President Obama used his Monday speech at the United Nations in New York to blast Russia for annexing the Crimean Peninsula and intervening militarily in Ukraine, just hours before he was scheduled to meet face to face with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Acknowledging that America’s economic interests in Ukraine are few, he said nonetheless that “we cannot stand by when the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a nation is flagrantly violated.”
“If that happens without consequence in Ukraine, it could happen to any nation gathered here today,” he told the United Nations General Assembly.
While the U.S. and EU pushed for economic sanctions against Russia, Obama said that was not done out of “a desire to return to a Cold War.” Obama said forces within Russia and even the U.S. continually frame the impasse over Ukraine as a new Cold War.
Some American politicians “are convinced that a new Cold War is upon us,” Obama said.
“Imagine if instead Russia had engaged in true diplomacy and worked with Ukraine and the international community” to end the conflict, he said. “That would be better for Ukraine but also better for Russia, and better for the world.”
The objective of Western economic sanctions against Russia is to pave the way for “a sovereign, democratic Ukraine that is allowed to determine its future and control its territory,” Obama said, not to “isolate Russia.” Obama said he wants “Russia to work with us to strengthen the international system as a whole.”
Obama also mentioned tensions in the South China Sea as another example where big nations must work cooperatively with their smaller neighbors and the international community to achieve peaceful outcomes.
“We don’t adjudicate claims,” he said, referring to the competition among China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Australia and other Asian nations over various strategic islands, atolls and rocky outcrops. “But like every nation gathered here, we have an interest in upholding the basic principles of freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce; and in resolving disputes through international law, not the law of force,” Obama said.
“So we will defend these principles while encouraging China and other claimants to resolve their differences peacefully,” he said just three days after welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping to Washington for a series of talks and state dinner.
“I say this recognizing that diplomacy is hard, that the outcomes are sometimes unsatisfying, that it is rarely politically popular,” Obama continued. “But I believe that leaders of large nations, in particular, have an obligation to take these risks, precisely because we are strong enough to protect our interests, if and when diplomacy fails.”
On Cuba, Obama said he is “confident that our Congress will inevitably lift an embargo that should not be in place anymore.”
He said the U.S. pursued a failed policy of isolating Cuba for 50 years, and said his administration’s re-establishment of relations with the communist island nation is the way forward.
“Change won’t come overnight to Cuba, but I am confident that openness, not coercion, will support reforms and better the life the Cuban people,” he said.
