League of Democracies

I heard that McCain has been supporting this idea of creating a League of Democracies. The support for this institution, which would replace the United Nations, rests on the assumption that the UN in ineffective because the non-democratic countries interfere with our ability to do good. The problem is that this assumption just doesn't ring true.

At a reading for her latest book, Samantha Power made a profound but obvious statement. She said the UN will only be as effective as its strongest member - the US - wants it to be. The fact is that many times, we have used the UN to avoid doing the right thing and has rarely stood in our way of acting when we truly wanted to. In Rwanda, we manipulated the UN to prevent us from acting (by preventing the UN from acting). And of course in Iraq we acted without UN approval.

Granted, on the margins, there are times when our desires are frustrated. Our ability to bring sanctions against countries like Iran and Sudan has been hampered. In the case of Iran, other democracies were standing in our way. And with Sudan, there are much more effective efforts we could undertake without the UN if we really wanted to.

On the other side though, a League of Democracies is unlikely to be more favorable towards Israel than the UN is, considering that although Israel is a democracy, the situation with the occupied territories doesn't exactly live up to democratic standards.

What conservatives like McCain actually want is a new institution that is better at doing what we want it to. We want an institution that will levy sanctions when we say to, let us invade when we want to, help avoid military efforts when we want to, and pretend that the situation in Israel is fine as it is and deserves no rebuke. A world body like this is a pipe dream. Our only hope is to actually live up to our standards, not our self interest. Maybe then other countries would be more willing to follow suit.