FPW's Matt Eckel puts paid to Senator McCain's "League of Democracies" notion.

Even if, somehow, there were to be enough agreement among the world's major democracies on an international policy agenda to make such an organization work effectively - which there won't be - formalizing a bloc of international democracies would seriously antagonize authoritarian powers like Russia and China, ossifying geopolitics along outdated ideological fault lines, increasing the likelihood of international conflict and making it immensely more difficult to deal with transnational issues like terrorism, environmental degradation and trade.

There's also the issue of legitimacy, which is undermined by replacing the current alphabet soup of IGOs for a wholly untested stew with ingredients from another alphabet. But, when all is said, the most compelling point about this new stalking horse is that, like the GWOT, it's just another way to spend 60 more years spending billions without a declaration of war, to arm allies and piss off enemies for domestic consumption.