Differing Legitimacy

Abstract

In this chapter we ‘test’ the model developed above regarding legitimacy, and how it differs between the USA and the EU. In the EU case, a UN mandate as an expression of international legitimacy is of major importance, reflecting both the validity of international law as well as the constitutive order of institutional multilateralism. In the US case, legitimacy is rooted primarily in domestic politics — in the concept of national security interests as well as in the concept of ethics, of the values served by using force. How do these different conceptions of legitimacy fit with the cases of Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq?

This is a just war, based not on any territorial ambitions but on values

Blair, 1999, cited in Clark 2001

In a very stark fashion, the handling of the Kosovo situation posed the issue of which consensus was to be the decisive one.

Clark 2001: 199