The proposal of a League of Democracies, put forward most recently by the US presidential candidate McCain and also by some staff members of his oppon...

The proposal of a League of Democracies, put forward most recently by the US presidential candidate McCain and also by some staff members of his opponent, Barack Obama, does not look compatible with either reality and the logic of the present international system (for the purpose of peace and development) or the reasons and the logic of the federalist political culture.

From the first viewpoint, the creation of such a League of "Willing" Democracies, which surfaced already to some extent in the Clinton era and later became one of the favorite themes of the Bush Administration, would cause unforeseeable and for sure dangerous consequences for both the real interests of the Western world, and for the USA itself, and for pursuing the goal of world peace.

First of all, it would push two emerging big powers like Russia and China, currently pursuing two different strategies, to form an alliance in opposition to the League, as it would seem to them (in fact, not a completely wrong impression: the USA, unable to control the United Nations, gives birth to an alternative international institution) essentially as a new instrument of the American hegemonic foreign policy. Considering the objective weight that Russia (energy resources) and China (the owner of most of America's foreign debt, and the main planetary "factory") have today in the world, the difficulties and dangers of such a perspective are obvious. Faced with the risk of breaking off with those powers, many Western democracies (the EU countries) and others (think of India), including the USA itself, will probably turn out to be not so "willing" at all, therefore the new instrument will prove very inefficient. In any case, it is likely that the fears for their own security coming from the birth of a new instrument led by the US will drive the Russian and Chinese governments to toughen up their illiberal and authoritarian domestic policies. As well-known, even the western democracies themselves after September 11 (terrorism, wars in the Middle East) have experienced counterblows (limitations on civil rights, increase of forms of authoritarian populism, etc.) coming from fears over security. The same will occur to a higher degree in countries of limited or absent liberal tradition like Russia and China. The world, then, instead of marching towards more democracy would risk a further authoritarian degeneration.

The creation of a League of "willing" Democracies, in addition, would have a second serious consequence: the delegitimation and weakening (explicitly pursued, as well-known, by the American neo-cons inspiring Bush's foreign policy, most of all after the UN failed to authorize the pre-emptive war on Iraq) of the existing international institutions, the UN in the first place. As it is a good thing not to be naïve, it is necessary to ask ourselves what relation there is between the fact that in 2001 the UN Security Council did not authorize the American pre-emptive war on Iraq (which later proved to be not only a formally and substantially illegitimate war, but also a completely inefficient one) and the proposal (American again) to create an institution as a matter of fact alternative to the UN. The UN's limits and contradictions are well-known and real, but the road to follow is to reform and strengthen it, both in its legitimation (for example, the proposal of a UN Parliamentary Assembly) and in its efficiency. Anyway, the universality of its membership is essential (and the UN does have it in principle, whereas the League will not, due precisely to its constitutive choice), as the disastrous historical experience of the Society of Nations between the two World Wars demonstrates. From this first viewpoint (the international system and its evolution) there is still to note that the proposal of a League of Democracies suggests the prospect of a vertical split that looks very ideological and very little realistic. As reality is not just "black and white" but also "grey", it will not be easy to decide who is to include and who is not, and, as historical experience demonstrates, it is probable that in those choices a great role will be played by the logic of reliability of alliances and strategic interests of the League's leading country or countries. It is probable then (here too we must not be naïve) that who will be considered more democratic, hence better deserving inclusion, is the more friendly country, and vice versa. All this will have a negative influence on the degree of legitimation, hence of efficiency, of the League in its action for peace and against genocide. The League will be neither more legitimated nor more efficient than the United Nations in pursuing world peace and human development.

Finally, the proposal of a League of "willing" Democracies looks to be in contradiction with some essential points of the federalist political culture. For the federalist thought, the reasons and the roots of war and organized violence do not lie in the nature of domestic political systems (more or less democratic or authoritarian) but in the (anarchical) nature of the international system. As historical experience, both old and contemporary, demonstrates, the fact that a country has a democratic domestic political system does not assure at all that that country carries out a peaceful foreign policy, that it operates for protecting human rights in the world, that it is available to subject itself to international laws, common and equal for all. There have been (Athens in ancient Greece) and there are democracies (the United States, the greatest democracy in the world, but well before it the liberal England, the republican France, etc.) that carry out imperialist policies, that waged and wage wars for hegemony, that refuse to subject themselves to international laws, common and equal for all. When their strategic interests, their own power in international relations, their own external and today also internal (with globalization the confines between internal and external have become uncertain) security (real or more and more often just perceived) are involved, also democracies may become "rogue States": they use force in a unilateral fashion, they carry out the policy of "two different yardsticks" in their relations with other countries, they restrict the freedom of their citizens, they manipulate domestic and international public opinion according to their strategic convenience. Given the anarchical character of the present international system, where there is no law and everybody "takes the law into his own hands", even democracies run the risk to be "rogue States" in their external relations (and in some case also in their relations with their citizens). If existing democracies are not to regress, and autocracies are to gradually become, in turn, democracies, the main problem is how to eliminate the fear of an external enemy, the real midwife of rogue policies: therefore, we should promote shared cessions of sovereignty to supra-national institutions, promote the birth of a global law and jurisdiction, foster the development of policies aiming to produce the "global public goods" that mankind needs and no State, democratic or not, is in a position today to produce alone.

The proposal of the League of "willing" Democracies, also due to the context it originated from (the hegemony problems of a declining big power), does not seem to go in any of these directions, which the federalists support and pursue. It does not contribute to overcome international anarchy, it does not help the world to pass from the "state of nature" to a "civil state" ruled by law. It does not help therefore to develop democracy in the world, as we all desire.