What do the Olympics mean to you? Is it about men and women who have trained and persevered for long years - indeed most of their lives - to reach the peak and a brief moment of glory? When an athlete achieves a superhuman result, do you wonder whether he or she took a shortcut, courtesy of the anabolic steroid industry, as Ben Johnson did in that infamous 100-meters final at the 1988 Seoul Games?

In 2009, while I was working in public diplomacy on NATO's international staff in Brussels, I was asked to produce a promotional campaign to be posted in the Washington, D.C., Metro system for NATO's 60th-anniversary summit in Strasbourg and Kehl. In response, I asked member countries to suggest powerful images that showed Allied forces in action in Afghanistan.

In London, two Saudi women are set to participate in the Olympics today. But back in Saudi Arabia, millions of women and girls are effectively banned from practicing sports inside the Kingdom. Also, they aren't allowed to drive, although there is no law stipulating that.

After disagreement over how to deal with the issue at a summit in Phnom Penh on July 13, where ASEAN leaders failed to release a joint communique for the first time in the group's 45-year history, Indonesia’s foreign minister Marty Natalegawa has circulated a proposal for six principles on resolving disputes in the South China Sea. The principles emphasize implementation of a code of conduct, having self-restraint without the use of force, and the seeking of peaceful resolutions.

The Russian and Chinese veto of the U.N. Security Council draft resolution that would have declared the situation in Syria a threat to international peace and security, extended the U.N. diplomatic mission headed by Kofi Annan, and set the stage for new sanctions and possibly U.N.-authorized military action was hardly surprising. More important, it isn’t all that significant.

Two global institutions – the United Nations and the Olympic Games – face charges that they are using “unaccountable and out of control” private security contractors. One of the companies at the heart of both controversies is G4S, a private security company in the UK.

In all these, where do we locate quiet, likeable people whose contributions may not have had immediate dramatic impact on the trajectory of history but who possess intangible assets that make us feel that they must be playing important roles in the way the wheels of history rotate?

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