Obama: 'We have to twist arms when countries don't do what we need them to'

President Barack Obama has said the reality of "American leadership" at times entails "twisting the arms" of states which "don't do what we need them to do," and that the US relied on its military strength and other leverage to achieve its goals.

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In a broad-ranging interview with Vox, which Obama himself described as a venue the US president both denied the efficacy of a purely "realist" foreign policy but also arguing that at times the US, which has a defense budget that exceeds the next 10 countries combined, needed to rely on its military muscle and other levers of power.

Lauding the rule-based system to emerge in the post-World War II era, Obama admitted it wasn't perfect, but argued

He argued, however, that the efficacy of this idealistic, Wilsonian, rule-based system was severely tested by the fact that

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In the president's view, the reality of those threats has compelled the US to have Obama further says that "we occasionally have to twist the arms of countries that wouldn't do what we need them to do if it weren't for the various economic or diplomatic or, in some cases, military leverage that we had - if we didn't have that dose of realism, we wouldn't get anything done, either."

Obama argues that the US doesn't have to all the challenges in the modern world, though he goes on to add that " in terms of states that could attack or provoke the United States.

"The closest we have, obviously, is Russia, with its nuclear arsenal, but generally speaking they can't project the way we can around the world. China can't, either. We spend more on our military than the next 10 countries combined," he said.

Within this context, Obama said that stemming from and were the biggest challenges facing the international community today.

Obama also argued that tackling these and other problems entailed and whenever possible, while also recognizing that Washington is

"We spend more on our military than the next 10 countries combined."

This approach, he said, also led to

When asked about the limits of American power, Obama conceded that there were things that his administration simply cannot do in terms of power projection, but remained upbeat.

This appeal to US leadership, which has often been couched within the notion of American exceptionalism, has regularly been questioned by Moscow.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov took issue with the notion past September, following Obama's speech before the UN in which the US president named along with the Ebola epidemic and ISIS as threats to international peace and security.

Lavrov said that Obama's address to the UN was the but added that he had

The Russian foreign minister added that Obama had presented a worldview based on the exceptionality of the United States.

"That's the worldview of a country that has spelt out its right to use force arbitrarily regardless of the UN Security Council's resolutions or other international legal acts in its national defense doctrine," Lavrov said.

In a September 2013 Op-Ed article in the New York Times, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the concept of American exceptionalism was a precarious one in the global arena.

"It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation," Putin wrote. "There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord's blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal."

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Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

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