President Obama dismissed Russia’s intervention in Syria on Friday, saying that the world isn’t following President Vladimir Putin’s lead.
“I didn’t see the 60-nation coalition line up behind Mr. Putin” after the Russian president’s speech before the United Nations General Assembly on Monday, Obama said.
“Iran and Mr. Assad make up Mr. Putin’s coalition,” Obama said, referring to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. “The rest of the world makes up ours.”
Obama said Putin is acting from a position of weakness and that his strategy will fail and bog him down in Syria.
“Mr. Putin had to go in to Syria not out of strength but out of weakness because his client, Mr. Assad, was crumbling,” Obama said. Sending arms and money alone wasn’t enough to prop him up in his four-year civil war with factions who want him to step down, so “now he has to put in his own planes and his own pilots.”
Obama said the United States will not cooperate with Russia’s strategy.
“We are not going to cooperate with a Russian campaign to simply try to destroy anyone that is disgusted with and fed up with Mr. Assad’s behavior,” Obama said.
Speaking about the flailing effort to train and equip moderate forces battling Assad, Obama said it has not proceeded according to plan.
“I’m the first to acknowledge that it hasn’t worked the way it’s supposed to,” Obama said.
Obama went on to say he will not turn the conflict in Syria into a “proxy war” between the U.S. and Russia.
He also responded to a reporter’s question about “half-baked” solutions and political “mumbo jumbo,” saying that he would rather see concrete, viable plans from opponents.
Obama also said there is a “difference between running for president and being president” when asked to assess former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s endorsement of erecting a no-fly zone over Syria.
“If and when she’s president, then she will make those judgments; and she’s been there enough that she knows that these are tough calls,” Obama said, adding that he obviously had faith in her because she was his secretary of state.
Obama consistently has rebuffed calls from Syrian diaspora in the U.S. to create a no-fly zone over the war-torn country.
