses. In those cases, however, Bolton argues that there is explicit international legal authority to interdict suspected shipments of WMD material and to opt out of the ICC (via Article 98 of the Rome Statute).

In the end, however, Bolton defaults to his prior argument about sovereign authority, grounded in the domestic "consent of the governed." Bolton sees the international debate about the legitimacy of US action as simply an attempt to constrain American power. And he definitely doesn't want that:

The question of legitimacy is frequently raised as a veiled attempt to restrain American discretion in undertaking unilateral action, or multilateral action taken outside the confines of an international organization, even when our actions are legitimated by the operation of that Constitutional system. The fact, however, is that this criticism would delegitimize the operation of our own Constitutional system, while doing nothing to confront the threats we are facing. Our actions, taken consistently with Constitutional principles, require no separate, external validation to make them legitimate. Whether it is removing a rogue Iraqi regime and replacing it, preventing WMD proliferation, or protecting Americans against an unaccountable Court, the United States will utilize its institutions of representative government, adhere to its Constitutional strictures, and follow its values when measuring the legitimacy of its actions.

Short version: we'll decide for ourselves what is legitimate, thank you. And this is the US representative to the most important international institution?

Incidentally, this argument is much like the one President Bush had with candidate John Kerry about the "global test" during the fall 2004 election.


Note: others have dissected Bolton's arguments in more detail.

The legitimacy of the Iraq war?

I finally got around to reading Paul Wolfowitz's "exit interviews" in the July/August 2005 Atlantic, conducted by Mark Bowden.

I'd like to analyze much of what he said, but I'm too tired tonight.

However, I've got to put this up ASAP.

On September 15, 2004, Bowden pressed Wolfowitz to explain what failure in Iraq might look like. Wolfowitz "dodged the question" and replied:

"One reason I don't think we will fail is because all the enemy has is its ability to terrorize," he said. "It doesn't promise people a better life. Does it appeal to Iraqi nationalism? It certainly doesn't appeal to Shiite or Kurdish views of the Iraq they want to see. I don't think it appeals to most Sunnis. So we have superior force, we've got resources and a lot of money, which is slowly making a difference. But that alone isn't enough. At the core what we have is legitimacy. I don't mean we as Americans, but this effort has legitimacy in the eyes of the Iraqi people as a whole."

In Wolfowitz's world, up continues to be down. And vice versa.

I've blogged on a number of occasions about the legitimacy crisis in US foreign policy, the neocon view of legitimacy, the legitimacy of resistance against foreign occupation, and the illegitimacy of the Iraq war.

Wolfowitz's statement has me flabbergasted.

"At the core what we have is legitimacy."

They couldn't get a UN resolution, the coalition of the willing is a joke, US poll numbers around the world are terrible, the Iraqi people want the US out, President Bush has said he wouldn't want his country to to be occupied...

"At the core what we have is legitimacy."

Sleep on that.

The Legitimacy of US Foreign Policy

Recent events in Lebanon and Egypt have led some political analysts to credit the war in Iraq with dramatically changing the political landscape in the Middle East. The White House says that "freedom is on the march," and these analysts believe that the Bush administration earns the credit.

More importantly, if a series of democratic dominoes fall, a lot of people are going to assume that the Iraq war will have been legitimized.

Just one year ago (March/April 2004), neoconservative policy analyst Robert Kagan published a piece called "America's Crisis of Legitimacy" in Foreign Affairs. In this article, he elaborated on his thesis that Americans and Europeans are living in different worlds:

it is precisely the question of legitimacy that divides Americans and Europeans today -- not the legitimacy of each other's political institutions, perhaps, but the legitimacy of their respective visions of world order. More to the point, for the first time since World War II, a majority of Europeans has come to doubt the legitimacy of U.S. power and of U.S. global leadership.

The United States cannot ignore this problem. The struggle to define and obtain international legitimacy in this new era may prove to be among the most critical contests of our time. In some ways, it is as significant in determining the future of the U.S. role in the international system as any purely material measure of power and influence.

Kagan argues that America has to solve its legitimacy crisis; otherwise, its material power will be debilitated.

The modern liberal mind is offended by the notion that a single world power may be unfettered except by its own sense of restraint. No matter how diplomatically adept a U.S. president might be, the spirit of liberal democracy recoils at the idea of hegemonic dominance, even when it is exercised benignly.

Oddly, though Kagan says that US policy has been viewed as "unilateralist because no European power had any real influence over it," he asserts that the US can solve its legitimacy crisis merely by exporting democracy:

The United States, in short, must pursue legitimacy in the manner truest to its nature: by promoting the principles of liberal democracy not only as a means to greater security but as an end in itself. Success would bring it a measure of authority in the liberal, democratic world, including among Europeans

Hmmm. Bush's second inaugural address makes this precise argument about the ideal ends of US foreign policy.

While Kagan has perhaps received more attention than anyone else for addressing the legitimacy of American foreign policy, numerous scholars of international relations (IR) have joined the debate. Most of them are making similar points.

Constructivist IR theorists, of course, emphasize the importance of legitimacy. Chris Reus-Smit of Australian National University explained in 2003:

Legitimacy is an inherently social phenomenon: one's actions are not legitimate unless they are recognised as such both other social actors. Legitimacy must be socially ordained; auto-legitimation is impossible as Charles I and Louis XIV found out to their cost. This fact is lost, however, on hardline members of the Bush Administration. It is not that they lack a view of America's legitimacy, it is that they have a decidedly non-social (and hence incoherent) view....The US went on to win a decisive military victory in Iraq, but Washington has struggled unsuccessfully to shake off a persistent aura of illegitimacy...

Reus-Smit points out that the occupation of Iraq has been widely viewed as illegitimate and that America's substantial material power cannot assure successful foreign policy. Legitimacy matters.

Liberal and neoliberal scholars agree that foreign policy legitimacy is important. Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2004:

The 18 months since the launching of the second Iraq war have brought home, even to its advocates, that the United States has a serious legitimacy problem.

Legitimacy arises from the conviction that state action proceeds within the ambit of law, in two senses: first, that action issues from rightful authority, that is, from the political institution authorized to take it; and second, that it does not violate a legal or moral norm. Ultimately, however, legitimacy is rooted in opinion, and thus actions that are unlawful in either of these senses may, in principle, still be deemed legitimate. That is why it is an elusive quality. Despite these vagaries, there can be no doubt that legitimacy is a vital thing to have, and illegitimacy a condition devoutly to be avoided.

How to restore legitimacy has thus become a central question for U.S. foreign policy, although the difficulty of doing so is manifest.

Most liberals embrace genuine multilateral decision-making as a means to assure the legitimacy of US foreign policy. They argue that this worked throughout the cold war. Again, this echoes Kagan's argument that the Europeans want a meaningful say over the use(s) of America's power.

Another foreign policy liberal, Charles Kupchan told the BBC in March 2003:

He said America might also find itself increasingly isolated as the world comes to resent its power.

"The real issue that I most fear here is that America will lose its most precious commodity in the world, and that is its international legitimacy."

Kupchan has written and discussed this more extensively, but I cannot find a working link to an academic article.

Even realists agree. Harvard's Stephen M. Walt in the January/February 2005 Boston Review:

American power is most effective when it is seen as legitimate, and when other societies believe it is being used to serve their interests as well as America’s....

Defending the legitimacy of American primacy is not primarily a question of “spin,” or propaganda, or even cultural exchange. If American foreign policy is insensitive to the interests of others, and if it makes global problems worse rather than better, no amount of “public diplomacy” is going to convince the rest of the world that the United States is really acting in the best interests of mankind.

Finally, Dartmouth's Bill Wohlforth in 2003, speaking at Yale, said something Kagan would likely embrace. He embraced the ends, rather than the means, of US policy:

Wohlforth said it's possible to run a neo-imperial foreign policy. "Legitimacy is obtained two ways," he said -- a country can defer to existing rules or create a new reality and make it work well, so that all recognize it.

"The U.S. did it after World War II," he said, noting that officials then said, "'We're going to fix the world, and when we're done, everyone will see that we were right and they'll be back on board.'"

More on this topic later.

Bolton and international law

Yesterday, I read an article by scholars Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson in Foreign Affairs, November/December 2004. In that piece on "The Sources of American Legitimacy," they quote the Bush administration's new nominee for Ambassador to the UN:

undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, John Bolton, had noted in the late 1990s that "it is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our short-term interest to do so-because, over the long term, the goal of those who think that international law really means anything are those who want to constrict the United States."

I also read in today's Washington Post that the Bush adminstration has just announced US withdrawal from another international treaty:

In a two-paragraph letter dated March 7, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice informed U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that the United States "hereby withdraws" from the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The United States proposed the protocol in 1963 and ratified it -- along with the rest of the Vienna Convention -- in 1969.

The protocol requires signatories to let the International Court of Justice (ICJ) make the final decision when their citizens say they have been illegally denied the right to see a home-country diplomat when jailed abroad.

Anyone notice a pattern here?

I guess now that the foreign policy team is back from Europe, they can continue to ignore the norms and ideas shared widely by Europeans and much of the rest of the world.

Legitimacy of resistance

‘‘Look, it can’t be fun to be occupied.’’

-- Paul Bremer, quoted on October 27, 2003

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

-- The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

Reuters is reporting an interview Al Jazeera television broadcast today with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In the interview, Assad said the Iraqi resistance is legitimate:

"Certainly, what has happened on the popular level gives legitimacy to the resistance and shows that the major part of what is happening is resistance," Assad said in comments aired on Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera.

"You are talking now about resistance which is against the occupation forces," Assad said. Asked if the resistance was legitimate, he said: "Well, of course, it's understood that way."

Assad is not alone. University of Illinois Law Professor Francis Boyle has been making this argument for awhile:

The Iraqi people have a right to use military force to resist US occupation consistent with the laws of war. I mean, they can’t target civilians but other than that they can certainly use military force to this illegal, criminal invasion.

Boyle has served as an attorney for the Palestinians in their legal struggle with Israel. Former Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle has previously agreed with Boyle that "international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone."

There are echoes, of course, of this "right to resistance" in the US Declaration of Independence:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Personally, though I recognize that self determination is a powerful motivating political force, I would strongly prefer that the various parties in Iraq work towards a non-violent solution to the civil and political breakdown.

President Bush seems to think that the Iraqi resistance is a perfectly natural response to their situation. Bush, recall, made a comment not all that different from Assad's in his April 13, 2004, prime time press conference:

they're not happy they're occupied. I wouldn't be happy if I were occupied either.

Right now, no one is happy.

To summarize: thousands of Iraqi innocents are losing their lives, they have no true liberty under occupation, and the President agrees they are not happy.

Again: Legitimacy Crisis? (R)

I feel badly for not writing a word over the past week about the violence in Iraq -- even as I've blogged about trivial matters such as my fantasy baseball team and the Vice Presidency. What do I think? I agree with this:

Self determination is a very powerful idea in politics. Political scientists have often demonstrated that even the poor and weak will resist their subordination. Terrorism is a classic weapon of the weak.

Thus, it should not be surprising that the situation in Iraq seems to be deteriorating.

While there are a lot of proposals floating around that would place Iraqis in much greater positions of power in Iraq, Paul Bremer is running the country -- and he reports directly to the Pentagon.

That excerpt is from one of my first pieces for this blog.

This is how I concluded:

The American/British occupation of Iraq has got to end soon, to be replaced by UN-directed nation-building and some form of legitimate Iraqi governance. An American general might oversee the troops on the ground, but there's a decent chance he's going to be wearing a blue helmet.

This is a repeat episode from September 5, 2003.

A Conversation with Robert Kagan

Yesterday, I moderated a Kentucky Author Forum event with Robert Kagan, whose Of Paradise and Power just came out in paperback last month.

I've previously blogged about his argument, so I won't repeat that now. Rather, I'm just going to summarize a few of the things he said in response to my questions. Audience members also asked questions, but I was targeting mine at areas of interest to me.

I started by asking Kagan to define a "neoconservative" and then I asked him to outline his "US is from Mars, Europe is from Venus" position. The answers were pretty much what I expected.

Kagan's new "Afterward" argues that the US needs the Europeans to provide legitimacy and the Europeans would like to cooperate with the US so as to have some say in how US power will be used. Eventually, he got around to making this point in the session Thursday.

Kagan said in reply to someone's questions that the Europeans just don't appreciate the WMD/terror threat the same way the US does since 9/11. He admitted, however, that Europeans have long faced terror, but declared that 9/11 was quite unique to the US because of the scale (and because the US had previously been relatively untouched by this problem).

I asked Kagan whether he thought the US and Europe could come to a "common assessment of the threat" (he uses virtually the same phrase as the September 2002 National Security Strategy document)? Specifically, I asked if the US could sustain a "high threat" context given the new revelations by David Kay about Iraqi WMD. Do Americans really believe they are imperiled all the time? Could the US eventually move toward the European view?

Kagan replied that people in Washington and NY certainly continue to feel threatened, as do those who fly planes. He also made a side comment that Kay really hadn't dismissed the threat, which is perhaps literally true, but is certainly not how it is being played out in the public sphere.

Then I asked Kagan to consider a counterfactual. What if the WTC buildings had been badly damaged, but had not collapsed? Would Americans still think the threat was so great if they did not have the visual image of the huge buildings collapsing. He acknowledged that the images were important, but insisted that the US would still rate these threats as high.

Later, I picked up something Bill Hartung of the World Policy Institute said last weekend in DC. When President Bush landed on that aircraft carrier last May, the US ship cost more than the entire North Korean military budget. Yet, the US is now approaching a half trillion dollar defense budget. Given that conservatives typically distrust government spending ("throwing money down a rathole"), did Kagan think the US is spending too much?

Kagan said no, and regretted that the US had reduced its military spending after the cold war ended. At one point, he noted that China was increasing its spending and he wished that the Europeans would spend more -- but doubted that would happen. Since the US is spending only about 4.5% of its GNP on defense, it could afford a lot more. It was common to spend 7% in the cold war, and the US sometimes spent as much as 15%.

Bottom line: even though Robert Kagan appreciates the importance of legitimacy, he still thinks the Europeans are wrong about the threats, wants to see a high level of US defense spending, and worries about the rise of China.

At one point, Kagan noted his support for American military intervention in the 1990s (places like Haiti and Kosovo) and declared that he was an IR liberal. Shortly after that, he said that he accepted realist arguments about the importance of power -- so he was basically trying to marry America's power to its ideals and change the world.

In short, he's still saying what the Project for A New American Century said before Bush was elected President. PNAC (Kagan was a director) called for many of the hawkish policies (warning, pdf file) the US is now pursuing . And the justification then wasn't terror or WMD. The neocons who wrote their playbook wanted to take advantage of the "unprecedented opportunity" presented by a world of great American power facing minimal great power opposition.

Let's hope the Europeans continue to deny legitimacy to the Pax Americana project.

International Legitimacy

The paperback version of Robert Kagan's book, Of Power and Paradise, is now available. He works at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and writes regularly for The Washington Post. Of course, Kagan is better known as a neoconservative who was a founder of the Project for a New American Century. In January 1998, he wrote an op-ed for the New York Times called "Bombing Iraq Isn't Enough."

Here's the first paragraph of that piece:

Saddam Hussein must go. This imperative may seem too simple for some experts and too daunting for the Clinton Administration. But if the United States is committed, as the President said in his State of the Union Message, to insuring that the Iraqi leader never again uses weapons of mass destruction, the only way to achieve that goal is to remove Mr. Hussein and his regime from power. Any policy short of that will fail.

Kagan has long called for missile defense, applauded America's "benevolent empire," and has been pretty hawkish on China.

Why am I establishing Kagan's credentials?

Well, his new book includes a very interesting new "Afterward" that focuses on the importance of legitimacy in world politics.

The book in hardback was pretty thin and basically expanded on a much-circulated article he wrote in June 2002 for Policy Review, "Power and Weakness." In that piece, Kagan famously declared that

It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world. On the all-important question of power — the efficacy of power, the morality of power, the desirability of power — American and European perspectives are diverging. Europe is turning away from power, or to put it a little differently, it is moving beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation. It is entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realization of Kant’s “Perpetual Peace.” The United States, meanwhile, remains mired in history, exercising power in the anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws and rules are unreliable and where true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might. That is why on major strategic and international questions today, Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus: They agree on little and understand one another less and less.

A lot of analysts embraced Kagan's argument to explain the rift between the US and most of the Europeans on the issue of Iraq.

Many Bush-supporters referenced Kagan to explain why the US had to act unilaterally (or with only a small number of states) to attack Iraq, fight terror, and stop WMD proliferation. Trying to get French and German approval would be futile.

The new "Afterward" (warning, this is a pdf file), however, argues that the US needs Europe -- to provide legitimacy for the war on terror. If a number of democracies refuses to accept the legitimacy of US actions, then the actions are not legitimate. America, in fact, faces a "crisis of legitimacy" according to Kagan.

Kagan says legitimacy has material implications, which is why the US is paying most of the costs in Iraq. But this isn't his main thesis. Kagan thinks that the US needs legitimacy and should be prepared to grant Europe some authority over its decisions (he approves of NATO) -- but only after the US and Europe agree about common threats. If the US acts without legitimacy, its power will ultimately be isolated and exhausted.

For the most part, Kagan is still engaged in an argument about power (Europe uses multilateral measures because it lacks power) and he continues to argue that Europe just doesn't appreciate threats that the US does (terror and WMD). But the argument in the afterward is new and provocative.

It certainly seems to encourage genuine dialogue about threats and responses among the US and its closest allies.

I saw Kagan on Charlie Rose Wednesday night, debating Harvard's Joe Nye (of "soft power" fame), and they didn't seem all that far apart. For those that want a condensed version of his latest argument, see the New York Times from January 24.

Much of my own work focuses on legitimacy in global politics. Unfortunately, my new book with Nayef Samhat is still at the printer and won't be out for almost a month (it was originally due today). We argue that order built on coersion and material self interest isn't legitimate -- it must be established through consensual dialogue.

Hey, that sounds a bit like what I'm reading in Kagan.

We'll all know more in two weeks. On February 12, 2004, I'm interviewing Kagan for the campus version of "Kentucky Author Forum."

Maybe I'll run in to him the weekend before that when I'm hanging around the halls of Carnegie, talking about preemptive war with some other scholars and analysts.

Rethinking the UN vote

Since last blogging on the topic. I've been thinking a bit more about that UN vote from Thursday.

What did the US gain?

The unanimous UN vote certainly provides a measure of political legitimacy; thus, some other states can more readily act to assist the US.

However, it is not yet clear what precisely that additional assistance will mean.

While none of France, Germany or Russia intend to provide cash or troops, they are going to attend the aid conference next month. In the past two days, US coalition partners Japan and Spain have promised some limited help (less than $1.5 billion in all), timed I'm sure to give the impression that the ball is already rolling -- and to coincide with Bush's visit in the case of Japan.

Moreover, states like India now might be able to provide some troops, though I'd guess they'll want someone else to pay for them. Even if they end up going as UN peacekeepers, the US would pay a substantial portion of their costs. The US pays about 20-25% of the overall UN budget and a higher portion (around one third) of peacekeeping costs. So far as I know, peacekeeping isn't yet planned and would require another resolution by the Security Council, which means France and Russia would have to agree at least not to veto. Do not count on that any time soon.

So, the new UN agreement might provide a small amount of cash and some troops. My guess is that the administration hopes that this veneer of multilateralism will suffice to provide domestic support for the overall Iraq project. That will mean tens of billions in additional US funds (the $87 billion, at minimum) and the ongoing deployment of over 100,000 American troops.

If this multilateral cover works, then the US efforts at the UN will have "succeeded," even if the UN role remains quite insignificant and other states pony up very little.

In other words, I think some were beginning to worry about sustenance of domestic political support for the Iraq project. Calpundit has blogged a little about the recent congressional effort to turn the latest aid into a loan.

The French, Germans and Russians did get a bit more out of the resolution than I originally reported as well. For example, Kofi Annan, as well as the Iraqi Governing Council, will have a voice in the political process that is supposed to set a timetable for a constitution and elections.

Also, the aid monies are going to be handled by a multilateral group and not by either the US or the Iraqis. This will help assure transparency (indeed, there's a specific provision for transparency) and accountability in the development process.

This "democratization of development" is a first step toward countering worries I've mentioned before about crony capitalism -- or "vote buying" by the US with states like Turkey, who will receive a big loan package even as they deploy troops to Iraq.

The UN's role is not going to expand quickly, however, as the AP is reporting even today that Annan remains reluctant to send the agency's people back to Iraq until the country is more secure. Since visiting US VIPs don't stay in Iraq when they visit, it seems pretty obvious that westerners still view the situation as unstable, at best.

The resolution says the UN will play a role in Iraq "as circumstances permit." Some might read that as a way to keep the UN out of the process, but Annan is apparently using it as a way to highlight worries about security on the ground.

Hopefully, the situation on the ground will get better and the recent vote portends a genuine multilateral commitment ot the future of Iraq. America's new UN partners, however, are not yet convinced that the Bush administration is committed to such genuine multilateralism.

I'll continue to keep an eye on the situation.

Irrelevant?

When President Bush was making the case for war against Iraq, he warned the United Nations that it should act with the US or become "irrelevant." Specifically, here's what he said:

"The conduct of the Iraqi regime is a threat to the authority of the United Nations, and a threat to peace. Iraq has answered a decade of U.N. demands with a decade of defiance. All the world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment. Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?"

Apparently, even though the UN did not support the US/UK invasion of Iraq, the President has decided that the UN remains relevant after all. As I've written before, the US is seeking cash and troops from other states -- and Bush realizes that other states want UN authorization before providing this assistance:

"Some countries have requested an explicit authorization of the United Nations Security Council before committing troops to Iraq."

And so, this past week, Secretary of State Colin Powell has been trying to convince US friends that they should cooperate with the US at the UN. Clearly, the administration is trying to convince states like Germany and France that they have a common interest in such multilateral action:

"I recognize that not all of our friends agreed with our decision to enforce the Security Council resolutions and remove Saddam Hussein from power. Yet we cannot let past differences interfere with present duties. Terrorists in Iraq have attacked representatives of the civilized world, and opposing them must be the cause of the civilized world. Members of the United Nations now have an opportunity -- and the responsibility -- to assume a broader role in assuring that Iraq becomes a free and democratic nation. "

Some media reports, including one from the Associated Press, suggest that the negotiations are making progress -- and that the US has "flinched." However, other reports (including the NY Times, which requires registration to view) suggest that states like Germany and France require a greatly diminished role for the US. They want Iraqi self governance very quickly -- and for the UN, not the US, to supervise the transfer of power.

To me, the most interesting part of all this is that the UN's chief role in world politics is becoming quite evident to everyone. It conveys political legitimacy on genuinely multilateral operations. Many countries will simply not line up behind the US to provide political cover for its foreign policy:

'''The fact the U.S. is coming back to the United Nations at this point is itself an indication the U.N. did not become "irrelevant,"' said Yale University scholar James S. Sutterlin, a former top U.N. political aide.

The world body 'has a unique capacity to mobilize money and legitimize the use of troops,' he said."

This political legitimacy, of course, was lacking in the war itself.

Legitimacy crisis?

Self determination is a very powerful idea in politics. Political scientists have often demonstrated that even the poor and weak will resist their subordination. Terrorism is a classic weapon of the weak.

Thus, it should not be surprising that the situation in Iraq seems to be deteriorating.

While there are a lot of proposals floating around that would place Iraqis in much greater positions of power in Iraq, Paul Bremer is running the country -- and he reports directly to the Pentagon.

The recent bombings targeting the UN headquarters and the Shiite cleric demonstrate fairly decisively that the "occupying powers" cannot guarantee the security of anyone in Iraq.

The infrastructure of the country also remains in horrible shape. While Americans hear about attacks against Iraqi oil pipelines, they might not realize that electricity generation in Iraq is "still around 25% below war levels," as British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw reportedly said this week.

Indeed, the BBC quotes Straw as making a very powerful argument about the meaning of all this:

"[The] lack of political progress in solving the linked problems of security, infrastructure and the political process are undermining the consent of the Iraqi people to the coalition presence and providing fertile ground for extremists and terrorists."

The obvious answer is to increase security, rebuild infrastructure, and cement legitimate Iraqi participation in government.

However, the US/British occupying powers are already paying high costs for the war. Economically, the US is paying about $4 billion per month. 150 American soldiers have died in Iraq since May 1, along with 50 troops from coalition partners.

Thus, it is not surprising that the US is turning to the UN in hopes of gaining some support and relief. Will other countries provide cash, soldiers and political cover?

Already, Germany and France are playing hard to get. Very clearly, they do not want to grant legitimacy to the occupation -- or to the war they opposed. Indeed, a substantial number of states thought the war against Iraq was illegal and illegitimate. As Pete Dombrowski and I argue in the November 2003 issue of International Studies Perspectives, leaders of numerous countries frequently and openly declared their opposition to the legal rationale for war against Iraq. The inspections, many argued, were working and were unopposed by Iraq, no state's self defense was immediately at risk, and the UN Security Council had not authorized an attack.

War in the face of those realities violates the Charter.

Thus, any new UN Security Council resolution will require crafty diplomacy and finesse. After the failures of February, it is not at all certain that the US is up to that task.

According to a story in The Guardian, even Mexico's UN representative, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser (who currently holds a seat on the Security Council), said: "The authority in Iraq should be the UN, as opposed to the occupying powers."

More broadly, Tom Friedman quoted Secretary-General Kofi Annan on this point in his August 31 column: ""Other nations are prepared to help, but they do not want to join what is perceived as an American `occupation.'"

The American/British occupation of Iraq has got to end soon, to be replaced by UN-directed nation-building and some form of legitimate Iraqi governance. An American general might oversee the troops on the ground, but there's a decent chance he's going to be wearing a blue helmet.