krebscycle

[Sachs]
Instead, the US should provide evidence of the chemical attacks to the UN; call on the Security Council to condemn the perpetrators; and refer such violations to the International Criminal Court. Moreover, the Obama administration should try to work with Russia and China to enforce the Chemical Weapons Convention. If the US fails in this, while acting diplomatically and transparently (without a unilateral attack), Russia and China would find themselves globally isolated on this important issue.[my bold]

  As I’m sure they know at Harvard, Russia and China are global powers. As when Donald Rumsfeld and Ronald Reagan winked at Sadaam Hussien’s use of chemical weapons against the Kurds and Iranians, neither Russia nor China would pay any penalty at all for the world’s disapproval.  Is Germany going to cut off Russian exports of natural gas or the United States going to stop buying Chinese made computers? Ha ha. What a joke.  Sach’s uses “globally isolated"  because there are zero concrete consequences he could point to.  And this hapless arm waving occurs in the middle of a long lecture to the Obama administration on how to conduct foreign policy.

All discussions of international relations need to begin with the following summary from a few years ago.

since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.