If there is a void it is created by you and Putin is quick to be attempting to fill it. You are the self appointed policeman of the world and it is a role that no one wants you in. The UN was long ago set up deal with international disputes but it has been emascalated by the false notion that if someone says no then nothing can be done. You have taken on the role of gathering armies to fight the battles but you don't fight all battles just those that suit you and that gives the lie to what you just said "We cannot lead from behind". Step back, let someoneelse take to lead before you implode

bipolar ,multipolar worlds and international institutions have proven to be unsuitable in conflict resolution.

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Step back, let someoneelse take to lead before you implode

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which nation do you have in mind ?

Does there have to be a specific nation? The US feels the weight of history too strongly, Britain learned to live without empire and the policeman role. France took action in certain parts of Africa recently but it isn't trying to police the world. Australia took action in East Timor and in the pacific, but it isn't trying to police the world, Countries in Africa are taking action in Somalia, but they are not trying to police the world. Just because the "great nations" have made the UN impotent does't mean we need the US specifically to resolve disputes. I think local intervention is a better model when those appointed to act can't act

Evidence of Turkey as a dishonest broker in this crisis

Activists: ISIS Is Now Launching Attacks From Inside Turkey - The Atlantic

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Does there have to be a specific nation?

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I think so . History has shown that multi-polarity is more unstable and war prone than bipolarity or unipolarity.The last time we had multi-polar security arrangements was prior to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand . Change 1914 to 2014, and Sarajevo to Donetsk,or the Senkaku Islands or the Spratlys .As we see in the Syrian Civil War ,conflicts do not remain local. Prior to WWI there were 2 local Balkan wars .The decline of super powers brings the emergence of vacuums. Both Balkan wars were the direct result of the decline of the regional super power ,the Ottomans. WWI started as the third Balkan War. The balance of power and the system of alliances turned the assassination into a world war. New alliances and the multilateral League of Nations could do nothing to prevent WWII .

Hmmm! Tom, I know you like to live in the past and you yearn for past glories, but the world can do without your brand of intervention. Grand high opera for the masses at home. Can you hear the Mikado playing? What has Iraq brought us? Nothing but years of on going war in a destabilised middle east. What has Afghanistan brought us? Nothing but destabilisation, you can't even win the wars you start effectively and you want us to give you licence for more of the same. I am not interested in some petti-fogging baltic war a hunded years ago and the Turks are playing you for fools right now. What you are saying is we have learned nothing and the reality is you have learned nothing

BBC News - Kurds protest against Turkey as IS advances on Kobane

Turkey has its own problems,

2013–14 protests in Turkey - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I see nothing that has changed from the lessons of the past . You utopian visions of an international body that mediates world conflicts has twice failed. Dreamers like you more than a century ago would meet near here at Lake Mohonk and plan their vision of the perfect world .
Lake Mohonk Conference on International Arbitration - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The world will lament the end of Pax Americana. Good luck having China guarantee safe passage of commerce to and from your Island continent .

Tom I don't dream of a world government or a world body that is all things to all people. That is a utopian view and it is what the UN has become. Putting that aside for the moment the UN was established by international treaty on one of the premises was that decisions on international security would be made by a centralised decision making process to avoid the sort of conflagrations they had just experienced, however, despite regional conflicts it could be said to have had some measure of success. You and I know the process is flawed by the veto and therefore I hasn't been allowed to operate fully

Our Unstable World Foretells Of A Large War Looming On Horizon - Investors.com

You must be excited by the prospect of war.

no ,it's what I feared would happen when we elected a pusillanimous POTUS.

Funny there was lots of war during 8 years of republican rule. You were even attacked on your soil.

Karma, Shussss! You don't want to awaken Tom to reality. Appearently he is wishing that the president would have prosecuted their wars with full vigour and restored their place in the world as the superpower of superpowers

Some good news from the war front, apparently foreign militants are dying as quickly as they enter the conflict so their numbers remain the same so we don't need to worry about them coming back and creating a home grown jihad but recent disclosures on US torture have stirred up those who previously suffered at their hands perhaps fuelling a fresh flush of militants

yeah much better to give no quarter and drone them with a hell fire. Then we don't have to worry about their treatment or their housing .

Yes Tom the spirit of Cheney lingers wonder who he will shoot next

it is all a bunch of political nonsense by Dianne FrankenFeinstein. She's having a hissy fit because the CIA tapped into her Intel Committees's computers. So she is playing scorced earth before her term as committee chair is over . Her report would've been just a little more credible if she actually called in some former CIA chiefs in to testify.
We will go back to the days of the Church Committee and the Torricelli Principle where our Intel Agencies hands were so tied that they had absolutely no valuable intel on AQ before the attack .

LOL, if she hadn't raised the issue the repubs would have buried it when they took over the government in January.

aren't you glad you live under the security umbrella that the agency and the military provides ?
"Those who 'abjure' violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf." (George Orwell 'Notes on Nationalism')


The truth is that she and ALL the Democrat leadership were briefed on exactly what was happening at the detention sites ,and they were all on board with it when there was no actionable intel on AQ ....and the smoke from the attacks still hovered over Manhattan ... and there was a lone wolf sniper picking off people in DC ... and there were anthrax attacks on Congressional leaders.;and no one knew if and when the next attack would take place .

So the only thing that makes sense is that they desperately hope to revise the 'blame it on Bush' strategy going into 2016.