President Obama Meets with French President Hollande

Hollande’s visit to the US underscored the urgency on counterterrorism after the November 13 Paris attacks by IS, which killed at least 130 people and injured hundreds of others.

Further dampening prospects of U.S.-Russian cooperation, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally Turkey, shot down a Russian fighter jet on Tuesday.

Calling ISIS a “scourge” that “must be defeated”, Obama said the usa stood with France after the brutal massacre in Paris.

Obama and Hollande promised a unified response to the terrorist threat, but made sure to emphasize their belief that a political solution would be most effective in ending Syria’s four-year-old war, easing the path to defeat ISIS.

“Instead of doubling down on the same failed policies that allowed for ISIS’s [Islamic State’s] rise, the Obama administration ought to be laying out the broad, overarching strategy needed to win”, he said.

President Hollande said he will reaffirm that point when he meets with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on Thursday. Militarily, it is about destroying Daesh no matter where they are.

The group appears to now be focusing on targets outside its base in Syria and Iraq, including attacks in Lebanon and Turkey and the downing of a Russian airliner over Egypt. Given the rash of attacks, Obama is now facing increased pressure at home and overseas to ramp up USA efforts to destroy the militants.

“We want to gather all countries”, Hollande said. “The refugee crisis and terrorism are all drivers for more populism and such trends can not be a positive thing for the United States in terms of strengthening the transatlantic relationship”.

“If Francois Hollande wants to turn up the dial or the volume – however much he wants to do it, either a little bit or a lot – he nearly certainly has to do that with the willing cooperation of the United States”, Shurkin said.

“The first thing President Obama should be doing with President Hollande is remembering the concept of the West and showing and meaning a willingness to put intelligence, military and economic tools in defense of those values”.

In a call, Obama and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan “agreed on the importance of de-escalating the situation and pursuing arrangements to ensure that such incidents do not happen again”, the White House said.

The United States has taken only incremental military action in recent months, sending in a small team of special forces in an advisory role and beefing up aid to Kurdish and Arab militias on the ground.

Hollande said he wouldn’t set a deadline for Assad leaving office because “it must be as soon as possible”.

“We will be able to confirm what happened in part through our own intelligence and our own tracking of that border area”, he said”.

Obama said the U.S. did not have enough information yet to form conclusions about the incident, but added similar confrontations could be avoided if Russian Federation stopped attacking “moderate” Syrian rebels who are battling forces loyal to the government of President Bashar al-Assad.