In an earlier post on openUSA, I took a cold look at Robert Kagan's new treatise, "The End of the End of History". Kagan - one of John McCain's principal foreign policy advisers - sought to draw a firm line between the world's democracies and their existential nemeses, a bloc of "autocracies", including Russia and China. Liberal democracies, he argued, must pool their moral and political resources in facing the autocratic tide.
The careful policy-wonk would wonder why this line should - or even whether this line could - be drawn in the first place. But Kagan, who was one of the keener proponents of the Iraq war, has taken his thesis a step further, proposing that Washington build a "League of Democracies" in order to better facilitate action on intractable crises in places like Darfur, Myanmar and Zimbabwe. McCain has made the "League" one of the major items of his foreign policy agenda.
Lest the "League" be seen as neocon-scheme-by-other-means, Kagan's proposal has many traditionally liberal friends. oD author Anne-Marie Slaughter has suggested a similar "Concert of Democracies". Ivo Daalder, one of Barack Obama's foreign policy advisors, backs the initiative. So too does France's foreign minister Bernard Kouchner.
The international institutions of the 20th century are clearly in need of 21st renovation or replacement. But is this the way? Many democratic capitals will see little sense in alienating China or Russia, key trading and strategic partners. Nor will democracies invested in building cooperative regional networks - like ASEAN - want to ruffle the feathers of important actors in the area who would not make it into the democratic tree house.
There is a love of boundary in Kagan's proposal that is troubling, in so far as it is as removed from fact as it is attached to ideology. The ambitious American strategic thinker Parag Khanna recently called for a "Big Three" - China, the EU, and the US - to take upon its shoulders the task of maintaining a rules-based international system. For all its simplicities, his understanding of global geopolitics is at least tethered to a realistic appraisal of power and interdependence. The Kaganite binary vision is not.
As "global democrats", where should are loyalties in this growing debate lie? The "League" has kicked up dust in the American press and will soon cause much ink to be spilled around the world. Watch this space.