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The aim of this paper is to analysethe coercive approaches to military pacificationwhile trying to highlight the pitfalls they might lead to. This will bedone by introducing the concept of (political) legitimacy - through the conceptof “legitimate violence” that Max Weber deemed so important - into the criticalanalysis of security-practices in contemporary interventions. In the context ofexternal military interventions, legitimacy is often exclusively analysed inrelation to other states through the concept of “international legitimacy”.This is not what will be done here. It is indeed legitimacy in relation to “local”populations that raises the more interesting questions. The empirical scope willhere be limited to the US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.On the theoretical level, whereaslegitimacy is too often considered as a capability one can possess, it willhere be considered as the possible attribute of a social relation. Hence, itimplies not only to look at the defining features of the security-practicesthemselves but also on the ways in which perceptions of legitimacy might feedinto their functioning. This is indeed here hoped to allow for a more accurateinterpretation of what is at stake in contemporary interventionist behaviour.This relational approach to political legitimacy here draws on the recognitionof the fact that, ultimately, (legitimate) authority by definition only existsprovided it is recognised by the ones on which it is exercised. A social actoris never legitimate as such, but only endowed with legitimacy by others. Ratherthan speaking of political legitimacy as an object the objective criteria ofwhich one could enumerate in universal terms (democracy, rule of law…), oneshould therefore speak of legitimisation as a process. All these elements, hereserving to highlight the inherent fragility and inter-subjectivity of politicallegitimacy, imply that it has to be bargained with the social agents who conferit to a political actor. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]