Of the many ideas floated by John McCain – some good, some not so hot – one of the truly alarming ones is his endorsement of the formation of a so-called “League of Democracies.” (With a tip of the hat to Hot Air.)
Gaining ground this political season is a proposed League of Democracies designed to strengthen support for the next president’s overseas agenda and ensure a global leadership role for the United States.
John McCain, the virtually certain Republican presidential nominee, has endorsed the concept of a new global compact of more than 100 democratic countries to advance shared views and has discussed the idea with French and British leaders.
“It could act where the U.N. fails to act,” he said last month, and pressure tyrants “with or without Moscow’s and Beijing’s approval.”
That last quote from McCain is really about all you need to know regarding this proposal and the dangers it poses. Much of the support for this concept seems to come from supporters of the current United States administration’s foreign policy and their swelling frustration that the United Nations will not always toe the company line with American demands. Make no mistake here… the United Nations is far from a perfect body and I freely admit they are in desperate need of a good housecleaning. Corruption has been a major issue (the oil for food scandal being only one of the more recent and egregious examples) and they constantly give themselves a black eye with the sinister behavior of some of their envoys, such as the rape and pedophilia charges against U.N. peacekeeping troops. But these are problems with individuals, such as are found from time to time with all organizaitions and governments composed of fallible human beings. What they are not, is evidence of some sort of shortcoming of the organization itself.
Let’s take a look for a moment at the original charter of the United Nations. This reads, in part:
To maintain international peace and security, to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
The attidue and hope of proponents of this proposal are probably summed up best by this paragraph from Ed Morrissey. (Taken from the Hot Air link above.)
If nothing else, the threat of the creation of a League of Democracies will have a salutary effect on Russia and China. Such a development will seriously weaken their prestige and their influence. They may react badly at first, but eventually they will have to forestall the League by acting less intransigently in the UN Security Council — and to start cracking down on the Iranians and the Sudanese. The threat may prove even more effective than the League would, at least in the short run.
That’s a lovely thought, isn’t it? Unless, of course, some of these major players on the world stage do not, in fact, meekly get in line after “reacting badly” and instead decide to form a shiny new “League of Nations You Just Royally Ticked Off.” And a cursory look at that new leauge will show approximately half of the Earth’s current nuclear powers lined up on that side of the new fence you built.
The formation of this so called “league of democracies” flies in the face of the fundamental idea behind the U.N. The organization was formed precisely to avoid what this proposal threatens – that is to say, the avoidance of building walls between nations with different forms of government and to keep lines of communcations open to reduce the possibility of global warfare. By the act of building some new global organization which starts out on day one by shutting out governments we do not “approve of” – including China and Russia – you in effect say, “You weren’t good enough to make the cut, so we’re shutting you out of the process.”
And we’ve seen how well that’s worked out in the past. This proposal smacks of nothing so much as a foolish disregard for the tendancy of nations with similar ideologies to gang up together against those with whom they disagree. Rather than solving problems, the League of Democracies appears to set the stage for a very real world war in the future. This is old world, pre-WW2 thinking on McCain’s part, better scribed on stone tablets than electronic communications, and it should be widely condemned.
(Picture from: PunditKitchen.com )