From midway through WWII and throughout the cold war, indeed until the end of the 20th C the democratic nations looked for leadership from the elected presidents of the USA, and on the whole they did a pretty good job. Bush /Cheney changed all that, despite the massive amount of goodwill that accrued to them following 9/11.
After a full-hearted wave of international support for the military intervention in the Afghan civil war, to overthrow the Taleban hosts of the al Qaeda terror group, suddenly many nations came to the realisation that they could not follow such a further lead as Washington was to next offer. This was primarily in the irrelevant invasion of Iraq in pursuit of a US neo-con policy with no acceptable logic to Europeans and many others. The discovery that there had been a false prospectus for the Iraq invasion made matters worse. This, plus dismay at the calibre of the Bush-Cheney presidency, for the first time in more than half a century resulted in a US administration which many significant nations were no longer prepared to follow, as they had their predecessors. It does not help that the outstanding problem of Iran and it's nuclear ambitions, could hardly be moderated by a US whom itself refuses to give up the ability to conduct experimental nuclear explosions, and has easily the largest nuclear weapons arsenal in the world, having just announced a modernisation program to cover the next forty years.

Many nations, not only the Arab states, have seen US policy to Israel to be flagrantly less than even- handed with regard to achieving the two state solution that was set out by the United Nations, when they voted for the state of Israel to join the community of nations. Many associate the continuing violence and lack of resolution in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, as a root cause of Islamic extremism.

The world authority itself, is as is widely agreed is due for substantial revision - the composition of the Security Council and the power of veto for example, is determined by winners and excludes the losers, in a world war which finished over sixty years ago, before most of our planet's population was even born. But it is not possible to look to this US administration for leadership in reshaping the UN, given the oft-stated declarations that the UN is only important, insofar as it is useful to their interests.

In all of these, as in other matters, there is currently only vestigial or no leadership, and yet the world needs exactly that leadership, certainly where the area is critical like nuclear proliferation. We hope that the next US Administration will inspire nations to follow them as in the past, but there are no guarantees that January 2009 will see that come to pass.

Our PRESCRIPTION is that through the UN, different respected nations or small groups of nations with particular experience or authority, should be invited to offer a lead in proposing initiatives in certain areas where leadership is clearly required, (as distinct from large committees, a beast not known to produce new initiatives).

We would propose Japan on the topic of nuclear proliferation.

A small group of nations that have provided peace-keeping troops to the Israel/ Lebanon /Palestinian arena (such as Canada, Ireland, Norway, plus a secular Moslem state like Turkey), to lead on how to achieve the two state solution for peace in the middle-east.

The future role and reorganisation of the UN we would propose to be referred, in the first instance, to the continentally representative, giant states of Brazil, South Africa and India.