The McCain League

I've noted this before, but the mostly very sound Princeton Project on National Security engages in this one unfortunate foray into the notion of creating a new international institution called the "Concert of Democracies." Creating such an institution isn't, I think, a bad idea per se but at least some of its proponents have developed what is, I think, the radically unsound view that such a Concert should arrogate to itself the authority to mount military interventions around the world without regard to the UN Security Council. Previous efforts to persuade some of the backers of this idea that it's an essentially neocon concept have tended to fail, but perhaps John McCain's endorsement of the "strong" version of the Concert (he wants to call it a League of Democracies) will convince them.

It's worth saying that along with being a bad idea, this is a somewhat silly proposal since the notion that countries like Brazil, India, South Africa, Indonesia, etc. are clamoring to provide a patina of legitimacy for future American miltiary operations is obviously absurd. I doubt you'd be able to get any substantial European support for this idea, much less backing from the traditional anti-colonial powers of the developing world.

Comments

One of the problems with the Concert of Democracies is that it is an attempt to institutionalise an Israeli-lobby talking point. See for example Clifford May's Foundation for the Defence of Democracies, stacked as it is with Israeli lobby types. Anything that gives additional legitimacy to Likudnik instincts in US and Israeli foreign policy needs to be rejected.

Posted by otto | May 1, 2007 12:20 PM

Who came up with the name? "Concert of Democracies" makes it sound like someone will be playing the tuba.

Posted by Neil the Ethical Werewolf | May 1, 2007 12:20 PM

The same neocon idiots who managed to make the genocidal dictator of Iraq into a martyr are going to end up making "democracy" into a curse word around the world before they're through. What better way to delegitimize the very concept of democracy than to form an organization of democracies that goes around trying to democratize everyone else through force?

Posted by Steve | May 1, 2007 12:22 PM

There is currently is no functional collective security organization in the world. The UN is no more than the sum of its parts, and the veto power of the regimes in Russia and China preclude any vigorous reaction to flouting of human rights.

The Concert of Democracies is an effort to address this dysfunction in a way that provides an alternative to the unilateral exercise of American power propounded by the neocons.

Opposition to this idea rests on the idea that
international intervention is legitimate if it is ratified by the Russian and Chinese regime, but illegitimate if these regimes oppose it - even if every major democratic nation in the world is in favor of such action.

Apparently, it is now a "progressive" view that developing a genuine multilateral response to genocide and human rights abuses should be subordinated to the appeasement of any regime that reserves the option of abusing its own people.

Posted by mhp | May 1, 2007 12:31 PM

I think Bob Wright it correct on this issue.
http://bloggingheads.tv/video.php?id=199&cid=997

It is an extremely bad idea namely because it would alienate those countries that are moving toward an open society i.e. China.

Posted by John | May 1, 2007 12:34 PM

UH OH.

Sounds like the Justice League to me. The Green Lantern Theory of International Diplomacy writ large.

Posted by Pat | May 1, 2007 12:37 PM

What are the countries in the world today that openly accede to being labeled non-democracies? There are few, and since the main justification for this idea seems to be that the UN is insufficiently responsive to the goal of spreading democracy and thus must be bypassed, I wonder how different the Concert of Democracies would be from the UN. Would the US have veto power over entry?

Posted by Marshall | May 1, 2007 12:43 PM

Ah, Pat beat me to it -- "Justice League," indeed. "Power rings ... ON! To the Hall of Democracy!"

Actually, a comic book like that would be an excellent satire of these kooks.

Posted by Anderson | May 1, 2007 12:47 PM

Sounds to me like NATO, but adding a few countries from outside N. America and Europe. I mean, NATO "arrogate[s] to itself the authority to mount military interventions" without regard to the UN Security Council, right?

Posted by Al | May 1, 2007 12:49 PM

Bob Wright's point that it would alienate 1) the Arab world, 2) China and 3) Russia has some truth to it. If we are going to implement this at some point, we'll have to probably wait until such a time that at least one or two major Arab states are democratic. Saying, for example, "well, Lebanon will be on it" just won't cut it do to Lebanon's small size. At the very least, observer status would have to be granted to China and Russia, or maybe voting rights, but not an absolute veto like the UNSC. Taking doses of reality out of liberal ideas does not serve liberalism. Russia and China are simply too big and powerful to not have them involved in the process at all or the institution, even if they vote against various things. We would probably also have to say we couldn't have interventions into Russia or China. Otherwise, Russia and China will likely undermine our attempts, which they are less likely to do if they have a stake in the institution. The US would also have to realize that the CoD would not be an extension of the Department of Defense and would have to bend to the whims of India, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, Turkey and others, not just the US when and where it wants to act.

Posted by Reality Man | May 1, 2007 12:58 PM

The non-US states who have an interest in signing up (other than Israel) are going to be relatively weak ones -- following William Odom, immature democracies -- with something to gain.

Eventually, someone's going to write an important book about just how badly Bush screwed over NATO, and the consequences thereof.

Apparently, it is now a "progressive" view that developing a genuine multilateral response to genocide and human rights abuses should be subordinated to the appeasement of any regime that reserves the option of abusing its own people.

Apparently, straw men never go out of fashion for some people.

Still, 'CoD' is a good name for a cod-multilateral org.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | May 1, 2007 1:10 PM

The fundamental problem is the idea that the United States reserves the right to decide which nations are legitimate in the international order and which are not -- that we get to structure the international system. That kind of arrogance is one source of our problems. China and Russia are big countries with lots of people and lots of international interests. Democracy or no, I'm sure their inhabitants believe that their own governments represent their interests better than the U.S. government. Perhaps even better than a Princeton professor.

Posted by mq | May 1, 2007 1:10 PM

Who came up with the name? "Concert of Democracies" makes it sound like someone will be playing the tuba.

My guess is that it is John Ikenberry, who was one of the principal co-authors of the report, and is enamored of this type of Wilsonian lingo

Posted by Dan Kervick | May 1, 2007 1:14 PM

So has Matt moved to New Mexico or Oregon or neither? Can someone relieve my ignorance on this point?

Posted by Aaron | May 1, 2007 1:22 PM

The only way this comes close to working is when the US agrees to cede (some) sovereignity to an international body. The obvious case would be nuclear proliferation and inspections.
We are not yet close to being able to agree to that.

Instinctually, this idea appeals to me - it strikes me that this would have, at the very least, be preferrable to the reactionary ad hoc imperialism model Bush used in the Iraq war. However, on reflection, I think Bob Wright is correct - institutionalizing this kind of things antagonizes exactly the wrong groups. It may have been better than Bush's model, but that bar is way too low.

Posted by theCoach | May 1, 2007 1:27 PM

What are the countries in the world today that openly accede to being labeled non-democracies? There are few, and since the main justification for this idea seems to be that the UN is insufficiently responsive to the goal of spreading democracy and thus must be bypassed, I wonder how different the Concert of Democracies would be from the UN. Would the US have veto power over entry?

It would be different because the proposal is that the COD would be a self-selected body. The US and a handful of other self-declared democracies get together and start a club, and then others get in the club only if the existing members invite them in.

Posted by Dan Kervick | May 1, 2007 1:30 PM

My guess is that it is John Ikenberry, who was one of the principal co-authors of the report, and is enamored of this type of Wilsonian lingo

The COD concept is much more Anne-Marie Slaughter's work than it is Ikenberry's. I don't know if she came up with the name or what, but that'd be my guess.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | May 1, 2007 1:45 PM

I can only offer a quote from "Murder By Death" here. For "theory," substitute "political institution:"

Sidney Wang: Very interesting theory, Mr. Charleston. However, leave out one important point.
Dick Charleston: What's that?
Sidney Wang: Is stupid. Is stupidest theory I ever heard.

Posted by James Gary | May 1, 2007 1:49 PM

Dan, I still don't think there's much of a difference from the status quo here. Let's say the Concert consists of the US, Israel, and Australia at first. Iran comes along and says "We're a democracy! Let us in!" Either the current Concert says no, in which case it's just a glorified coalition of the willing with no more international sway than the current coalition has. Or the Concert says yes, in which case the Concert is no different than the UN.

How ruthlessly are the incumbents willing to police membership? It's entirely unclear to me that even on the proponents' criteria, a more ruthless culling of democracies would achieve the desired ends. Is a narrow group of Israel, the USA, and Australia going to be able to get anything done that it can't get done under the status quo?

Posted by Marshall | May 1, 2007 1:50 PM

Or, in a less-snarky mode, this is *exactly* the same idea that the Onion put forth a few years back:

"U.S. Forms Own U.N."
"WASHINGTON, DC—Frustrated with the UN’s procedural policies, the United States formed its own international governing body."

The link is at
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27948

Posted by James Gary | May 1, 2007 1:55 PM

Wow, I'm annoyed. A "concert of democracies" is a great idea, if it's not set up as an explicit alliance. It could be like ASEAN - an economic, trade, and political forum.

I think it's such a tragedy that neocons have given the idea of "spreading democracy" a bad name. It's a great idea - it just shouldn't be done by military force. A group of democracies that maintains favorable trade and immigration relations with one another, and acts in concert at the UN, would be a great way of showing the non-democratic world that democracy is the way to go.

Posted by Mr. Noah | May 1, 2007 1:56 PM

"It's worth saying that along with being a bad idea, this is a somewhat silly proposal since the notion that countries like Brazil, India, South Africa, Indonesia, etc. are clamoring to provide a patina of legitimacy for future American miltiary operations is obviously absurd."

A bad idea for sure (given the diminishing primacy of pluralistic nation-states, and the likelihood that countries which may descend into sectarian civil war will descend into sectarian civil war if invaded in the post-Cold War world), but that doesn't mean a certain swath of elites in the developing world as well as their aspirant class electorates won't be quietly enthusiastic at the prospect of themselves or their countrymen becoming constabularies in an American imperial legion. The folks in charge want the dollars, and any number of the People want a path to American citizenship. What the Americans get out of it is a global army on the cheap. And all we need is a major humanitarian catastrophe abroad (like say a good swath of the Arab world becoming the former Yugoslavia writ large), and a massive American-led peacekeeping operation (not even the left can oppose without appearing heartless) to seal the deal for decades or several centuries to come.

Posted by Linus | May 1, 2007 2:17 PM

Well, I can't pass up the opportunity to talk crap about the Princeton Project's COD. When they had their little colloquium on the COD at TPMCafe, I couldn't get through the posts without wanting to smash my own head in with a brick. At least some of these people are supposed to be Foreign Policy progressives!

They start with a criticism of the UN as somehow no longer being a good avenue for pusuing American interests. Okay, but *why*? There doesn't seem to be *any* awareness on the PP's part of how US intransigence on a number of issues could sour other countries' willingness to play ball on issues that matter to the US.

Wanna get serious about Iran's nucear program? I know, how about not undermining the global non-proliferation regime? What about Kyoto? The ICC? The landmine treaty? Anan's reform program for the UN? France, and Belgium, and Germany, and Sweden, and Australia, and the UK, and Norway, and Canada, and most other Western democraices are still going to want all of these things, and the US is still going to block them, even if you put all these countries in a new multilateral institution with a stupid name.

People calling themselves "Wilsonian" multilateralists these days seem to get that multilateral institutions can be means for pursuing US interests. But they don't seem to get that "multilateral" also means comprimise, and not always getting to do exactly what the US wants, when and how it wants it. I can't shake the feeling that the COD is supposed to be like the UNSC, except that all it ever does is all and only what the US wants.

You know, if someone were writing a book about this stuff, it'd sure be good to see some emphasis on the idea that "multilaterial" means "sometimes having to compromise and pursue other countries' interests."

Posted by Scott E. | May 1, 2007 2:23 PM

Linus, that might be the most absurdly naive thing I've ever read.

There are also a bunch of borderline cases. Authoritarianism is becoming much more clever about using democratic processes to get into power and then use new tools to make them look different from old authoritarians while wielding power. Venezuela is a case of this. Would Taiwan be let in? The neocons would push hard for that. If Israel's Arab population, especially in the West Bank and Gaza, end up outnumbering Israelis and Israeli Jews, will Israel be let in? The Democratic Republic of the Congo? Nigeria? Senegal? Sri Lanka? Iran is another sticky case. Ukraine? Bangladesh and Thailand just had coups. Afghanistan? Iraq? What about constitutional monarchies with elected parliaments like Kuwait where elected officials have actually too little power vis-a-vis the emir?

Posted by Reality Man | May 1, 2007 2:26 PM

Scott, I think you have to take into account that domestic US politics is forefront in the minds of supposed "progressive" foreign policy wonks. These people are still groping around to try to find a stance for domestic consumption that is "strong" but not Republican. Hence they don't have a coherent view of multilateralism.

Posted by Marshall | May 1, 2007 2:34 PM

Instinctually, this idea appeals to me - it strikes me that this would have, at the very least, be preferrable to the reactionary ad hoc imperialism model Bush used in the Iraq war.

That may be true. But I see the Concert of Democracies as a recipe for Cold War II. It's chief effect will likely be to force those states who are left out of the group to form a countervailing bloc to protect their own interests.

There are a number of absolutely vital, and truly global, welfare and security issues that must be addressed in this century - climate, energy supply and security, nuclear proliferation, global urbanization and job creation, just for a few examples. To have any hope of addressing these problems effectively, we are going to have to work constructively with a lot of countries whose internal politics do not please either the US government or Princetonian liberals - chief among whom are China and Russia. We can't afford to go around creating powerful and exclusive clubs based on ideological self-selection, clubs that will likely bog down these essential global efforts in the swamps of bipolar power bloc rivalries and politics.

The first Cold War was a major global pain in the ass, and for decades quashed hopes of concerted global action on issues of global concern. It pisses me off that Democrats are flirting with this direction again. Some nostalgists apparently miss the "moral clartity" of bipolarity, and are eager to breath new life into the post-WWII US self-conception as Leader of the "Free World". They want to create a new Free World bloc so they can strut around as leaders of it.

Along these same lines, among the many disspiriting aspects of the recent Democratic debate is the readiness of many of these idiot candidates to throw themselves in with the new anti-Russia propaganda campaign, and repeat the distortions, exaggerations and disinformation that are part of that campaign.

This is typical and predictable Dem foreign policy campaigning by the numbers. They're always looking for some issue to be "tough" on to compensate for their dovishness in other departments. They think: "I'm advocating withdrawing from Iraq, and my enemies will say I am a weak appeaser and defeatist. Thus, I must look for some country to verbally hammer and abuse, so that I will look strong. I know - I'll go after Russia. I mean, what could be the harm in that!"

Posted by Dan Kervick | May 1, 2007 2:35 PM

They want to create a new Free World bloc so they can strut around as leaders of it.

That's quite right. And it has a very grave application to the War on Terror, where our strategy should be to DISAGGREGATE our opponents. This COD would unite them (if it is, indeed, exclusive in a way the UN is not).

The first Cold War was a major global pain in the ass, and for decades quashed hopes of concerted global action on issues of global concern.

I'm a liberal, and even I consider the implication here naive. We are NOT on the brink of some Brave New Era when power struggles among states cease and we can all work together to solve climate change, if only the Princeton Project would stop talking stupidly. Power struggles are a key dynamic in international relations and will not just stop because key actors (as in people, as opposed to states) decide to be reasonable. The Cold War was one thing, and the next period will be a different struggle, but it's not like the Cold War was an annoying hiccup in the steady march of reason and cooperation.

Posted by Marshall | May 1, 2007 2:42 PM

You know, if someone were writing a book about this stuff, it'd sure be good to see some emphasis on the idea that "multilaterial" means "sometimes having to compromise and pursue other countries' interests."

Gulf War I remains the gold standard.

Posted by Steve | May 1, 2007 2:44 PM

This is unexpected because I expected Obama to come up with this idea. His speech last week looked like it was heavily influenced by the princeton project. also, anne-marie slaughter donated $1500 to obama's campaign in the first quarter. I'm sure they're pissed that McCain took the COD proposal.

Posted by Dan | May 1, 2007 2:50 PM

The name is awful and the supporters current and past are perhaps not the best ones, but isn't a Concert of Democracies basically exactly what we had until the Iraq War? When we went into the former Yugoslavia, we worked with a bunch of European countries under NATO and not UN auspices. The EU, with an overlapping but not identical membership, helps us in that area and also in Afghanistan, and the Japanese and Australians were in Afghanistan, too.

I honestly think that if Gore had been President in 2001, we would have seen an expansion of or replacement for NATO to include some non-Atlantic countries, which would have come close to being a Security Council Minus Russia and China.

But once you let in India, Indonesia, South Africa, and Brazil, it becomes unwieldy, and at that point, the only major powers you omit are Russia and China. For that reason alone a wider "Concert" would be pretty useless.

Those countries don't necessarily share Western ideas about the international system, anyway. India has some leverage but hasn't done as much as Germany or France to push Iran away from nuclear weapons, and the South Africans haven't lifted a finger to get Mugabe out of Zimbabwe. The right wingers can't be too happy about that.

Posted by JimWDC | May 1, 2007 3:08 PM

"There are also a bunch of borderline cases. Authoritarianism is becoming much more clever about using democratic processes to get into power and then use new tools to make them look different from old authoritarians while wielding power. Venezuela is a case of this."

I don't overly-disagree with what you say. The trouble here is that I didn't overly-disagree with what you say before you said it.

My point was that we're I think in the early stages of a long era marked by the eroding primacy of national borders and central governments, and this trend concerns especially pluralistic nation-states (both with unelected and elected governments, but especially the former). What this means in part I think is that if you decide to undertake some kind of unilateral or otherwise pseudo-multilateral intervention premised on the idea of democratizing the invaded state said state is likely to fragment along ethnic, religious, and other sectarian lines. This fragmentation may be peaceful (as with the former Czechoslovakia) or it may be violently unpleasant (as with the former Yugoslavia, and the likely to be former Iraq).

But this doesn't mean there won't be large-scale American-led interventions in the future, and it is not so difficult to imagine the chaos and sectarian violence in Iraq and Afghanistan spreading throughout at least a part of the Arab World and Central Asia leading to the ultimate dissolution of many if not all states involved, and the creation of a number of new nation-states of sectarian character. It's also not difficult to imagine a massive American-led peacekeeping operation throughout the region - again a kind of Bosnia writ-large. Such an enterprise would build on certain trends we're seeing today I think including third world armies rented on the cheap.

But don't blame me. I'm a small-r republican. I think states and regions need to provide for their own security.

Posted by Linus | May 1, 2007 3:47 PM

There is currently is no functional collective security organization in the world. The UN is no more than the sum of its parts, and the veto power of the regimes in Russia and China preclude any vigorous reaction to flouting of human rights.

I agree that there are huge problems with the UN Security Council, and I also agree that much of these problems are rooted in discord between China/Russia and the other permanent Security Council members. However, I disagree with you when you attribute this discord to China & Russia's undemocratic regimes.

As Marshall says, power struggles are a fact of life. China & Russia are both large countries with great power ambitions, ambitions which frequently clash with the interests of the United States and its allies. There is no reason to believe that liberal democracy in China & Russia would eliminate these countries' power ambitions, and hence no reason to believe that Chinese-Russian-American conflict would dissapear.

Posted by Peter H | May 1, 2007 4:06 PM

Marshall,

I think the idea is that the concert will be a kind of NATO-plus, and give its members a powerful tool of leverage over the UN. Whenever some concert-desired intervention is on the table, the concert will make it clear that they plan to act on their own if the UN fails to approve the intervention. The concert would be of sufficient size and strength, it is imagined, that the body of nations outside the concert will be in no position to offer effective resistance to anything the concert chooses to do. Its supporters have also said they would use the prospect of autonomous concert action as a way to push the UN into the kinds of reforms desired by the concert.

Perhaps the concert will not offer the full level of universal legitimacy supplied by UN approval. But it will provide some legitimacy, and much more than comes with unilateralism or a fly-by-night coalition of the willing. Most importantly, I think, the idea's supporters hope it will provide legitimacy among the populations of the concert members themselves. And that is all the legitimacy that is needed to carry out planned actions with unified public backing.

The defenders of this proposal sometimes engage in a certain amount of sweet talk about the UN. But it is clear that the creation of such a concert would only push the UN further down the road toward irrelevancy and anachronism, so that it can only rubber-stamp concert actions, or mutter impotently on the sidelines as it is ignored.

Posted by Dan Kervick | May 1, 2007 4:26 PM

I still don't see how the Concert differs at all from the status quo. It is an unusual combination of cynical and useless.

Posted by Marshall | May 1, 2007 4:51 PM

The League would be a validation and strategic acknowledgement of the defacto military arrangement that the US provides the global economy. Which is to say Europe and Japan don't spend money on their own militaries because the US does. That is what the US Navy does - it keeps the seas safe from piracy and projects force. The Netherlands needn't have a naval power to protect all of the Shell supertankers despite the fact that they would make a great terrorist target for AQ.

It's a much more proper establishment for security arrangements as it would have requirements for certain standards of human rights that everybody knows China and Russia and Saudi Arabia are not interested in. It thereby becomes a moral organization for stability that you simply can't buy your way into while still funding assassinations, suppressing free speech, or oppressing women.

It's clear to me as a Republican that liberals suggest these are priorities required for the moral application of diplomatic and military force, which is why you'll continue to call it the CoD positively as it exists in academic theory. Of course as soon as the Pentagon shows interest, you'll abandon it as corrupt.

"Free Tibet, just don't send troops". Right?

Posted by Cobb | May 1, 2007 6:09 PM

This is truly a 'Bush league' idea, whether from McCain's mouth (or other orifice) or the Princeton thingy.

NATO was a good idea because it fostered the cooperation needed (standardization of military weapons and tactics) to lend reinforcement to the evolution of the EU - which is an unmitigated 'good thing'. NATO never made real sense as an offsetting force against the Soviet Union, since it was just a cover-operation for US forces being stationed as far east as we could get without forcing a war with the S.U.

But, before we forget, competing alliances and overlapping alliances haven't been good for world peace in the long run. The tendency is to make small wars into bigger ones. In WWII there were no formal alliances against Germany prior to the outbreak for war, but instead a set of open promises (like to Poland) to come to their aid.

In peacekeeping matters (Kosovo, Bosnia et al), alliances have been helpful, particularly where military forces are similarly equipped, trained and have previously cooperated.

The so-called concert of democracies will be perceived by the non-members as hostile alliances, and if the membership includes only actual democracies, its membership roles will be slim and contain members who actually have little in common. This isn't good multilateralism.

If the argument is that the UN doesn't work, it is because some major players don't have the same views on various topics. The presence of some non-UN alliance won't alter that set of facts, but instead make the divisions more rigid, more fearsome (as local scapegoats inside the non-concert powers) and generally degrade into the black/white divisions that end up messing with actual possibilities for cooperation - and possibly resulting in outright hostilities.

Instead, the US (and others) should be looking for ways to get along on some issues and agree to disagree on others. Please, no more alliances that contemplate conducting united war policies and therefore increase the likihood of them being needed.

Posted by JimPortlandOR | May 1, 2007 6:26 PM

I don't think Russian intransigence is thwarting an overwhelming international desire to stop the genocide in Darfur. I don't think Chinese obstructionism has turned Bush's otherwise brilliant occupation of Iraq into a modern-day Flight of Icarus.

It's never been clear what problems the concert of democracies is supposed to solve, much less whether or not it has any chance of success.

Posted by jalmari | May 1, 2007 9:11 PM

"League of Democracies" sounds too much like the "Delian League" of ancient Athens. An alliance of democracies that rapidly became the Athenian empire with subject democracies paying Athens for protection and to support Athenian wars (the Peloponnesian war, for instance).

The UN is a better organization for spreading liberal democracy. It is structured to balance the power of any one state against others, and preventing a concentration of power is essential to the survival of democracy anywhere.

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