Ivo Daalder and Robert Kagan think a Concert of Democracies would help provide international legitimacy to any war we might need to wage in the future:
A policy of seeking consensus among the world's great democratic nations can form the basis for a new domestic consensus on the use of force. It would not exclude efforts to win Security Council authorization. Nor would it preclude using force even when some of our democratic friends disagree. But the United States will be on stronger ground to launch and sustain interventions when it makes every effort to seek and win the approval of the democratic world.
Eventually, perhaps, these matters could be addressed and decided in a more formal arrangement, a Concert of Democracies, where the world's democracies could meet and cooperate in dealing with the many global challenges they confront. Until such a formal mechanism has been created, however, future presidents need to recognize that legitimacy matters, and that the most meaningful and potent form of legitimacy for a democracy such as the United States is the kind bestowed by fellow democrats around the world.
Nonsense. This idea made no sense when it was bandied about as a League of Democracies and it makes no sense now:
There is so much to do and the current body is so biased against the US and freedom and democracy generally that I've read some calling for a body just for democracies. This is understandable. We associate with rank thugs in the UN. But do we really want a League of Democracies? I think this option would actually be worse than what we have.
Just think, the world's democracies haven't exactly been eager to support us in Iraq. Sure, we do have support from many democracies, but just because we'd be in the company of free countries does not mean they'd support us. And if we were members of a League of Democracies, would we not have a greater obligation to follow the majority even if we don't formally have a majority rules agreement to be a member?
Face it, having thugs and fiends in the UN makes it easier for us to ignore that body when it sides with our enemies and instead gather allies outside the UN to support our objectives. If we gain the support of the UN, that's great; but as things stand now, we do not look too bad as far as I'm concerned when we ignore the UN's farcical moral authority.
So end the fantasy of creating a resolute body of freedom-defending democracies banding together to destroy our common enemies. We can't create that in a formal body. For every Australia, Britain, South Korea, or Netherlands that joins us in Iraq, there is a Spain, Belgium, France, or Germany that will snipe at us, work against us, and look for ways to charge us with crimes. We must live with the democracies as they are and not as we wish them to be.
So stay in the UN. Fire Kofi Annan. Reform the Security Council as I've suggested. Open up the UN books to open audit. Decimate the permanent bureaucracy (I'll settle for firing a tenth). And demand performance in exchange for our money. Heck, only let the performers stay in New York. Open up a satellite office in Kinshasha and send any underperforming bodies to the field office! That will improve effectiveness!
Better the devil we know, I think.
We can call it a concert now, but few of the other democracies even own the same instruments that we do or know any of our music. All we will do is create another body, with added legitimacy, that we must cajole into letting us defend ourselves.
