A radical foreign policy idea put forth by presumptive Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has drawn cheers of support from sources as varied as his campaign’s neo-conservative backers to liberal internationalists from the camp of his rival, Sen. Barack Obama. But the idea is not without some surprising detractors.
McCain’s “League of Democracies” would be a new international organisation whose membership is made up of democratic governments that meet certain minimal requirements.
The philosophical basis for the League is German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s idea of “perpetual peace”, which argues that democratic governments are less likely to go to war — particularly with fellow democracies rather than autocratic regimes. But democratic nations may be at odds with non-democratic ones.
This is already well underway, according to neoconservative scholar and McCain adviser Robert Kagan, who sees a new “global competition” between democracies and autocracies.