U.S. Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush pauses during an interview with Reuters at Nonie’s Restaurant in Peterborough.

Republican Jeb Bush vowed on Tuesday to take a more aggressive approach to countering Russia if he is elected president next year, calling Vladimir Putin an “agile adversary” who is exploiting a vacuum of U.S. leadership in Syria and elsewhere.

In an interview with Reuters, Bush said that if elected in 2016 he would seek to build a coalition of European and Arab partners to work for the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which he said is key to resolving the festering conflict and a worsening refugee crisis.

Calling Putin a “bully”, Bush said the United States and Europe should also extend sanctions against Moscow over its military aggression in Ukraine that are set to expire at year’s end.

“How to deal with him is to confront him on his terms, not to create a more bellicose environment but to simply say that there is going to be a consequence,” Bush said in the interview, in which he also called for a tougher stance against China and to counter growing Iranian and Russian influence in Iraq.

No-fly zone

Russia’s sudden step-up of military intervention since last month in support of Assad has raised questions about U.S. influence in the region and cast doubt on Obama’s strategy, which has mostly steered clear of confronting Assad militarily.

With a raft of policy proposals, Bush has sought to position himself as the most substantive candidate on foreign policy, drawing a contrast with “outsider” candidates like Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson who have never held elected office.

Bush’s approach to coalition-building over Syria carries echoes of the coalition his father, then-President George H.W. Bush, built in 1991 to respond to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. He said he would create a no-fly zone to protect Syrian refugees and allow for training of Syrian rebels, an effort that has mostly collapsed under President Barack Obama.

Obama has resisted the creation of a no-fly zone and has not stepped in to protect Syrian rebels now under attack by Syrian government forces backed by Iranian troops and Russian warplanes. He has said Russia is acting out of weakness and warned Moscow it would get sucked into “quagmire” in Syria.

“You see the potential now for a unified approach against both Assad and ISIS,” Bush said, referring to the ISIS militant group that controls swathes of Syria and Iraq. “If we do nothing, we’re basically saying goodbye to the Middle East.”

He also said he would make sure the United States continues to confront ISIS in Iraq and bolster the national government there amid signs that Russia and Iran are exerting growing influence in the country.

“I wouldn’t worry about antagonizing the Russians, for starters. They should worry about antagonizing us,” he said.

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