Chasing The Flame

Samantha Power and Her Opportunity to be Unreasonable

Since the war in Iraq began, millions of Iraqis have fled their homes for safety and security.  More than 1.5 million Iraqis are currently living in Syria, Jordan and other neighboring countries, and more than 2.5 million Iraqis are internally displaced.  These people are some of the world's most vulnerable. For years, NGOs supporting Iraqi refugees and internally displaced people have called on the US government for a more comprehensive plan to assist these people and their host communities.  Finally, the US government has responded, and the president has appointed Samantha Power to coordinate these efforts.

We will never know if Sergio Vieira de Mello fully appreciated the life lessons and experiences that Power captures so beautifully in Chasing the Flame. Nor do we know if he could have transformed them into policy. His final posting in Iraq represented that opportunity, but that opportunity was, as Power describes, constantly frustrated by the United States. 

When Power climbed into Sergio's life and mined it for lessons as she walked with him through Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Iraq, she realized that Sergio's experiences could shed light on and clarify a new way of acting in the world.  Indeed, the key lessons that she derives from Sergio's career are appropriate guidance for her as she assumes this new responsibility.

*Legitimacy matters, and it comes both from legal authority or consent and from competent performance.

*Spoilers, rogue states, and non-state militants must be engaged, if only so they can be sized up and neutralized.

*Fearful people must be made more secure.

*Dignity is the cornerstone of order.

*We outsiders must bring humility and patience to our dealings with foreign lands.

US failures in Iraq are well-documented. Chief among them has been the failure to coordinate the various agencies (and individuals) working in and on the country and the wider region.  Power has the opportunity to correct this failure and her success is dependent upon it.  This is where she will have the opportunity to draw upon her own life lessons and experiences.  It's clear that Power has an ability to synthesize and then articulate complex ideas into policy (not ideology).  She has the ability to engage and excite people, to bring them along with her--she's a natural bridge-builder, and she appreciates the deeply transnational dimensions of this work.  She's courageous, pragmatic and passionately human.  Power faces an enormous challenge, but she is also someone who unashamedly believes in making the world better, in our capacity to change it, in our responsibility to do that work. 

In her Pulitzer Prize-winning first book, A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide, Power quotes George Bernard Shaw.  That quote should act as inspiration for her - and for all of us - as she takes on one of the world's biggest challenges and as she begins to provide the much needed short and long term support that these vulnerable human beings in Iraq so sorely need.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress, depends on the unreasonable man.”

George Bernard Shaw

Darfur: Are we willing to hold our elected officials responsible for inaction?

This week’s congressional hearings on Darfur and the quest for peace in Sudan could provide the necessary momentum for a shift in the Obama administration’s policy on the region which is currently under review.  Witnesses at the hearings included UN Ambassador Susan Rice, former U.S. Envoy to Sudan Richard Williamson,  Roger Winter, former special representative for Sudan to the deputy secretary of State, and John Prendergast and John Norris of Enough.

Winter, Williamson and Prendergast, who have been working on or in Sudan for decades, urged Congress to take a leadership position, to stand up and stand for the principles that they and many in the Obama administration upheld as they campaigned for their current positions.  They also argued that Congress had a critical role to play as the Obama administration struggled to translate the signals coming from Khartoum.  Winter, Williamson and Prendergast urged the representatives to not be fooled by these signals and to better understand how Khartoum has effectively used the international community as it has continued to wreak havoc on the people of Darfuran d the wider region.  They also urged Congress to take a leadership role in demanding a comprehensive plan for the region, to recognize that the stop, start, piecemeal work was not only not working but was playing into Khartoum’s hands.

It seems clear that the Obama administration is split on its interpretation of events in Sudan and on the best course of action to take in the region.  U.S. Special Envoy Scott Gration continues to argue for incentives (carrots) and to question whether in fact genocide is taking place in Darfur. UN Ambassador Rice takes a much firmer stand on Sudan believing, like many of the other witnesses, that sticks should be used instead and that Sudan has not earned any incentives. She also did not publicly question the legitimacy of the genocide charge. As more of these internal debates come to light, so did the stumbling of the Obama administration’s spokespeople.  If Samantha Power were to update "A Problem from Hell," there is little doubt that she would include the exchange between the press and Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs PJ Crowley. Watch it here, and, as you do, reflect on this exchange between the press and State Department Spokesperson Christine Shelley shown in the first few seconds of this clip. .

This infamous exchange has now appeared in books, articles, and documentaries.  It was this response to Rwanda that set the world on fire years later---as they read Philip Gourevitch’s "We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families," Samantha Power’s "A Problem from Hell," and watched Frontline’s Triumph of Evil, Greg Barker’s "Ghosts of Rwanda," and Terry George’s feature film, "Hotel Rwanda."  It was the shock, sadness, shame and desire to not stand by while innocent people were raped, murdered and forced from their homes that inspired thousands of people — and many men and women running for office — to dare to say, “never again, not on my watch.”  Indeed, it was their belief that something could and should be done that inspired them, us, to say it.  Power was correct in her analysis: there is no political cost for standing by, for doing little or nothing, but there should be. There should be more than a moral cost, there should be a political one. But, that is up to us, the voters, and this is where the need for leadership comes in again---it's not just that Congressional leaders need to emerge and speak out, that leaders within the National Security Council need to emerge and speak out, leaders within the Obama administration need to emerge and speak out, it’s that we do.  The only cost that will matter is a political cost and that only matters if we are willing to demand payment.

Is Humanitarian Intervention Dead?

Be sure to check out Samantha's review of Gary Bass's latest, Freedom's Battle, posted on Slate this week. An excerpt:

Historically informed caution certainly seems the right antidote to Bush-era recklessness. An ethnic, national, or religious group must be in immediate danger of being massacred on a large scale; a credible multilateral body must support the intervention. The countries intervening must forswear up front the pursuit of commercial or strategic interests in the region. They must commit to remaining for a finite period and in numbers befitting their limited mandates (though, as Bass notes, it's important to be careful not to allow the killers to wait out the intervention and to deploy a force sizable enough to protect civilians). Finally, the countries entering a foreign land must have done so on the basis of the good-faith calculation that the benefits of such action would outweigh the costs—to the victims, the region, and the intervening parties.

While instituting such requirements should reduce the risks of cynical or counterproductive interventions, the conditions are in fact so stringent that it is not obvious how or when, in today's world, such conditions might be met. Countries are hardly rushing to contribute troops to the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Darfur. And since China and Russia frown on external interferences that aren't of their own making, multilateral consensus is likely to be elusive. On this score, Henry Kissinger seems increasingly correct that "a doctrine of common intervention can furnish a more useful tool to frustrate action than the doctrine of non-interference."

With a few noteworthy exceptions (e.g. Iraq 2003), the United States has acted with inaction when it comes to so-called humanitarian intervention. Will this change? Can it? Should it? History shows that the answers are complex. We all know, however, that the ramifications are often bloody.

Samantha Power in Today's NY Times

Be sure to check out Samantha's op-ed in today's NY Times: "For Terrorists, a War on Aid Groups."

"Just as we Americans tried to make sense of our tragedy, United Nations officials, nongovernmental workers and world leaders grappled with applying the lessons of August 19. But five years later — and less than a week after Taliban forces in Afghanistan killed three female educators and a driver with the International Rescue Committee — the individuals who carry out vital humanitarian and development work for the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations have never been more at risk."