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that people will continue to suffer. When the norms and principles that establish the legitim-
acy and moral obligation of countries to act outstrip the capacity or willingness of states to
act, this erodes the legitimacy of the liberal order that upholds these norms and principles. 9
There is no neutral and independent global government that determines when and where
interventions will take place, so major states themselves decide—and they inevitably act
when their more parochial or strategic interests are at stake. Bosnia and Kosovo were on the
doorstep of Europe, and so NATO acted. Rwanda suffered mass killings, but the international
community did not respond. The weakly established international arrangements to deal with
humanitarian emergencies and the selectivity of the interventions threaten the legitimacy of
the norms and principles themselves.
The second problem is the danger that liberal internationalism can turn into “liberal im-
perialism.” Historically, liberals have often embodied both impulses—an awkward duality
that continues within the liberal vision today. 10 For Woodrow Wilson, the liberal imperial
impulse was on display in his interventions in Mexico in 1914 and 1916. Wilson said that
America's deployment of force was to help Mexico “adjust her unruly household.” Regard-
ing Latin America, Wilson said: “We are friends of constitutional government in America;
we are more than its friends, we are its champions. I am going to teach the South Americ-
an republics to elect good men.” Indeed, Wilson used military force in an attempt to teach
Southern republics, intervening in Cuba, the Dominion Republic, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico,
and Nicaragua. The liberal internationalist impulse was articulated later during World War I
in Wilson's Fourteen Points address and in proposals for collective security and the League
of Nations. This sentiment was stated perhaps most clearly in the summer of 1918 as the war
was reaching its climax. Wilson gave his July 4 address at Mount Vernon and described his
vision of postwar order: “What we seek is the reign of law, based on the consent of the gov-
erned and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind.” 11
There is often a fine line between the two impulses—and the danger is that liberal interna-
tionalist principles and norms can provide a cover for powerful states to exploit weak ones. 12
David Rieff makes this argument, namely that the human rights movement provides unwit-
ting intellectual and political support for imperial-style interventions, a problem seen most
clearly, in Rieff's view, in the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq. Reiff writes: “[T]he
endless wars of altruism posited by so many human rights activists (no matter what euphem-
isms like 'peacekeeping,' 'humanitarian intervention,' 'upholding international law,' or the
like they may care to use) or the endless wars of liberation (as they see it) proposed by Amer-
ican neoconservatives—Iraq was supposed to be only the first step—can only lead to disas-
ter.” 13 Tony Smith also argues that contemporary neoliberal incarnations of liberal interna-
tionalism create a slippery slope for American policy makers, built on optimistic assumptions
about promoting democracy and peace, that inevitably leads to imperialist adventures. There
is much to be admired in the liberal tradition that dates back to Woodrow Wilson, Smith ar-
 
 
 
 
 
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