The Education of an Idealist

by Samantha Power

  Looking back, I cringe at how hard I was pushing myself through the most hectic and demanding workdays I had ever experienced. But my doctor didn’t see a health risk, and I saw women further along in their pregnancies moving at the same frenetic pace—just as I had seen my mother do years before when she was pregnant with my brother.

  AS A NEW NSC EMPLOYEE, I had anticipated that I would get some kind of tutorial on how to do my job. But while I found directions on my desk for how to set up my voicemail, there was no manual on how to help shape US foreign policy.

  President Obama’s NSC served as a central coordinating hub to inform and advise his decision-making on national security, and to ensure that his foreign policy was implemented across numerous executive branch agencies. Senior Directors were the core of the President’s NSC staff, and we held roughly the same “rank” as Assistant Secretaries at the State Department. We prepared background papers and talking points, and we offered advice to President Obama, National Security Adviser Jones, and Deputy National Security Adviser Tom Donilon on what the United States should do vis-à-vis particular countries, emerging threats, and sudden crises. On key matters, we would lay out before the President the pros and cons of pending choices. These “decision memos” were liable to cover everything from whether to provide Pakistan additional military assistance to whether Obama should meet with the Dalai Lama over Chinese objections.

  The NSC had “regional” Senior Directors for every part of the world, “homeland” Senior Directors for threats like natural disasters and cyberattacks, and “functional” Senior Directors for issues that cut across different parts of the globe, such as nuclear nonproliferation, climate and energy, and international economics. As the functional Senior Director responsible for multilateral affairs, I advised the President on US relations with international organizations, especially the United Nations.

  My portfolio was broad. On a typical day, I might review a UN Security Council draft resolution ratcheting up sanctions against Iran or I might assess whether the United States should support deploying UN peacekeepers to a conflict zone. I also got Jones’s permission to serve concurrently as Obama’s Senior Director for Human Rights, since no other Senior Director had been assigned that responsibility.

  In theory, my human rights role meant that I would be able to generate discussion within the NSC and across the government about possible US actions to combat political repression, anti-Semitism, crackdowns on religious minorities, human trafficking, or mass atrocities. In practice, however, I needed support from the appropriate regional Senior Director when I wanted to influence policy toward a particular country where abuses were occurring. Some colleagues were more enthusiastic than others about my involvement in “their” countries.

  Because of “optics”—a term that I heard constantly—I even needed sign-offs from regional Senior Directors to hold certain meetings. For example, if I hoped to see a critic of the Egyptian government to learn about worsening conditions in the country’s prisons, I first had to check with the Senior Director responsible for the Middle East. My colleagues were sometimes concerned about the “message” that holding meetings with dissidents would send to governments whose cooperation the United States sought. Occasionally, I would be asked to delegate a meeting to a lower-level person at the State Department to avoid raising the ire of an American ally. They had a point: foreign governments could in fact get upset when they heard that White House officials had taken meetings with opposition figures, but the irritation would quickly pass. I argued (unsuccessfully) that routinizing such non-official contacts would make us better informed and render each specific meeting less noteworthy, as it would be interpreted as part of a larger, systemic approach.

  My first months on the NSC in some ways reminded me of moving to the United States thirty years before. I had once again arrived in a foreign land. In Pittsburgh, I had self-consciously appropriated the idioms and expressions I heard my friends use. Now, I was exposed to a whole new bureaucratic lingo. I had to anticipate “pushback” from constituencies that I had never even known existed. I saw government officials “foot-stomping” points they felt strongly about. When the President was meeting with another head of state, we had to agree in advance on what “the ask” and “the deliverables” would be. When the bureaucracy was mired in gridlock, one hoped for an “action-forcing event” like a high-level official’s testimony before Congress or an upcoming meeting with a foreign minister that would create pressure to make a decision.

  Sports metaphors, which I readily understood, were ubiquitous. When we secured what we wanted at the UN, for example, it was generally not a good idea to “spike the ball” and boast about our success. When we couldn’t decide on the best path forward, we needed to “tee up” the issue for higher-level decision.

  The gendered metaphors made my skin crawl. In advance of laying out the full scope of our strategy for Iraq, “we needed to show some leg” to foreshadow what we were about to do, or we needed to go in “open Kimono” and be fully transparent. When we landed on an option in the middle, avoiding a hard choice, we might find ourselves “half-pregnant,” a phrase I’m embarrassed to say I heard myself using while more than half-pregnant.

  WORKING AT THE NSC seemed a little bit like conducting an orchestra. I had one very important power: I got to choose the “music” within my area—that is, the issue on which to spur a government-wide debate about what the United States should do. I then chaired meetings in the Situation Room,* gathering people from the intelligence community, the State Department, the Defense Department, the Treasury Department, USAID, and other agencies to explore whether we could agree on a desired strategy.

  These meetings were rarely harmonious. Even representatives from the same government agency often disagreed on an appropriate approach. State Department country experts, for instance, might differ from their colleagues focused on war crimes prosecutions over how to hold a government accountable for large-scale civilian deaths. A few of Obama’s political appointees in the Defense Department embraced my recommendation that the United States join the international treaty banning land mines, while long-serving, uniformed officers staunchly opposed the idea. The discussions could be raucous, tense, and unpleasant.

  When a decision was especially important or we could not reach consensus about next steps, Donilon would convene the “Deputies,” the number-two officials of each government agency, or Jones would gather the “Principals,” the heads of the agencies like Secretary of State Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. When Obama wished to discuss an issue, he would summon the Principals or relevant NSC staff so as to hear competing perspectives and offer direction.

  The flow of paper—and the so-called clearance process—from one official to the next was the lifeblood of 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 kitchen—and not at all surprised by how blandly the resulting White House statements often read. Anything sharp or interesting was likely to be edited out somewhere along the line.

  And this wasn’t just true of official statements. Everything US officials did seemed to need clearance from someone else, creating countless internal veto points before an idea would be raised with the President. Even First Lady Michelle Obama needed the National Park Service’s sign-off before she could plant a vegetable garden on the South Lawn.

  I was chastised several times during my first month because I sent material directly to Lippert and Donilon without first getting approvals from other Senior D
irectors, who had their own views on the topic. This sin of bypassing colleagues with equities was termed a “process foul,” and being guilty of it felt akin to committing a crime. Over time, however, I came to appreciate the importance of fidelity to “process”—especially when colleagues tried to send the President material that didn’t offer a perspective on how a decision might impact human rights.

  I saw early on how few voices in high-level government discussions highlighted the nexus between human rights and US national security. Although government officials did not brand themselves with the labels that academics obsessed over (like “realist” or “liberal internationalist”), the realist view—which downplayed the importance of “values”—was dominant. Many US officials considered prioritizing human rights to be in tension with, if not antithetical to, our traditional security concerns.

  My view was that the way governments treated their own citizens mattered, and could have a direct impact on American national security interests. Countless studies showed the importance of the rule of law to sustained economic development, and the strong causal links between government repression and civilian susceptibility to radicalization and extremism.2 Nonetheless, it was rare for participants in NSC meetings to identify respect for individual dignity as central to a country’s long-term stability. I would try making these points, but I didn’t get the sense I was denting the entrenched skepticism that I encountered.

  I was not an absolutist. Sometimes, of course, US officials did face a stark, short-term choice between promoting human rights and pursuing competing interests—for example, seeking partnerships with the authoritarian Chinese government in order to confront major shared threats like the North Korean nuclear program and climate change. Sometimes it was unwise to be publicly vocal about human rights concerns, as more progress might be made behind the scenes. Regardless, I was frustrated that we didn’t more often internalize the implications of the truism that countries that treated their citizens with respect made far more reliable partners over time.

  ALTHOUGH I WAS NEWLY ENDOWED with a responsibility to mobilize action, I did not yet know how to move the US government. And from the start, I was aware that very bad things were happening in the world.

  As I wrote in my journal in February of 2009:

  Sudanese troops massed around Darfur. We were told 30,000 people had gathered at the UN base in Darfur . . . The UN was packed up to leave. And Samantha Power, upstander, had no fucking idea how to write a decision memo.

  I wasn’t sure what I needed to do. Was I senior enough to guide the rest of the administration on an issue that didn’t warrant the President’s attention? Who among the other Senior Directors did I need to consult? If one of my colleagues disagreed with my approach, who would break the tie? How would our guidance eventually be dispensed to US diplomats out in the world? These questions would take time for me to sort out.

  My multilateral portfolio required me to make recommendations to President Obama and others on, for example, whether the United States should run for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council. This was a body that I felt we had a clear interest in joining, because participating would allow us to push for broad-based human rights actions. But because the Council dedicated a disproportionate number of its resolutions to denouncing Israel, President Obama would be attacked by some if we ran for a seat.

  Unsure of how to proceed, I sought out Denis McDonough. Denis was now a top adviser to Obama who saw the President several times every day.

  “What does Obama want to do about the Human Rights Council?” I asked.

  “What do you think, Sammy,” he answered back.

  I was confused. I had thought the President would provide us with direction. But it turned out that with the crashing economy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and all the active plotting by terrorists, he was concentrating primarily on high-stakes issues. On other foreign policy matters, Obama would be briefed on what we were doing and would sometimes tell us to change course. But he understood from the start that he would not be able to do his job if he did not delegate.*

  Obama’s thinking departed in important ways from that of the foreign policy establishment. During the presidential campaign, he had taken stances that differed from most Republican and Democratic candidates. However, once in office, he would draw on recommendations from his cabinet and NSC staff in making foreign policy. Because of this more bottom-up process—and because Obama selected a four-star general as National Security Advisor, retained President Bush’s Secretary of Defense, and made someone whom he had sparred with on foreign policy his Secretary of State—his bolder instincts were not always reflected in day-to-day decisions.

  This was especially true in the early months of the administration, when Obama’s mid-level political appointees were awaiting confirmation from the US Senate and not yet in place. Indeed, when I chaired meetings in 2009 to consider whether our administration should take a fresh position on something, I often heard one of two entrenched views: “We never do that,” or “We always do that.” The past was prologue: those who had conceived of policies in a certain way were ill disposed to try something new.

  Truthfully, though, I was often facing a more fundamental problem than dealing with an internally conflicted bureaucracy and ingrained views. On many of the challenges that crossed my desk, I had a hard time answering Denis’s vital question: What did I think?

  When I held back in policy debates out of humility, I saw others—who often knew less—sound off with strong opinions, helping tip the direction of our policy. Being forceful and having others on your side often mattered more than the objective merits of one’s argument.

  Early on, Susan (now Ambassador Rice) warned me: “Don’t let anybody there roll you, Sam.” I wasn’t familiar with what it meant to be “rolled,” so she helpfully clued me in.

  “Act like you are the boss,” Susan counseled, “or people will take advantage of you.”

  I knew that Susan was said to have a “black belt” in bureaucracy, and, determined to accelerate my learning, I jotted down her advice in the government-issued green notebook I carried with me everywhere.

  — 20 —

  Can We Go Home Now?

  I made my first trip to the Oval Office on March 10th, 2009, when UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon paid a courtesy call to President Obama.

  I assumed that I would have little difficulty finding the Oval. After all, in my new universe, it was the sun around which all planets rotated. And by then, I had taken many short walks from my office in the EEOB to the ground floor of the West Wing for Situation Room meetings.

  Unfortunately, as soon as I entered the White House, I realized I had no idea where to go. I rushed back to my office in the EEOB and googled “Oval Office West Wing map.” I ended up printing out a small map from the Washington Post website that showed a floor plan. But the image, which was not drawn to scale, gave me a false sense of security. I wandered up to the second floor, while the Oval—which was tough to miss—was on the first.

  By the time I found my way into the “pre-brief” with the President, the other participants were already seated, and National Security Advisor Jones was speaking. I sat down awkwardly, maneuvering my seven months’ pregnant body onto the couch between my colleagues, trying to catch my breath before the President called on me.

  Since my fainting episodes, I had carried a well-worn Poland Springs water bottle everywhere, and I thought nothing of setting it down on the elegant wooden coffee table next to Obama’s large bowl of fresh apples. As soon as I did so, however, a butler promptly removed the unsightly item from view. Susan, who was sitting next to Jones, tried to give me an encouraging smile, but her face bore the trace of a grimace.

  President Obama greeted me warmly. “How are you, Power?” he said. “Let me give you a minute to get your bearings.” I tried to slow my breathing.

  After he motioned for me to offer my thoughts, I told him that his meeting with the secretary-general was happeni
ng at a critical juncture. The previous week, Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir had been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and genocide perpetrated by his forces in Darfur. In retaliation, he had just expelled thirteen international aid groups from his country, thereby crippling vital food deliveries that Darfuri displaced people needed to survive.

  More nervous than I had ever been in Obama’s presence, I told him that Darfur stood at a “strategic moment.” I emphasized the peril faced by more than a million Darfuris, and I urged him to use his remarks to the press alongside the secretary-general to publicly condemn President Bashir’s actions.

  “This will be the first time your voice will be heard saying that the expulsion of humanitarians is unacceptable,” I said.

  “But if I say that,” Obama asked, “what leverage do we have to follow through?”

  The man who sat before me in the President’s chair looked and sounded just like the man I had worked for in the Senate and on the campaign. However, even two months into his new job, he was different.

  “Nobody is going to go in and arrest Bashir, and his own guys are not going to dislodge him,” Obama continued. The NSC Senior Director for Africa attempted to respond, but the President cut her off as well.

  “What do we have to make Bashir cooperate? Are the Arabs with us?”

  I shook my head.

  “The Africans?”

  “Some,” I said.

  “China?”

  I looked down.

  The Chinese government, which was emerging as a major force in world affairs, argued that a sovereign state had the right to do whatever it wanted within its borders. This position was rooted in its own self-interest: China didn’t want outsiders scrutinizing its domestic human rights abuses. And even though many African leaders had declared their intention never to allow “another Rwanda,” they were not looking to confront the oil-rich government of Sudan.