The first big foreign policy debate of the presidential campaign has focused on Senator John McCain’s proposal for a League of Democracies. Proponents of this new grouping see it as a mechanism to legitimise the American use of force when the United Nations fails to authorise collective action, and as a vehicle to strengthen the forces of democracy in the face of rising authoritarian states, such as China and Russia. Critics see it as a dangerous idea – potentially subverting the UN and creating divisions among the great powers precisely when the US should be building closer ties.

As authors of the Princeton Project on National Security report that first proposed a “Concert of Democracies”, we believe that both sides of this debate have failed to see the true promise and role of greater co-operation among the world’s leading democracies. The pre-eminent need today is not an exclusive club of democracies, but renewal of the world’s global architecture – the UN, Bretton Woods and the Group of Eight leading nations. It is in the context of this larger agenda that a Concert of Democracies can be helpful.