Amid airstrikes, Obama presents global game plan at UN

Facing a range of global challenges, President Obama made an impassioned plea to world leaders Wednesday to strengthen the international security system to confront a complex and unpredictable modern world.

Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Obama referred to the advance of the terror group the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Russian aggression in Ukraine, and the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The president’s speech was sandwiched between U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria, which hit a dozen oil refineries that the terror group ISIS controls.

“Each of these problems demands urgent attention,” Obama said. “But they are also symptoms of a broader problem—the failure of our international system to keep pace with an interconnected world.”

“We have not invested adequately in the public health capacity of developing countries,” Obama continued. “Too often, we have failed to enforce international norms when it’s inconvenient to do so. And we have not confronted forcefully enough the intolerance, sectarianism, and hopelessness that feeds violent extremism in too many parts of the globe.”

Obama said that despite technological advances, “there is a pervasive unease in our world – a sense that the very forces that have brought us together have created new dangers, and made it difficult for any single nation to insulate itself from global forces.” He urged U.N. members to “affirm our collective responsibility to confront global problems.”

And, using an alternative acronym for ISIS, Obama called on the world’s Muslims to “explicitly, forcefully, and consistently reject the ideology of al Qaida and ISIL.”

Obama said the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) would later Wednesday adopt a resolution that underscores the responsibility of states to counter violent extremism.

At that UNSC session, which Obama will chair, he will call on fellow members to help stop the flow of extremist fighters into Iraq and Syria on behalf of ISIS and other terror groups, the administration has said.

The chairmanship of the 15-member panel rotates alphabetically between members, for one month each.

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