It is a commonly expressed idea that a key goal of intervention in and assistance to foreign nations is to establish (or re-establish) legitimate political authority. Historically, even so great a skeptic as John Stuart Mill allowed that intervention could be justified if it were “for the good of the people themselves” as measured by their willingness to support and defend the results. In recent times, President George W. Bush justified his post-war emphasis on democracybuilding in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the Middle East with the logic that “nations in the region will have greater stability because governments will have greater legitimacy.” President Obama applauded French intervention in Mali for its ability “to reaffirm democracy and legitimacy and an effective government” in the country. The experiences of Western-led state reconstruction in Cambodia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq among other places have been characterized by a belated recognition of the legitimacy imperative. In contemporary debates on a wide range of foreign intervention and assistance operations, legitimacy has come to occupy a central place in discussions of the domestic agenda of rebuilding that follows the external agenda that drives the initial intervention – stopping genocide, toppling a dictator, saving the starving, or establishing a transitional authority