The emergence of the United States as the sole military, economic and cultural superpower has only deepened the resistance, especially among American conservatives, to any potential international restraints on American powers.
"You will see India and Pakistan with a thousand-mile shared border and a 50-year history of enmity and war -- a situation that is truly frightening when you add into the mix nuclear weapons outside of the system of international restraints".
Despite reports of an imminent summit meeting, neither side seemed ready to heed international calls for restraint and reconciliation.
NEWS Israel and Hamas brushed aside international calls for restraint on Thursday and escalated their lethal conflict over Gaza, where Palestinian militants launched hundreds of rockets into Israeli territory, targeting Tel Aviv for the first time, and Israel intensified its aerial assaults and sent armored vehicles rumbling toward the Gaza border for a possible invasion.
The British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, arriving for the EU foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels, said: "I condemn the fact that this referendum has taken place, in breach of the Ukrainian constitution and in defiance of calls by the international community for restraint.
KIRYAT MALACHI, Israel Israelel and Hamas brushed aside international calls for restraint on Thursday and escalated their lethal conflict over Gaza, where Palestinian militants launched hundreds of rockets into Israeli territory, targeting Tel Aviv for the first time, and Israel intensified its aerial assaults and sent armored vehicles rumbling toward the Gaza border for a possible invasion.
(See: "Oil Prices Ignite") Later this week the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will attempt to gain parliamentary approval for a military expedition to deal with Kurdish rebel bases in Northern Iraq, in defiance of international calls for restraint.
Despite international calls for restraint, Israeli and Palestinian leaders responded with increasingly hostile rhetoric.
Asked about such restraints as international treaties and codes of conduct, which might limit America's freedom of action, Rumbo replied: "I honestly believe that every country ought to do what it wants to do".
Putin's Russia is even more dismissive of the restraints of international law, expropriating sovereign territory, invading neighboring nations, assassinating domestic enemies abroad, and blatantly manipulating elections overseas (a subject in which, of course, the United States once showed a certain expertise).
For international actors, this means restraint in some cases.
