The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir

by Samantha Power

had long taken for granted the importance of individual dignity, the richness of American diversity, and the practical necessity of global cooperation. Yet suddenly, these core values were under assault and far more vulnerable than I had recognized.

In my Irish family, being able to tell a lively story has always been a means of fitting in and drawing people together. As a war correspondent, storytelling was the most effective tool I had to bridge the vast space between those suffering the wounds of distant conflict and my American readers. As a diplomat, when foreign officials refused to budge in negotiations, I would try to shake up stale debates by sharing authentic, firsthand stories about the many

But my main religious practice was (and still remains) private prayer, appeals to God to look after the people who mattered to me, and—even without the reminder of the Angelus bells—prayers of gratitude.

We decide, on issues large and small, whether we will be bystanders or upstanders.

Yet the coincidence of publishing the book in relative proximity to the start of the war made “A Problem from Hell” liable to misinterpretation. A year after

A MONTH AFTER THE US INVASION, my publisher called and informed me that “A Problem from Hell” had won the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction. “Are you

government policymaking. If the White House was going to issue a statement (for example, to condemn a crackdown on protesters in a foreign country), an NSC country specialist would write the first draft. He would then circulate it by email to others on the NSC for edits. Among the recipients would be members of our press team, lawyers, and liaisons to Congress. Every NSC official who was seen to have “equity” in a statement had to be “looped in” so that they could “chop on,” or edit, the words that went out into the world under President Obama’s name. I was stunned by the number of cooks in the

My view was that the way governments treated their own citizens mattered, and could have a direct impact on American national security interests.

“Team of Rivals” before making hard decisions, the group traveling with him to Turkey held a very one-sided view of the matter.5 Of

To put the situation in government-speak, it was the best action-forcing event I would have to push the issue.

Wiesel found a way to close out his remarks with a proclamation of faith. “In the final analysis,” he said, “I believe in man in spite of men.” He continued: I still cling to words, for it is we who decide whether they become spears or balm, carriers of bigotry or vehicles of understanding, whether they are used to curse or to heal, whether they are here to cause shame or to give comfort.

“the willingness of those who are neither perpetrators nor victims to accept the assigned role of bystander, believing . . . the fiction that we do not have a choice.”

“Never compare your insides to somebody else’s outsides,” a mantra I learned to keep at the forefront of my mind.

On average, we were able to bring some 17,000 Iraqis to the United States

someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there’s nothing weak—nothing passive—nothing naive—in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King. But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force

sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism—it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason. He rejected

the false choice between realism and idealism, saying: I believe that peace is unstable where citizens are denied the right to speak freely or worship as they please; choose their own leaders or assemble without fear. Pent-up grievances fester, and the suppression of tribal and religious identity can lead to violence. We also know that the opposite is...

against a democracy, and our closest friends are governments that protect the rights of their citizens. No matter how callously defined, neither America’s interests—nor the world’s—are served by the denial of human aspirations . . . We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice. We can admit the intractability of depravation, and still s...

New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote, “The Oslo speech was the most profound of his presidency, and maybe his life.” Even predictable Republican critics of the President praised it, including Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin.

From there, Obama directed the intelligence community to prepare an unprecedented National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) identifying the places facing the greatest risk of mass atrocities.

couple of weeks into Obama’s presidency, our administration had reversed course and joined the declaration.

Overall, as an administration, we would dispense more than $30 million to support frontline advocates for LGBT rights in some eighty countries. And, in powerful acts of

Obama once told me, “Better is good, and better is actually a lot harder than worse”—a message he has expressed often since leaving office.

“The power of human dignity is always underestimated until the day it finally prevails.”

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

“Nobody’s better than you, but you’re better than nobody.”

CNN asked presidential candidate Donald Trump who was behind the missile strike. Trump repeated Putin’s denials of Russian involvement,

Trump would play a significant role in hyping the possibility of a mass Ebola outbreak in the US, firing off more than fifty tweets on the topic and raising it during his TV appearances.

Obama was providing an awesome demonstration of US leadership and capability—and a vivid example of how a country advances its values and interests at once.

In the wake of this effort, an unusual wave of confidence washed over the UN. The combination of ending the Ebola epidemic and concluding the Iran nuclear deal in 2015 made

diplomats believe for the first time in a while that diplomacy and collective action could, in fact, make the world better and safer.

including an evening featuring the authors Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, who discussed their book The Confidence Code, which argues that “success correlates more closely with confidence than it does with competence.”41

I had heard foreign ambassadors remark on the power of President Clinton choosing Czech refugee Madeleine Albright to represent the United States at the UN, President

Bush naming Afghan immigrant Zalmay Khalilzad, and President Obama selecting me. But immigrants defined every part of American society.

Candidate Trump repeatedly lied about this process, promoting falsehoods like, “We have no idea who [refugees] are, where they come from. There’s no documentation. There’s no paperwork.”49 In fact, two-thirds of all of the refugees who had come to the US in the previous decade were women and children—and we knew who they were.

United States since the landmark Refugee Act of 1980, not one has carried out a lethal act of domestic terrorism.

One of the most vocal public advocates for greater US involvement in Syria was Senator McCain. I had worked with McCain during my years at the White House, and he had supported me during my confirmation process. So when he placed a hold on Deputy National Security Advisor Antony Blinken’s nomination to become Obama’s Deputy Secretary

State, I volunteered to call the senator to smooth out the situation. “McCain and I have a

great relationship,” I assured Blinken. “...

Although commentators frequently claimed that Obama came to view the Libya decision as the “worst mistake” of his presidency, he made publicly clear that what he regretted was “failing to plan for the day after what I think was the right thing to do in intervening in Libya” (italics mine).57 And despite the fracturing

However, Obama was never convinced that the United States could use military force “carefully and responsibly” in Syria.

Reversing ourselves in public left us looking confused, and it exposed how constrained the President was domestically on foreign policy.

massive population movement sent a half million Syrian refugees across Europe in 2015 alone. Presidential candidate Donald Trump and Brexit advocates used this biblical flight to help strategically

demonize migrants and refugees, a key element of their successful campaigns.

but all we can know is that those of us involved in helping devise Syria policy will forever carry regret over our inability to do more to stem the crisis.

economist Albert Hirschman’s book Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. Published in 1970, Hirschman wrote that when someone is unhappy with a policy or practice, they can choose to “exit,” exercise “voice” (communicate grievances internally or through public protest), or be governed by “loyalty,” which “holds exit at bay and activates voice.”

The inclination to remain silent or to acquiesce in the presence of the great men—to live to fight another day, to give on this issue so that you can be “effective” on later issues—is overwhelming . . . it is easy to rationalize the decision to stay aboard. By doing so, one may be able to prevent a few bad things from happening and perhaps even make a few good things happen.

‘Don’t do stupid shit’

for my US government colleagues. The Heath brothers stressed that, counterintuitively, big problems “are most often solved by a sequence of small solutions, sometimes over weeks, sometimes over decades.” “Shrink the change” became a kind of motto for me and my team, along with President Obama’s version of the point: “Better is good.”

“Even if we can’t solve the whole problem,” I would say, “surely there is something we can do.”