The New York Times on Wednesday published an  op-ed by Vladimir Putin in which the Russian president urged the United States not to launch an attack on Syria. “We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement,” Putin wrote in encouraging President Barack Obama to pursue the possibility of a diplomatic settlement to the crisis caused by the use of chemical weapons. Referring back before the decades-long Cold War to the time when the United States and Soviet Union were allies in World War II and worked to create the United Nations, Putin argued that a strike would render the U.N. impotent (“No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations”) and lead to additional violence in the Middle East and around the world. Roll Call discusses whether Obama has postponed the military force vote indefinitely,  or effectively canceled it altogether.