The Education of an Idealist

by Samantha Power

  — 26 —

  Let’s Pray They Accomplish Something

  No matter how many unsuccessful pregnancy tests I had taken over two years of trying to conceive a second child, I could never suppress my faith that two lines would appear. In my eagerness to learn immediately whether my latest round of IVF had worked, I had even taken to storing test kits in the locked safe in the EEOB where I kept classified files. For five consecutive months, I used a manila folder to hide the kit as I carried it down the hall to the women’s restroom. And on almost as many occasions, after I took the test, I convinced myself that a faint, second line existed—only to have Cass, the realist, shake his head glumly.

  But on the sixth time I made this walk, there was no doubting what I saw: two dark pink lines beside each other. I galloped down the stairs to Cass’s office, burst past his assistant, and un-self-consciously waved the stick in the air. After four rounds of IVF and four miscarriages, Cass and I knew we could take nothing for granted—but we also knew that we now had a chance.

  In the coming months, despite one major scare where I began bleeding eight weeks into the pregnancy, Eamon (Irish for Eddie’s name, if it was a boy) or Rían (Irish for “king,” if it was a girl) managed to hang on.

  Declan worried aloud whether there would be enough of his mother to go around when a new baby came. Yet he still rested his head against my growing tummy, and, once we learned it was a girl, whispered to her, “Hi Rían, it’s your brother. I will see you soon.”

  On June 1st, 2012, as I was texting at two a.m. with Denis McDonough about an Israeli-Palestinian issue brewing at the United Nations, I felt cramping begin. Only at this late date did I really allow myself to believe that we were having another baby. “The king is coming,” I whispered to Cass, waking him.

  Together, we had produced around seventy embryos through the IVF process. Only one, this little warrior Rían, was going to make it. And indeed, after she was born, everything about her seemed rooted in an irrepressible desire for life.

  When I returned to work after my maternity leave, I largely retained the perspective I had first gained while caring for Declan. My moods were less affected by the highs and lows of the daily grind. During times when slights and setbacks might once have sent me off into the Bat Cave, I was usually able to access the calm I felt while caring for my kids. I also noticed that I had stopped getting nervous before big government meetings. What had once felt like the pinnacle of my week no longer held that status.

  But there were exceptions—and meeting Aung San Suu Kyi was one of them.

  IN OCTOBER OF 2012, a month after I had gone back to work, I found myself in Rangoon anxiously waiting to see Burma’s iconic, oft-imprisoned opposition leader. For as long as I had cared about human rights, I had been in awe of Suu Kyi’s courage and poise. Even as her husband lay dying with cancer, she had refused to leave her house arrest in Burma to visit him in the UK, fearing the military junta would not allow her to return home. For her pacifism and activism, she had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

  With the initially hopeful events in the Arab world turning violent, Burma seemed a rare bright spot. During the previous two years, its military government had released hundreds of political prisoners from jail while freeing Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest. Most significantly, the regime had respected the results of parliamentary elections in which her opposition party dominated.

  These tentative steps toward openness suggested that more progress was possible, and in order to try to accelerate it, President Obama intended to become the first sitting US president to visit Burma. Bold, principled engagement with repressive governments was exactly what the President had meant in his inaugural address when he pledged that the United States would extend a hand if autocratic leaders would unclench their fists. We knew, however, that Suu Kyi was opposed to a presidential visit, and the White House had sent me to Rangoon in the hopes that I could help change her mind.

  When the military regime took its first tentative steps toward expanding political freedom, our administration had pursued what we called an “action for action” approach: US steps toward normalization followed liberalizing steps from Burma’s military leadership. However, partly owing to concerns that the European Union was lifting sanctions faster than we were, benefitting European businesses, the White House had begun deviating from that playbook, rushing to lift the ban on US companies investing in Burma. Given the number of reforms the ruling generals still needed to make, I had argued for retaining more targeted sanctions until we saw more progress. I thought we were moving too briskly. “The United States government has no dimmer switch!” I vented to my staff before flying to Rangoon.

  I arrived at a sterile office where the National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi’s political party, hosted the stream of foreign emissaries suddenly visiting Burma. After a perfunctory greeting, Suu Kyi cut right to the chase.

  “A presidential visit is a dreadful idea,” she said. I had not expected her to be quite so firm and quickly grew flustered.

  “I understand you feel that way,” I began.

  “I don’t feel this way,” she said. “I believe I know my country far better than you in Washington. This trip is a mistake.”

  “If I may just lay out a few of the reasons that—” I tried.

  “There is nothing to be said,” she interrupted. “President Obama traveling to Burma at this time will legitimize a military regime that has consistently stood in the way of democracy.”

  “I understand the risk,” I said, “but I am here to get your thoughts on how we can use the trip as leverage to secure concessions from the military that will—”

  Again, she cut me off. “This is not a good use of time,” she said. “Nothing you say will alter my view.”

  After several more attempts to convey how we hoped to use an Obama visit to advance political reform, Aung San Suu Kyi made clear her view had not changed. “This is your decision,” she said. “But the consequences will be ours to cope with.”

  I pivoted to discussing a topic she liked even less—the status of the country’s Rohingya population. Burma was nearly 90 percent Buddhist, and the Rohingya were a beleaguered Muslim minority that the military dictatorship disenfranchised and severely mistreated. Over the previous three decades, they had been denied citizenship and conscripted into what amounted to slave labor. Government rules forbade Rohingya from traveling out of their villages, or from marrying and having children without official permission. And state security forces used rape to terrorize Rohingya women.

  Incited by extremist Buddhist monks and backed by government security forces, local Burmese vigilantes had recently killed hundreds of Rohingya and burned many villages to the ground, displacing more than 100,000 people. Hatred toward this minority group was so widespread that I had even heard Burmese human rights lawyers speak about the Rohingya with contempt.

  When I brought up how state forces had pushed Rohingya families out of their homes and violently attacked them, Aung San Suu Kyi had a ready answer. “Do not forget that there is violence on both sides,” she said, repeating a false claim made by Buddhist radicals to justify the attacks.

  Few predicted then that the persecution of the Rohingya would escalate into full-scale genocide, which it did in August of 2017.* But I was still shocked that this renowned champion of freedom was drawing an equivalence between defenseless civilians and heavily armed, state-backed mobs. I appealed to her to raise her voice to demand that the rights of all people in Burma be protected.

  “It is a tragedy,” she said. “It will do nobody any good for me to take sides.”

  “We are not asking you to take sides,” I said. “We urge you to use your immense credibility to speak up on behalf of human rights, and to acknowledge all who are being abused.”

  I knew Suu Kyi had relied on her Buddhist faith during her years in captivity, so I asked whether she could issue even a simple message on the importance of compassion and “lo
ving kindness.” Since she was the most beloved public figure in the country, such a gesture would go a long way toward reminding her millions of constituents about the importance of nondiscrimination and nonviolence.

  “You should not rely on propaganda for your information,” she said tersely. “Muslim countries are hyping events. It is irresponsible, and they are making matters worse.”

  I was crestfallen to hear such coldness in the face of escalating violence against civilians. But above all, I was rattled by Suu Kyi’s holier-than-thou tone. “I must say,” I said wearily, “when I was young, I never imagined that one day I would have the honor of meeting you. But had I imagined it, this is not how I would have thought the meeting would go.” Suu Kyi offered the slight trace of a smile.

  What I found most chilling was the fact that she was a bad listener—an alarming quality in a leader. And she demonstrated scant empathy for the plight of a vulnerable minority, despite clear evidence of the crimes being committed against them.

  “What’s weird,” I recounted to Cass when I got home, “is that her whole life has supposedly been about human rights, but it is not clear she cares that much about humans.” When I returned to the White House, I told my colleagues that, while I hoped my experience with Aung San Suu Kyi was an aberration, pinning our hopes on her leadership could be a mistake.

  AS PLANNING FOR PRESIDENT OBAMA’S VISIT progressed, Aung San Suu Kyi came around to supporting it. She was focused on her own political fortunes and saw the domestic benefit of embracing the occasion. Unfortunately, her rivals in the military government refused to agree to a set of reforms that we had hoped to announce before Obama arrived. So, a few weeks after my initial trip, the President asked me to return to Burma and lock down our desired terms. I would have just three days there to forge an agreement before Air Force One touched down.

  Given this compressed timeline, I felt enormous pressure, which I conveyed to Ben Rhodes, who played a key role in crafting our Burma policy and understood all that was riding on the upcoming negotiation. Ben was a lifelong Mets fan who despised the New York Yankees as much as I did. But in the days before the trip he began calling me “Mariano,” for Mariano Rivera, the Yankees’ Hall of Fame closer—his way of trying to give me confidence that I could deliver for our boss.

  On the flight over, I carried three items of critical importance: a thick briefing book that I consumed during the twenty-hour journey; a notebook where I mapped out the concessions I would be seeking; and my breast pump, which would help prevent my milk supply for five-month-old Rían from drying up on what would be my second lengthy trip to Burma in a month.

  Over three bruising days of negotiations, I secured a communiqué that contained a powerful set of commitments from the Burmese government. The final agreement included a large additional release of political prisoners, access for humanitarian workers to war-torn ethnic areas, and permission for critics of the Burmese dictatorship to return from exile or to travel outside of Burma.

  After Air Force One landed at the airport in Rangoon on November 19th, 2012, I received a large hug from Tom Donilon, the normally undemonstrative National Security Advisor. He was elated with what I had secured.

  “You belong out in the field,” he declared.

  Walking by, Obama stopped to congratulate me on the “nice work.”

  Having just won reelection two weeks prior, he was the most relaxed I had seen him since before Election Night in 2008. I hurriedly thanked him for making the trip and thus giving me bargaining clout, but he waved me off.

  “Let’s not kid ourselves,” he said, “I’m only a prop.”

  When our convoy arrived at Aung San Suu Kyi’s home a few hours later, she seemed extremely happy to see the President. He too was moved to be in the place where she had effectively been imprisoned on and off for fifteen years. She welcomed us into her book-lined study, greeting me as if we were meeting for the first time.

  Obama began by expressing his admiration for all she had already achieved for democracy in Burma. “How can we be of further assistance?” he asked. Instead of answering Obama’s question, Suu Kyi spoke for the next twenty minutes about the arcane procedural maneuverings that dominated the Burmese parliament. At various points I looked toward Obama, wondering if he was disappointed or bored. But he didn’t seem to mind her journey into the weeds of Burmese politics.

  Halfway through their allotted time together, Suu Kyi asked to meet alone with President Obama and Secretary Clinton. I was immensely relieved for an excuse to leave the room—I had not had time to pump for hours and had grown increasingly uncomfortable as the meeting went on.

  I raced out to the armored vehicle where I had left my pump and asked to be directed to the nearest restroom, which was on the ground floor of Suu Kyi’s home, across the hall from the study where Obama, Clinton, and she were still talking.

  I perched myself on the closed lid of the toilet, assembled the breast pump, and then attached the suction cups first to a pair of small bottles and then to myself. When I turned on the pump, it began its loud, rhythmic, blare: HEEEE-HAWWWW. HEEEE-HAWWWW. HEEE-HAWWWW.

  Initially, I was self-conscious about the noise, wondering if Obama, Clinton, and Suu Kyi might be able to hear it. But a large press pool from all over the world was milling outside, creating a din that I was confident would drown out other sounds.

  Because I found it uncomfortable to pump, I had always disliked it. And if I didn’t produce as much milk as usual, I felt like a failure. But on that day, in part because it had been so long since I had last pumped, the milk flowed freely.

  I took in the utter improbability of the moment. Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the United States, had just been elected to a second term by a sizable margin. Aung San Suu Kyi was a free woman and a member of the parliament from which she had been banned for decades. And I, the mother of two children who had successfully negotiated with the Burmese military junta’s representatives in advance of a presidential visit, was pumping in the bathroom of the home of a human rights giant. I looked up at the ceiling and said a short prayer of thanks.

  At one point, I thought I heard the chatter of the media die down, so I assumed that Obama and Suu Kyi were about to begin their press conference. I leaned over toward the window in the bathroom, which was beside the toilet, and pulled back one of the curtains to see if this was the case.

  To my surprise and horror, the window looked directly out onto the porch where the two leaders were already making statements to the cameras. Had I unwittingly drawn the curtain a few inches wider, I would have exposed myself to the world.

  DURING THE FLIGHT HOME, President Obama was in high spirits after his reelection and what had become a widely celebrated visit to Burma. He summoned me to his personal cabin on Air Force One and asked me what job I hoped for in his second term.

  Cass had just left the White House after three and a half years. He was now commuting between our home in Washington and a small rental apartment near Harvard Law School, where he had resumed teaching three days a week. I did not want to leave government, but I was ready to try something new. I had run a number of policy processes to their conclusion, led our efforts to improve the government’s responsiveness to atrocities, and worked with Susan and others to ensure we reengaged a variety of international bodies. I thought it was time for someone with fresh eyes to take up my portfolio. I also thought I might be more effective tackling issues that our administration was struggling with (Syria being the best example) from a different perch. Susan was in the running to become Secretary of State or National Security Advisor, so I told the President that I would be interested in taking her place if she left the UN.

  “What’s your second choice?” Obama asked immediately.

  I told him I would work wherever he wanted to put me, but I returned to the UN job. I knew the organization well, I said, and I understood its flaws. I had proven my ability to negotiate important deals. I would be a forceful advocate for A
merican ideals, and my tirelessness would enable me to effectively rally other countries to address threats that mattered to the United States.

  I had never had to sell myself to Obama before and felt awkward doing so. Indeed, the last time I had tried to convince someone to give me a job was in 1993, when I had met with Carey English at U.S. News & World Report. At least then I had been able to hand him my Balkans chronology and writing clips. I hated the sound of advocating for my own advancement.

  Obama challenged me to justify my preference for the UN position. “I thought you cared about making a difference,” he said. I gave him a puzzled look as he continued. “You have a hell of a lot more influence on US policy from where you are now than you would from the UN.” Punctuating his point, he pronounced “the UN” in a dismissive tone. For the next ten minutes, I found myself transported to Obama’s law school classroom as I defended my professional qualifications and described how I would approach the job.

  When Cass later asked how well I had answered Obama’s questions, I gave myself a “B-,” before adding, “and that’s with grade inflation.”

  Only after I had returned to my seat in the main cabin did I think of half a dozen arguments I should have made. My motto—not just as a journalist, but also in life—had always been “show, don’t tell.” But given that President Obama was arguably the most preoccupied person on the planet, in this case I kicked myself for not connecting the dots.

  IN MARCH OF 2013, after more than four years at the White House, I took a short break from the administration. President Obama and I had not discussed the UN job a second time. Even though Pete Rouse, one of the President’s closest advisers, had told me Obama was seriously considering me, I couldn’t be sure what he would ultimately decide. Eager to continue serving, I accepted an offer from the new Secretary of State, John Kerry, to become Undersecretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights. The role came with a large portfolio in which I would oversee human rights, refugees and migration, international justice and law enforcement, and conflict prevention. The position required Senate confirmation, so I submitted all of my financial and personal records to a team of White House lawyers who would scrutinize the information to ensure that I had done nothing illegal or unethical. Then, I waited.