U.S. Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama has been trying to burnish his foreign policy credentials.

So it didn’t help when he called Canada’s leader a “president” during a debate Tuesday in Chicago.

Asked what he’d do about the North American trade deal, Obama said it needs changes, so he’d “immediately call the president of Mexico (and) the president of Canada.” ~The Edmonton Sun

But, remember, folks, he was an international studies major and has lived overseas–that’s what counts!

The soundtrack to Fanaa was playing in the background, and I was finishing reviewing the most recent Arabic lesson’s vocabulary when I was reminded of another Arabic loanword found in Sayat Nova’s poetry.  His Doon en hoorin is (You Are A Nymph) has a line where he says:

Toor, indzi spane, ikhtiar unis!

I believed that this translated roughly as, “Come (lit., give), kill me, you have the right.”  The modern Eastern Armenian translator renders ikhtiar as iravunk’, which is where my translation of ikhtiar as “right” comes from.  In the context of the poem, this rendering might make perfect sense, since the gusan is talking about the authority of the beloved to order his death, where she plays the role of a khan or some other powerful figure.  Yet my Arabic lesson tells me that the primary meaning of ikhtiar is “choice” and the dictionary confirms that it means selection, preference or even free will in certain usages.  Fortunately, there is a way out of this contradiction.  

Ikhtiar (or ikhtiyar as Hans-Wehr transliterates it) can also mean “option” in Arabic, which would also fit the context of the poem.  It would not, however, bear out the translator’s decision to use iravunk’.  This rendering does manage to convey some of the meaning, but does not capture exactly what the poet was saying.  Still, I can appreciate the translator’s quandary, since the main Armenian word for choice is entrut’yun, which is a bit more cumbersome.  So, eight weeks in intensive Arabic have at least brought me some new insight into Sayat Nova.  Park’ Astutso!

So says Niall Stanage.

Hugo Chávez is rubbing his hands. He has a plan, and Colombian intelligence is aware of it. It seems he convinced the drug-trafficking, communist-leaning guerrillas to collaborate in a strategy that will lead the so-called Democratic Pole to victory in the next elections.

The Venezuelan colonel is willing to spend whatever is needed: $10 million, $50 million, $100 million. The gush of petrodollars is enough to bankroll those imperial spasms. After the triumph in Colombia, Peru will fall of its own weight in the next elections, maybe by the hand of Ollanta Humala — and the conquest of the Andean arch will be complete: 100 million people. ~Carlos Alberto Montaner

There is something a bit odd about describing a string of left-populist victories in democratic elections as the “conquest of the Andean arch,” as if Pisarro were back in the saddle overthrowing the Incas.  From the perspective of the backers of the populists, they are finally reclaiming their countries from the people that have (mis)ruled them.  That their policies will bring on disaster and economic ruin is all but certain, but that is actually their affair.  If more of Latin America is on the verge of sliding into democratic despotism, this is the result of the flaws of mass democracy, which might make us reconsider the importance of such “democratic values” in the first place and think on whether their disappearance from the continent–if indeed they are going to disappear in some places–would be a cause for lament. 

It seems to me that when Venezuelophobes cast their eyes across the Atlantic, the toppling of dominoes in supposedly “people-powered” revolutions is viewed as being all to the good.  Why?  The obvious reason is that the new oligarchs who take power in Georgia or Ukraine or Lebanon are believed to be U.S. puppets to one degree or another, as indeed they are.  When a democratic wave crashes, even if promoted and funded by foreign agents and pushed by foreign NGOs, these enthusiasts for democracy are supposed to be very pleased about it.  Not so when the people involved live in this hemisphere and vote for the ‘wrong’ sorts.  When foreigners aid ostensibly pro-Western forces to seize power, er, win elections, this is supporting the liberation of a longsuffering, heroic people from the domination of exploitative elites; when people who are not on “our” side aid forces in another country to win elections, this is nefarious imperialism.  I would be perfectly willing to acknowledge right now–and I do acknowledge–that Venezuela is engaged in power projection and a kind of soft imperialism, just as Washington has been doing for some time.  In fact, I consider both policies dreadful and misguided, but it would be refreshing if those warning against the growing menace of Venezuela could acknowledge that Chavez is implementing the same kinds of tactics and pursuing the same goals of power projection that our government pursues.  If we could just drop all the pious chatter about the glory of democracy or the impending collapse of democracy, we might start to understand and manage foreign affairs a bit better.   

Of course, I would argue that the prevalence of Chavista and left-populist types in Latin American politics today is good evidence that democracy is not necessarily the best form of government for every country, and it isn’t necessarily that good of a form of government in any country.  Even so, if the spread of mass democracy in Latin America ultimately means a turn towards demagogic despotism and the collapse of representative government in favour of authoritarian populism, it is unclear what shoring up the Uribe government with some military aid will matter one way or the other.  Montaner speaks of a coming hurricane, and then recommends that we help Uribe set up a nice tent on the beach.  If Montaner is right about the almost certain unsustainability of democracy in Latin America, backing Uribe’s government will be of little use in preventing the collapse of this kind of government there. 

We are supposed to be deeply shocked that Chavez is meddling in the elections of a neighbouring country (because the overthrow of Milosevic, Shevardnadze, Yanukovych et al. were all purely local operations, you see, in which no outsiders were involved).  Certainly, it would be better if Chavez didn’t do this, but he has already been backing and funding FARC rebels for years, so pushing an electoral option is a less bloody means to the same goal.  This is possibly better for the Colombian peasants who have been caught in the middle of the civil war for all these years (not that many people in favour of perpetuating the military alliance with Colombia care much for their welfare).

Ruben Navarette should stick to his reliable shtick of “nativist”-bashing and leave the foreign policy talk to someone else.  First, he hasn’t got his facts straight:

But Obama wasn’t hatching an invasion. He was talking about going into Pakistan if our military was in hot pursuit of “high-value terrorist targets.”

In fact, the speech that caused all of this was not referring to “hot pursuit” across the border, but included talk of a “sanctuary” that would be attacked in the event that Musharraf “failed” to do so.  In other words, Obama would launch an attack into Pakistani territory, whether or not the Pakistani government gave its approval, and with no apparent concern for the aftermath of such an action.  Specifically, he said:

If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will. 

Navarette enlightens us:

There is no target of higher value than Osama bin Laden, and our intelligence agencies say that he’s in the remote tribal areas of western Pakistan. Most Americans would probably agree that this is one person we have the right to pursue to the ends of the Earth. That includes going into Pakistan.

This is typical.  Having so personalised all our conflicts and focused them on individual evil masterminds, we as a nation persuade ourselves that any action, no matter how ill-conceived or destructive it may be, would be justified for the sake of killing the archnemesis.  There is, naturally, the appeal to the mob in the final resort, since there are not many good policy arguments to hand about doing what he proposes. 

Let’s be clear: of course, Bin Laden should pay for what he and his have done.  Virtually no one in this country questions the legitimacy or rightness of this.  But, to follow Navarette’s view, this apparently trumps all other considerations and outweighs all other costs.  It’s as if Navarette says, “Who cares if the action doubles or triples the strength of pro-Taliban forces?  Why worry whether it helps bring about the fall of the government in Kabul or causes another coup in Islamabad?  If you can take a shot at Bin Laden and company, it’s all good.”  Such is the stellar strategic thinking of the Obamas and Navarettes of the world.  This is exactly the kind of short-sighted, overly personalised vendetta-as-strategy that has mired us in Iraq and which continues to exacerbate the jihadi threat.  What earns Obama’s proposal applause on some parts of the left and scorn across most of the spectrum is that it is somewhat unlike Bush’s current policy, which has plenty of its own problems.  However, simply because a policy differs from the extremely poor policies of this administration does not mean that it makes sense.   

This is a foreign policy approach that does not gauge a proposal by its merits, but rather by the people it annoys.  If a really stupid policy idea happens to annoy neocons and Mr. Bush, Obama and company might think that it is a great idea because it is simply different from what has been done.  This is actually to mimic the worst habits of the neocons.  For years, neocons operated by arguing something like the following: “If someone with regional knowledge says something that we disagree with, it is obviously biased, left-wing and self-serving, so we must actively ignore people who know something about this part of the world.  ‘Arabists’ and Foreign Service people are not on board with our agenda, and are therefore wrong about virtually everything.  Whatever “realists” recommend, we must strive to do the opposite, especially when it involves stirring up conflict and overthrowing foreign governments.  Wherever Clinton was too hemmed in by international rules and institutions, we will cast them off and do whatever we please.  Knowledge and expertise are overrated; moral clarity is what matters.”  Of course, I might very well find problems with the “realist” agenda as well, but that doesn’t mean that any and all critiques of the “realists” are equally smart or all alternatives are equally desirable.  This should be obvious, but there are some Obamaphiles who are having difficulty grasping it. 

Navarette continues: 

But the Pakistani ambassador to the United States insists that, if the U.S. military went into Pakistan after bin Laden, it would destabilize the region and hurt relations between the two countries. In fact, Mahmud Ali Durrani told CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux that if the United States were to locate and kill bin Laden inside Pakistan it would so inflame the Pakistani people that it could actually hurt the war on terror.

Huh? Killing bin Laden would hurt the war on terror? And some presidential hopefuls consider these folks our friends, and others think these matters ought not even be discussed?

Suddenly, Barack Obama seems like the least-naive person in the race. 

This is pretty straightforward: when the ambassador of a country that enjoys major non-NATO ally status with the United States says that X will harm relations between the two countries, it actually will harm relations between the two countries.  This is not an empty threat, as our worsening relations with Turkey over the past four years because of Iraq should show.  If the ambassador says that X will destabilise the region (which it probably would do in this case), you have to take that seriously, even if you end up deciding in favour of X.  You might be able to argue that, taking all things into account, it is worth the risk, but to actively ignore the risk or pretend that there is no risk is absurd.  To deny that Obama said what he, in fact, said is even more absurd, and that seems to be Navarette’s tack here. 

Naturally, the Pakistani government is not going to encourage foreign military action on its territory.  There is a significant measure of self-interest in all of this, but anyone who understands even a little about the politics of western Pakistan understands that the ambassador is not simply talking to protect his job.  American military action on any large scale will stir up even more support for pro-Taliban forces, which represent a more enduring danger to the U.S.-backed government in Kabul.  Provoking an even larger groundswell of support for pro-Taliban forces, or perhaps even triggering a major insurrection, inside a major allied state would be mad.  What Obama proposed in his speech would risk doing this very thing. 

Navarette muddles the issue again with this talk of “friendship.” Allied nations are not “friends.”  States do not have “friends.”  There are plenty of people in every U.S.-allied state who are not friendly towards our government or our interests, which is what you would expect, especially in light of recent events.  The Pakistani government is telling us, quite plainly, that making these threats will weaken the position of the government there, worsen the scale and scope of the threat and ultimately make the government less reliable than it already is in fighting jihadis.  That strikes me as a pretty good list of reasons why it is a very questionable proposal. 

I would add one other thing: Obama is actually drawing a bit from the Clinton ’92 playbook in running “to the right” of the administration by issuing bold statements on foreign policy that try to paint current policy as weak or servile.  Remember when Clinton was attacking Bush the Elder for “coddling the dictators” in Beijing?  Who was it who then became one of Beijing’s most useful fools once in office?  Naturally, it was Clinton.  Supposing for the moment that this is electoral posturing, designed to make a Democratic candidate look “tough” and “serious” enough (while managing to have the exact opposite effect), we might expect any Obama Administration to be as blind to the flaws of Pakistan as Clinton’s was to those of China. 

There is a new TAC coming out with my Pakistan column in it.  Once it is out, I’ll talk a bit more about what I think our Pakistan policy should be.

Update: Musharraf explicitly rejects the possibility of U.S. strikes inside Pakistan, and is now contemplating declaring a state of emergency.  This would be the place that Obama wants to take “action” in.  According to the AP, Obama has some small part in this latest fit of panic:

Tariq Azim, minister of state for information, said some sentiment coming from the United States, including from Democratic presidential hopeful Barak Obama, over the possibility of U.S. military action against al-Qaida in Pakistan “has started alarm bells ringing and has upset the Pakistani public.” 

Of course, the government is bound to blame someone else for their internal problems, many of which the Pakistani government has exacerbated through its heavy-handed handling of marginal regions.  Nonetheless, the possibility that careless and stupid remarks by candidates in our election might worsen already tense situations should be sobering.

Everyone’s favourite, Katherine Harris, made a small splash by having a total of four campaign managers during her Esther Resurrection Tour highly eccentric, error-ridden run for the Senate, but it seems as if Fred intends to outmatch her in sheer personnel turnover.  At the present rate, he should leave her in the dust.  He has already dropped one manager and two “temporary” co-managers and moved on to yet another, Bill Lacy.  All this comes before his much-delayed, not so highly anticipated and no longer very interesting announcement in September that he will start officially running.  Once he begins to campaign properly, we should start seeing campaign managers move in and out on a weekly basis.  Given that Bill Lacy is a veteran of Thompson’s first Senate run, he may stick around a little longer, if only for old times’ sake, but if I were mounting a bid for the Presidency I think the last person I would call on would be the one who worked as a strategist for Dole and for the Dole ’96 campaign.

In a time deluged by ideology — when everyone is urged to take a side and join the political battle — Shakespeare offers a different message: that the most important and dramatic choices are made in the human soul. Some steps, once taken, cannot be retraced. Some appetites, once freed, become a prison. ~Michael Gerson

I suppose it makes sense that one of the chief participants in unleashing said ideological deluge should now find deep wisdom and insight in Shakespeare.  Pity that he didn’t read more of it when he was still working for the White House.

James has a very interesting and valuable post on optimism.  We agree part of the way, in that we both seem sure that optimism is undesirable, misleading and potentially dangerous.  James goes on to say:

Optimism, in fact, is an attitude, an emotional orientation, a psychological posture, a feeling — a meta-feeling, even, a feeling about feelings, the feeling that we should  feel as if failure is impossible.

I agree that there is such an attitude, or orientation, or posture, or feeling, but I would say that this attitude is the product of an optimistic worldview, rather than the substance of optimism itself.  Just as I insist that we all recognise that pessimism is more than, and indeed quite different from, feeling gloomy and misanthropic, it is important that we understand optimism as a kind of philosophical thought.  Optimism of the kind I am describing, and which I reject utterly, is not simply unsettling cheerfulness and irrepressible giddiness, bad as these may be, but a set of assumptions about the world, human nature and the direction (or non-direction) of history.      

One of my first forays against dread optimism was early last year, when I came across this outstanding Salisbury quote in a Gimson article in The Spectator.  Lord Salisbury said:

The optimist view of politics assumes that there must be some remedy for every political ill, and rather than not find it, will make two hardships to cure one. If all equitable remedies have failed, its votaries take it as proved without argument that the one-sided remedies, which alone are left, must needs succeed. But is not the other view barely possible? Is it not just conceivable that there is no remedy that we can apply for the Irish hatred of ourselves? …May it not, on the contrary, be our incessant doctoring and meddling, awaking the passions now of this party, now of that, raising at every step a fresh crop of resentments by the side of the old growth, that puts off the day when these feelings will decay quietly away and be forgotten?

Optimism is not simply an attitude or a feeling, but an assumption that all problems, in the end, have solutions and that we can know what they are and put them into effect.  It is an assumption that no consequences are final, there is always another day to set things right, that there is always a second chance and that history is moving towards something that we can discern and, even more remarkably, we may be able to accelerate progress towards that end.  The optimist says, “It is never too late,” while the pessimist knows that people are late and they miss what they are seeking, or something else interferes and prevents you from reaching the goal.  Pessimism recognises certain limitations of finite man that do not change; optimism sees human limits as continually expanding and being redefined.  This is not simply an attitude, but a belief about the structure of reality and the nature of history.  Anyone who accepts the reality of the radical contingency of historical change cannot think that history is going in any particular direction.  Anyone who briefly scans the annals of mankind cannot conclude that human reason has the capacity to actually “solve” fundamental problems of our condition, yet this is what an optimist, be he liberal or Marxist or something else, must believe.  According to Dienstag:

Pessimism, to Schopenhauer, means not that our civilization or morality are declining, but rather that human beings are fated to endure a life freighted with problems that are fundamentally unmeliorable.

Optimism is the view that there are ultimately no problems that are unmeliorable (optimists may make a concession with respect to death, but only very grudgingly).  Rather than being filled with burdens to be endured, life may be improved virtually without end in the optimist’s view.  This is far more, and far worse, than endless self-delusion based on excessive cheer and confidence.  It is the assumption that there is good reason to be so cheerful and confident about the future.

In the end, optimism as a philosophical view is an acceptance of the reality of progress.  Here is Dienstag on the struggle between the idea of progress and pessimism:

Finally, the dismissal of pessimism reflects the continuing grip that ideas of progress retain on contemporary consciousness.  Though supposedly slain many times (Lewis Mumford called it the “deadest of dead ideas” in 1932), this beast continues to rise from the ashes for the simple reason that, first, it helps us to make sense of the linear time of our calendar and, second, there is no easy substitute for it.  However much it may be denied in principle, in practice the idea of progress is difficult to displace.  And from that perspective, pessimism is especially bewildering…..Pessimism is a substitute for progress, but it is not a painless one.  In suggesting that we look at time and history differently, it asks us to alter radically our opinion of ourselves and of what we can expect from politics [bold mine-DL].  It does not simply tell us to expect less.  It tells us, in fact, to expect nothing.  This posture, I argue below, is not impossible and not suicidal.  It is neither skeptical (knowing nothing) nor nihilistic (wanting nothing).  It is a distinct account of the human condition that has developed in the shadow of progress–alongside it, as it were–with its own political stance.

It must be PNAC op-ed week.  If you didn’t have enough fun with Kagan/Daalder, Tod Lindberg has arrived to repeat (in The Weekly Standard, of course)the standard “centrist” charge: the evil antiwar liberals are wrongfully attacking the “serious” people in the Democratic foreign policy establishment and the DLC more generally.  “Serious” people such as, oh, maybe Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, whom Lindberg naturally defends against attacks from the blog left.  Of course, disdain for the DLC is also held up as an example of some sort of perfidy, when it is probably the main proof that even the Kossacks can get some things right in spite of themselves.

Lindberg is right about one thing: the DLC isn’t going away, or at least it isn’t going quietly.  They represent a dying ideology that is already unsuited to the times, but they retain enough institutional clout to live on despite this for many years.  The DLC continues to have an outsized influence on Democratic foreign policy thinking, if such a word can used in this context, and its think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute, counts as its members several of the Democratic presidential candidates, naturally including Clinton.  If none of the candidates showed up at the latest DLC event, it is not because the candidates have abandoned liberal interventionism, nor have they all repudiated some of the lessons that the DLC taught to the party about appealing to middle-class and “moderate” voters.  On the contrary, the major candidates seem more wedded to the horrid interventionist idea than ever, and the main three candidates have been practically falling over themselves to remind people that they, too, believe in God.  Where the party and the DLC now disagree strongly is over Iraq, and, at least as far as foreign policy goes, they really disagree only over Iraq.  Once the war there is over (as it will be, eventually, one day), the Kossacks and the like may be horrified to discover that New Democrats, or those who have learned to follow in their footsteps, continue to dictate the terms of the debate on foreign policy for the foreseeable future.  This is because, despite all of the whining about “purges” in the Democratic Party, there have not actually been any effective purges of the foreign policy intellectuals who signed on for the Iraq war or who embrace activist foreign policy more generally.   While the Kossacks wield more influence today than in past cycles, they will not be filling out the ranks of a future Democratic administration.  The wonks tied to this foreign policy establishment will be the ones shaping and implementing policy.  In fact, in the future the Kossacks, ever a party-oriented group interested mainly in having Democrats win elections, will almost certainly endorse the bad policies of a “centrist” Democratic President, even if these policies are nothing more than a refined or slightly modified version of what is being done today.  This is a shame, since hardly anyone deserves the blog left’s attacks more than these “centrists.”

Besides being an embodiment of everything that is wrong with foreign policy pundits and elites, the bipartisan interventionist consensus and the profoundly unrepresentative nature of foreign policy “centrism,” the entire Kagan/Daalder op-ed founders on the central problem that it is an argument over how to “sustain broad, bipartisan support for interventions.”  This is strange for a couple reasons.  First, the Obama, Clinton and Edwards campaigns guarantee that the Democrats will continue to support interventionism of one kind or another should their side win in the next election and these campaigns represent strong interventionist strains inside the Democratic Party that are, alas, not going anywhere.  The bipartisan consensus on intervention as such has hardly ever been more robust, despite the disasters this very consensus has brought on our country.  You hardly need to abandon the Security Council to maintain it–indeed, I suspect that any move towards doing so would weaken that consensus considerably, since there are many CFR types and liberal internationalists who would not be interested in this proposal.  Second, it is even more strange since they had just said this:

Throughout its history, America has frequently used force on behalf of principles and tangible interests, and that is not likely to change.  

Presumably, if intervention is a natural expression of America’s acting on behalf of “principles and tangible interests,” there should not have to be a mechanism to sustain bipartisan support for it.  The national interest and fundamental shared political principles ought to dictate that support for the interventionist option will be shared by a broad majority.  If there is such broad support, what is the need for a new mechanism?  The argument for a new mechanism suggests that the broad majority does not exist and the bipartisan consensus has to be maintained against the will of the American people (neither of which would surprise me).  That this kind of policy creates deep and powerful divisions within both parties and splits the country roughly in half (and not strictly along party lines) suggests that it may be an unnatural, abnormal kind of policy, or that it is the sort that is instinctively opposed by large numbers of Americans who do not accept the elite’s definitions of “tangible interests” or their application of force on behalf of these “principles.” 

Most of the op-ed is an argument for replacing the U.N. as font of legitimacy for armed intervention with the ridiculous Concert of Democracies.  It is ridiculous because it is a naked extension of U.S. hegemony and it is an attempt to create a parallel structure that will rubber stamp Washington’s policies, a more enduring version of the Coalition of Small, Easily Intimidated Nations.  Call it the Permanent Council of the Willing, or perhaps, given that legitimacy seems to be decided entirely arbitrarily under the Kagan/Daalder scheme, the Axis of Democracies.  Consider this statement:

Because they share a common view of what constitutes a just order within states, they tend to agree on when the international community has an obligation to intervene. Shared principles provide the foundation for legitimacy.

Obviously, there have been alliances of states that had rather different understandings of a “just order within states” from those of the hegemonists today.  Did their shared principles provide legitimacy for their invasions of other states?  Will future alliances of despotic states be free to determine their the appropriate circumstances for “intervention” based on their “shared principles”?  Or do we suppose that the U.S. and allied European and Asian states get to have one set of rules for themselves–which they get to enforce against themselves and thus never enforce–while judging the other states in the world by a much more rigorous standard? 

There is one other obvious snag, which has already been pointed out elsewhere, and this is that “fellow democrats around the world” do not always or even very often agree with the need for some kind of intervention or, if they do acknowledge the need, they are not willing to endorse the use of force.  Most “fellow democrats around the world” are strongly supportive of the United Nations and the protections provided to them by the U.N. Charterand secured by the UNSC.  Indeed, the only states that usually have an interest in subverting or overthrowing the authority of the U.N. are states engaged in aggression, the promotion of terrorism or the proliferation of nuclear weapons.  These states want looser controls on their freedom of action for themselves internally and in dealings with other states.  They are, of course, quite willing to use the U.N. as a shield or a club when it suits them, but it is the great powers in particular that tend to find international law the most constraining when they are not able to use it as a means of dominating other states. 

In post-Cold War times, cross-border invasions of small, militarily weaker states by their neighbours have usually been met with international intervention and/or condemnation.  Many of the relatively new democratic states are not very strong militarily, and they have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo governing intervention.  (Then there is the small matter of being bound by treaty law to abide by the Charter’s provisions, but never you mind that.)  The “fellow democrats around the world” generally seek to abide by a principle of nonaggression.  “[F]ellow democrats around the world” tend to be the ones who are among the most outraged at what has been done in and to Iraq.  Are they very likely to sign off on another intervention in the future?  Hardly.     

Pushing this a bit further, we can see that relying on the approval of “fellow democrats around the world” would have meant, in the case of Iraq, accepting the objections of Canada, France, Germany and India, four of the “great democracies,” and holding off on the invasion and only proceeding with it with explicit authorisation from the Security Council.  By the standards that Kagan and Daalder are setting for the new Concert, the Iraq war would probably never have happened.  They would be unable to achieve those goals that they deem to be most important.  The Concert is hegemonist in purpose, but it is actually hamstrung by its own obsession with respecting the opinion of democratic governments around the world just as if it were dealing with the Security Council.  If it were true (and it isn’t) that the Security Council is lax in authorising interventions, this Concert would be no better and might even be worse (by “worse,” I mean worse from the perspective of the hegemonists).  Unlike the U.N., the Concert could not be so easily pilloried and mocked by warmongers as an assembly of despots, kings and villains.  To the extent that the democratic status of the member states would lend legitimacy in our own eyes their objections would be that much harder to ignore and reject.  Viewed another way, the Concert approach would mean that the United States would theoretically make actions that the government deemed to be necessary for national security dependent on the approval of some significant number of democratic states, some of which might have moral, strategic or other objections that would nix any proposed action.  If it was ridiculous, as the neocons would have it, to make a matter of national security dependent on corrupt and despotic governments, is it any less ridiculous to make it dependent on relatively decent foreign governments?  According to the pre-war arguments war supporters made, the government is obliged, especially if the security threat is real (as it was not in the case of Iraq), to take “appropriate” action regardless of international law, the positions of other governments or the opinions of other peoples.  The interests of democratic states, or even of the “great democracies,” do not always coincide, nor do they necessarily coincide all that frequently.  The Concert is supposed to work because there is a greater chance of common agreement on the rightness and necessity of taking action in some conflict or crisis, but there is no guarantee whatever that there will be any such agreement.  Most “fellow democrats around the world” think that international law actually exists and means something, while it is fashionable in this country among certain internationalists to doubt its significance or enforceability.  Between these views is a vast chasm that cannot be bridged simply because all the peoples  involved vote for their governments and extend some basic legal protections to citizens. 

Having said all this, I suppose you might think that I would find the Concert a potentially attractive idea.  It might conceivbably serve as a more effective check against intervention than the current system.  Even so, the Concert is a terrible idea, since it is a transparent effort to the defeat the purpose of international law in the name of providing some supposed global order.  To the extent that it is an attempt institutionalise past serial aggression in the name of “human rights” and democracy, it is an abomination that ought to be rejected completely.