Obama Evokes Trump's Wall in Final UN Assembly Speech as President

With the world watching, President Obama today took an apparent swipe at Donald Trump's plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border in his eighth and final address to the United Nations General Assembly as commander in chief.

"Today a nation ringed by walls would only imprison itself," Obama warned, without naming the Republican presidential nominee.

The president further cautioning against "the same forces of global integration" that have made democracies interdependent while also exposing “deep fault lines in the existing international order" like gaps between the rich and poor created by capitalism throughout the world.

The president made two other references to the ineffectiveness of walls in stopping global forces, quipping that "mosquitoes don’t respect walls" in an apparent reference to the Zika virus, and also with respect to the struggle against global terrorism.

“The world is simply too small to be able to build a wall and stop it from affecting our own societies,” Obama said.

Though he never directly addressed the U.S. election, the president's message for the General Assembly was in many ways applicable to the impulses raging in the presidential race, citing "a contest between authoritarianism and democracy right now" and an appeal for a top-down "strong man model."

Obama rejected such tendencies. "History shows that strong men are then left with two paths," he said. "Permanent crackdown, which sparks strife at home, or scapegoating enemies abroad, which can lead to war."

Speaking about the big picture, the president recounted the "progress" made during his presidency, on issues including the global financial crisis, international terrorism and re-establishing relations with Cuba.

"This is important work," Obama stressed. "It has made a real difference in the lives of our people and it could not have happened had we not worked together."

Obama said nations throughout the world "can choose to press forward with a better model of cooperation and integration," or "retreat into a world sharply divided and ultimately in conflict along age-old lines of nation and tribe and race and religion."

"I want to suggest to you today that we must go forward and not backward," he said, although he added doing so would require nations of the world to "acknowledge that the existing path to global integration requires a course correction."

"The answer cannot be a simple rejection of global integration," Obama implored. "Instead, we must work together to make sure the benefits of such integration are broadly shared and that the disruptions -- economic, political, and cultural -- that are caused by integration are squarely addressed."

Obama demanded democracies of the world "must speak out forcefully" for "freedom and dignity."

"A world in which one percent of the economy controls the other 99 percent will never be stable," Obama asserted. "These are the policies I’ve pursued in the United States, and with clear results" -- touting progress is job creation, cutting poverty, improving infrastructure and investing in childhood education.”

The president’s speech comes as fighting in Syria has resumed after the Syrian military declared Monday an end to the fragile ceasefire deal that was brokered between the United States and Russia just over a week ago.

"Together now we have to open our hearts and do more to help refugees who are desperate for a home. We should all welcome the pledges of increased assistance that have been made at this general assembly gathering," Obama said. "There's a lot of nations right now that are doing the right thing, but many nations, particularly those blessed with wealth, and the benefits of geography, that can do more to offer a hand."

In the same month that North Korea conducted its second nuclear test of the year, Obama highlighted the benefits of free markets over markets resisting influence from globalization.

"We cannot unwind integration any more than we can stuff technology back into a box, nor can we look to failed models of the past. If we start resorting to trade wars, market distorting subsidies, overreliance on national resources instead of innovation, these approaches will make us poor collectively and they're more likely to lead to conflict," Obama said.

"And the stark contrast between, say, the success of the Republic of Korea and the wasteland of North Korea shows that central plan to control the economy is a dead end."

Let's block ads! (Why?)

from ABC News: Politics http://ift.tt/2d8y90I
via IFTTT

Tweet