TOPIC: Realignment of world political leadership and power

 
Are we experiencing a realignment of world political leadership and power? Is ‘the West’ stepping away from its world policing leadership? The US steps away from its ‘line in the sand’ about punishing the use of chemical weapons in Syria and allows Russia to take the lead. Britain refuses to back the US’s possible use of force on the chemical weapons issue. Is this a result of the rebalancing of world economic powers; the weakening of Britain’s and France’s wealth, the effect of the US recession, China’s rapid economic growth and Russia’s huge gas wealth? If so what will be the effect worldwide of the Western values of democracy and human rights?
 
Comment
 
Maybe the recession is no bad thing after all. When the economy’s thriving, when everyone’s in a job, when you have all the money in the world to build bigger and better weapons, when your citizens expect you to buy more and more battle ships, when you have all the Drones, all the missiles, all the weapons of mass destruction you want, it kind of makes sense to use them all, doesn’t it? And you can always take the opportunity to reinforce your country’s ability to roll out such worthy ideals as Democracy and Human Rights, can’t you? And if you decide to go to war you need to have an enemy, don’t you? That makes everyone very patriotic, doesn’t it? And that’s a really good thing. All that people pulling together thing, the fighting against the enemy thing. The stuff of history. Remember Hitler!
No-one, but no-one can deny the atrocities going on in Syria. But there is an added complication here. Who exactly is the enemy? Assad? The rebels? What is clear is that the atrocities are on both sides. Now that complicates things.
So shucks! What do you do when there is no clear enemy? And what happens when you don’t have any substantial support from America’s long time lackeys in Europe.  And is that Russia now daring to raise its ugly head above the parapet? And China? Is China really ready to play its role?

Is this all a sign that the UN is actually finally starting to kick in? All those agreements are really starting to mean something? We are no longer prepared to live in a world where America decides which battles to embroil us all in and which atrocities in the world we are to continue to ignore?
 
We all know that the leaders of the Top 5 breathed a sigh of relief when it became clear that there would be no attacks on Syria when Obama stood back from the line. Now perhaps the world leaders will get together and work out a strategy for useful engagement in Syria. Perhaps when Richard and Meghan have finished up their talks here they can nip on down to Syria and nudge Assad and the guys to lay down arms. Syria needs help in building peace, not Drone attacks.