Polarising Power is on the brink of making a difference

Nearly a year before the world woke up to images of Syrians dying in a large-scale chemical weapons attack, Samantha Power was quietly pushing US president Barack Obama for a military strike to stop what she calls the "grotesque tactics" of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. For a fleeting moment this month, it seemed she had prevailed.

Now Power, a former senior aide on the National Security Council and a former war reporter born in Ireland, must negotiate for peace in a new public role as Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations.

The president’s abrupt decision not to use force in Syria has thrust her into the middle of contentious talks to create a UN Security Council resolution mandating the elimination of Assad’s chemical arsenal by the middle of next year.

She makes her diplomatic debut as Obama arrives in New York for the UN General Assembly. A woman known for her closeness to the president and the soaring prose of her Pulitzer Prize-winning book on genocide, A Problem From Hell, Power is the lead American negotiator in the difficult, gritty business of arguing with the Russians, Syria's patrons, who have already rejected the notion of using force if Assad does not comply.

Even her supporters wonder if the untested Power will be tough enough, a question with big implications. Secretary of state John Kerry will work with her on the UN resolution, but her role is so central that her performance – in her first weeks in the job – will help determine America’s future course in Syria.

"Most diplomats in a career of 40 years would never get this kind of opportunity to make such a difference at such a critical moment," said Edward Luck, the dean of the School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego and a former senior UN adviser on peacekeeping issues. "The stakes could not be higher."

At the UN headquarters last week Power, who turned 43 on Saturday, looked harried as she swept through the corridors with her entourage. In brief comments to reporters, she deflected questions about how she would handle Russia’s resistance to authorising the use of force if Assad refused to comply.

Military action
"We are determined to have an enforceable and binding resolution," Power said, in the kind of bland, bureaucratic language she might have shunned as a writer for The New Yorker, which she once was. Beyond that, "I think I'm not going to comment." She declined to be interviewed for this article.

Over the past 2½ years, as Syria descended into civil war and bloodshed, Power – who in her role in the White House in 2011 helped orchestrate the American intervention in Libya – was unable to persuade the president to do the same in Syria.

One person close to Power said she had been advocating military action at least since then, and as far back as December of last year.

The sarin gas attack of August 21st, which American intelligence agencies say killed more than 1,400 Syrians, nearly a third of them children, forced the issue on to Obama’s agenda.

“I don’t think she ever expected that every issue would be decided her way,” the person said, insisting on anonymity. “But she did want to be working for a president who was fully engaged, wrestling with this problem of how to respond to mass atrocities.”

Polarising figure
Power was in Ireland at a family reunion when the attack occurred. She called for an emergency session of the UN Security Council, knowing that she would not be back in time to attend, and missed it, drawing sharp criticism from conservative commentators. She cut her trip short and returned two days later.

In Washington, Power was confirmed in her new job by the senate on August 1st in an overwhelmingly bipartisan 87-10 vote.

Yet she is polarising. Conservatives such as Republican senator Marco Rubio are suspicious of remarks she made in 2002 about Israel, since disavowed, that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might require "alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import". That sentiment flows from bearing witness to human rights atrocities.

Ethnic cleansing
On assignment for The New Yorker in 2004, Power was among the first to chronicle the bloody ethnic cleansing in Sudan, where she visited refugee camps and slipped into rebel-held areas in Darfur to see villages that had burned to the ground. As a young freelancer in Bosnia, she reported on the systematic rape of Muslim women.

“Samantha is somebody who believes deeply that American power flows from our values as much as our military might, and that in the world, when we act in accordance with our values, we strengthen our ability to lead,” said Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former state department official who knows Power well.

But the reporter who once risked arrest in the Balkans and harangued Clinton officials over late-night drinks now has a driver, a security detail and a household staff. She lives in the ambassador's residence at the top of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel with her husband, Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor and former regulatory chief in the Obama administration, and their children, Declan (4) and Rian (1).

Toothless resolution
Power, who aides say has been in daily negotiations on Syria, has described the UN process she is facing as "a rare moment of promise at the security council after 2½ years of deadlock and paralysis".

If she can help break that deadlock with a vote that results in Syria giving up its chemical weapons, foreign policy analysts say it could help lay the groundwork for broader talks on ending Syria’s bloody civil war.

But if she winds up with a toothless resolution, it could be an embarrassment, setting the tone for the rest of her ambassadorship. Of all people, she does not want to be the ambassador who becomes bogged down in a drawn-out diplomatic negotiation while thousands of Syrians remain at risk.

"She is facing the same dilemma that many diplomats face," said Vali Nasr, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. "Except for most of them, their convictions and ideals are not in the public domain in the form of a Pulitzer-Prize winning book. – (New York Times)