COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.: President Barack Obama defended his tenure as commander in chief Thursday while setting out a clear contrast with potential successor Donald Trump, saying the U.S. needs “smart, steady, principled American leadership” in an increasingly interconnected world.
Obama saluted more that 800 graduates of the Air Force Academy in his final commencement address as president, calling it “the highest honor in my life to lead the greatest military in the history of the world.”
“Our military is, by a mile, the strongest in the world,” he said.
But while U.S. foreign policy “has to be strong … it also has to be smart,” he said as he laid out lessons learned during his tenure and those history offers to the nation’s next generation of leaders.
Just as in an economic address a day earlier in Indiana, Obama did not name Trump. But he was unmistakably making an argument against Trump’s temperament and meandering pronouncements, including calls for a more isolationist U.S. foreign policy.
He said that despite serious threats the nation faces from overseas, a temptation to “pull back” or argue that other nations should “fend for themselves” would only give “false comfort.”
“We cannot turn inward,” he said. “Allowing problems to fester over there makes us less secure over here. So as Americans, we have to keep leading and working with others to build the security and prosperity and justice we want in the world.”
Obama said that despite the threats of terrorist networks, Russian aggression in Ukraine, disputes in the South China Sea and civil wars in the Middle East, the world is nonetheless in the safe and prosperous.
And that will continue if the U.S. keeps embracing its role as a global leader.
Obama’s national security address came hours before Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, delivered her own in San Diego. She assailed Trump as dangerous to U.S. national security and unqualified to be commander in chief.
“He is not just unprepared; he is temperamentally unfit,” she told supporters. “We cannot let him roll the dice with America.”
For Obama, the speech was part of a tradition of addressing one of the military’s four service academies at graduation.
His outdoor address ended with a dramatic Thunderbird flyover as cadets tossed their caps — a moment later marred by news that one of the jets had crashed shortly after completing the maneuver.
The pilot, identified as Maj. Alex Turner of Chelmsford, Mass., safely ejected and later met with Obama.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.