2| August 2008 Washington Office OCCASIONAL PAPER The League of Democracies A“League of Justice” or an“Unholy Alliance“? by Rolf Mützenich, Member of the German Parliament Independent of whether the next U.S. president will be John McCain or Barack Obama, Europe should prepare itself for a re-orientation of U.S. foreign policy; a foreign policy which will increasingly call upon the participation of its closest democratic allies. In a recent article, Republican presi­dential nominee John McCain proposed founding a“League of Democracies”. According to McCain, this organization would not be designed to replace but instead to support the United Nations by becoming engaged when the UN fails to achieve results. Thereby, McCain reengages a debate that has defined U.S. foreign policy since the time of Woodrow Wilson and the U.S. entry into World War I in 1917:“making the world safer for democracies”. This type of sentiment has per­vaded U.S. foreign policy throughout the country’s history. After World War II, this strategy was supplemented with the concept of containment of the Soviet Union and its satellite states. This strategy often had negative effects on democrati­zation efforts since the U.S. was not very picky in terms of who it chose to engage in alliances with during the time of the Cold War. According to the principle“the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, dictatorships and even the Taliban in Afghanistan received U.S. support as long as they were anti­communist in ideology. ➟