US President Barack Obama told the United Nations General Assembly that the American military and its allies will dismantle the Islamic State’s “network of death”, and warned Russia that it would pay for its attempts to destabilize Ukraine.

“Those who have joined ISIL should leave the battlefield while they can,” President Obama said, suggesting that the three days of air strikes against Islamic State and other Islamist groups were only the tip of the iceberg.  “For we will not succumb to threats, and we will demonstrate that the future belongs to those who build, not those who destroy.”

Last year, Mr. Obama placed Iran’s nuclear ambitions and Syria’s civil war at the top of his priorities list.  This time around, they’re on the back burner and the strongest language reserved for Russia, which Obama accused of conspiring with Ukrainian separatists to obstruct an investigation into a downed Malaysian jetliner.

“This is a vision of the world in which might makes right,” Obama said, “a world in which one nation’s borders can be redrawn by another, and civilized people are not allowed to recover the remains of their loved ones because of the truth that might be revealed.”

Earlier in the Security Council, Prime Minister Tony Abbott gave Australia’s “unflinching” support of the US-led war against global terrorism.  The Council adopted a binding resolution compelling states to prevent their nationals joining jihadists in Iraq and Syria.  Abbott got the ball rolling, telling the council that the passports of more than 60 Australians had been suspended to stop them from joining extremist groups in the Middle East.