Joshua Keating: A Wilsonian Move by the White House in Libya

Joshua Keating blogs for Foreign Policy.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced today that the United States is will recognize Libya's Transitional National Council as the country's "legitimate governing authority". This comes as something of a surprise, as the normal U.S. policy is to recognize whichever government is in de facto power of a country. Despite recent rebel gains, that's probably still Muammar al-Qaddafi, entrenched behind his forces in Tripoli. This stance goes back as far as the French Revolution, when the U.S. recognized the country's new Republican government while Europe's monarchies still regarded it as illegitimate....

But there have certainly been exceptions to the rule. An instructive case is the Woodrow Wilson administration's refusal to extend recognition to Mexican dictator Vicotriano Huerta, who took power in a 1913 coup. (Historian Peter Henderson provides some good background on this case in this, unfortunately gated, article.)

Huerta was undoubtedly in control of the Mexican government and had been in negotiations with the Taft administration, which had been leaning toward recognition. But incoming President Wilson saw the recognition issue differently, arguing that "We can have no sympathy with those who seek to seize the power of government to advance their own personal interests or ambitions."...