Robert Kagan: Why Should Democracy Be Shy?(The Last Word)(Interview)

Byline: Christopher Werth

We gave to look at international relations a a competition, because Russia and China already see it that way.

Robert Kagan believes a war is coming. Not necessarily one with guns and bombs, but his new book argues that a fundamental global divide is emerging between liberal democracies and autocratic governments--namely Russia and China. He and presidential hopeful John McCain, whom he advises, call for a League of Democracies, which the Republican candidate has pledged to pursue if he wins the November election. NEWSWEEK's Christopher Werth spoke with Kagan about the ascendancy of great-power competition.

NEWSWEEK: McCain doesn't just want a League of Democracies; he recently said he wants Russia out of the G8. How serious is he about ideas like these?

Kagan: Let's be clear, there's no establishing a League of Democracies unless the other democracies want to participate. This is not Woodrow Wilson sailing across the Atlantic with Fourteen Points and saying, "Sign here." And no one is going to be kicking Russia out of the G8. Russia would have a say in that. Other countries wouldn't agree with it. The real question is, if anyone had known that Russia was going to be the Russia it is today, would they have let it in the G8 in the first place? He wants to emphasize that we need to take Russian autocracy seriously.

At the same time, this is a critique of the U.N. Security Council?

It's an acknowledgment that the Security Council has had a hard time coming to any kind of agreement, particularly with humanitarian matters--Darfur, Burma, Zimbabwe. The autocracies and the democracies are reliably split on these issues. [McCain] has said before that the League of Democracies is not designed to circumvent--it's designed to complement--the U.N. It's worth recalling that there have been actions by something that you could call a League of Democracies. In 1999, NATO countries went to war in Kosovo. Shouldn't such a thing be more global than just the transatlantic community?