Anyhoo, the authors rue the Bush Doctrine which has robbed the US of legitimacy in the eyes of the world.
The Foreign Affairs article's pretence to balance is too thin to stand. The four pillars of legitimacy were not always and everywhere acknowledged, but challenged at every opportunity by those Powers whose aims went against the Western industrialized democracies and their allies. During the Cold War the Soviet block specifically sought to de-legitimize the US and its allies, and to cast the cloak of legitimacy around itself, its policies and its deeds. Even before that struggle ended the situation was changing, not unexpectedly so. Every tin plated two bit tyrant sought cover in the cloak of legitimacy, and was increasingly given, to the extent that they suceeded in dong so, a respectful hearing in international forums, the UN being the biggest and the best.
The result of this has been the creation of a double standard wherein the US is held to a nearly impossible standard of policy and conduct to which other states merely pay lip service, and to which no one expects them to adhere in practice. The examples of this are too numerous and tragic to enumerate here, but be it noted that they are conveniently overlooked by the UN at large. As the universal whipping boy, the US serves to fund the UN and it's ostensible goals while taking the blame of the failure of those goals naturally resulting from the many UN members who covertly (or not, it is sufficient to CLAIM to Political Correctness) undermine them.
Thus the notion that the US has become an international pariah on account of its unilateralism is false on two counts. First it the notion that the US is without friends and allies in the world, Kerry's bribed and coerced, the list of allies belies this. The second is that the US has had the love, admiration and respect of the international community up till the neocons squandered it by their unilateral, militaristic cowboy policies. Much of US foreign policy has had as its aim the gaining of that love, admiration and respect, a strange weakness of ours, a policy which has proved to be not only fruitless but actually detrimental, and is irrelevant to our national interest in any event.
In fact what is happening here is that the US is once again accepting its position of leadership in the world. Pandering to the world's petty tyrants is not in our national interest, leading the world is. It is only to be expected those moved by envy, avarice, pride and lust for power should resist this. After all, it is in their short term national interest to do so, and there is great advantage to be had from those who know how to exploit the chaos of a leaderless or weakly led world, as Saddam showed us so well.
In the end, a world in chaos is a world in midst of a power vacuum; power vacuums do not last long. Should the US fail to shoulder the leadership of the world community on its own terms, there are those who will do so on theirs.
