On Thursday, Freedom House, in partnership with the Democracy Coalition Project and the Open Society Foundations, hosted a briefing on the importance of U.S. engagement at the United Nations’ Human Rights Council.  Advocacy Director at Freedom House Paula Schriefer moderated the event and introduced the following panelists: Dr. Thaung Htun, Representative for UN Affairs from the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma; Hadi Ghaemi, Executive Director at the ...

On July 2-4 the Community of Democracies met for its 10th-year anniversary in Krakow, Poland. The National Democratic Institute reports that the "meeting focused on challenges to democracy and, specifically, how to overcome obstacles in the path of building civil society in the contemporary world." The meeting initiated a "global democracy work plan" focusing on "civil society protections, gender equality and women's rights, poverty, development and democracy, promoting ...

Ahmet Davutoglu and Celso Amorim, the respective foreign ministers for Turkey and Brazil, took to the op-ed pages of the New York Times today to spell out the rationale for, and importance of, the May 17th nuclear fuel swap deal. In a piece called "Giving Diplomacy a Chance," the two argue that they are in full support for a nuclear-free world and that any attempt to prevent Iran from becoming ...

In a piece for Brookings, POMED's James Liddell and Brookings' own Maati Monjib traces the evolution of King Mohammed VI of Morocco's ten years on the throne.  While the end of King Hassan II's reign and the beginning of King Mohammed's rule saw marked improvements in the government's oppressive tactics, the locus of power remains embodied in the king himself. Although women have seen their lot improve substantially, and Morocco has ...

At the American Conservative, Justin Raimondo considers America’s push for democratization as “a twisted replay of the Cold War, with the U.S. taking the part of Russia”, deriding the Concert of Democracies as “no symphony but a pro-American version of the Warsaw Pact”. At the 63rd UN General Assembly last week President Bush continued to stress the US “must stand united in our support of other young democracies”. Raimondo digs into ...

Last week Jim Goldgeier had a piece up at political science blog The Monkey Cage that's well worth highlighting here.  Goldgeier, drawing in part from his forthcoming book co-written with Derek Chollet, takes a look at why democracy promotion, and specifically John McCain's idea for a League of Democracies, has not gained much traction so far in this election cycle.  Goldgeier argues that in 1991-92, there was an unusual convergence ...

In an interview with Financial Times, Obama adviser Anthony Lake talks about the seriousness of the Iranian threat and how his candidate's ideas for engaging Iran relate to current European strategies for engagement.  Lake also briefly discusses Obama's "very responsible" Iraq strategy and his "still relevant" proposals for tracking and using force against terrorists in Pakistan.  Although Lake offers criticisms of John McCain's proposals in many of these areas, he is ...

In US News & World Report, Kevin Whitelaw takes a quick look at John McCain's proposal for a "League of Democracies".  Calling on Obama adviser Richard Danzig and democracy scholar Thomas Carothers, Whitelaw highlights a couple of the most pertinent criticisms of the proposal after briefly summarizing some of the reasons McCain has offered for how it might be useful.

In the Daily Star, Robert Skidelsky castigates the idea of a "League of Democracies" as a flawed, unnecessary pipe dream. The concept is flawed in that it is based on the ideas that democracies will agree on important international issues and that long-term peace between democracies and non-democracies is not feasible. He fears that such a league will disrupt the current international order by marginalizing Russia and China, ...

In an article in Foreign Policy (registration required), Thomas Carothers examines the idea of a "League of Democracies," and the logical pitfalls it encounters when thought about more concretely. The most faulty assumption made by advocates of the idea is the premise that shared democratic values will foster a consensus on foreign policy. Furthermore, outside the U.S. there are few advocates for this idea as there is skepticism ...

In a speech delivered today in Columbus, Ohio, John McCain sought to lay out his vision for the U.S. at the end of his first term in January 2013.  With regard to the Middle East, McCain focused solely on Iraq, which he believes will be a "functioning democracy" still suffering some lingering ill effects from tyranny and sectarian tension.  The U.S. role in Iraq will be massively reduced to minor ...

About a year ago today, John McCain first aired the idea of a "League of Democracies" saying that it "would form the core of an international order of peace based on freedom." McCain also said it would "act where the UN fails to act" while taking care to assure people that it would "complement" not "supplant" the UN and other international organizations. As Sameer Lalwani points out, this is an ...

At the Washington Realist today, Nicolas Gvosdev responds to an earlier article by Robert Kagan, in which Kagan argued that the world was experiencing an autocratic resurgence which called for a new alliance of democracies. For his part, Gvosdev contends that global entanglements of national and economic interests lead to a more complicated world than any "league of democracies" would admit.

Debate over the "Concert of Democracies" theory, stirred last week by the Washington Post op-ed by Ivo Daalder and Robert Kagan, continues at Partnership for a Secure America; Brian Vogt, commenting on a response by Christopher Preble and David Rieff at the National Interest, says, "the key factor will be the breadth of membership of the “Concert of Democracies” that will provide the international legitimacy of intervention."

In an op-ed to the International Herald Tribune, former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft argues that the United States must embrace multi-lateralism. Touching on the concept of the "Concert of Democracies," Scowcroft says, "I know that some have proposed a new league or assembly of the world's democratic states as a solution. And if the goal of such a body is to assist in the promotion and extension of democratic ...

In an op-ed to today's Washington Post, Ivo Daalder and Robert Kagan renew calls for the creation of a formalized Concert of Democracies to serve as a useful multi-lateral mechanism for bestowing legitimacy on international interventions. TNR's Jonathan Chait says of the op-ed, "Others have proposed this idea before, but the pairing of the authors, and the logic they use to arrive at the conclusion, is interesting and worth ...