The Education of an Idealist

by Samantha Power

  These were among the many dynamics that those of us advising the President had debated prior to August 21st and now were discussing anew as he prepared to order military action. Yet for the first time since the start of the Syrian conflict, even when considering all of these potential downsides, Obama had concluded that the costs of not responding forcefully were greater than the risks of taking military action. Whereas on Libya he had sought a UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force, here—given the stakes for Syria and for upholding the international norm against the use of chemical weapons—Obama was prepared to operate without what White House lawyers called a “traditionally recognized legal basis under international law.” The lawyers suggested that, given the vast number of international obligations Assad’s regime had violated, acting without the Council could, as it was in the case of Kosovo, be “justified and legitimate under international law.”

  My own view was that Obama was right to have decided to respond to the August 21st attack with air strikes. Indeed, I believed that he should have responded in this manner even to the previous, smaller-scale chemical attacks, once the intelligence community had confirmed them. Had he ordered limited strikes then, I wondered whether Assad’s forces would have dared to stage such a large subsequent attack.

  Regardless of what the United States might have done beforehand, after the brazen killing of 1,400 people, I did not believe that additional nonmilitary actions would be sufficient to deter Assad from gassing more Syrians. We were already providing military support to the Syrian opposition. We had secured the deployment of UN cease-fire observers earlier in the war. On chemical weapons specifically, we had waged a diplomatic full-court press with Russia and Iran, Syria’s backers, pressing them to restrain their ally. We and the Europeans had imposed a raft of economic sanctions, but even in apartheid South Africa and Milošević’s Serbia, two places where sanctions played an important role in changing government behavior, they did so over a period of years, not months. Moreover, the US and European asset freezes and banking restrictions against Syrian government officials, which had been imposed in 2011 and 2012 and could be expanded now, were not global in their reach. Russia had used its veto to prevent the Security Council from levying sanctions, which meant that the Syrian government could continue to legally transact business in many parts of the world, while still receiving weapons and funding from Russia and Iran.

  If we responded with more of the same, I felt sure Assad’s regime would continue with more of the same.

  Assad had staged the largest massacre of the war, and he had carried out a chemical attack beyond anything the world had seen in a quarter century.26 While I wished President Obama would consider confronting Assad’s other instruments of death, I agreed with him that chemical weapons warranted a specific red line. They were weapons of mass destruction, capable of killing vast numbers of people at once. The nations of the world had come together after World War I to ban these weapons, and if the international consensus against their use were to break down, the lapse would almost certainly come back to haunt many more people (Americans included) in and out of conflict zones around the world.

  I had no illusions that the kind of limited military action Obama was about to order would bring the Syrian war to an end. That would take sustained international diplomacy, which had repeatedly stalled. But in my view, diplomacy had been ineffective in part because Assad had become convinced that no one would stop him from using even the most merciless tactics against his own people. If the US government looked away from this incident, signaling that Assad could gas his citizens at will, I worried he would never feel sufficient pressure to negotiate. Instead, he would go on using unspeakably vicious methods to remain in power, and the war would continue indefinitely, killing countless Syrians and eventually endangering American national security.

  Even if US-led action would not save Syrians from being killed in other ways, preventing any loss of life was important. And critically, the risk of Assad retaliating or US action devolving into full-fledged conflict seemed very low. As President Obama put it publicly in early September, “The Assad regime does not have the ability to seriously threaten our military . . . Neither Assad nor his allies have any interest in escalation that would lead to his demise.”

  For these reasons, I understood why the August 21st attack had changed President Obama’s extremely fraught appraisal. And I wholeheartedly backed his plan to destroy select Syrian military targets.

  WITH OBAMA PREPARING TO GIVE the final go-ahead for the strikes, I began hustling among videoconferences with Susan and the US national security team; Security Council meetings; and strategy sessions with the ambassadors from the UK and France, whose militaries planned to join us in the coming operation.

  In the evenings when I got home, Declan, who was desperate for attention, would often emerge sleepily from his bedroom. Both he and Rían had a knack for wailing at high volume at precisely the moment John Kerry decided to call. When I attempted to create a sound buffer by locking myself in the apartment’s secure study, the raucousness was only made worse by their determined pounding on the metal door of the top-secret vault.

  Whenever I was on the verge of losing my patience, I reminded myself of my good fortune: I could put my kids to bed knowing that, when I checked on them late at night, they would be there, breathing soundly in their sleep.

  — 30 —

  “Chemical Weapons Were Used”

  As soon as I arrived back in New York from Washington on Saturday, August 24th, I began engaging UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in an effort to secure the withdrawal of the UN investigators from Syria. However, Ban insisted that the UN team was staying put. The Syrian government had prevented their visit for more than four months, and now that they had finally gotten in, Ban wanted them to remain so they could investigate the new attack.

  As reasonable as this sounded, the UN team had no mandate to assess who had carried out the attacks. They only had the authority to ascertain whether chemicals had been involved. When it came to the massive attack that had just occurred, however, this question had been answered.

  The victims had been videotaped and photographed displaying all the medically established bodily responses to sarin. Innumerable survivors and witnesses had described symptoms consistent with sarin. All of this evidence and testimony had been disseminated around the world. Not even the Syrian or Russian governments denied that banned chemical weapons had been used—they just denied Assad’s responsibility, instead claiming the opposition was at fault.

  I reminded Ban that Damascus and Moscow were now heartily embracing the UN investigation because it was a convenient stalling mechanism. The Assad regime would tightly control the investigators’ every movement. And every day these UN inspectors remained in Damascus was another day for the Syrian military to destroy evidence of its crime and move its precious heavy weapons into hiding.

  I expected the secretary-general to see the demonstrable ridiculousness of keeping inspectors in harm’s way solely for the purpose of telling the world what it already knew.

  “This is a moot mission,” I told Ban. “The UN is being manipulated.”

  But from Ban’s perspective, pulling the inspectors out would make the UN look complicit in the western military action that he and the world recognized was imminent. The secretary-general was unyielding. “We cannot not proceed,” he said.

  The presence of the UN team caused Obama to delay the US military operation he had hoped to launch on the night of August 25th. Every day for the next five days, Obama would ask me, Susan, or John Kerry whether Ban had withdrawn the flawed mission, so that he could order the planned strikes. And each day, one of us would report to the President that the UN investigators remained in Damascus. Obama was seething with frustration.

  On Friday, August 30th, nine days after the attack, Ban called to relay the utterly unsurprising news that the UN team had gathered convincing proof that sarin gas had been used. They wou
ld be leaving Syria the next morning with environmental and biomedical samples (like tissue and hair), as well as weapons fragments collected from the neighborhoods they visited.

  Even if the UN team had stayed too long to learn too little, I thought, its departure from Syrian territory was a major development. It would give President Obama the peace of mind he had been seeking to launch the planned air strikes, which I assumed he would do as soon as the UN team crossed the border into Lebanon the next day (and were no longer potential hostages). Knowing what was coming, the UN had evacuated its expatriate staff and paid Syrian local staff three months’ advance salary.

  That night, as I wearily entered the Waldorf at nine p.m., I heard my secure phone ring and hustled to the back study to answer it. Susan was on the line.

  I started filling her in on the latest from the secretary-general, but she cut me off. President Obama had decided on a sudden change of course, she said. He had gone from “wanting to go and go yesterday” to deciding that he would seek authorization from Congress for the use of force before proceeding with military strikes against Assad.

  I was so taken aback that I asked Susan to repeat what she had said, to be sure I hadn’t misheard.

  She insisted that Obama was not going wobbly on the use of force itself. “He will fight like hell to get the authorization,” she explained. “He is betting his presidency and our reputation in the world on this.”

  When I asked if the President might be open to reversing his decision, she said we would have a chance to offer our views at a meeting early the following morning. But, she added, “His mind is made up.”

  I PARTICIPATED IN THE SATURDAY-MORNING Situation Room meeting from a small, secure videoconference facility at the US Mission in New York.

  The President opened by reviewing the Pentagon’s chosen targets, which, by necessity, were not involved with chemical weapons production or delivery.

  “What if Assad doesn’t stop using chemical weapons?” Obama asked. “What if this drags on?”

  Obama was focused on the duration of the mission because of longstanding questions related to the President’s use of force when not responding to an imminent national security threat. Although the Constitution designates the President as Commander in Chief of the armed forces, it gives Congress the power to declare war. Over the past several decades, presidents have argued that the limited nature and scope of their military operations meant they were not “at war” as such, allowing them to use military force without congressional approval. However, the 1973 War Powers Resolution stipulated that, when Congress has not authorized a military operation, the President must report the action to Congress within forty-eight hours and remove US armed forces from “hostilities” within sixty days. Presidents have generally gotten around the sixty-day requirement by arguing that US hostilities were not continuous, allowing the “clock” to stop and then reset again. Indeed, during his first term, Obama himself had contended that he was in compliance with the War Powers Resolution during the 222-day military campaign in Libya because US involvement was sufficiently limited as to not constitute “hostilities” or require the automatic sixty-day pullout.27

  But on Syria, Obama had now decided that Congress should fulfill its constitutional responsibility and leap with him into the unknown.

  The President was concerned that if he acted without Congress and the mission dragged on or took unexpected turns, his political opponents would attack his presidency as lawless and illegitimate. Republican as well as Democratic presidents had skirted the War Powers Resolution in the past. However, the partisan rancor in Washington had grown so intense that, despite these precedents, House Republicans could easily have used a dispute over whether Obama was violating the law to launch impeachment proceedings. Already, some 140 House lawmakers (among them 21 Democrats) had signed a letter warning Obama that military strikes in Syria “without prior congressional authorization” would be unconstitutional.

  The President wanted to be sure that, in the event military strikes did not achieve their intended effects immediately, Congress would already have provided clear legal permission to allow the United States to finish the job—no matter how long it took.

  “If Assad thinks he can wait us out,” Obama said during the meeting, “that’s in nobody’s interest.”

  I found this reasoning persuasive in every respect except one: for all the drawbacks of moving ahead without congressional support, proceeding with congressional support required . . . Congress.

  Many in the GOP seemed convinced that their most politically advantageous posture was unyielding opposition to Obama’s proposals, regardless of their content. Indeed, a month later, House Republicans would shut down the government for sixteen days in a quixotic attempt to defund Obama’s health care law.

  Given these domestic political dynamics, and the significant fact that the British parliament had just voted not to join the United States and France in the military operation,* Vice President Biden, Secretary of State Kerry, and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel all raised questions about Obama’s change of heart. Kerry was the most apocalyptic in his foreboding. “It is no exaggeration to say that, if you lose with Congress, having already told the world you are going to use military force, people will proclaim the effective end of your second term,” he warned during the meeting.

  However, after voicing their concerns, all three ultimately expressed support for the President’s plan to request congressional approval. They said that, by making our case to the public and campaigning relentlessly, we would be able to mobilize the required votes. An important factor in their thinking was Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vocal support for US military action, along with that of the influential lobbying group AIPAC. Further, because Iran was supporting Assad, they argued that the anti-Iran animus on the Hill would help us get over the vote thresholds needed in the House and Senate.

  Every fiber in my being was alarmed by Obama’s proposed plan, but when I spoke up during the meeting, I phrased my apprehension as a question. “The thing I don’t understand is, what happens if Congress doesn’t support you?” I asked. “Does that mean Assad could just keep using chemical weapons, and they would become like a conventional weapon of war?”

  Even though Obama planned to publicly stress that the Constitution provided him the authority to use force regardless of how Congress voted, I did not believe that he would launch strikes in the face of open opposition on Capitol Hill. It therefore seemed particularly dangerous to announce a decision to go to Congress without first having a well-informed understanding of where the necessary votes would come from.

  Obama seized on my question, asking others around the table to debate it. But instead of grappling with what we would do if the House and Senate did not support us, people quickly returned to arguing that Congress could be brought on board.

  Within just a few weeks, I would feel comfortable asserting a view in cabinet discussions on any subject, giving voice to whatever doubts or questions stirred inside me. But that fateful day, less than a month after assuming my new position, I felt as though I had just parachuted into a conversation mid-sentence. And on the specific issue of legislative feasibility, I believed I had to defer to Biden, Kerry, and Hagel. The three former senators brought a combined seventy-six years of experience on Capitol Hill to the discussion.

  I also knew that the day before, Susan had tried to convince Obama that Congress could not be relied upon. He had not budged then, and nothing in his disposition as he chaired the meeting led me to believe he was open to changing his mind.

  What I did not know in that Saturday meeting was that this would end up being the only time Obama would seriously contemplate using military force against the Assad regime. We would have countless meetings and debates on Syria over the next three and a half years, but he would never again consider taking the kind of risk he had been prepared to bear in the immediate aftermath of the August 21st attack.

  THE PRESIDENT G
AVE ME TWO MAIN ASSIGNMENTS once he made public his decision to go to Congress: drumming up international statements of support for American military action, and helping to mobilize domestic public opinion in advance of the House and Senate votes.

  While the countries in the UN had been relatively united in the run-up to NATO’s intervention in Libya, member states were divided over the right course of action in Syria. Leading the opposition to military strikes were the Russians, who wanted to forestall bombing at all costs. Syria hosted the Russian military’s only base outside the former Soviet Union, and Russian arms manufacturers sold the Syrian military billions of dollars’ worth of weapons. Despite the fact that only limited US strikes were planned, Putin worried that US actions would set in motion a chain of events that could result in Assad’s ouster or diminish Russian influence in the region.

  At the UN, Russian diplomats pointed to the 2011 overthrow of Qaddafi and his violent death at the hands of the opposition as a means of discrediting the proposed US response to the chemical attack. Russia argued that NATO’s intervention in Libya had been just another American “regime change” operation under the guise of humanitarian protection, and that this time countries shouldn’t be fooled about what would happen in Syria.

  It was true that when Qaddafi refused to order his forces to stop attacking Libyan civilians, the line became blurred between enforcing the UN Security Council’s civilian protection mandate and pushing for a political transition away from his leadership. But whenever Russian officials raised this objection, they had no answer for how Libyans were going to be protected (as was required by the Council resolution, passed without Russia’s objection) if Qaddafi’s forces kept attacking them. Nonetheless, these claims that the United States and our coalition partners had overstepped on Libya gave Russia another argument for why countries should not support a military operation to confront Assad.