UNITED
NATIONS (AP) — President Barack Obama conceded Tuesday that the United
States and other world powers have limited ability to solve the most
profound challenges facing the world, while calling for a “course
correction” for globalization to ensure that nations don’t retreat into a
more sharply divided world.
Obama,
in his final speech to the U.N. General Assembly, acknowledged that the
extremist and sectarian violence wreaking havoc in the Middle East and
elsewhere “will not be quickly reversed.” Still, he stuck faithfully to
his insistence that diplomatic efforts and not military solutions are
the key to resolving Syria’s civil war and other conflicts.
“If
we are honest, we know that no external power is going to be able to
force different religious communities or ethnic communities to co-exist
for long,” Obama said. “Until basic questions are answered about how
communities co-exist, the embers of extremism will continue to burn.
Countless human beings will suffer.”
In
a less-than-subtle jab at Donald Trump, the Republican running to
replace him, Obama said, “The world is too small for us to simply be
able to build a wall and prevent (extremism) from affecting our own
societies.”
The
president was unabashed in his critique of Russia as he laid out his
diagnosis of the world’s ills. Obama’s longstanding differences with
Russian President Vladimir Putin over his actions in Ukraine have
accompanied intense disagreement over Syria’s future and a series of
failed attempts by Russia and the U.S. to resolve the civil war there
together.
“In a world that left the age of empire behind, we see Russia attempting to recover lost glory through force,” Obama said.
The
tough talk about Russia illustrated how little progress has been made
in reconciling the diverging interests among the two powers that has
allowed the Syria crisis to continue to fester. A year ago, Obama stood
at the same podium and declared anew that Syrian President Bashar Assad
must leave power, while Putin gave a dueling speech warning it would be a
mistake to abandon Assad.
In
the year since, Moscow’s leverage in the conflict has strengthened
significantly. Russia’s military intervention in Syria has helped
bolster Assad’s standing without pulling it into the military “quagmire”
that Obama had predicted.
Obama
sought to use his last appearance before the global body to define how
his leadership had put the world on a better trajectory over the last
eight years. At the heart of that approach, Obama said, is the notion
that the biggest conflicts are best solved when nations cooperate rather
than tackle them individually.
It’s
a theme that Democrat Hillary Clinton has put at the forefront of her
campaign for president, casting herself as the natural continuation of
Obama’s legacy. In another apparent reference to Trump, Obama bemoaned
how terrorist networks had spread their ideology on social media,
spurring anger toward “innocent immigrants and Muslims.”
Obama
lamented that the world has become safer and more prosperous at the
same time that nations are struggling with a devastating refugee crisis,
terrorism and a breakdown in basic order in the Middle East. He said
governing had become more difficult as people lose faith in public
institutions and tensions among nations spiral out of control more
rapidly.
“This is the paradox that defines the world today,” Obama said. “We must go forward, and not backward.”
The
president cited his administration’s outreach to former adversaries
Cuba and Myanmar as key examples of progress, along with global
cooperation to cut emissions blamed for global warming. At the same
time, he said he sought not to “whitewash” challenges across the globe,
some of which he attributed to deepening anxieties about the profound
shifts inflicted by technology and growing international
interdependence.
“In
order to move forward though, we do have to acknowledge that the
existing path to global integration requires a course correction,” Obama
said.
___
Associated Press writer Darlene Superville in New York contributed to this report.
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