Paul Ryan recently criticized president Obama for deferring our foreign policy leadership to the UN security council. “Why should we give Russia and China a veto?” There is no doubt that by blocking action in Syria, Russia and China have blood on their hands. Of course what many people do not realized is that their reason for blocking action is the betrayal they felt after going along with resolutions regarding Libya. To them, NATO used this as a green light to get involved on behalf of one side against the other.

It appears that the president is using his community organizing skills on a global scale. Brining together diverse groups with differing values and agendas is an inherently difficult task. It requires overcoming a great deal of entropy (the natural tendency of the universe to become more disordered). It is much more difficult, from an intellectual point of view, than simply dictating what will be and making it happen with overwhelming military action.

It is unfortunate that this approach is costing lives in Syria and no one likes to be perceived as weak. I support this approach, however, because it goes beyond the simple weakness vs. strength dichotomy. It treats the world’s problems as problems. It is path to long term development of mutual trust among nations. It may be slower, but any progress that is made is more likely to be sustainable. At this point, any trust that may have developed will be gone if the U.S. were to go back to the days of “cowboy diplomacy”  and throwing our weight around.