League of Democracies? Posted by Patrick Barry

The League of Democracies has come to be a central plank in John McCain's foreign policy.  It is through this (non-existent) vehicle that McCain hopes to create the necessary leverage to confront problematic, undemocratic countries like Iran and Russia. The truth is that despite McCain's best intentions, this notion should have been cast aside a long time ago. 

The objections to it are many, and have bridged ideological divides.  The first and most obvious point is that we simply don't have time to wait for the creation of a league of democracies to confront a challenge as serious as Iran's pursuit of Nuclear weapons.  With nearly 4,000 centrifuges operating, does John McCain really expect to build a weighty, ponderous institution in time to confront the threat? Nina Hachigian did a great job of cataloging the many, many questions that must necessarily addressed before such a body comes into existence.  You can't build something like this in a day, but to deal with serious and immediate problems, you sort of would need to.

Second, as many conservative commentators have noted, such an institution could easily become irrelevant without the necessary military capacity to match force to lofty rhetoric.  Just a short while ago, Andrew Bacevich called the idea "a new NATO without the clout or the cohesion of the old."  An institution without teeth cannot be as effective, and John McCain has not addressed this concern, voiced by important members of the realist community.   

Finally, under John McCain's stewardship, such an institution is likely to be less a vehicle for consensus building, and more a mechanism for confrontation.  At a time when democracy promotion is viewed around the world as tainted, because of it's unfortunate association with the Bush Administration's war on terror, now is not the time brandish democracy as a tool to isolate.  We need cooperation from countries like China and Russia on issues  both discrete and broad.  Shutting them out of a debate as important as climate change, or as critical to our safety as Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons is just unnaceptable.  Thomas Carothers perfectly sums up this argument in a recent piece for the Carnegie Endowment.

Comments

[HARRY WEAVER]

Mutually assured destruction prevented both Red China and the Soviet Union from ever using Nuclear weapons. Could someone explain to me why that wouldn't work with Iran? Who cares whether Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt acquire Nuclear weapons. Personally, I don't think any leaders of these countries are brain-dead; which is exactly what they would be if they ever used them. I don't think the Mullah's of Iran are stupid either. If they acquired them and used them, they wouldn't exist anymore.

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