The Education of an Idealist

by Samantha Power

  * To be clear: what happened in Bosnia was not “like” the Holocaust in the sense that Bosnian Serb militants did not set out to murder every Bosnian Muslim or Croat, as Hitler had tried to wipe out all of Europe’s Jews. Serb nationalists pursued what they called “ethnic cleansing,” murdering thousands of civilians because of their ethnicity and expelling the rest. But what happened in Bosnia was, in fact, genocide. The UN Genocide Convention had deliberately defined genocide as destruction, rather than extermination, as its authors believed that requiring a showing of intent to exterminate a whole group would ensure that action to halt genocide would invariably come too late.

  * I served as its executive director until 2002.

  * Janjaweed, roughly translated, means “evil horseman.”

  * In the year 2000, CFR had awarded me a fellowship, which I had deferred for several years, but which helped support a yearlong stint in Senator Obama’s office.

  * The Situation Room refers to the secure complex built by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. It includes both the main conference room, known from countless movies, and several smaller breakout rooms, such as the one depicted in the now-famous photo of President Obama and his top advisers tracking the Osama bin Laden raid in 2011.

  * We ran for, and won, a seat on the Human Rights Council in 2009. Through our leadership in the Council, over the course of President Obama’s time in office we helped authorize international commissions and rapporteurs that exposed human rights abuses in many repressive places, including Iran, Syria, Sudan, Russian-occupied Crimea, and North Korea. Our spearheading of a UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea allowed us in 2014 to mobilize the necessary votes to put North Korean human rights violations on the Security Council agenda for the first time. In response to Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa’s atrocities against Tamil civilians, we led the Human Rights Council to adopt resolutions insisting on accountability for wartime abuses. This resulted in the diplomatic isolation of the Sri Lankan government, a factor that reportedly influenced some Sri Lankans, who voted him out of office in 2015. We also succeeded in getting the Human Rights Council to reduce by half the share of country-specific resolutions on Israel.

  * They were, respectively, UN Ambassador Susan Rice’s deputy Erica Barks-Ruggles, Deputy National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg, Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey, and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy.

  * Although Turkey and Armenia did sign protocols in October of 2009 pledging to normalize relations, the process fell apart by 2010, and the rapprochement never occurred.

  * Secretary of State Clinton and Secretary of Defense Gates were usually allowed to bring only a single aide to NSC meetings, and they understandably complained when they saw NSC staff filling the scarce seats lining the walls of the Situation Room.

  * In November of 2017, as the #MeToo movement was unfolding, more than two hundred women in the American national security community—including colleagues of mine from the Obama administration—signed an open letter that offered a stinging assessment of how women were treated within our profession. Noting that sexual harassment and abuse was “not just a problem in Hollywood, Silicon Valley, newsrooms or Congress,” the letter stated, “Many women are held back or driven from the national security field by men who use their power to assault at one end of the spectrum and perpetuate—sometimes unconsciously—environments that silence, demean, belittle or neglect women at the other.”

  * Some 142,000 Iraqis had worked for the US government, military, and other US-backed programs since the beginning of the war in 2003. As a result of their work, many had been branded “traitors” by Iraqi extremists and gone into hiding.

  * The stipend, which covers refugees’ first three months in the United States, had been $900 a month for decades. This was hardly a windfall. Most refugees arrive to the United States in extremely precarious financial situations, but they are required to reimburse the US government for the full cost of their travel, which often totals thousands of dollars and drives them into debt soon after arrival.

  * In 2017, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia would convict Mladić of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, sentencing him to life in prison.

  * Today, seventy countries criminalize being gay, and six (Iran, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen) impose the death penalty for consensual same-sex acts.

  * In 2015, Mugabe would use his UNGA speech to proclaim, “We are not gays!”

  * In his better-known domestic efforts, President Obama secured the inclusion of LGBT soldiers in the military, expanded federal hate crimes protections, and ultimately pushed for a nationwide right to same-sex marriage, which the Supreme Court recognized in 2015.

  * Today, the OGP is comprised of more than seventy countries, which have each made dozens of specific commitments (totaling more than 3,000) to fight corruption and improve service delivery by harnessing new technologies and incorporating citizen feedback into their programs and policies.

  * Even though the ICC now had jurisdiction over crimes being committed in Libya, several countries that were not party to the court were prepared to offer Qaddafi safe exile.

  * Qaddafi had announced in late 2003 that Libya would shut down its rudimentary nuclear weapons program. If the Libyan program had not been terminated—and if it had advanced significantly in the intervening years—it might well have deterred foreign military action in 2011. Nonetheless, in the years after the Libya military intervention, Iran still decided to go along with the US-led plan that curtailed the country’s nuclear weapons program. It is possible that the NATO-Arab intervention in Libya affected the calculation of North Korea’s Kim Jong-un as he assessed whether to trade away his nuclear program for sanctions relief and other incentives. The North Korean government has referenced Libya as a worrying precedent. Experts, however, cite a large range of additional reasons that the Kim regime refuses to give up its nuclear weapons. The analogy between the two countries is particularly fraught because, while Libya did not have any nuclear weapons when it gave up its program, North Korea tested its first nuclear device in 2006 and has many such weapons today. The incentives and leverage for each country diverge in important ways.

  * In the Security Council, the author of a resolution—the “penholder”—submits a draft for the other members of the Council to review. In order for the text to pass and become a resolution, it must receive a positive vote from nine of the fifteen members and not be vetoed by any of the five permanent members—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Because of Russia’s veto power, in 1999, the Council did not authorize NATO’s military campaign to prevent atrocities in Kosovo.

  * Russia’s constitution did not allow a president to serve more than two consecutive terms, so in 2008 Putin became prime minister—and Dmitry Medvedev, his handpicked successor, was elected president. Despite Putin’s move to the prime ministership, he retained significant influence over domestic and foreign policy. In 2012, Medvedev announced that he supported Putin returning to the presidency, and Putin was again elected Russia’s official head of state.

  * Although almost all Libyans were Sunni Muslim, some were secular, while others wanted to see Libya governed by strict adherence to Islamic law.

  * In 2014, President Obama would instruct the State Department to ramp up US diplomacy and Secretary of State John Kerry and others would do so, making relentless efforts. But by then, Libya’s fissures had hardened.

  * During President Obama’s second term, influenced by Aung San Suu Kyi’s stated support for a full lift of economic sanctions, he would remove most of the remaining restrictions. I again raised objections, given the substantial democratic progress yet to be achieved and my worries about the Burmese military’s ongoing abuses against civilians. But the White House made a calculated gamble that greater openness, prosperity, and exposure to the outside world would ul
timately spur political liberalization. In October of 2016, several months before President Obama left office, Rohingya militants staged attacks against local police. Following this, the Burmese military carried out massive “clearance operations” in Rakhine State, destroying a number of villages, killing civilians, and displacing an estimated 94,000 Rohingya. Then, beginning in August of 2017, the Burmese military initiated a catastrophic campaign of murder and rape against the Rohingya population living in Rakhine, which led to thousands of deaths and the exodus of more than 800,000 Rohingya refugees into neighboring Bangladesh. The UN and numerous human rights organizations documented a campaign of “genocidal intent” that included widespread sexual violence, summary executions of civilians (including babies and children), torture, and the destruction of entire villages.

  * Bolton would serve as US Ambassador to the UN under a recess appointment, and in 2018 he became Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor.

  * CSP is a “think tank” that has also been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, due to its anti-Muslim stances.

  * When the UN was founded in 1945, it had just fifty-one members, but the number grew over the years, largely due to decolonization in Africa and Asia and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Initially, China’s seat was occupied by the Republic of China, ruled by Chiang Kai-shek, who had fled with his forces to the island of Taiwan in 1949 after China’s civil war. In 1971, the People’s Republic of China assumed control over China’s seat.

  * In accordance with diplomatic tradition, I would hand over a letter from President Obama that asked Ban to formally accept me as the President’s representative.

  * In addition to the job I held as US Permanent Representative to the United Nations, the Mission had four other US ambassadors—the US Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations and Deputy Representative in the Security Council (Rosemary DiCarlo, followed by Michele Sison), an additional Alternate Representative of the United States for Special Political Affairs in the United Nations (Jeffrey DeLaurentis, followed by David Pressman), a US Representative for UN Management and Reform (Joe Torsella, followed by Isobel Coleman), and a US Representative on the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (Elizabeth Cousens, followed by Sarah Mendelson).

  * After the Council passes an enforcement resolution, however, nothing happens in the real world unless the countries that belong to the UN act on that resolution. For example, when the Council creates a new peacekeeping mission, some of the 193 UN member states must contribute the troops, police, equipment, and funding that make such a mission possible.

  * By this time, the press was reporting that Israel, France, and the UK had reached the same conclusion that Assad was using chemical weapons.

  * International law generally recognizes three circumstances in which states are permitted to resort to the use of force on the territory of another state: (1) when acting in individual or collective self-defense; (2) when the other state consents; or (3) when explicitly authorized by the UN Security Council. As veto-holders, the permanent members of the Security Council thus have tremendous say in how—or whether—force can be used under international law to confront threats to peace and security. In this case, Russia’s veto prevented the Security Council from taking any action in response to Syria’s blatant violation of international humanitarian law.

  * The day before this Saturday meeting, British prime minister David Cameron’s military authorization measure had been narrowly defeated in Parliament by a margin of 285–272. The loss was a humiliating blow and a misreading by Cameron of UK politics, presaging the 2016 Brexit vote that would drive him from office.

  * A simple majority in each house of Congress would have been needed to pass an authorization for use of military force.

  * Twenty-four UN member states did not vote, either because of their small staffs or in order to avoid alienating either the United States or Russia.

  * In addition to Russia, the NO votes came from Armenia, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, North Korea, Nicaragua, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe. This meant that Russia, while technically not “alone,” did not win any support beyond the “who’s who” of repressive states that generally voted together irrespective of the substance of the resolutions. Even China did not vote with Russia.

  * In 2018, the Joint Investigative Team (JIT) responsible for investigating what happened to MH17 concluded that the Russian military’s 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade was responsible for providing the Russian separatists with this missile system. The JIT—comprised of criminal investigators from the governments of Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Malaysia, and Ukraine—also documented that the system in question returned to Russia after the attack.

  * In the end, Russia managed just forty-three YES votes to remove LGBT partner benefits, receiving support from countries like Saudi Arabia, China, Iran, India, Egypt, Pakistan, and Syria. We secured eighty NO votes to preserve them. Thirty-seven countries abstained, while thirty-three countries did not vote.

  * It gave me no pleasure to vote for Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had attacked political rights and civil liberties, stacked the judiciary, and moved aggressively to silence critical voices. He and his political party had also taken to demonizing refugees and the Hungarian-born investor George Soros, using rhetoric with anti-Semitic undertones. Still, compared to Russia—which was facilitating mass atrocities in Syria and had invaded Ukraine—Hungary was the better option.

  * At the time, well over half of the 150 people entering the US on a daily basis from the affected countries were American citizens or permanent residents; the proposed travel ban could only have been legally applied to noncitizens.

  * Due to significant underreporting, these official numbers were probably far lower than the actual human toll.

  * In addition to my small group of aides from the US Mission to the UN, our delegation included Jeremy Konyndyk, director of USAID’s Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance; and Andrew Weber, the State Department’s Deputy Coordinator for Ebola Response.

  * By comparison, in 2014 more than 55,000 Americans died of flu-related illnesses, while some 32,000 Americans died in car accidents.

  * Lasting Ebola-free declarations were made by the World Health Organization on March 17th, 2016, for Sierra Leone; June 1st, 2016, for Guinea; and June 9th, 2016, for Liberia.

  * Because ambassadors came and went, the number fluctuated during my tenure, rising as high as forty-two and dipping to thirty-six.

  * The United Kingdom would appoint its first female ambassador to the UN in 2018.

  * According to Human Rights Watch, over the course of thirty-six hours in late 2014, Sudanese uniformed and armed military personnel raped more than two hundred women and girls in a “systematic” attack in the town of Tabit.

  * The name roughly translates as “Western education is forbidden.”

  * Boko Haram carried out 183 suicide attacks over the course of 2014 and 2015. Of these attacks, 58 were perpetrated by children, three-quarters of whom were girls.

  * High-level trips are valuable because they often generate White House–led processes through which US government agencies find “deliverables” that, when announced, might make the host government more responsive to US requests. Travel by senior US officials is thus often accompanied by an announcement of new US funding. Without making this trip, I could not have secured the release of a similar level of additional assistance.

  * As it happened, Boko Haram would stage multiple attacks while our delegation was in the region, including an assault on a Cameroonian checkpoint that killed three soldiers and a suicide bombing that killed eight people at a camp for displaced persons in Northeast Nigeria.

  * Since 2016, more than 100 of the 219 Chibok girls who ended up in captivity have either escaped or been freed by Boko Haram. Aisha was one of the girls released by the group in 2017 following negotiations with the Nigerian government.