THIS past week has been a hive of activity as world leaders were gathered at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York for the General Assembly.
It is a meeting of ‘The Good’, ‘The Bad’ and ‘The Ugly’ as power players meet and new agendas are set.
Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed a world audience at the General Assembly on Monday and revealed that Russia has been able to secure an intelligence sharing agreement with Syria and Iran, as well as Iraq, which is supposed to be a US ally.
Russia recently dispatched a fleet of Russian fighter jets and other serious military hardware to a new air base in Syria.
All this is highlighting that the US plan for Syria is not working, international support is dwindling, and America has few options and even less influence over the major players in the region.
Domestically, things are not looking good for the Obama Administration.
According to Deputy Attorney-General John Carlin, the number of Americans fighting with ISIS overseas or trying to join the group has more than doubled in the last year alone.
This is a concerning statistic as overseas ISIS recruiters increasingly call for terror plots inside America
Officials estimate more than 250 Americans have joined, or have been trying to join, ISIS in Iraq and Syria – up from 100 a year ago.
The numbers are informed estimates based on investigation elements like interviews with family members, videos from overseas and authorised wiretaps.
President Obama visited the UN on Tuesday and urged world leaders to help stem the flow of foreign fighters into Syria and Iraq, and calling for increased efforts to counter ISIS’s online propaganda and recruiting efforts.
He asked the leaders of 60 nations to help bring stability inside Iraq and Syria — even offering to work directly with Iran and Russia.
It can be recalled that last year, addressing the General Assembly, President Obama, challenged the world to back up America in its restrained attempts to defeat the Islamic State group, and to rally Muslims worldwide to reject the ideology of religious extremism.
This time around President Putin has strategically built up support in Syria for President Bashar Assad’s government in the days leading up to the General Assembly, thus silently making it known that Russia is the new ‘game’ in town.
America has to come up with a new strategy if it is going to retain its supposed control of the fight against ISIS.
The plan to train as many as 5 400 Syrian rebel fighters by the end of this year has so far completely failed and that faction represents one of the weakest political forces in the country.
America has not and will not deploy its own troops to wage ground warfare in Syria, and they would have to contend with the established regimes of other extremist groups like Jabhat al-Nusrah and the remaining al-Qaida cells in the region.
Turkey and Saudi Arabia have grown intensely dubious of American interests in the area, particularly over its direct military support for some of the same Kurdish fighters that Turkey considers to be terrorists.
America has no control over Iran, which wages proxy warfare through its particularly potent patrons in Hezbollah.​
In his first address to the UN in over a decade, President Putin did not mince his words as he called out America over its interference in the Middle-East saying it has led to, “flagrant destruction of national institutions and lifestyle itself.
“Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and a social disaster. And nobody cares a bit about human rights, including the right to life.”
He even warned America about its attempt to arm rebel fighters saying that such a move is not just short-sighted, but ‘fire hazardous’.
President Putin has successfully positioned Russia as indispensable to resolving key international problems and nowhere has his success been more visible than in the Syrian conflict and Iranian nuclear negotiations.