First, Rachel, your initial paragraphs relating to electoral politics are out of place in this discussion and don't move me in the slightest. Aside from the insignificant fact that I disagree with you about the political assessment, let's try to remember that the question before us is about a proposed epochal change in US national security policy and global relations. It's the job of serious leaders and thinkers to decide these questions on the merits, with a long view of the global and national interest, and then sell the result to the public. We should never pursue such an important initiative, where so many lives are at stake, because it might give "progressive politicians" some sort of branding advantage in the next election.

I recently listened to an interview with Jessica Tuchman Matthews, of the Carnegie Endowment, on NPR. She made the sober and perceptive point that one reason for the inability of the international community to settle on a coherent and effective international policy toward Iran is that the US-Russia relationship has gone totally to hell over the last couple of years. And she counted it a top priority to get to work on repairing that relationship. I think this is exactly right. Unfortuanately a coalition of neoconservative wingnuts and liberal saps seems bent on re-igniting the Cold War. And Iran is just one issue in one region. Russia sits in the middle a substantial sphere of influence that contains a number of countries that are likely to become increasingly important over the next several decades.

And will Russia be in the Concert of Democracies? the fact is, you can't even tell me! Nobody knows, isn't that right? But we can't have these vital issues of security bound up with years of demagoguery and wrangling over who does and doesn't get into the Concert, and with interminable hair-splitting debates about whether Russia's particular form of centralized elected government is more or less democratic than India's, for example, or about what kind of press is freer: one that has substantial state-owned components, or one that is owned by a handful of private robber-barons.

A similar point applies to China. In this case, it's pretty clear that China will not make it into the Concert. But it appalls me that at this juncture in world history people would be considering moves to stick a knife in US-China relations, because they have decided this month to get themselves all worked up about China establishing relationships with "unsavory" governments in Africa. And yet compared to the history and present of US and European involvement in Africa, the Chinese are virginal newbies and pikers!

Do you honestly think the making of business and security deals with unsavory regimes will be affected one way or another by this Concert of Democracies? We have always made such deals where or national interest seemed to require them; we will continue to make such deals. Other countries will as well - including democracies.

You know, when Nixon went to meet Mao, Mao was a butcher. He was very, very, very unsavory. And do you think China now is an improvement of the China under Mao? Of course you do. It's not even arguable. The situation in China is phenomenally improved since the US opening. China is no political Shangri-La perhaps, but its people are far freer and richer than they were in the late sixties and early seventies. But if we had listened to the ideologues and hardliners of the right and left back in 1973, the people of whom you and your friends are the heirs, the situation would now be incomparably worse. They would have declared engagement with China to be incompatible with the principles and moral purity of the free world.

You mention Darfur and Iran. The defenders of the Concert keep coming back to these two issues. But these are simply the crises of the month. Two years from now we will probably be talking about two entirely new crisis. We can't predict with any assurance what these are going to be. But we can predict that whatevever they are, our chances of solving them will be impaired if the global system has degenerated further along the path of an ideologically tinged great power rivalry - the path promised by the Concert of Democracies - and if the great game for strategic control of global energy reserves, profits and markets has intensified.

Do you think any of your democratizing dreams are going to become a reality anytime soon if the US and China in 2010 and 1015 are in a pitched competition for influence and clients in Africa? What if the same is true with the US, Europe and Russia battling it out over alliances and pipelines in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Caspian basin and the Caucusus? And do you think there is any hope for peace in the Middle East if a decade from now, the region is a warlord-torn wasteland of permanent regional insurgency, with local chieftains selling off oilfields for security protection to the highest oil-hungry bidder in the outside world?

And the other big global challeneges? Global hunger, slums and inequality? Environmental degradation? Water resources? Nuclear and conventional weapons proliferation? Population management? Forget it. These problems all require broad-based solutions that go beyond the limited opportunites offered by a Concert of Democracies. And the will and capability of addressing them will be sapped by the sideshow struggle of Alliance of Democracies against the Evildoers.

I believe you are fixated on a couple of present issues, and missing the bigger global picture. The Concert offers only short term, feel-good satisfactions to our moral vanity - not long-term global solutions.

When you talk about "seriousness and toughness", you are not a credible messenger. In fact the frequency with which you mention the need to prove "our" toughness and seriousness to the public only shows how insecure you are about the whole subject. If you want to persuade the public about the seriousness of your national security positions, then develop cool, analytical and unsentimental strategies for keeping them safe and looking out after their long-term interests and well-being, and forget the democracy jihads.

Dan: You're breaking the rules! How dare you be thoughtful and intelligent and serious? I say this is very rude!

When the United States forms alliances with other nations, those alliances should be for the purpose of addressing a set of specific measurable goals that are regional in their scope, and specifically address U.S. interests.
For example, the U.S. forms alliances in the Pacific, in Europe and South America for specific purposes. The NATO alliance provides for defending strong US interests in Europe, and the overarching goal of preventing another European war.
Other agreements focus solely on commerce, which is entirely appropriate.
For global issues, we have the United Nations, which is already weighted somewhat towards the democratic nations. Better to bolster the United Nations than to invent a vague alliance with vague goals, based on a vague philosophy, and the popular politics of the moment.

Russia would not be in the concert of democracies because it is not a democracy. But, the creation of the concert does not rule out cooperation, either on a bilateral or multilateral basis, with states that are not members. It simply means intensifying cooperation with like minded states. You are extremely disingenuous if you frame this as concert = no engagement with Russia. We're all adults here and whatever our views on the concert we understand how this game works, I think, i.e. conditional engagement with Russia will always be important.

You don't understand the situation. The U.S. doesn't need much help in projecting its power. The wars in Iraq and Aghanistan demonstrates this rather well. Even the disaster of the outcome in Iraq and a messy retreat won't impact the U.S. nearly as long as it will the Middle East. Who now remembers the negative impact on the U.S. of leaving Vietnam?

Further, what you might call the projection of power is going on daily. The U.S. dollar is the currency of choice in large numbers of countries and U.S. companies are in virtually every nation. I understand there is a lot of disatifaction with current U.S. policies but who really opposes the U.S.s leadership role?

It seems the Concert is about constraining U.S. power. The U.N. no matter how admirables goals is a non-starter in the U.S. A new institution in which countries that will take on some of the burden of using the rule of law to the world and helping in other situations is likely to be one more likely to restrain the U.S.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Well, Russia has an elected President and legislature Architect. So how many democratic institutions does a country have to have in order to count as a democracy? Are we just going to juggle the democracy books until we get exactly the countries we want in the concert?

I agree, or course, that some measure of cooperation will always occur between the US and Russia. Even during the height of the Cold War, the US and Russia cooperated on a few things. But fundamentally their relationship was driven by intense geopolitical competition, deep suspicion, fear and proxy warfare.

I do think forming a Concert of Demcoracies would be a very significant step that would severely damage relationships with countries outside the concert, and poison opportunities for global cooperation that would exist oteherwise. It miight not push these relationships into the darkest Cold War-style doldrums. But I think most of the world would interpret the formation of the concert as a sort of a declaration of independence by a group of democracies. This group would be seen as drawing back and giving up to some extent on the broader global community, and forming their own private club and major power bloc to pursue their own more limited group interests, with fewer constrints, and in a way that it inherently threatening to the interests of those not in the bloc.

Countries not in the concert would naturally view the concert as a strategic adversary, and would be forced to protect their interests by forming a countervaling bloc. How do you think the US would respond, if for example, the nations of Japan, China, Russia, India and Indonesia announced the formation of an "Asiatic Concert" aimed at pursuing a unified economic, foreign and military policy?

The concert is a treaty between each member state so the US would have to agree that Russia was a democracy, that the US would never use force against it, and so on. Obviously that won't happen so Russia won't be in. Also, Russia may have elections but it does not have a free press and an independent judicial system. As for what would we do if the bad guys ganged up on us-- we'd be outraged and respond; but, remember, we're not the bad guys, we're the good guys. So it's okay for us to cooperate.

Members of the COD, insofar as they are also members of the UN, would still need to seek UN authorization before threatening or using force.

If it is believed that the COD would be able to just avoid the UN entirely, that is clearly false. If that belief is the foundation of support for the COD--and I think it probably is--then the COD would be founded on false premises and lead to illegal actions.

We don't actually know if these assertions about the treaty ratification are accurate or not. The proposed charter as it appears in the appendix to the princeton report does not provide any methods of or restrictions on ratification. Presumably there would have to be, but we don't know yet. After all, it could be that other states would accept Russian ratification while the US rejects it. In that case, the charter would be in effect between those other states and Russia but not in effect between the US and Russia.

None of this is clear yet.

Does the UK have a free press? I can never tell, since they seem to have all sorts of crazy libel laws that cast a chilling effect on publication, but I don't know exactly how these laws work. I've read wild and outrageous stuff in Russian online publications that might be hard to get away with in a British publication. It also seems that one cannot go anywhere in England without being surveilled by some spooky camara. Is that a free society?

But I guess democracy is whatever the Concert of the Self-selected and Self-satisfied say it is.

I am surprised Rachel is not a signatory.

I know why. They hate women: 26 names and 1 woman!

That's a progressive bunch, all right.

To see Ivo's name just cracks me up! I wonder how he'll be able to live that one down.

The man has been so deeply wrong on the most important question of our time and that won't slow down his pontificating.

You've got to admire those people! I just don't know how they sleep at night.

Yes, it's a matter of repackaging Pax Americana, which is leaking pretty badly.

I only wish the proponents were honest about it, and not adopt a boy scout pose of good guys vs. bad guys that is supremely irritating.

Anyway, the CoD is DOA. The pros know that. They're just throwing the dems a bone to kill time.

But the intellectual weakness of their arguments is quite staggering.

I know Reece. That was mainly for the benefit of others who might be following the discussion casually.

Dan,
You wrote:
"Well, Russia has an elected President and legislature Architect. So how many democratic institutions does a country have to have in order to count as a democracy? Are we just going to juggle the democracy books until we get exactly the countries we want in the concert?"

Do you seriously think that Russia could be considered a democracy, or are you being sarcastic? It reads serious, maybe I am missing the nuance.

I think any concert would entail a huge degree of politicking behind the scenes--such is the nature of power and clubs. But the proper way to at least erect such a concert would be to establish some fairly clear rules regarding what a democracy entailed. It would have to be a great deal more than elections, since even Zimbabwe holds elections.

The Princeton Project spelled out, to some degree, some of the other essentials. Basic civil rights and minority rights, such as the rights of free speech, a free press, organization, and the others in the Universal Declaration. Ranking these would be an issue, of course--in practicality, it would probably use Freedom House or Amnesty International, or a similar such scoring system as a rule of thumb. In other words, these would have to be realized rights, not rights on the books. Basic checks and balances--most crucially, a functioning, independent court system, would be another prereq, in my view.

In other words, elections, minority and civil rights, and the infrastructure of judicial oversight, are the basic building blocks of any democracy.

On those grounds, Israel would count as much as America would--both have those three, and both have obvious problems. (Discrimination against Arab Israelis in Israel, discrimination against minorities in America, both against the law, and both regularly breached. Israel's courts are certainly less politically charged than America's--they beat us there. Both are better on at least the first and third counts than some of the new EU states which we would also probably want to allow in.)

Having worked with a human rights group for Arab Israelis in Nazareth, I think there is more institutionalized civil rights curtailment in Israel against that portion of its population--and a concert of democracies might be an excellent lever to change such anti-democratic forces in Israel, by using a change as conditionality for entering. Such would be the power of a concert like this, to push members that are borderline and aspiring towards improvement towards the brighter side of the line.

I think there would be no hope for using it as a lever against the really egregious problem countries, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and dozens of others, which are far far lower on the scale of democracy than any of those discussed here.

Director, Truman National Security Project
www.trumanproject.org

I seriously think Russia has a good claim to be considered a democracy. Democracy is not an all or nothing affair. There are a variety of democratic institutions, and many countries have some and lack others - including our own country. If the concert is only to allow in countries that are "pure" democracies, it will have no members. So presuamably, there is to be some kind of threshold that the members must pass.

It has become very common recently for people to argue that elections are not sufficient to make a country a democracy. But still, if a country elects its chief executive and national legislature, I think that is a very weighty consideration in favor of its being regarded as a democracy.

Lumping together Iran and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Memo to Rachel: Pakistan's leader got his job through a military coup. The guy's a dictator.

Saudi Arabia: they've never had an election! (except at the town level).

Iran: Not perfect. But they do elect their president in a real election. In fact, there's been more regime change in Iran than in the US lately.

Rachel: [a goal of CoD would be to] show of how America can lead as part of a team.

Apparently inadequacy of an organization like NATO is that USA cannot simply tell other countries what to do, hence, no concert.

All goals stated by Princeton-Projectanians (-Projectiles? -Projectmongers?) are about as precise. A vision that we need a vision, optimism that we will find hope (or hope that we will be optimistic). Priority: making a hard assesment.

The remaining optimistic vision of hope is about making sanctions better --- and perhaps intervention in Darfur.

Clearly, were we so inclined, we can send troops to Darfur tomorrow. There would be loud complains from the usual suspects, but not much more than usual. "Concert" sanctions would not be better than sanctions enacted by EU and joined by Japan (but not by China, Russia, India etc.)

Why does Israel's borders determine whether it is a democracy? It is not their fault that Jordan so miserable lost the war in 1967.

Germany currently has ahistorical borders. Does that raise a question about its status. There are many border disputes around the world since when does that determine whether a countries internal system is a democracy?

During the American Civil War the South disputed the borders. France and England were prepared to recognize the CSA. Was the United States no longer a democratic republic? Was the South?

I find it fascinating that Western and clearly democratic countreis are so distained while there is such support for nations that are virtual theocracies, repress women, mainly by the men who write here, and those who reject the Wests concept of the invidual and the rule of law.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

I think if you look at any of the recognized rating systems, Russia isn't even close. They score extraordinarily low on press freedom, corruption and democracy indexes.

PHN,
I agree with your analysis, but not your conclusion.

You wrote:
"the United Nations, which is already weighted somewhat towards the democratic nations"

The word "somewhat" is the central issue. Any international organization worth supporting should be considerably more weighted toward democracy.

I did write that because it's true.

Go ahead and name the countries it's attacked in recent history.

Come on. Do it. I am waiting!

Any new organization of states will still have to deal with the abovementioned sovereignty question. Politics is about power and since no organization will possibly allow a single entity to wield more power than either itself or at least its closest ally, no organization will possibly be able to wield enough power to affect change in the places it is needed.

Also, would a coalition of self-professed democracies have a mandate to pass resolutions on the state of those states that are not members because they have not been deemed democracies by the lucky few? If so, would those states that are not democracies have a right to comment on the democratic nature of an organization that is trying to enact policies against/for them without in fact democratically including them in the organization itself? Isn't the idea of a coalition of democratic states formed to solve problems in non-democratic states a little bit hypocritcal? Something of an assumption of our own infallibility?

Since the major question resonating throughout all of this discussion is that surrounding the exercise of power, maybe it makes more sense to create an organization without ANY power as a means for those disenfranchised states, ostensibly non-democratic, to have a forum in which their greavences can be discussed without being held accountable by more powerful states and as a method by which the democratic states that wish to change them can air potential solutions without the spectre of powerful security council members vetoing their solutions.

Whichever way, it is evident that the formation of this organization is hinged upon only one thing - can it differentiate itself in some functional and practical way from the organizations that already exist? If not, there is no reason to bring it into being.

Rachel,

Your comments suggest to me that the basis for this proposal is two significant misperceptions.

One is that the failures of the Bush administration highlight a permanent problem for the US instead of a temporary one caused by the failed leadership of a particular administration and the second is that the most important means for achieving progressive ends in the world is the exercise of power.

You write:

Currently, it is too often the case that referring a tough issue to a multilateral body basically means killing it. Darfur is a good example. Nuclear sanctions in Iran are another. China's willingness to make business deals with many of the most unsavory regimes on the planet--and Russia's economic strength given the price of oil, as well as its growing retrenchment into tsarist era politics--means that the Security Council is not going to be a viable organ for many of the goals progressives want to see in the world.

Clinton was able to get sanctions imposed on Pakistan and India in response to their nuclear testing. He had everyone lined up in support of sanctions against N. Korea within months of the crisis there in 1993, which gave him the ability to negotiate from strength. He got NATO's approval for the Serb-Kosovo conflict.

And the first Bush Administration was quite capable of forming a coalition of the Arab world to fight Saddam the first time around.

We've never had trouble creating these kinds of coalitions UNTIL this administration. So why should I believe there is some larger problem here that needs fixing that won't be fixed by a change of leadership??

As for furthering progressive goals in the world, it seems to me the most important work in that regard is performed through NGOs, the Peace Corp, foreign aid programs, patient negotiations, moral persuasion and the example we set in the world.

Occassionally, there are moments when the exercise of power is needed -- such as the sanctions that helped end apartheid in S. Africa and actions to end ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.

But even in the Kosovo action, I think we were right to spend years pushing for a solution through non-military means before taking the last resort action of bombing people -- even if those early efforts weren't successful.

Finally, I'm troubled by what appears to be in your post and others no recognition as to the limits of what we can do as a country. We can't solve the world's problems.

President Clinton, in defending his actions in Kosovo, acknowledged this.

And it's my recollection that in his original Oval Office speech announcing the war, he laid down a set of criteria for when we should intervene, and implicity, when we should just walk away because there's nothing we can do. But I can't find it now.

I believe it was along the lines of there must be a clear chance to achieve our goals in a reasonable time frame, regional countries must be willing to step in to provide both military, police and humanitarian support during and after the conflict, and there must be an agreement among the allies in the conflict as to what peacekeeping structures will be set up when the conflict ends and how forces will come to be drawn down (exit strategy).

(And in the case of that war, planning to put those things in place began the day the war started)

You missed my point Daniel. It's not that Israel's borders are ahistorical. It's that Israel has no declared or internationally recognized border.

Here's why this is relevant to whether Israel is a democracy: If a country contains many inhabitants that are not eligible to vote or otherwise participate in the governing of a country, then that is clearly a very undemocratic feature of the country. Now there are many Palestinians in West Bank territories that are not eligible to participate in the governing of Israel. Are these people, or are they not, inhabitants of Israel?

If they are, then Israel contains millions of inhabitants who are excluded from participation in the governance of the country, and therefore fails dramatically to count as a democracy.

If they are not inhabitants of Israel, because those territories are not part of Israel, then the government should clearly say so.

But in fact, a significant proportion of the Israeli population regards these territories as part of Israel, and the government refuses to disavow these claims. At the same time, the government has long assisted efforts to colonize and incorporporate those territories into Israel.

So, until Israel disavows these territorial claims, and the logical consequences of those claims - that Israel rules in an undemocratic manner over subject populations who live on their territory but are disenfranchised from participation in Israel's government - then I don't know why we should accept Israel's claim to being a democracy. They convict themselves of undemocratic rule by their own words and claims.

If, on the other hand, Israel made it clear that it regards only those territories outside the occupied territories as parts of Israel itself, then Israel woould clearly have an extremely strong claim to being a democracy.

And of course, everything would be different if, like the Confederate states of America, the Palestinians had seceded from Israel, and were eligible to participate in the governance of Israel, but had chosen not to participate. But obviously nothing like this is the case.

These are similar issues to the ones England faced with Ireland and Scotland.
When you have people living within your borders, either they are in or they are out. The Palestinians are in limbo and that is half the problem.

GHaines thanks for correcting the record. You are undoubtedly referring to the US removing the (democratically) elected Mossadegh who wanted to use oil revenues to improve general standards of living (he was exhibiting aggressive behavior, damn him); and then Iran defended itself (aggressive again) against the US aided Iraq invasion. Let's see one quarter of the world's prison population is in which country again? oh the US. You mean more than in China with its vastly larger population? oh much larger... a full third larger. And which country is the predominant user of illegal torture. What, the US? Lets get the Concert of Democracies on this forthwith to deal with Iran and its iron-fisted regime.

I knew you wouldn't have a response to my post.
America certainly did support Iraq versus Iran (then flip-flopped a bit)
Ask yourself this question- why would a liberal democracy support Iraq versus Iran?
Maybe, just maybe, it is because Iran + power = terrifying to the sane.
Maybe the thought of Islamic Fundamentalists in power is seen as a huge step back for civilization. Just maybe.

You don't find a powerful Iran a terrifying proposition?

How do you feel about the Caliphate? Pro or Con?

Do you doubt that they will use Nuclear weapons on Israel as soon as they get some?

Is that a good thing in your opinion? Let me see if I can guess. Israel is the bad guy, they don't deserve to exist in the first place, so Iran is actually doing good by nuking them. Someone else had that same strategy in the 1930s. Roosevelt? No... Truman? No...Hitler! That’s right-- Adolf Hitler.

The Caliphate is the Nazi party with new uniforms and less forgiving attitudes about freedom and women's rights. That terrifies me. I guess you're ok with it.

Is that patronizing enough? How can someone not be condescending to the pro-Islamic Fundamentalist Theocracy faction?

Why are they demonized? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they act like demons. The relevant question is why they and not others that act as much like demons are demonized.

That is a valid point.
However, I think many other demons are demonized. We demonize North Korea, for example, we demonized Saddam's Iraq, we demonized the Taliban's Afghanistan, and others.
Why does Robert Mugabe get a pass? Why does Islam Karimov get a pass? Why does Saudi Arabia get a pass (if not from the media, but from our government)?
I think that goes to the core of the Concert of Democracies idea. We need to get in bed with some of these filthy regimes because we do not have enough strong, like minded allies cooperating with each other.
Having said that, we still would let Mugabe fly under the radar, just like we are letting the Islamic Courts in Somalia and the LRA in Uganda. If we don't see a strategic reason to get involved we don't.
As powerful as America is, we do not have control of the world. I realize that makes some people on this site very happy, but it is no less true.
We can't solve every problem in every country, we have to prioritize them based on how they affect us.

We need to get in bed with some of these filthy regimes because we do not have enough strong, like minded allies cooperating with each other.

It's maybe more so that America hasn't been able to convince other democracies? Maybe a Concert of Democracies would make that "easier"?

...as in unnecessary?

/Tuomas

Of course there was flip-flopping in the Iran-Iraq war. I am not demonizing Henry Kissinger to observe that balances of power have been at the core of his thinking since his doctoral dissertation, "A World Restored, Metternich, Castlereagh and the conservative politics in a revolutionary world".

When two regional powers threaten the balance desired by an external one, in Kissinger's logic, how can it not be to the US advantage to play one against the other? I remember, at the time, the Washington saying about that war as the one where we wanted to see both sides lose.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"given that you can't seem to get Sunni versus Shi'a belief straight."

Huh? I think you hit reply to my post on accident. No hard feelings.

"Oh, they're just heathens, I guess, all the same."
That's a great argument for pulling out. Who cares about brown people anyway? Lets stop trying to protect them. They are too brown.

Brown people don't bother me as much as they bother some on the left though. I say we are all humans, so lets help them.