Commenter DivGuy notes that the Daalder/Kagan op-ed I panned earlier today is even more cynical and wrongheaded than I’d guessed:
I like how it’s “democracies in Europe and Asia.”Because if they included Mexico or Brazil or South Africa, there would be a small chance of intervention being vetoed. (And, of course, how stupid is Daalder to think that Kagan would respect France’s veto in a future debate over intervention?)
Exactly. But this is precisely the problem. A lot of folks — normally disgruntled former Iraq hawks, but also including Daalder who I think never backed the war — seem to be grasping for an international mechanism that would provide legitimacy but somehow also never block actions the US government wanted to take. Obviously, though, this isn’t going to work. The idea that some international organizations say-so might grant legitimacy to something or other is inextricably bound up with the idea that the IO might say no.