In 1884, after their respective military expeditions had laid claim to different parts of Africa, colonial powers convened in Berlin to pore over maps, argue boundary lines, and divvy up the continent among themselves. The Berlin conference explicitly concerned the contours of European sovereignty over different parcels of Africa. No Africans were present at the gathering. More than 100 years later, in 2001, Bonn was the venue for another conference convened by the great “Western” powers; this time, the maps were of Afghanistan. Yet, in the twenty-first century, with the ghost of Berlin hovering over the current discourse of intervention, the Bonn conference ostensibly addressed the contours of Afghan sovereignty. The UN searched across the world, from the hills of Rome to the beaches of Cyprus, to find Afghans to attend. Fewer than two years later, in the 2003 “liberation” of Iraq, Baghdad became yet another venue for “recognizing” sovereignty – in an effort that George W. Bush claimed (and apparently with little intentional irony) is focused on Iraqis choosing their own regime.

Even as the specific rationale for the U.S. intervention in Iraq confronted an ever-growing legitimacy crisis, the normative terrain of legitimacy that was invoked by the Bush administration (whose touchstones of protection and internationalist solidarity are discussed herein) has gained further traction in the realm of humanitarian law and policy.