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So what to do? Africa's regional leaders may provide the answer. The African Union has for some time been pushing to have the indictment deferred by the U.N. Security Council, which it has the authority to do under Article 16 of the ICC charter.

Support for deferral is widespread among African leaders

The Arab League, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the semiautonomous government of Southern Sudan have also voiced support for a deferral.

deferring the warrant would be contingent upon concessions from Bashir and his party—namely, agreements to work to hasten the implementation of the CPA, hold elections this year and work with the UN and international mediators toward peace in Darfur, starting immediately with a ceasefire.

the United States could always push to reinstate the indictment and use the warrant as leverage to compel Khartoum to act and honor its commitments.

A conditional suspension of the ICC's warrant for Bashir is the best way to prevent a collapse of the CPA, protect those still in need and force Khartoum to act toward ending the conflict in Darfur.

Sudan expelled 13 foreign aid groups in March after the ICC issued an arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

Mr Bashir is accused of orchestrating atrocities against civilians in Darfur, where his government has been fighting rebels since 2003. The UN says that up to 300,000 people have died during the conflict and 2.7 million driven from their homes.

The political elites in Europe have not yet responded to these problems. There have been no significant public debates; neither about the euro, EU expansion, a proposed constitution, nor the European Union's responsibilities in the Balkans and Afghanistan. Instead, Europe's political elites have remained silent. EU policies are determined, following the pre-1989 Western European tradition, by a cartel of political elites that is insulated from the democratic public. The more that Europe lacks the acceptance of its citizens, the harder it will befor the Union to meet the coming geopolitical challenges.

The assumption that the European Union lacks competence in foreign and security policy is misguided. For nearly a decade, the European Union has had access to the entire spectrum of institutional capacities -- including military capability -- that is necessary for active participation in global politics. It is an equally unconvincing argument that the 27 member states are simply too difficult to coordinate to actively engage in international politics. On the contrary: the foreign and security strategy of the European Union is remarkably consistent and coherent, from effective multilateralism, to peaceful conflict resolution, to addressing the problem of fragile statehood. Europe only needs to match its words with action. Member states need to abandon their vain attachment to national prerogatives and speak with one foreign policy voice. Here the largest member states -- Great Britain, France, and Germany -- have often been the biggest hindrance.

The era of the G-7 or G-8, in which the western industrial states (and Russia) could keep to themselves, is over. There is no alternative to a G-20 that systematically includes developing nations from all regions of the world into the process of global governance.

Until now, the European Union -- despite its inclusion in the Middle East Quartet -- has always been reluctant to propose solutions to the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Instead, Europe has essentially hidden behind the United States. Now, after eight years of the Bush administration, America has lost nearly all of its credibility, and it is going to be a while before President Obama can do anything to significantly reestablish it. There is a need, in other words, for the European Union and its member states to play a larger role -- not least, because the European Union has pro-Arab as well as pro-Israeli positions represented in its institutions and among its member states. The European Union could credibly serve as an honest broker in the region -- if it only wanted to.

Unfortunately, the countries of the European Union allow themselves to be played against one another yet again -- especially along the economic fault line between old and new member states. Europe's answer to the economic and financial crisis is not encouraging. Instead of a coordinated reaction of the EU member states, national measures have taken priority. Even Germany -- despite all its pro-European rhetoric -- has shown little appetite for cooperation.This failure is particularly frustrating in light of the fact that Europe has the world's best institutional capacity to develop integrated answers to crossborder economic challenges.

In addition, there is still a clear asymmetry between negative and positive integration, as political scientist Fritz Scharpf diagnosed in the mid-1990s. The creation of an internal market continues to trump the development of economic and social policies that can steer and correct that very market. It is no accident that the call for a "social Europe" is getting ever louder. The inability for European governments to coordinate their responses to the financial crisis has contributed to the legitimation crisis of European integration.

The post-Cold War era is over. Europe has no choice but to orient itself to the challenges of the future. Before anything else, the European Union needs to gain the approval and trust of its own citizens. The failed referenda pose less of a threat to Europe than does the continent's growing Euro-skepticism and the silence of European elites in the face of criticism "from below." Those who are believers in Europe and European unification must actively take on the challenge of convincing others.

The deceased politician and scholar Peter Glotz, just several weeks after the end of the fateful year 1989, wrote in this very publication that "the decisive question of the next decade will be whether the European elites manage to overcome the narrow categories of the nation state. ... In Europe, the nations are too weak to engage in global politics; at the same time, they are strong enough to prevent the development of an effective supranational European politics." Twenty years later, those observations have unfortunately lost none of their truth.

Diplomats here said it gave him leverage in keeping African and European leaders listening and their doors open. If Libya sent all the migrants home, they would become a burden to poorer African nations, which would have to absorb them while losing out on the remittances they send home. At the same time, diplomats here said, Libya has made it plain to European countries, especially Italy, that if Libya chose to look the other way, most of those migrants would head for European shores. “It’s a kind of soft power they use,” said one Western diplomat who works on Libyan affairs but requested anonymity for fear of antagonizing Libyan authorities.

He said the International Criminal Court’s indictment of Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, on war crimes charges was lamentable because it would undermine Darfur peace talks. A request by the African Union and the Arab League for the Security Council to suspend the indictment for a year should be respected, he said. The indictment “helps to deepen a perception that international justice is racist” because the case is the third to be brought against Africans, Mr. d’Escoto said.

Ruhakana Rugunda, the Ugandan ambassador and a Security Council member, said, “I do not consider that decision racist.”

Mr. d’Escoto supported Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s criticism of the United States for falling about $1 billion behind in its United Nations dues. Describing the United States’ attitude toward the Council, Mr. d’Escoto said, “ ‘You either give me the green light to commit the aggression that I want to commit, or I shall declare you irrelevant.’ ” Mark Kornblau, the spokesman for the United States Mission, said, “It’s hard to make sense of Mr. d’Escoto’s increasingly bizarre statements.”

Mr. d’Escoto tends to draw support from countries at odds with Washington, while Western nations accuse him of being stuck in a leftist, Sandinista mind-set. Mr. d’Escoto, a Roman Catholic priest, was Nicaragua’s foreign minister from 1979 to 1990.

This club is anything but exclusive. Candidate members include Indonesia, Thailand, and Turkey, where there are already signs that the economic crisis is exacerbating domestic political conflicts. And let us not forget the plague of piracy in Somalia, the renewed civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the continuing violence in Sudan’s Darfur region, and the heart of darkness that is Zimbabwe under President Robert Mugabe. The axis of upheaval has many members. And it’s a fairly safe bet that the roster will grow even longer this year.

The problem is that, as in the 1930s, most countries are looking inward, grappling with the domestic consequences of the economic crisis and paying little attention to the wider world crisis. This is true even of the United States, which is now so preoccupied with its own economic problems that countering global upheaval looks like an expensive luxury. With the U.S. rate of GDP growth set to contract between 2 and 3 percentage points this year, and with the official unemployment rate likely to approach 10 percent, all attention in Washington will remain focused on a nearly $1 trillion stimulus package. Caution has been thrown to the wind by both the Federal Reserve and the Treasury. The projected deficit for 2009 is already soaring above the trillion-dollar mark, more than 8 percent of GDP. Few commentators are asking what all this means for U.S. foreign policy.

The answer is obvious: The resources available for policing the world are certain to be reduced for the foreseeable future. That will be especially true if foreign investors start demanding higher yields on the bonds they buy from the United States or simply begin dumping dollars in exchange for other currencies.

Economic volatility, plus ethnic disintegration, plus an empire in decline: That combination is about the most lethal in geopolitics. We now have all three. The age of upheaval starts now.