Killing The UN

By Cernig

I wrote yesterday that McCain's proposed League of Democracies was a way of doing an end run around the UN by creating a new US-led body to provide a facade of international approval to new interventions and "preventative" wars.

Today, Krauthammer confirmed that this part of McCain's foreign policy plan is right out of the neocon playbook.

Well, I like the idea of the league of democracies, and only in part because I and others had proposed it about six years ago. What I like about it, it’s got a hidden agenda. It looks as if it’s all about listening and joining with allies, all the kind of stuff you’d hear a John Kerry say, except that the idea here, which McCain can’t say, but I can, is to essentially kill the U.N.

Think Progress has the video - and also notes that Krauthammer first proposed this League six years ago, so he would know its true purpose.

The UN comes in for a lot of criticism from Americans, but other than the lost 20-something percenters I think they'd mostly agree that it perhaps needs some reform but should still be kept around as the primary international forum. If voting for McCain was clearly labelled as a vote for disbanding the UN, a lot of people would balk. That's why McCain has to pretend that he'd just be adding another body to international diplomacy.

And if McCain dares to invoke Churchill, the greatest defender of a strong UN, anytime in the future I may just puke.

Update Kevin Sullivan, the most right-leaning "liberal" in the blogosphere, wouldn't attend the UN's funeral and James Joyner seems to think a different, democratic, alternative would be better for U.S. interests than the UN is, writing that "Attempting to get that business done through a smaller coalition of more like-minded states only makes sense, and it’s a far sight better than either going it alone or waiting on the UN to achieve consensus."

But here's the rub - what happens when the League of Democracies tries to impose its authority on a non-democracy and the latter says it doesn’t recognise the authority of a body it hasn’t been invited to send representatives to and has no voice at?

We bomb them?