You know the world has really changed when America can't get its allies on board for a foreign adventure. Worse still the Russians, driven solely by realpolitik, can deliver China, Brazil, South Africa and India onto their team. The US get France and Canada.
Following David Cameron, who he pushed into acting too fast, Obama might even lose his own Congressional vote. Pity the people of Syria, left to die in a war between a mad dictator and Al-Qaeda jihadists. One would have thought in this new world, with a declining superpower and more evenly distributed wealth than ever before (well, since we all had equal access to caves anyway), that the UN would grow in stature and be used as the grand global bargaining institution it was meant to be. Sadly not a bit of it. Instead, like the League of Nations before it, its impotency is fully exposed by the weakness of the need for unity. The US vetoes anything attacking Israel, now Russia and China defend Syria come what may. A total impasse is reached and the G20 is used instead for politicking.
The UN does many good things, but the political element is a failure, we should stop funding it and use the money more productively than paying diplomats to sit in New York and shout at one another. We have our own parliament for that. We have the G20 that is by far a more rational forum in that it consists of the wealthiest countries and the only ones with any ability to use hard power beyond their borders.
