A League of Their Own

The League of Democracies: the McCain campaign doesn't talk about it much anymore, but it was once an important part of the Senator's foreign policy platform (and remains on his website). More importantly, the idea has existed in a number of forms across the political spectrum for some time; a "Community of Democracies" in fact is still in existence, and has been since 2000 (the State Department has information here).

So, regardless of the election results, the idea - that democratic countries can usefully ally or associate in some way to achieve foreign policy goals that autocratic governments could otherwise resist - seems likely to stay a part of the debate for some time. Ted Piccone, a longtime foreign policy hand and democratization expert, however, has a sobering new report (pdf) out with the Brookings Institution. Drawing on his own experience working with the Community of Democracies, and deep knowledge of other versions of the scheme that have been advanced in recent years, Piccone comes to a sobering conclusion:

Yet despite its superficial appeal to our better angels, even some of [the League of Democracies'] advocates acknowledge that its real purpose is to legitimize the use of U.S. military force and destroy the United Nations. For that and many other reasons, the idea will not fly in the current geopolitical environment and will have to await the day when the world is composed of many more likeminded democracies than currently exist.

The report is sobering reading, and not just for neoconservatives. The underlying flaw in any scheme similar to the League of Democracies is that political concerns almost always trump democratic sympathies. In almost any conceivable situation, at least a handful of democracies are willing to bend the rules and either allow autocracies into the democratic fold or shield them from broader action. The Community has been far less effective in the UN, for instance, than other groupings based on far flimsier identities. The G-77, for instance, a holdover from the Cold War that groups developing countries that were unaligned with either superpower (far more than 77 of them now) is still a force to be reckoned with at the UN. But the constituent states of the Community of Democracies (more than 100 at present) just have not had the same shared interests.

Democratic governance has not prevented conflict in the past, but it has not proven an effective means for organizing action to achieve other goals. It was an enticing specter, but it looks as if the next US president will have to find some other means to organize and motivate other states if the US is to reassert global leadership.