In 2011, a series of uprisings known as the Arab Spring briefly gave the impression that democracy was on an unstoppable march across the globe. Seven years later, it hasn’t exactly turned out that way. Egypt has embraced authoritarianism, Libya is in a state of near anarchy, and Syria has been mired in a catastrophic civil war for seven years. Meanwhile, the international influence of authoritarian countries such as China and Russia has grown significantly.
John Davenport, Ph.D., a professor of philosophy, says these and many more developments are proof that NATO and the United Nations Security Council, the two bodies best equipped to promote human rights and peace, are no longer up to the job. In a book that will be published by Routledge this fall, Davenport makes the case for creating what he calls a “League of Democracies.”
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And in an extended bonus track, Davenport delves into the ways in which game theory explains how the challenges the world’s democracies face are similar to those that America’s founding fathers faced in the 18th century.
Full transcript below
John Davenport: The goal of this proposal is not to create an entity that would take over the whole world. It’s to create a new organization that could protect democracies from the rising threats posed by Russia and China, and to stop the enormous mass atrocities that keep coming at us wave after wave.
Patrick Verel: In 2011 a series of uprisings known as the Arab Spring briefly gave the impression that democracy was on an unstoppable march across the globe. Seven years later, it hasn’t exactly turned out that way. Egypt has embraced authoritarianism, Libya is in a state of near anarchy, and Syria has been mired in a catastrophic civil war for seven years. Meanwhile, the international influence of authoritarian countries such as China and Russia as grown significantly.
John Davenport, a professor of philosophy at Fordham, says these and many more developments are proof that NATO and the United Nations Security Council, the two bodies best equipped to promote human rights and peace, are no longer up to the job. In a new book that will be published by Routledge this fall, Davenport makes the case for creating what he calls a league of democracies. I’m Patrick Verel, and this is Fordham News.
What was the genesis of this book, was there one particular moment that made you think, “You know what, let’s just start all over?”
John Davenport: In a word, Syria. I think the idea for the book really came to me in the summer of 2013 when it became clear that no nations were going to do anything about the new genocide in progress. After seeing this go on for decades, in the period we thought the world was going to get better after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Instead, we had Bosnia, we had Rwanda, we had the slaughter in the Darfur region of Sudan. All of the mass movements of refugees that these crisis cause. The civil war in Libya. There just isn’t a system in place in the world today to prevent mass atrocity crimes that destabilize whole regions.
Patrick Verel: What do you think is the most pressing concern for liberal democracies today?
John Davenport: Clearly we have division among democracies across the world. Those tensions are being aggravated by China and Russia, which are trying to buy off and woo many of these democracies. That’s not something that Western democracies should take sitting down. We need some new system that can unite the will of democratic countries and assure each of those nations that others are going to do their fair share in order to have a real security arrangement that can stand up to the new threats of cyber attacks, of endless hacking of our elections. New technology, unfortunately we’re going to face armed satellites, robotic weaponry, even nanotechnology. Now we have microwave attacks on our diplomats.
Patrick Verel: President Trump’s American First posture has been described by many as a form of isolationism, which would seem to preclude any acceptance of another international body. What do you think needs to happen for that to change?
John Davenport: It’s a natural reaction for people when faced with huge challenges to retrench and say well if we just retreat within our own borders we can weather out the storm that way. Unfortunately, that’s like the illusion that the hobbits suffered from in The Lord of the Rings. If we just stick to our own affairs in the Shire we don’t have to deal with these larger problems. That’s not how the world works. Things are going to get worse and worse in the 21st century as we approach peak population, not only with climate challenges but with pandemic diseases, financial instability across the world, mass movements of people driven by mass atrocity crimes and rising dictatorships.
The United States has to give up the pretension that we can take unilateral action whenever we want to, as we did in 2003. But, I don’t think that would be a huge price for a lot of Americans now, so ironically it might turn out that the isolationist tendency could even help this argument. But then, in other parts of the world, like Europe would have to accept that in order to get the multilateral decision making that they want, they have to be willing to go outside the U.N. Security Council. It’s now proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that this system is never going to work.
If 500,000 people can be killed in Syria with no forceful response, it’s time to abandon the Security Council. By the way, I should note, I don’t propose abandoning the United Nations entirely. This proposal is simply a replacement for the security council. It provides a way for democracies to act outside the purview of the security council, so we no longer give Russia and China a veto over what we’re doing.
Patrick Verel: Now, I understand that the Federalist Papers are actually a source of inspiration for this plan. Can you explain that a little bit more?
John Davenport: Yes, it’s amazing how exactly the situation between nations in the world today fits the analogy of the relation among the 13 young states in the founding of the United States. During the revolutionary war and the period immediately after, we had enormous discoordination among the 13 states. They were being played off against one another by old European powers. They couldn’t form any common foreign policy. They couldn’t even raise revenue to pay their debts or pay their veterans.
The whole relationship among them was falling apart and easily could have devolved into civil war a lot earlier in American history, if it wasn’t for the intervention of Alexander Hamilton with his friends Madison and Jay, who were able to make very powerful and convincing arguments that these problems. The collective action problems is what is the technical term for them between the 13 states, could only be overcome by a strong central authority that could make decisions for all of them and have binding power to enforce those decisions.
That’s exactly what the United Nations Security Council, NATO, and even the European Union for the most part really lack today. All of our international bodies make decisions by consensus, which means that almost every member nation has to agree. That’s how the old American confederation worked, or rather didn’t work, and that was precisely Hamilton’s insight.
Patrick Verel: Have you thought about any unintended consequences that might happen in the event that something like this actually is put together?
John Davenport: Absolutely, there are a lot of possible objections to the plan. Of course the most likely one is you’re going to create a massive leviathan, a world government that’s going to tyrannize humanity for the remainder of our future. The goal of this proposal is not to create an entity that would take over the whole world. It’s to create a new organization that could protect democracies from the rising threats posed by Russia and China, and to stop the enormous mass atrocities that keep coming at us wave after wave. It’s got to be, in my view, a directly elected council. So that, in unlike the U.N. Security Council, it’s answerable directly to people in all of those democratic nations.
It has to have real enforcement powers. It has to have at least a small armed force of it’s own that the council together with the chief executive of the league can deploy when they see that that’s really necessary to prevent new waves of ethnic cleansing or genocide.
Patrick Verel: When I ask about unintended consequences and you mention this idea that oh, it’s not meant to be this world wide government, it allows for freedom. One of the things that dawned on me was, okay, so if you had like a Libya where they fell apart and you did have this league, and the league decided okay, we’re going to go in and we’re going to stabilize it. What happens when China and Russia they’ve formed their own little alliance and they decide, well no, they say they want us to come in and help and we’re going to send in our own troops. Then you end up with a sort of a proxy war.
John Davenport: The first thing to say about Libya, the lack of reconstruction. That’s a case where there was an assurance game between nations and no one nation wanted to be stuck with the bill and the quagmire like what we went through in Afghanistan and Iraq. So, the advantage of a league of democracies is that you could have 30 or 40 nations contributing, so the cost on any one of them is small. You could have a large presence of peace keepers there for 20 years or more and yet, the burden on any one nation is really very small.
Now, the possibility of a league of dictators, Robert Kegan has addressed this. I argue about this in the book that I think it’s very unlikely, although China and Russia are attempting to ally these days and trying to bring other smaller countries into their orbit. I think once there was serious pressure on them from a league of democracies, it would be very hard for them to continue that posture. Unless we wait too long until China’s so big that it’s got most of the worlds economy in it’s pocket. I think actually a league of democracies could simply use trade sanctions to put enough pressure on China that they would probably have to democratize.
Once either China or Russia join the league, well it’s game over. The other one would never be able to continue completely isolated. The problems that are posed by Russia and China today, the rise of their despotis model where you’ve got economic growth without political rights, that would be ended. The future of humanity would be much brighter. It would also be easy for example with a league of democracies to get China to do what it needs to, to disarm North Korea. Can you imagine what trade sanctions between 40 nations that controlled 80% or more of the worlds economy would do to China? They couldn’t withstand a month of that. The regime would collapse within weeks.
Bonus Track
Patrick Verel: Now I understand that the Federalist papers are actually a source of inspiration for this plan. Can you explain that a little bit more?
John Davenport: Yes. It’s amazing how exactly the situation between nations in the world today, fits the analogy of the relation among the 13 young states in the founding of the United States during the Revolutionary War and the period immediately after. We had enormous dis-coordination among the 13 states, they were being played off against one another by old European powers, they couldn’t form any common foreign policy, they couldn’t even raise revenue to pay their debts or pay their Veterans. The whole relationship among them was falling apart and easily could have devolved into Civil War, a lot earlier in American history, if it wasn’t for the intervention of Alexander Hamilton with his friends, Madison and Jay. Who were able to make very powerful and convincing arguments. That these problems, the collective action problems, is the technical term for them between the 13 states, could only be overcome by a strong central authority that could make decisions for all of them and have binding power to enforce those decisions.
That’s exactly what the United Nation Security Council, NATO and even the European Union for the most part, really lack today. All of our international bodies make decisions by consensus, which means that almost every member nation has to agree. That’s how the old American Confederation worked, or rather, didn’t work. And that was precisely Hamilton’s insight.
Patrick Verel: The Federalist papers though, they wrote those in like what, 1780-something? How is that relevant to today?
John Davenport: Well what’s interesting about it is that, although they didn’t use these phrases. The problems that Hamilton, Madison and Jay saw between the states were basically, games of chicken where they’d each wait for other states to do the hard work like, sending troops to Washington’s army, prisoners dilemmas where they would compete with each other to have better trade deals with other nations. And assurance games, which is less of a familiar term, but that stands for cases where the parties will only act together if they have enough trust in one another to do what’s needed for their collective good, so they don’t waste their resources. These are exactly the problems that we see among governments around the world today, SERI is basically a game of chicken. Nobody wanted to intervene. It’s a losing game of chicken, where everybody goes off the cliff.
And, like in the old car chase. In the case of preventing pandemics, like with the Ebola crisis. The U.S. did the work mainly, to prevent the last one from spreading around the world. Prisoners dilemmas, well climate change is a prisoners’ dilemma and nations are not cooperating well enough with each other because, they each gain an advantage by having cheaper energy in short. And so it’s very difficult without some power that can really enforce decisions over enough leading nations to come up with some solution to that problem.
