The Education of an Idealist Read online

  Also by Samantha Power

  “A Problem from Hell”:

  America and the Age of Genocide

  Chasing the Flame:

  One Man’s Fight to Save the World

  Realizing Human Rights:

  Moving from Inspiration to Impact (co-edited with Graham Allison)

  The Unquiet American:

  Richard Holbrooke and the World (co-edited with Derek Chollet)

  Copyright

  The opinions and characterizations in this book are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the US government.

  THE EDUCATION OF AN IDEALIST. Copyright © 2019 by Samantha Power. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Unless otherwise noted, photographs are courtesy of the author.

  Cover design by Ploy Siripant

  Cover photograph © Geoffrey W. King

  FIRST EDITION

  Digital Edition SEPTEMBER 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-282071-6

  Version 08272019

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-282069-3

  Dedication

  For Cass, Declan, and Rían

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Samantha Power

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Preface

  Part One

  1: Ireland

  2: America

  3: Loss

  4: Dignity

  5: Tank Man

  6: Doers

  7: Risk

  8: Hearts of Darkness

  9: “Tell Clinton”

  10: The Secret to a Long Life

  11: “Go Remember”

  12: “A Problem from Hell”

  13: Upstanders

  14: Going to Washington

  15: The Bat Cave

  16: Yes We Can

  17: Monster

  18: Victory

  Part Two

  19: No Manual

  20: Can We Go Home Now?

  21: April 24th

  22: Turnaround

  23: Toolbox

  24: Revolutions

  25: All Necessary Measures

  26: Let’s Pray They Accomplish Something

  27: One Shot

  28: “Can’t Be Both”

  29: The Red Line

  30: “Chemical Weapons Were Used”

  31: When America Sneezes

  32: Upside-Down Land

  33: Us and Them

  34: Freedom from Fear

  35: Lean On

  36: Toussaint

  37: The Golden Door

  38: Exit, Voice, Loyalty

  39: Shrink the Change

  40: The End

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Index

  Photo Section

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Preface

  On a bright Saturday in September of 2013, I was sitting in a crowded diner in midtown Manhattan with my husband, Cass, and our kids, four-year-old Declan and one-year-old Rían. My cell phone rang. The White House switchboard was on the line: “Ambassador Power, please hold for the President of the United States.”

  I took two long sips of water and walked out of the restaurant’s clamor toward the corner of 50th and Lexington.

  I had first met Barack Obama eight years before, when he was a newly elected US senator. Although he was already considered a bright young star in American politics, I would not have predicted then that within a few short years he would become president. And I would have found it unbelievable that I—an unmarried Irish immigrant, obsessive sports fan, journalist, and human rights activist who had not served a day in government—would, within that same period, gain a husband and two children and be named United States Ambassador to the United Nations.

  And yet there I was, with a security detail hovering, about to confer with the President while my family sat nearby.

  Obama was not calling for a Saturday-afternoon chat. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad had recently unleashed chemical weapons against his own citizens, killing 1,400 people, including more than 400 children. This atrocity crossed the “red line” that the President had drawn when he threatened the Assad regime with “enormous consequences” if it used chemical weapons. In response, Obama had initially decided to order air strikes in Syria, but Congress—and most of the American public—had not supported him.

  Then the unforeseen happened: Russian president Vladimir Putin, Assad’s ally, offered to work with the United States to destroy Syria’s large chemical weapons stockpile.

  Locking down the specifics was left to me and my Russian counterpart at the UN. If we failed to negotiate a Security Council resolution, President Obama did not have a Plan B.

  “Hey!” Obama said when he came on the line. Despite the gravity of the situation, he used the same airy inflection as when we first met in 2005.

  I had only become UN ambassador the previous month, and Obama understood that I was facing a high-pressure diplomatic assignment. He was checking in to be sure we were on the same page.

  “I just want you to know I have complete confidence in you,” he said.

  I started to thank him.

  “But . . .” Obama interrupted.

  At that moment I did not need a “but.”

  “But in these negotiations with the Russians,” he continued, “I want to make sure you don’t overshoot the runway.”

  The Syrian government was notorious for unspeakable acts of savagery against its own people, and Obama knew I was skeptical that Assad would ever relinquish his chemical weapons. He was concerned I would demand too much from the Russians and cause them to walk away.

  “But don’t undershoot the runway either,” he quickly added.

  “Yes, Mr. President,” I said.

  We hung up and I began walking back toward the diner, security agents in tow.

  Don’t overshoot. Don’t undershoot. Looking up to the cloudless sky, I found myself wondering something more fundamental: “Where the hell is the runway?”

  I HAD SPENT DECADES thinking about moments such as this, critical junctures in American foreign policy where lives were at stake. Studying the manual, however, is not the same as flying.

  In 2002, I had published my first book, “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide. In the book, I criticized US officials for doing too little to stop the major genocides of the twentieth century. Now I found myself in the President’s cabinet as the Syrian regime was murdering hundreds of thousands of its own people.

  “What would the old Samantha Power say to the current Samantha Power?” reporters often asked. “How does the author of a book on atrocities defend the US government’s inaction in the face of mass murder in Syria?”

  My standard answer rejected the implication that my past and present selves were in conflict. “The old and new Samantha know each other quite well,” I would reply. “They talk all the time. And they agree . . .”

  The full answer, of course, was more complicated.

  I had gone from being an outsider to an insider—from being a critic of American foreign policy to a leading representative of the United States on the world stage. From within g
overnment, I was able to help spur actions that improved people’s lives. And yet we were failing to stop the carnage in Syria. I was at risk of falling prey to the same mode of rationalization I had assailed as an activist.

  In January of 2017, I concluded eight years in the Obama administration and became an outsider once more. As I tried to get my bearings, President Obama’s successor began to turn the country in a radically different direction. Like many Americans, I vacillated between feelings of disbelief, outrage, and anxiety about the future. I 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.

  I set out to write a book that explored what I had learned thus far in my life and career. I returned to my early childhood in Ireland, the circumstances that brought me to the United States, my high school years in Atlanta, Georgia, and my time as a journalist in Bosnia. I delved into experiences that had moved and even altered me—as a human rights advocate, on a presidential campaign, in the White House, and at the UN. And I examined painful losses and setbacks, both in my private life and in the public glare.

  We make sense of our lives through stories. Regardless of our different backgrounds and perspectives, stories have the power to bind us. 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 people who were being affected (for good and bad) by our decisions. And as a woman in national security and the mother of two young children, I used stories to make bearable the tensions inherent in balancing a demanding career and a fulfilling family life.

  This story is one of sorrow, resilience, anger, solidarity, determination, and laughter, sometimes jumbled together. This is also a story of idealism—where it comes from, how it gets challenged, and why it must endure.

  Some may interpret this book’s title as suggesting that I began with lofty dreams about how one person could make a difference, only to be “educated” by the brutish forces that I encountered. That is not the story that follows.

  Part One

  — 1 —

  Ireland

  What right has this woman to be so educated?”

  My mother, Vera Delaney, had not broken any laws, yet she seemed to be on trial. As she made the case for why she should be allowed to take my brother and me to America, her fate appeared contingent upon the whims of the Irish judge who posed this question.

  I was eight; my brother, Stephen, was four. Neither of us was present that day in the Dublin courtroom. But the story of what transpired there is so emblazoned in my psyche that I can see the judge’s face, shaped like the map of Ireland, his skin blotted with what looked like my granny’s blush. I can visualize the mahogany wood paneling behind the bench where he presided. I can smell the boiled ham that wafted off of his black robes. I can even make out the intricate white threads of his juridical wig.

  I’ve often wondered how my mother channeled her anger: Did she start to respond to the judge’s provocation, only to get a knee under the table from her lawyer? Did she feel her cheeks burn—as mine are prone to do—despite the chill of the courtroom? I imagined the voice inside her head: “Keep it together, Vera. He wants you to react. Don’t give him an excuse to deny you custody.”

  It was far from inevitable that my mother, the person I have always admired most in this world, would end up “so educated.” She came of age at a time when less than 10 percent of married women in Ireland were part of the workforce. Her father, a policeman in Cork City, was an incurable, high-stakes gambler who bet his paychecks on horse and dog racing. My mother, her four sisters, and her younger brother grew up under the constant threat of foreclosure. While none of her three older siblings went to college, my mother decided early on that she would be the first of the Delaney children to do so—indeed, she would become a doctor.

  Because the Catholic girls’ school my mother attended did not offer science courses, she had a problem. When she tried to apply to the University College Cork’s medical program, the registrar told her she lacked the background to manage the curriculum. Undeterred, my mother registered anyway. When she got home, one of her sisters lit into her because of the lengthy program’s cost. My mother responded by dumping her plate of bacon, cabbage, and mashed potatoes on her sister’s lap. But she marched back to the college and, livid but shamed, changed her registration to the shorter Bachelor of Science program. After earning that degree, she went on to pursue a PhD in biochemistry in London. But caring for patients was what my mother had always wanted and would never stop wanting; while writing her dissertation, she finally decided to apply to medical school. Thirteen years after first attempting to enroll, she achieved her lifelong dream of becoming a medical doctor.

  Yet in that courtroom years later, my mother was forced to answer for her career—for being “so educated”—because she was trying to move with her children to the United States, a country she had never visited, in order to get advanced training in her area of specialization, kidney transplantation.

  She was also hoping to run away with the man she loved—a man who wasn’t my father.

  MY DAD, JIM POWER, was an epic figure—brilliant, dashing, and charismatic, yet intimidating and witheringly sharp-tongued. At six foot five he towered over his Irish contemporaries. Even as a child, I could tell he was the man in the room that people most wanted to please.

  My parents met in London, where my mother was studying medicine and my dad was working as a dentist. Mum first spotted him leading a sing-along for a group of Irish exiles in the Bunch of Grapes pub in Knightsbridge. After long fending off girlfriends, my dad pursued her avidly.

  Mum was a slender, stylish young woman with a lively sense of play, who could place a tennis serve or hit a squash forehand better than almost all her male peers. She liked my father’s constant teasing, which kept her off balance. She was amazed by his talent for the piano and his ability to launch into whatever songs the bar patrons requested.

  My father initially encouraged and helped subsidize Mum’s medical school pursuits. A scratch golfer, he applauded how quickly she picked up his sport, and cheered her on as she ascended the ranks of British athletics in squash. As a teenager and college student, she had played competitive tennis and field hockey—first for her home province of Munster and later for Ireland. At squash, she was relentless: speedy to the front of the court and agile from side to side. When Mum was off in the library or on the squash court, Dad was at the pub, boasting to his friends about her latest feats. After an impassioned courtship, they wed in September of 1968.

  “This is the third of my children getting married this year,” her father told his mother, “and I would not put my money on this one.” For a man who bet on anything and everything, this was saying something.

  While my grandfather adored his daughter, his traditional views on gender roles made him worry that Mum would prioritize her career above her marriage. My grandfather accurately saw his new son-in-law as a man who needed to be taken care of. My dad had been idolized and sheltered by his own mother, but despite this coddled upbringing, he was deeply drawn to women with opinions and ambitions of their own.

  While the accomplished duo initially charged forth, their interests soon began to diverge. My mother studied constantly, partly to make up for all she felt she didn’t know. And having grown up fearing that any knock on the door might be a lender seizing the family home to pay her father’s gambling debts, Mum was determined to take control of her own path. In contrast, my dad’s achievements had always come effortlessly. His photographic memory allowed him to lo
ok at a blank wall and visualize words as he had previously read them on the page. Because my father never felt the passion for his career that Mum had for hers, he lacked focus. Despite being an established dentist, at the age of thirty-five he decided to take the unusual step of returning to school to get a medical degree of his own.

  I was born in September of 1970, while Mum was still studying to become a doctor in London. When my dad began the six-year course at University College Dublin shortly thereafter, we moved back to Dublin, where Mum would finish medical school. Although my dad breezed through his program, when he finally became Dr. Jim Power, MD, he showed no interest in practicing medicine—an attitude Mum couldn’t fathom. His older sister came to refer to him as “the eternal student.”

  My father had always been a drinker, but after Mum threw herself deeper into her medical career, his drinking became something of a vocation. His second home was Hartigan’s, a pub ten minutes away from where we lived. Known for its highbrow political debates, no-frills decorum, and the taste and pour of its pints, Hartigan’s felt like a village pub in the middle of Ireland’s bustling capital. My father was one of the regulars.

  Guinness—the dark brown, silky stout with the thick, pillowy head—was not just his drink; it was his craft. Known as “mother’s milk,” Guinness had adopted the tagline “GUINNESS IS GOOD FOR YOU” in the 1920s, and most of us believed it. For decades, Irish mothers had been served Guinness after giving birth because of its iron content and perceived health benefits.

  Like many of his contemporaries, my father hailed the delicacy of the drinking experience, stressing the proper “two-pour” approach: tilting the tulip-shaped pint glass at a 45-degree angle, filling it halfway, pausing so the stout could settle, and then—and only then—pouring the rest. “Pulling a pint” properly, my dad insisted, should take at least two minutes. “Good things come to those who wait,” he would say, mimicking the satisfied customers in the Guinness television ads. Once the pour was complete, my dad—usually an impatient man—waited with unencumbered anticipation for the barman to smooth the creamy head with a butter knife. He relished the first taste of every pint, pausing before clearing his upper lip of Guinness’s signature foamy residue.