This past week I joined a couple of progressive brainstorming sessions discussing the new foreign policy ideas that can help us out of the hole. Oftentimes the question of creating a "Community of Democracies" as a caucus at the UN and a forum for building international consensus is raised. (I'm now on a flight to Asia hoping to post when I arrive and to be asleep before I can put in all the links, but google "community of democracies" and you'll get the background you need. Democracy Arsenal's Mort Halperin and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright have been championing this idea for a decade or more. Ivo Daalder and others at www.tpmcafe.com's America Abroad have talked about it more recently). While the proposal has merit, it won't work either politically or policywise as the centerpiece of new progressive thinking, and here's why:
1. The Community of Democracies Already Exists - Secretary Albright liked the idea so much they went out and created it, getting dozens of countries to participate in a forum that now meets regularly. The Bush Administration has continued to support the existing COD. While many progressives now argue that the current COD is too big and diverse to do the sorts of things it should, I frankly don't see how we get away with dissolving it in favor of something new that excludes some current members.
2. The Idea is Too Abstract to Ignite Excitement Among the American Public - The American public will be hard pressed to rally around a proposal to form a new international organization, much less one whose purposes and membership are, at least at this point, abstractions. That doesn't make the community a bad idea, it just says it won't be "the idea" that jumpstarts a progressive foreign policy platform. The fact that a version of the COD already exists also undercuts public enthusiasm.
3. Membership Issues Will Be A Quagmire - Particularly now that Iraq and the Palestinian Authority have held democratic elections yielding outcomes that are worse from our perspective than most coups d'etat, its hard to envision how we'd delineate a criteria for membership that would be seen as fair, and yet encircle only those countries who could productively be part of the forum.
4. Noone's Clear on What the Organization Will Do - Caucusing at the UN inevitably gets brought up as an option, and certainly it would be helpful for us to have more ways of building support for our positions at Turtle Bay. But the regional, economic and political agendas of democracies are highly diverse, and its not clear what the group could build consensus on. I believe one of the original notions was a caucus to promote the advancement of democracy around the world but, after Iraq, that's no longer a proposition most countries will sign onto readily.
5. Concerns About China May Dilute the Organization's Ambitions - A lot of discussion these days in progressive circles revolves around forming alliances and relationships to gird against China's rise, without at the same time provoking Beijing. With that goal in mind, some favor shaping a community of democracies loosely so as not to raise Chinese ire. Indeed this may be necessary to get Asian democracies on board. But tempering the organization's ambitions in deference to Beijing could end up defeating the purpose.
6. A Strong Community of Democracies May Spotlight American Conduct and Interests in Uncomfortable Ways - What if the community of democracies decided to take on issues like torture, detentions, civil liberties, or capital punishment? The US might try to argue that democracies ought to agree to disagree on these topics, but others might not defer. What if the community wanted to talk about making forums like the UN Security Council more democratic in how they operate?
7. In the Near-Term, the U.S. Does Not Have the Legitimacy to Champion a New International Organization - One of the hangovers of the Bush era will be that any major multilateral policy initiative we advance will be mischaracterized around the world as yet another veiled American attempt to extend our unilateral influence and advance narrow self-interest. While we can and must overcome that perception, it will take time and complicate the task of building new institutions in the short-term.
8. No Other Country Will Front for Us Right Now - It is virtually impossible to identify any country that would have the political sway necessary to get such an organization off the ground, and that would be willing to risk, at this point, being seen to do the US's bidding in such an overt way. The fact that no one else is talking about this effort in a serious way of their own volition makes it doubly unlikely.
9. We've Been Talking About it For Too Long - I can remember progressive foreign policy gatherings two or three years ago that highlighted this idea as the best of the "new thinking" on what progressives have to offer. For that reason alone, I don't think this is the idea to energize thinkers.
10. Focusing Too Heavily on This Idea Would Risk Getting us Away From the Drawing Board - Right now, rather than settling on an existing idea as a platform centerpiece, progressives should dig into the hard work of coming up with totally new ones. Examining the values and policies that we believe are right, we should focus on inventing totally new ideas that speak to a political moment that's very different now than it was even a year ago. Coming up with a strong alternative to the community of democracies is a whole lot harder than taking the idea apart. But its what we need to focus on.