The League of Extraordinary Thoughtlessness

I think the idea of creating a "democracies only" international organization has some promise. But I think the idea of creating, as John McCain has proposed, a League of Democracies that would purport to have the authority to authorize Iraq-style non-defensive wars when the U.N. Security Council declines to do so is a terrible idea. But beyond the merits of the idea, there's another problem as Matt Welch points out:

[R]egardless of whatever Rauch, Welch or McCain might think about a 21st century League of Nations, the main point is that there is no way in hell anything remotely like this is happening any time in the next decade. After eight years of a cranky, go-it-alone White House that won re-election in part by bashing limp-wristed Euro-weenies, the chances of another interventionist Republican winning enough good faith among grumbly allies to create a brand spanking new America-defined Club of Winners are something approaching zero.

Quite so. McCain's habit of putting this at the center of his foreign policy agenda reveals not just poor strategic thinking on the underlying merits of the concept, but an extraordinary detachment from the realities of the contemporary world. The idea that Canada and France and Brazil and India and South Korea are all just chomping at the bit to join a new McCain-initiated, America-led war club is ludicrous and anyone who thought about it for five minutes could see that.