I'm eager to read Fareed's next post. In the meantime, I'd like to indicate my agreement with Fareed and Josh, and respond briefly to the latest posts by Anne-Marie and David.

I stand by my observation that what Anne-Marie and John Ikenberry call the postwar liberal international order was in fact two distinct orders. Plan A--the UN, Bretton Woods, the Four (or Five) Policemen--was reluctantly set aside in favor of a hastily improvised but ultimately successful Plan B--NATO, the Marshall Plan, what became the EU--when the Soviet Union chose to act as a revisionist power instead of a status quo power after 1945.

Obviously I disagree with David, and Robert Kagan, about the U.S. itself being an aggressive, revisionist "empire." That view, which treats neoconservatism as the mainstream American tradition rather than an aberration, is impossible to square with the facts. The U.S. rapidly demobilized and disarmed after World War I and World War II; the Roosevelt and early Truman administrations planned for a modest post-1945 military role for the U.S. as essentially an offshore naval and air power; and the U.S. engaged in a major rearmament program, revived the draft and adopted a strategy of forward defense only after Stalin repressed half of Europe, helped Mao come to power in China and sponsored Kim Il Sung's invasion of South Korea.

Anne-Marie's summary of the relatively noncontroversial aspects of the Princeton Project minimizes, I think, the truly radical nature of the Project's proposals about international security. Anne-Marie and John Ikenberry propose that, if the permanent members of the Security Council do not give up their veto power by the end of this decade, the U.S. should organize a Concert of Democracies whose members, with a two-thirds vote, can authorize wars outside of the UN Security Council system.

From Page 26 of "Forging a World of Liberty Under Law" (the Princeton Project):

[The Concert of Democracies would not] be a substitute for the United Nations or other global institutions, as long as those institutions can be successfully reformed. If UNSC expansion and reform proves impossible by the end of this decade [December 31, 2010--ML], however, the Concert could become an alternative forum for the approval of the use of force in cases where the use of the veto at the Security Council prevented free nations from keeping faith with the aims of the U.N. Charter.[emphasis added].

On page 61, one finds "Appendix A: Charter for A Concert of Democracies":

"Possible Future Amendments Should Security Council Reform Fail:

7. Action pursuant to article four and consistent with the purposes of the United Nations, including the use of military force, may be approved by a two-thirds majority of the parties. [emphasis added].

If the Concert of Democracies were formed as proposed, and if Russia and China refuse to give up their Security Council vetoes in the next couple of years, then as of January 1, 2011, President John McCain could ask the UN Security Council to authorize an American "war of choice" against Iran, and if Russia or China blocked the resolution, then President McCain, ritually citing the "purposes of the United Nations," could ignore the Security Council and ask for a two-thirds vote of the Concert of Democracies. Because each democracy would have one vote, no matter how little it would contribute in military or economic terms to a U.S.-led war, President McCain might be able to line up enough votes for his Iran War from lesser democracies like Poland and Spain, even in the face of opposition from every other democratic great power--Britain, France, Germany and Japan.

The alleged problem that this well-thought-out proposal for circumventing the Security Council is supposed to solve is possible Russian and Chinese opposition to new wars that the U.S. might want to fight in the near future. But is this really a problem? Remember, Russia and China supported or did not block the Gulf War, to punish Saddam for invading Kuwait, and the Afghan War, to punish the Taleban for supporting al-Qaeda---two wars consonant with the spirit of the UN system designed by the U.S. during World War II. However, because of Russian and Chinese opposition, the U.S. waged the Kosovo War without Security Council approval (invoking NATO instead), and invaded Iraq without a new Security Council resolution (which was opposed by democratic France as well as semi-democratic Russia and autocratic China).

I reluctantly supported the Kosovo War, viewing it not as it was sold (a postmodern crusade against "genocide") but rather as great-power management of the final stages of the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Arguably illegal under international law, the Kosovo War should be considered an exception to the rule, not a precedent for a series of armed interventions in inter-ethnic conflicts within state borders. I publicly opposed the Iraq War in advance. In my view, whatever their motives may have been, the governments of Russia and China (and France) were right about the Iraq War and Bush and Blair were wrong.

Unless you think the U.S. should wage more wars like Kosovo and Iraq in the near future, then the alleged problem of Russian and Chinese opposition on the Security Council to such wars is not a problem at all, and there is no need for a cure in the form of a Concert of Democracies in which small, weak states could be persuaded by Washington to rubber-stamp yet more American "wars of choice."