(Before getting to my point, let me say that I agree with Michael Lind's comment that both sides of the debate get at something that is part of the picture.)

An aspect in this debate about liberal internationalism that has not been brought up is the structural growth of executive power separately from international policy and practice. This is a kind of growth of executive power that is different from the powers granted the executive due to national security emergencies, e.g. the War on Terror. Emergency powers are, by definition, exceptional; the power I am getting at, is not. It is structural, and begins long before the current emergencies. In my analyisis its roots lie in the growth of privatisation, deregulation, and economic globalization: because of these the executive branch, central banks, and a few key agencies, notably ministries of finance, have gained power, even as much of the rest of the state apparatus lost power. It begins with Reagan, after the decades of embedded liberalism when the legislative actually contested and restricted some features of executive power. And it has continued since, regardless of political party....and, in that sense, also holds for Obama (where the question becomes will he use it as good power! see here).

The growth of executive power in the case of Bush-Cheney due to the War on Terror (state of emergency) obscured the growth of structural executive power. Leaving out this structural power in a discussion of international liberalism is perhaps understandable because the executive branch has always had considerable unaccountable power in international affairs. But it seems to me the growth of executive power as a structural trend may matter to understand something more specific to Bush-Cheney than to Wilson and thereby, perhaps, a difference with Wilson?

This is a hunch based on fragments of reality, not something I can prove. Looking at international liberalism from this angle of structural growth of executive power is not the usual perspective. Here are elements of the hunch. Because this trend is structural to the current phase of "liberal democracies" (beginning in the 1980s in some of these, expanding to others in the early 1990s), a growing number of presidents and prime ministers find themselves in a space where they can just go at it, whatever the it. This has the effect of facilitating joint executive action even when in violation of international law - a kind of specialized trust. During the debates on Iraq, we saw prime ministers and presidents go through the UN to "legitimize" their actions, but act against UN decisions when these were unfavourable.

It points to a double internationalism: one increasingly centered in the UN, the other increasingly centered in the structural power of the executive branch in more and more liberal democracies - a global club of increasingly powerful presidents and prime ministers that meet and strategize...more and more.