It was not long ago when United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power could do no wrong in the eyes of the internationalist left. Leaving aside the intolerable sin of having called Hillary Clinton a “monster” during the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries – a transgression for which she spent some months repenting — the lettered internationalist has finally secured her dream job: guiding American foreign affairs as President Barack Obama’s chief diplomat in the United Nations. But Power’s journey is a tragic one. Her story has become a parable, teaching a whole new generation to be careful what they wish for.
Today, the internationalist scholar and famous champion for the supremacy of multilateral institutions is learning that the challenges of governing appear far less complex when filtered through the narrow windows adorning Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Not long ago, Power championed humanitarian interventionism as a means of curtailing bloodshed and preventing genocides. She advocated for broad consensus building via international institutions and fretted that America’s unilateral actions in Iraq undermined the mission’s purpose. Today, opposed by the recalcitrant voices in Beijing and Moscow in the U.N., Power is pushing her own morally questionable and legally ambiguous war. In the process, she is learning about the intellectual limitations of “smart power.”
“How do you make American words mean something again?” Power once asked her students. “How do we prevent our stories from sounding like fairy tales?”
It was a good question. One in which her intellectual brethren were eager to answer. In 2009, with Obama’s ascension to high office, they got their chance.
The author of the 2002 book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, long ago became a beacon of promise for the intellectual left incensed by President George W. Bush’s dismissal of the relevance of multilateral diplomatic institutions. Though not a dove, (as a champion of the “responsibility to protect” doctrine, Power was a leading voice in the White House convincing Obama to intervene in the nascent Libyan civil war in 2011), Power could have aptly been described as a globalist.
As a champion of intervention, Power appeared to welcome the 2003 invasion of Iraq. However, she was vexed by the lack of international authorization for that invasion and reconstruction which would be conducted by Bush’s nearly 50-nation strong “coalition of the willing.”
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