Quick—what does the Russian incursion of Ukraine have in common with the Israeli strikes on Hamas in Gaza? If you lean to the Left, you might be inclined to say something about an offensive military power taking advantage of a weaker community fighting for its freedom, especially if you were ignorant of the news. In most cases, that’s everyone on the Left.

But play along: what do these two events have to do with a rash of children flooding across our southern border?

Actually, all three news items have one thing in common: they all reflect what happens in the absence of a working foreign policy.

You can read this as a slam at Barack Obama, but frankly he checked out a while back after he decided partying and goofing off was a heck of a lot easier than being in charge. The real culprit here is the overall lack of leadership at any level in the administration. So, no—not Barack Obama, but the absence of adults in his administration.

Russia moved into the Ukraine because Putin knows no one will stop him. Not the hand-wringers in Europe who are more concerned with whether Cypriot fishing regulations should be in Greek, Turkish, or both. And certainly not the United States, whom Putin correctly read as unconscious.

Israel understood that the United States has been lying to her for years regarding support. Whenever we told Israel that we would apply pressure to the Palestinian government, it came as a strongly worded tweet, followed by the United Nations getting detailed information as to what Hamas was doing so that the UN could get its workers into safer areas. If anyone thinks the United Nations wants Israel to survive more than another ten minutes, they have not been paying attention. Israel, knowing the United States is actually sorta supporting the Hamas terrorists here, had to act on her own.

And the consistency of stories from the children being rounded up at our southern borders is terrible: they are being sent not just by desperate parents but by complicit governments, who are telling the children that the United States will take care of them and their brothers and sisters—just get them across the border and you get amnesty. No, the Obama administration never said this. But they have made no realistic effort to prove the Mexican and Central American governments are running a disgusting scam to dump their poor and clean up their welfare rosters.

In all three cases, the official American response is to shrug and ask “So?” But let us not put the cart before the horse: these problems occur because the shrug came first. The next president, Democrat or Republican, is going to have a terrible, filthy mess to clean up.