Hillary Clinton's Russian re-set policy gave Moscow permission to go from privately challenging U.S. foreign policy to publicly moving military hardware into Syria to prop up Bashar al-Assad and annexing Crimea from Ukraine. And Donald Trump seems to support the idea that Putin will be Putin. It's enough to leave America's allies confused.
While we all want the U.N. to live up to its original intent and be the place where the world comes together to solve international problems, the reality is the U.N. isn't all that different from any other political body. Countries and individuals play to the cameras, create good theatre, and negotiate selfishly.