On Wednesday, John McCain, in his first major policy speech [2] since securing the GOP nomination, called upon the democratic nations of the world to join the United States in the formation of new and improved "global alliance" - what he called the "League of Democracies".
McCain stated, "We have to strengthen our global alliance as the core of a new global compact, a league of democracies that can harness the vast influence of the more than 100 democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests."
"It's not just [a commitment of] mine. President Sarkozy of France is talking about the same thing; Prime Minister Brown of England, Chancellor Merkel is another talking about the same thing," McCain said in response to a question about containing an Iranian nuclear program, arguing that a coalition of democratic countries could be more effective in pressuring the Iranians to abandon their nuclear ambitions.
It was pointed out on Wednesday evening's Special Report with Brit Hume [3] by Charles Krauthammer that he had proposed the same idea about six years ago. A highly appealing aspect of such an organization - what he called a "hidden agenda" of such an idea - would be that it would it would "essentially kill the U.N.".
Krauthammer: How do you kill it? You establish a parallel institution of democracies that actually does stuff, that actually acts in the world, and that is not acting either against our interests or doing nothing, as the U.N. almost all the time does. And that's a good idea.
Krauthammer's caveat to the "League" - which seemed to be in parallel to McCain's idea as well, considering he did not include nations such as Russia or Venezuela in his proposal - is that it must consist of "real democracies".
Krauthammer: The problem is if you include everyone, Cuba, Chavez and all these guys, it's going to end up either useless or bad, as we've learned in the U.N. experience, so the new idea, which is 50 years late, but I think is coming now, is establish institutions of real democracies and act together with them in that structure.
It's ironic that, just yesterday, there were several words of praise [4] for Krauthammer's great conservative mind here at Conservative Outpost - the same day in which Sen. McCain was taking one of his great ideas and introducing it into his foreign policy vision for his future presidency. Like I said in my comment yesterday, "'Of all the great minds in the conservative movement, he's the one that I constantly keep telling myself, "I'm glad he's on OUR side!'"
