McCain's Foreign Policy Proposals Could Cut UN Out of International Debate, Promote More "Interventions"

John McCain is set on sidelining the UN apparently in his foreign policy proposals and creating a "League of Democracies" that could facilitate more 'interventions' in other nations around the world. 

Excerpt US News report "Better Diplomacy Though a 'League of Democracies'? ": 

"This would not be like the universal-membership and failed League of Nations of Woodrow Wilson but much more like what Theodore Roosevelt envisioned: like-minded nations working together in the cause of peace," he explained. "The new League of Democracies would form the core of an international order of peace based on freedom. It could act where the U.N. fails to act, to relieve human suffering in places like Darfur."

The idea is not a new one. In particular, a number of conservative thinkers—long hostile to what they believe has been an ineffective United Nations—see a League of Democracies as a way to help cut one of their favorite punching bags out of the diplomatic picture.

BTW, remember that the invasion of Iraq was and is also considered a 'humanitarian intervention'.   Just check with your local right wing talking points troll about how much better off Iraqis are these days than they were when Saddam Hussein was executing scores of criminals each year in the early 21st century. (Human Rights Watch).  (Scores means less than 200.)  Now nearly 1/4 of Iraqis have been displaced or killed.  And American Big Oil  is being offered "no bid" contracts.  Great humanitarian action there!

More excerpts from above article:

"The notion that a democracy's foreign policy will be primarily defined on a wide range of issues by its status as a democracy is a misleading and possibly dangerous form of policy reductionism," Thomas Carothers, a leading democracy scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in a recent policy brief. He lists several democracies that have troubled relations with the United States, including Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nepal, Palestine, and Pakistan. Several recent elections have produced regimes that are outwardly hostile to the United States, particularly one in the Gaza Strip where Hamas, labeled a terrorist group by the United States, came to power.

An additional concern is that such a league could further alienate powerful countries like Russia and China, which would be excluded by design. While Moscow and Beijing have often blocked U.S.-led diplomatic efforts on bodies like the United Nations, their influence is often essential to reining in countries like Iran and North Korea. Indeed, it was Chinese pressure that appears to have been decisive in the recent diplomatic breakthrough with North Korea.

Advisers to Barack Obama have also been critical of the proposal, saying it is an outgrowth of what they call the Bush administration's "you're either with us or against us" approach to foreign policy. "I don't regard this idea as terribly attractive," says Richard Danzig, a former secretary of the Navy and an Obama national security adviser. "It tends to emphasize the we-they character of the world, when in fact the world is more complicated than that."

 Again this is probably what Wesley Clark, who ran NATO, and is advising Barack Obama is talking about when he evaluates whether John McCain is ready to run the free world. 

This weekend most of mainstream has been focusing on the "how dare he?" of Mr. Clark's statement.

It's nice that someone focused on the wacky foreign policy proposals from the John McCain camp.

Clark was being generous to the Republican candidate.  It is much nicer to say that only lack of experience and qualifications leads to this extension of the Bush Doctrine by John McCain than to imagine what else might be the force that pushes McCain towards it.  Has anyone checked to make sure his name isn't on the PNAC letter?

tags: john mccain  wesley clark  league of democracies  pnac  pnac letter  

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