Christopher Roach

May 06, 2008

McCain really knows how to turn a phrase:  League of Democracies! My God, next think you know, he’ll be championing “peace with honor” or “bimetallism.”  McCain is not only going out of his way lately to insult Medvedev’s Russia, but he’s insulting vast swaths of the world by attempting to create a competitor to the UN.  Assuming anyone would join the League of Democracies, what would happen in the case of a marginal applicant?  Could anyone say Russia’s regard for human rights is any less developed than Israel’s or South Africa’s?  Would a President McCain have the courage to tell Nigeria to get its civilizational act together?  Would McCain coutenance diplomacy with any country that dared to disagree with the United States?

Further, what would this group do?  We can’t even get long-established NATO to pitch in more than a pro forma amount of troops in Afghanistan, and this is an organization made up of wealthy and civilized European countries. Would such militarily capable democracies as Honduras and Uganda do anything to help us if we have to go “toe to toe” with Russia on account of McCain’s saber-rattling and unwise expansion of NATO into disputed caucasian mini-states like Georgia?

This probably doesn’t matter to McCain, who bases important and complicated foreign policy decisions on his gut.  One wonders if he’s considered the cost of fobbing off improvident commitments to defend weak and vulnerable allies, such as the great dishonor suffered by Britain and France as they half-heartedly honored their defense treaty with Poland in 1939.  Well, I can’t really say I wonder, as evidenced by the auspicious name for McCain’s latest project.