A world crisis with no world leader

There was a time when having almost two hundred of your citizens blown out of the sky was a big deal for a western democracy. But when Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine last month, killing 193 Dutch citizens and a couple of dozen other Europeans, the response was conspicuous public mourning, some mild objections, a soupçon more sanctions, but otherwise nothing. Everyone knew which government might have handed powerful surface-to-air missiles to eastern Ukraine’s rebels. But nobody seemed willing or able to do anything much about it.

There was also a time when whole swaths of the map being overrun by Islamic groups who make al-Qa’eda look like Quakers would have caused concern to the civilised world. Wasn’t the intended post-9/11 mission (before it got lost in a swamp of largely futile ‘nation-building’) precisely aimed at preventing the emergence of ungoverned spaces around the world where international terrorists could train freely?

What bliss that 2001 map looks like now. Back then there were only a couple of ungoverned spaces. Today the map’s full of them. Having rampaged across Syria, crucifying and beheading as it went, Isis has managed to seize major towns, an air force and oil facilities in Iraq and declared the reconfiguration of the Caliphate. The Pakistani Taleban have managed to temporarily seize control of major airports in that country as well as tribal border regions. And neither there nor anywhere else does anybody seem to have any idea of what to do. Today the list of ungoverned spaces stretches from North Africa to South Asia.

In the United States there is a growing awareness that some of this might be a presidential problem. Winning the Nobel Peace Prize for not doing anything seems to have persuaded President Obama that not doing anything brings peace as well as prizes.