Obama Tell Russia Stay Out of My Way on war against Isil
Barack Obama sought to strike a delicate balance at the UN general assembly on Wednesday. He had come to New York to rally the world for a new struggle against Islamic extremism – but at the same time he had to reassure his global audience it was not about to witness a replay of George W Bush’s “war on terror”.
Moreover, the president had to achieve that feat at a time when the Security Council is at its most divided for over a decade, with deep rifts between the West and Russia over Ukraine and Syria. The tone of Obama’s remarks addressed towards Moscow were as stern as anything heard from an American president since well before the fall of the Berlin Wall. In an echo of the language of the cold war, he portrayed Russia as the very antithesis of everything America stood for, and invited the world to choose between the two very models they represented.
However, most of the speech was devoted to the new challenges to world order presented by the Isis extremists in Syria and Iraq. He portrayed “the cancer of violent extremism that has ravaged so many parts of the Muslim world” as the most important challenge facing the world as it was “the one issue that risks a cycle of conflict that could derail progress” on all the other challenges facing the international community.
While acknowledging that terrorism was nothing new, the president suggested that the movement’s extreme brutality coupled with its mastery of tools of globalisation such as social media made the group a particularly potent threat.
“With access to technology that allows small groups to do great harm, they have embraced a nightmarish vision that would divide the world into adherents and infidels – killing as many innocent civilians as possible; and employing the most brutal methods to intimidate people within their communities,” he said.
Speaking hours after news broke that the US-led air campaign against the group had been extended from Iraq into Syria, he vowed that the Isis militants (for which he used the acronym Isil) would be degraded and then destroyed.
“We will use our military might in a campaign of air strikes to roll back Isil. We will train and equip forces fighting against these terrorists on the ground. We will work to cut off their financing, and to stop the flow of fighters into and out of the region,” he said. “Today, I ask the world to join in this effort. Those who have joined Isil should leave the battlefield while they can.”
In the tenor of his remarks, Obama made it clear he was aware that his address risked sounding like an echo of UN speeches made over 10 years ago by President George W Bush – an era marked by widespread distrust of the US and its motives. It is an impression deepened by the widespread doubts voiced over the legal underpinning of the campaign in Syria. But Obama tried to distance his campaign against extremism from his predecessor’s “war on terror”.
“I have made it clear that America will not base our entire foreign policy on reacting to terrorism,” Obama pledged. With the Bush legacy clearly in mind, he promised: “America will be a respectful and constructive partner. We will neither tolerate terrorist safe havens, nor act as an occupying power.”
Acknowledging that “no external power can bring about a transformation of hearts and minds”, the president said that the rejection of sectarianism and extremism was a “generational task” for the people of the Middle East. He emphasised that Washington was now seeking as wide a coalition as possible to combat the influence of Isis, starting in the Islamic world. “It is the task of all great religions to accommodate devout faith with a modern, multicultural world,” he says, calling for the battle of ideas to be taken online.
“That means contesting the space that terrorists occupy – including the Internet and social media. Their propaganda has coerced young people to travel abroad to fight their wars, and turned students into suicide bombers. We must offer an alternative vision,” he said, and he praised the #notinmyname campaign launched by young British Muslims.
Obama addressed head-on the deep divide between the West and Russia that has threatened to paralyse the work of the UN Security Council. He laid out the details of Moscow’s intervention in Crimea and eastern Ukraine saying its actions in Ukraine represented a threat to the international order established after the second world war and symbolised by the UN.
“This is a vision of the world in which might makes right – a world in which one nation’s borders can be redrawn by another, and civilised people are not allowed to recover the remains of their loved ones because of the truth that might be revealed,” Obama said. “America stands for something different. We believe that right makes might – that bigger nations should not be able to bully smaller ones; that people should be able to choose their own future.”
Obama stressed that the US was willing to cooperate with Moscow on the pressing global challenges of the day, such as climate change and the spread of the Ebola virus, but only “if Russia changes course.”
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