Obama's and Putin's Syrian sinkhole

Concentrating on their commonly agreed problem, destroying chemical weapons and not who fired them, averted any possible Security Council paralysis.

Similarly Russia and America need to concentrate on jointly destroying their common agreed enemy, Islamic State, under a UN mandated Security Council Resolution - rather than acting independently – and dangerously - of each other whilst arguing about Assad's fate as President or Syria's inclusion in any proposed UN force.

President Putin warned that the stakes of operating outside a UN Security Council resolution are high:

Russia stands ready to work together with its partners on the basis of full consensus, but we consider the attempts to undermine the legitimacy of the United Nations as extremely dangerous. They could lead to a collapse of the entire architecture of international organizations, and then indeed there would be no other rules left but the rule of force.

We would get a world dominated by selfishness rather than collective work, a world increasingly characterized by dictate rather than equality. There would be less of a chain of democracy and freedom, and that would be a world where true independent states would be replaced by an ever-growing number of de facto protectorates and externally controlled territories.

On the basis of international law, we must join efforts to address the problems that all of us are facing and create a genuinely broad international coalition against terrorism.

Similar to the anti-Hitler coalition, it could unite a broad range of forces that are resolutely resisting those who, just like the Nazis, sow evil and hatred of humankind. And, naturally, the Muslim countries are to play a key role in the coalition, even more so because the Islamic State does not only pose a direct threat to them, but also desecrates one of the greatest world religions by its bloody crimes.

President Obama also understands the risks of acting unilaterally:

No matter how powerful our military, how strong our economy, we understand the United States cannot solve the world's problems alone.

With Russian airstrikes seriously escalating the conflict in Syria, Obama and Putin need to urgently sponsor that Security Council resolution before the Syrian sinkhole opens even wider.