The Education of an Idealist

by Samantha Power

  “Multitasking,” I said. “I’m just feeding my girl.”

  Kerry howled with laughter.

  “That’s SO GREAT, Sam. Make sure she gets a good meal, and then go stick it to the Russians.”

  In the end, guided by the Kerry–Lavrov framework and backed by the technical expertise of our respective arms control teams and lawyers, we came to an agreement on the text of a resolution. The final step was to put it before the Security Council for passage.

  WALKING INTO THE COUNCIL chamber before the vote on September 27th, I noticed Kerry chatting with Lavrov. When I approached, I saw the Russian foreign minister was handing out blue pins adorned with a white dove, the symbol of peace. It was simply too much, and I walked back the way I came.

  Kerry was upbeat about what we had accomplished. Just after he sat in the US chair to take the vote on what would become UN Security Council Resolution 2118, he leaned back and said, “This is a pretty damn good resolution, Sam.”

  In one sense, he was right. We had made the best of a bad situation. The operational mission that we had created with Russia would eventually result in the destruction of equipment used to make chemical weapons at twenty-one separate Syrian sites. Meanwhile, the existing chemicals in Syria’s extensive arsenal would be removed from their hiding places and loaded onto Danish and Norwegian ships. Under the protection of naval forces from Russia, China, Denmark, Norway, and the UK at various points in their journey, the ships would carry much of the chemical stockpile to an Italian port, where an American Navy vessel would receive the most dangerous of the chemicals and then neutralize them in international waters.

  On a scale of one to ten, the degree of difficulty of such an unprecedented, multifaceted mission in a red-hot war zone was eleven.

  And yet, over the next year, brave men and women would achieve the seemingly impossible, removing and destroying a whopping 1,300 tons of chemical agents that Assad would otherwise have had at his disposal for future attacks.

  Although Russia’s involvement in this effort seemed puzzling at the time, Putin likely supported the mission in order to eliminate even the miniscule near-term chance that Obama would use military force in Syria. His coziness with Assad notwithstanding, Putin may have also wanted to reduce the likelihood of his ally staging another large chemical weapons attack down the road. Even though Congress had effectively tied Obama’s hands for this round, the Russian leader knew that Assad was a serial chemical weapons user. After his next attack, the United States military would have targets at the ready, and the congressional political dynamics might have shifted. By forcing Assad to renounce chemical weapons and getting him to work with the international community to destroy them, Putin was also, in a perverse sense, legitimizing Assad, who tried to portray himself as a person willing to do whatever it took for “peace.”

  More broadly, Putin was on a mission to restore Russian greatness. Spearheading this initiative won him accolades, with many commentators praising the Russian leader for showcasing his country’s enduring influence on the world stage—and for outmaneuvering Obama.

  I secured the strongest deal possible in a circumstance where our leverage had been badly dented by Congress’s opposition to the President’s proposed authorization. But on the day my first major Security Council resolution became law, I could not shake the concern that the Council was implicitly licensing other kinds of attacks on civilians. After all, because Russia refused to include references to SCUD missiles, artillery, barrel bombs, and even napalm, the resolution was silent on Assad’s other murderous weapons.

  What the United States and Russia had done together was meaningful, but we could not pretend it was remotely enough. With the threat of US military force no longer looming, the Syrian military resumed its ferocious assaults on civilians. Two days after the resolution’s passage, a regime air strike would kill fourteen people, most of them children on their first day of school.

  Additionally, in the months after the Syrian government issued a “declaration” of its inventory, laying out the quantities and locations of its stockpiles, laboratories, and delivery systems, we discovered that it omitted some capabilities and supplies we knew it had.30 Several years would pass before the regime would dare to use sarin gas again. But just seven months after the Council vote, the Syrian military began weaponizing chlorine, relying on the widely available household chemical to supplant the sophisticated weapons we were destroying.

  More than anything, I despaired for the future of Syria. By coming so close to punishing Assad only to pull back, the US government had moved farther away than ever before, telegraphing that we would likely never do so. Assad could reasonably conclude that, going forward, he could starve his people into submission, carpet bomb hospitals and schools, and eventually even resume chemical weapons attacks, all without the United States doing much to stop him.

  Although the effects of this red-line episode were hard to measure, a large number of foreign diplomats told me afterward that America’s “flip-flopping” had damaged President Obama’s global reputation. I found much of this criticism maddening, given that many of these same ambassadors represented countries that would never have stood publicly with the United States had we gone ahead with air strikes. But it is undeniable that the perception of the “unenforced threat” shadowed our administration’s subsequent efforts to influence Assad and other actors in the war. This moved us further away from the President’s aim—and the regional and global necessity—of achieving a negotiated settlement to end the conflict.

  Despite making the best of a terrible predicament, there was no getting around the fact that President Obama’s own public statements prior to going to Congress reflected a firm conviction: what Assad had done merited using military force. As Obama had asked in his speech to the nation on August 31st, “What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price?”

  Obama went to Congress because he believed that legislators would heed what their Commander in Chief called “a serious danger to our national security.” They didn’t. Assad still paid some price—giving up chemical weapons—but he subsequently used the rest of his arsenal with even greater abandon.

  The costs—to Syrians, the United States, and the world—would continue to grow.

  — 31 —

  When America Sneezes

  Early on in my tenure as UN ambassador, I attended a Security Council session dedicated to addressing mounting violence in the Central African Republic (CAR), an impoverished, landlocked country of 4.6 million people being engulfed by Muslim-on-Christian and Christian-on-Muslim terror. At the session, CAR’s UN ambassador, Charles Doubane, pleaded with the Council to come to the rescue of his “bewildered, helpless people.” He told us that fifty-three years after independence, his country had “totally collapsed.”

  I was startled to hear Doubane describe himself as the “Ambassador of a failed state.” I was also horrified by the litany of graphic examples he offered of the savagery that CAR’s people were suffering. Despite the work I had done on mass atrocities over the years, I knew almost nothing about the situation Doubane was describing. I arranged a meeting with him so I could begin to get educated.

  The Permanent Mission of the Central African Republic to the United Nations, like that of many small countries, was located in an unassuming office complex a block from UN Headquarters. When I arrived, a diminutive, elderly, French-speaking man answered the door, exclaiming happily, “Bonjour Madame l’Ambassadrice!” Upon walking in, I was struck by the fact that the CAR “team” consisted of just two people—Doubane and this cheerful man whose suit hung off his frail limbs.

  While the US Mission to the UN contained nearly two hundred offices and cubicles spread across twenty-two floors, the CAR Mission amounted to the entryway where I found myself standing and a tiny adjoining room. The Mission carried the pungent smell of cologne and was inordinately tidy. In fact, it had so little clutter that I wondered if th
e two diplomats had just moved in.

  As I processed the scene, Ambassador Doubane strode into the entryway, where his associate now stood holding a bulky camera. The ambassador was dressed spiffily in a navy suit with a royal blue silk handkerchief in his blazer pocket to match his royal blue shirt. He shook my hand warmly. Then he stiffened, stood between his country’s flag and that of the United Nations, and—as his colleague snapped photos and I listened—spoke with great formality, declaring:

  Madame Power, since the Central African Republic declared independence in 1960, no greater honor has befallen our humble Mission than to have the chance to welcome you here. We have checked our records, and we can find no evidence that a US Permanent Representative has ever before visited the Central African Republic’s Mission to the United Nations.

  By taking the time out of your busy schedule to be with us here today, you have shown us that the world’s superpower cares about what happens in our small, suffering country—that the Honorable Barack Obama knows our pain. My country will remember this visit forever. You have given us the first hope we have felt in a very long time.

  I stood awkwardly as the ambassador delivered his homage. Amid all that President Obama was juggling, I was not sure he was carefully tracking the violence in the Central African Republic, and, new to my job, I had not intended to raise expectations with the CAR government about what the United States might do to help. When Doubane had finished, I said I was very touched by what he had said and thanked him for taking the time to meet with me. I knew every minute of his day was precious, as his people were counting on him to rally the world. I added that I would do my best not to disappoint him.

  He walked me toward a chair in his office, and on the small glass coffee table, incongruous against the spartan office furnishings, I saw a lush collection of fresh white and yellow roses. I knew that the CAR government was so short on funds that it had fallen behind on its negligible UN dues and was struggling to pay the rent. Catching my gaze, Ambassador Doubane explained, “This is a very special occasion for us. Ever since your scheduler called last week, we have been preparing our office for your visit.”

  With the formalities behind us, he asked how he could be of help. I said I had no agenda. “I have just come to learn,” I said. “Tell me more about your country.”

  He began to speak but quickly stopped. I initially thought he was struggling to find the proper English word to convey his meaning, but then I realized he was tearing up. I touched his arm and told him I was sorry about the horrors befalling his people. He said quickly, “No, it’s not that, Ambassador. What is happening in my country is terrible—more terrible than anything that has ever happened to us before. But I am emotional because you are here. The United States of America is the greatest country in the world, and you, America, are here.”

  MY ENCOUNTERS WITH AMBASSADOR DOUBANE influenced me in at least two important ways. First, after human rights organizations and UN officials in CAR began echoing his warning of a coming genocide, I took the first of four trips to Doubane’s country—a country that no US cabinet official had ever visited. Convinced that the potential for genocide was real, I reached out to Rwandan president Paul Kagame and got his agreement to send Rwandan peacekeeping troops to CAR. My team in Washington then worked with the Pentagon to get the fast-moving US military to equip and fly Burundian and Rwandan soldiers into the inferno as part of a beefed-up protection force.

  My French counterpart, Gérard Araud, was already elevating the issue at the UN, where many other conflicts were competing for attention. I joined him, lobbying humanitarians to help stranded civilians who wished to leave their religiously mixed communities because they were afraid of being butchered.

  The Obama administration’s engagement over the next several years did not solve the crisis in the Central African Republic. Far from it. Thousands have been killed and one out of every four Central Africans remains displaced. As a detailed study produced by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s genocide prevention center later noted, “Although the forces the United States helped deploy may have proven to be among the most effective peacekeepers in CAR, they represented only a tiny fraction of what was needed to stop the violence.”31

  Nonetheless, when the international forces arrived, the Christian-Muslim atrocities were spiraling out of control. The troop influx gave some people the ability to remain in their homes and others the means to escape. With time, the peacekeepers brought down the level of violence. Under President Obama, the United States would also become the world’s most generous country toward CAR, providing more than $800 million in funding for humanitarian aid and peacekeeping operations during his second term. My team and I were able to bring attention to the crisis and help galvanize efforts that may have prevented the worst-case scenarios from coming to pass. Our actions led some to claim that we helped avert a genocide. I had gone into government hoping to be a part of efforts like this.

  The second consequence of visiting Ambassador Doubane and hearing his story was that I decided to try to meet with each of the UN ambassadors to learn theirs. Partly, this decision was strategic: for the big, challenging votes in the General Assembly, where the United States was often outnumbered, the relationships I built could turn my colleagues into unlikely allies. But even if these so-called courtesy calls did not win extra support for the United States, I believed in the importance of conveying a sentiment I often heard from Vice President Biden, quoting his own mother: “Nobody’s better than you, but you’re better than nobody.”

  The UN Charter says that the UN is “based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members,” but almost nothing at the UN conveyed equality between the United States and, say, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the most destitute country in the world. So few people worked at the missions of small or poor countries that they often missed important votes and negotiations. If the ambassadors had conflicting doctor’s appointments or traveled home for consultations, for example, they often lacked backup to ensure someone would take their place.

  The United States, on the other hand, was the host country to the United Nations. We were the most powerful and richest country in the world. At times, this privilege led us to take other countries for granted. But when we recognized the inherent worth of nations and the individuals who represented them, we were valuing their dignity. By visiting the other ambassadors rather than having them travel to the US Mission to meet me (as was traditional), I was able to see the art my colleagues wanted to showcase, the family photos on their desks, and the books they had brought with them all the way to America. Most significantly, regardless of their size, wealth, or geopolitical heft, I could show them America’s respect.

  The role model I looked to for how to engage my colleagues was Eddie. In the three decades I had watched him, no taxi driver, medical patient, or person at the local café with an unusual accent seemed to be immune to his charm—or his questions. “You wouldn’t happen to be from Uzbekistan?” he would ask, before sharing his love of silks from Samarkand. When he spotted a very tall, thin African with facial scars, he might ask, “Do you come from the Dinka or the Nuer ethnic group?” These conversations often ended with an exchange of telephone numbers and an agreement to meet for coffee later in the week. Eddie read more than anybody I had ever met, but he supplemented what he learned in books by engaging the walking, talking libraries that populated our daily lives: the people around us.

  During my three and a half years as the US Ambassador to the UN, I was able to visit with the ambassador of every member state in the UN, except North Korea. When I mentioned to friends what I was doing, they would sometimes gasp, thinking I was planning to visit the other 192 countries in the world. In fact, my ambition was modest: I never once had to leave the island of Manhattan to access representatives from every corner of the planet.

  My twenty-four-year-old scheduler, Megan Koilparampil, took full ownership of this effort. She had read “A Problem from Hell” after
college, and during her job interview, she made clear that her interest in atrocity prevention drew her to the position. She understood that the operations work she and others in the US Mission did—scheduling, logistics, and event or trip planning—was every bit as important as the work our diplomats did negotiating through the night. Indeed, the operations team had mugs made with the acronym “GSD” (for “Get Shit Done”) on the side.

  Megan devoured the task of scheduling courtesy calls. Some of the people who answered at the offices I hoped to visit did not speak English, so Megan canvassed our team to find people with the necessary language skills. At the small, understaffed missions, days of attempts were sometimes required before someone answered the phone. Often, it was the ambassador who eventually picked up. When I had concluded my visit to a foreign colleague’s office, very often he or she would bid me farewell with a request to “say hi to Megan.” On occasion, when urging a country to take a tough vote, I would invoke the person they would least want to disappoint. “I am really counting on you,” I would say. “And so is Megan.”

  The one-on-one meetings were eye-opening and often inspiring. Usually, when I reached out to a foreign diplomat, I did so because I needed something: I might want their country to support our position in a tense budget negotiation, for instance, or to send its soldiers to protect civilians in a crisis zone. But I tried not to use these individual visits to make such “asks.”

  Instead, I inquired about the ambassadors’ upbringings, how they became diplomats, what they missed most about their countries, and what challenges they found most daunting. Around 50 of the 191 ambassadors I visited reported that no US Permanent Representative had set foot in their mission before. Many treated “America’s visit” as a very special occasion, dressing up more formally than usual, bringing national delicacies from home to offer me, and having a camera at the ready to record the moment for posterity.