In an Age of Worrying Global Trends, Ambassador Power Offers Hope and a Challenge to Aspiring Diplomats

Abstract

In an Age of Worrying Global Trends, Ambassador Power Offers Hope and a Challenge to Aspiring Diplomats Jenna Wichterman (bio) Review of Samantha Power, The Education of an Idealist (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2019). “What can one individual do?” In a world suffuse with suffering, disorder, and conflict, can one person—or one country, for that matter—truly make a difference in addressing some of our globe’s most pressing issues? This question emerges as a central theme in Ambassador Samantha Power’s memoir, The Education of an Idealist. It is a question that she continuously asks herself, and implicitly challenges the reader to ask themselves as well. Power’s voice is one of deep conviction and moral clarity, as she seeks to elevate the role of human rights in American foreign policy and persuade other policymakers to wield the immense power of the United States with a greater sense of responsibility. Power’s Memoir: A Summary Power writes a captivating narrative about her entrance into foreign policy as a war correspondent in the Balkans and her subsequent tenure in the Obama White House. An immigrant from Ireland, she describes herself as mesmerized by the American promise of freedom, opportunity, and promotion of human dignity— such that she is appalled at American hypocrisy when its people cry “never again” at genocides throughout history, yet stand idly by in subsequent decades of human rights atrocities. After calling for stronger American action to prevent violence as a war correspondent in fragmenting Yugoslavia, she returns to the United States and writes her first book, A Problem from Hell, arguing that US policymakers often fail to fully use their leverage in order to prevent genocide. She meets with upand-coming Senator Barack Obama, who hires her as a foreign policy fellow on [End Page 185] his Senate staff. Following his presidential election, Power then enters the halls of power: first as senior director for multilateral affairs at the National Security Council, then as US ambassador to the United Nations. In these roles, Power wrestles with navigating her newfound responsibility to uphold the principles which she had espoused as an activist. She began her journey as an untested idealist, and though her opinions gain nuance throughout her career, she concludes her tenure in government with sustained belief in the power of these ideals. An Argument for Human Rights, Shrinking the Change, and Coalition-Building Ambassador Power’s memoir is not merely a narrative; it is an extended argument for the promotion of human rights, the importance of even incremental attempts to ameliorate complex global problems, and the value of leadership through coalition-building. Power contends that the United States should use various tools in its policy toolbox to promote human dignity and protect the vulnerable around the world whenever feasible. American foreign policymakers, she believes, “should not frame [their] policy options in terms of doing nothing or unilaterally sending in the Marines.”1 Rather, the United States has a vast toolbox of other options, including economic sanctions, public shaming, public and private diplomacy, multilateral peacekeeping operations, and negotiations, among others. “Even if we can’t solve the whole problem,” Ambassador Power often told her team in the US Mission to the UN, “surely there is something we can do.”2 Her rejection of the all-or-nothing approach to global issues remains the secret to Power’s effectiveness throughout her government tenure.3 She highlights ways in which the United States significantly improved people’s lives around the world with low-cost efforts. She argues that American diplomatic pressure on the Sudanese government influenced their decision to respect South Sudan’s 2011 independence referendum, preventing potential violence.4 When Ambassador Power was briefed about warning signs of imminent massacres in the Central African Republic, she personally visited the country (becoming the first US cabinet official to do so). While her visit did not fully solve the problem, Power’s elevation of this issue helped galvanize the international community in successful peacekeeping and prevention efforts.5 Whenever her team at the United Nations began to feel overwhelmed with the magnitude of a problem, she pushed them to consider how to “shrink the change” and keep...