American leadership in the world “is not just a matter of us bombing somebody”, Barack Obama insisted on Friday as he reeled off a year of achievements from a global climate deal to the Iran nuclear pact.

During an end-of-year press conference at the White House, the president also claimed steady progress in the war against Islamic State and expressed optimism about working with Congress to reform the criminal justice system, but declined to rule out the idea of going it alone to close the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay.

Perhaps with an eye on the judgment of history, he set out a vision for America’s role in the world very different from the country that invaded Iraq in a hugely divisive war under President George W Bush.

“As I look back on this year, one thing I see is that so much of our steady, persistent work over the years is paying off for the American people in big, tangible ways,” Obama said.

Domestically he cited a record streak of job growth, healthcare prices growing at their lowest level in five decades under the Affordable Care Act, legalisation of gay marriage in all 50 states and a rewrite of the No Child Left Behind law to invest in early childhood education.

A clean energy industry boom, he continued, culminated in the recent Paris agreement on climate change that was “only possible because of American leadership”. Obama also listed the Iran nuclear deal, moves to normalise relations with Cuba, the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and success in virtually wiping out the Ebola virus in west Africa.

“At each juncture what we’ve said is that American strength, and American exceptionalism, is not just a matter of us bombing somebody,” he told reporters in the west wing.

“More often, it’s a matter of us convening, setting the agenda, pointing other nations in a direction that’s good for everybody and good for US interests, engaging in painstaking diplomacy, leading by example.



“And sometimes the results don’t come overnight, they don’t come the following day, but they come, and this year what you really saw was that steady, persistent leadership on many initiatives that I began when I first came into office.”



Guantánamo and the year ahead

Looking ahead to his final year, as a presidential election to find his successor looms ever larger, Obama promised he would not be a lame-duck president but push all the way to maximise his remaining year in office.



“I said at the beginning of this year that interesting stuff happens in the fourth quarter and we are only halfway through. In 2016, I’m going to leave it all out on the field. Wherever there’s an opportunity, I’m going to take it.”

Activists protest in front of the White House demanding President Obama close down the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Photograph: Larry Downing/Reuters

It is an agenda that includes keeping his longstanding promise to shut down the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, which he regards as a powerful “magnet” for jihadi recruitment that helps perpetuate the myth of a war between America and Islam, as well as being a waste of taxpayer millions.

The number of detainees should fall below a hundred early next year, he said. Obama would present a plan to Congress and not assume, as is widely predicted, that it will be rebuffed. But nor did he deny that he might explore the legality of bypassing Congress if that is what it takes.

“We will wait until Congress has definitively said no to a well thought-out plan with numbers attached to it before we say anything definitive about my executive authority here.”

Earlier on Friday, Congress passed a major bipartisan budget package that staved off a potential government shutdown and extended tax cuts for both families and businesses. The White House has indicated that Obama will sign it.

The president noted optimistically that by averting a funding crisis for the next nine months, Congress had cleared a path for cooperation with him next year, following years of bitter deadlock. “Congress and I have a long runway to get some things done for the American people,” he said.

“There has been sincere, serious negotiations and efforts by Democrats and Republicans to create a criminal justice system that is more fair, more even-handed, more proportionate and is smarter about how we reduce crime.”

His remarks about criminal justice came as he commuted the sentences of 95 people serving long jail terms, mostly for drugs offences.

He pointed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact as another area ripe for cooperation. Obama said he had called new House speaker Paul Ryan to thank him for “orderly negotiations”, describing the Republican as professional and straightforward: “Kudos to him.”

Later on Friday, Obama was to depart for San Bernardino, California, where he planned to meet with families of the 14 victims of the recent mass shooting. He then will fly to Hawaii, where he will spend two weeks on vacation with his wife and daughters in what has become a family Christmas tradition.

Amid widespread fears about terrorism and extremists, Obama took a swipe against a reporter questioning his strategy for defeating Isis in Iraq and Syria. “There’s only so much bombing you can do,” he said.

“We’re going to defeat Isil and we’re going to do so by systematically squeezing them, cutting off their supply lines, cutting off their financing, taking out their leadership, taking out their forces, taking out their infrastructure. We’re seeing steady progress in many of these areas, so they’re going to be on the run.”

He also affirmed his longstanding position that Syrian president Bashar Assad must leave power for Syria to resolve its civil war, even though his administration has recently said it could accept an unspecified transition period during which Assad stayed.

Obama plans to return to the White House in early January to begin a final year in office that will be increasingly overshadowed by the 2016 presidential campaign.

His final State of the Union address on 12 January will be his last great set-piece moment to lay out his remaining must-dos and attempt to frame the achievements since taking office in 2008. Another attempt to force through gun controls seems likely to be among his top priorities.

Republican frontrunner Donald Trump did not figure in the press conference but Obama predicted: “I think I will have a Democratic successor. And I will campaign very hard to make that happen.”

He finished by wishing journalists merry Christmas and heading off to a White House film screening for invited families and children who lost loved ones in war. “OK everybody, I gotta get to Star Wars,” he smiled.

Moments later, White House spokesman Josh Earnest arrived in the briefing room accompanied by R2D2 and a couple of Storm Troopers – the most unlikely projection of American power witnessed in the west wing in 2015.