With her long, straight auburn hair, blue eyes and freckles, Samantha Power
looks as though she has stepped out of a photograph of the Kennedy clan. She
was born in Ireland, lives in Massachusetts and shares the admiration of
America’s royal family for the candidate they regard as the new JFK.
I wonder: could she be a relation of Caroline Kennedy from the wrong side of
the blanket?
She laughs: “Maybe it’s the hair. I don’t have any Kennedy blood, stock or
power.”
Power came to America at the age of nine with her mother – a doctor who left
her father for another man at a time when Ireland did not allow divorce –
and has risen to become a senior foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama, the
frontrunner in the race for the Democratic nomination for the presidency.
If he continues his dazzling ascent to the White House, she could have a great
deal of power and dominion over the rest of us.
Last summer Obama told her she should write a book about her life. “Barack
thinks everyone with an interesting life story should write a memoir,” she
teases. Power, 37, is engagingly frank, but insists: “I’m more interested in
other people’s stories.”
Her Pulitzer prize-winning book on genocide first captured Obama’s attention
in 2005 and he may well reward her with a trusted place in his new Camelot.
She once referred to herself as the “genocide chick” and, although the
subject lacks glamour, it does have its perks. One of these was playing
basket-ball with George Clooney – “She’s the best I’ve ever played against,”
he says gallantly.
Power, for her part, describes the Hollywood star as a brilliant “one-man
diplomat” for Darfur.
“I’d like to say, for the record, that I did not get into issues of genocide
for the privilege of meeting George Clooney,” she says with mock solemnity
over a coffee in Washington.
“He’s more than a celebrity. He’s doing things that both the US and British
governments should be doing. It shouldn’t take a celebrity to go door to
door for contributors for troop commitments. I’ve been blown away by him.”
She is also thrilled by the impact Obama is already having on world affairs:
“I have a friend who just came back from Burma last week and said all that
anybody is talking about on the streets of Rangoon is Barack Obama. What is
incredible is how many constituencies he can appeal to, how many boundaries
he can cross effortlessly – of race, of age, of geography and of religion.”
“Obamamania”, she believes, owes much to the building of a movement by
dedicated supporters. “The only way we were going to win was to have
organisers who were willing to freeze their asses off in rural Iowa when it
seemed like there was going to be no political payoff. The corollary is that
those who are helping Obama do so with quasi-evangel-ical fervour. I think
Obama supporters, by and large, do not see this as mere politics. They see
this as the future of the world.”
What does Power – who is much sought after by ambassadors because of her
closeness to the Illinois senator – think of the report last week that
Gordon Brown had badly misjudged Obama’s electoral appeal and was now
desperately trying to play catchup after snubbing him in deference to the
fading Hillary Clinton? “It’s not fair,” she says staunchly. “He’s not a
fair-weather friend who has only just realised Obama is for real.”
At any rate, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, our man in Washington, got in touch with
Power almost as soon as he arrived last autumn and met Obama a couple of
weeks ago in Maryland.
Hitherto, the principal conduit between Britain and the candidate has been
Lord Malloch-Brown, the junior foreign minister, whom Obama came to admire
when he was deputy secretary-general of the United Nations.
“He was really taken with him,” says Power, in what will undoubtedly be viewed
by American conservatives as a desperately bad sign. “It’s a relationship
that has persisted and they have talked a number of times since.”
Power spent her twenties as a reporter in trouble spots such as Kosovo,
Rwanda, East Timor and Sudan before helping to found the Carr Center for
Human Rights Policy at Harvard University in 1999.
It was as a journalist that she met the subject of her latest book, Sergio
Vieira de Mello, a close friend of Malloch-Brown who served as the UN
mission chief in Iraq and was a victim of the first big Al-Qaeda suicide
attack in Baghdad in 2003.
The dashing Brazilian diplomat was invariably sent to wherever there was a
nasty war being fought or a precarious peace to be kept and ordered to make
the best of it, which he usually did.
Power and de Mello had dinner together at a seafood restaurant in Croatia when
Nato began bombing the Serbs for the first time in 1994. She gave him the
opportunity to cancel, but he said insouciantly: “The sky is falling but a
man has got to eat, hasn't he? If world war three starts while we’re having
dinner, we won’t order a second bottle of wine.”
She was charmed, as were many women who met de Mello; but there was a tough,
pragmatic side to the humanitarian that fascinated her. Wherever he found
himself, from Bosnia to Rwanda, East Timor, Cambodia and Baghdad, he would
do business with warlords and rebels, occupiers and insurgents – whatever it
took to rummage up food and shelter for people at risk.
Power has chronicled his life in Chasing the Flame, an intellectually
ambitious biography to be published next week.
She writes honestly of his capricious love life – for most of his career he
had a loyal wife and two sons quartered in Geneva while he often had
girlfriends in trouble zones with him – and movingly details his final hours
trapped alive in the rubble of the UN headquarters.
Her passion, however, is the exploration of the art of the possible in foreign
affairs. De Mello had little time for UN bureaucracy but loved working in
the field. Power is impressed by the “strand of dignity, freedom from fear
and impulse towards service” running through his career.
De Mello started out as a “denunciator” who participated in the student
battles in Paris in 1968 but became “an accommodator”. Power talked about
him at length with Obama while she researched her book and believes that the
two men have a lot in common.
“Both guys have thought more about broken people and broken places than just
about anybody in public life. Most presidential candidates haven’t lived in
broken places. They may have interned in a broken place for the summer. This
is in his [Obama’s] blood.”
By the end of de Mello’s life – he died at 55 – she thinks he “may have
reached the best balance possible, which was to be willing to walk into a
room to see if there is anything you can extract from the unconciliatory”.
She adds: “Neither Sergio nor Barack is ambivalent about the use of force. In
East Timor, Sergio was the person who gave shoot-to-kill orders, toughening
up the rules of engagement for UN peacekeepers against the judgment of a lot
of pacifists at UN headquarters.”
Obama has been criticised for saying he would meet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the
Iranian president, without preconditions; but Power counters that
“definitions of toughness have to be rethought”. It is tougher, she
believes, “to be in a room with Ahmadinejad than lobbing verbal hand
grenades against him from 5,000 miles away” – a position now being adopted
by some neoconservatives who are urging President George W Bush himself to
open talks.
Power shocked some friends by opposing the invasion of Iraq. “Some people
said, ‘How could you write about genocide and not support the war?’ It felt
like one was sentencing the Iraqi people to life imprisonment under a brutal
regime.”
She decided, however, that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein was planning
a new round of slaughter and the costs and benefits of war were not worth
the risk. Now she admits the question is: “If we leave, could it get worse?”
Power believes that Obama would do all he could to prevent large-scale
civilian deaths by a meticulously planned withdrawal from Iraq. “If a
systematic campaign of genocide were to unfold, he would try to get other
countries to join the US to go back in order to stave it off. What you are
talking about is a massive crime against humanity and the hope would be that
humanity would step forward.”
She knows, however, that “with the record of stepping forward in Rwanda or
Darfur or in the Holocaust, it is going to be very difficult”.
Just as de Mello’s good intentions did not save him from Al-Qaeda’s nihilism,
so Obama’s message of hope could be met with cynicism. So far he has
triumphed over every expectation. If his luck holds, perhaps Obama-mania
could sweep the world.
Chasing the Flame by Samantha Power is published by Allen Lane on March 6
at £25
I really enjoyed reading her highly readable and persuasive book on genocide. I'm glad that she is part of Obama's foreign policy team. It is certainly timely for the US to step out of its cave and start dealing with the real ills that afflict the world -- from poverty to terrorism to lack of democratic freedoms -- which, in my opinion, are all interrelated. And, Obama's rhetoric of freeing the US from narrow special interests is good news, as well, particularly in the realm of foreign policy. The US foreign policy has been in the thrall of special interest groups of all stripes and nationalities for far too long...
elan, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
What a waste! This woman's only accomplishment of note is that she convinced President Clinton not to accept Osam bin Laden when offered him by the Sudanese government, and you don't even mention it, much less ask her about it?
Rob, ny, usa
Can't say America, who haven't been warned.
However, when did this country ever heed any advice from others?
prudence eely bond mcguire, London, England UK
I totally agree with you Jim. Obama would be an total disaster not just for foreign policy but on the domestic front. Do these people really here what Obama has been saying? The problem is that Obama has really been saying on the whole NOTHING. Just feel good advise ala Dr. Phil or his buddy Oprah. He claims fresh ideas and hope - large government spending, universal healthcare - the WSJ has totaled his programs at over $800 Billion and rising. Hope? One only needs to believe in themself, not rely on some politican to do it for them. His ideas are just retreads of 60's new society government programs which on the whole did not work and such consequent spending will finally bankrupt the US. People such as Samantha Power really need to dig between the lines. I live in Illinois which Obama supposedly represents. The man has only been in office for 3 years (won in 2004 took office in Jan 2005) ) and has not passed any significant legislation and misses votes. Enough said!
Karl, Chicago, IL,
Amen to that, Linda from San Francisco. Yeah, what she said.
Darryl M, London, England
The fact that JFK was assasinated at a young age, have resulted in a historical falacy! I am a Democrat, but I have to say he was not a good President. He took us into the Vietnam War. He almsot made a catasterophic tragedy in the Cuban missle crisis! So, what's so wonderful about him? So, Why Obama's trying to imitate him to get this false analogy?
He is not a JFK. Even if he was, it proves he is an inexperienced candidate who might get us into more troubles!
tommylee, los angeles, USA
Barack Obama has a demonstrated capacity to bring people together. I believe he will have that effect not only on the American people, but globally. The Whole World Is Watching, and perhaps hoping, he will be the next leader of the free world, the new United States of America.
He can make the case to the UN and countries neighboring Iraq that he opposed this war from the onset. He can make the case that now he is burdened with ending it, and it is in the best interests of all concerned to come together with a cautious, planned deployment of all US combat patrols.
I don't believe any other candidate for the presidency can offer this honesty and neutrality in the global community. Only he can honestly bring this arguement forward and win support.
Linda, San Francisco,
Amen to that, Mr. Draper. Yeah, what he said.
Kit, Los Angeles, CA
Good grief---do these people ever listen to what they are saying? Iraqi people were not worth the risk of saving them from Sadaam who had already demonstrated his willingness to slaughter them wholesale when necessary for whatever reason? Darfur on the other hand is worth the lives of Americans because------? This whole piece is a good illustration of what is ahead for America if, God forbid, Obama wins the presidency. A whole new crew of new ager, baby boomer types caught up in their own image of glamourus global diplomacy. Wait till the terrorists go back to hacking off heads and they will see how much good breaking bread with them will do.
jim draper, mountainburg, arkansas