‘President is speeding up the demise of post-war world order – and China and the Kremlin are licking their chops’
Former US envoy to the UN Samantha Power reflects on new era of world politics in an exclusive interview with Shona Murray
AS A diplomat who served in one of the world’s highest offices, Samantha Power led the charge against Russia’s escalation of the war in Syria while serving as US ambassador to the UN.
In her final address last December, the Dubliner laid down on record her assessment of who was responsible for what the UN has just called “a complete meltdown of humanity”.
Syria’s month-long offensive on Aleppo involved the use of indiscriminate weaponry such as barrel bombs and heavy shelling.
During this period alone 1,200 people were killed; over half of whom were civilians.
“In the last 24 hours alone pro-Assad forces have killed 82 civilians including 11 women and 13 children,” she told the UN Security Council, of which Russia is a permanent member.
“To the regime of Bashar al-Assad, Russia and Iran: Is there literally nothing that can shame you? Is there no act of barbarism against civilians, no execution of a child that gets under your skin?”
Before she was US ambassador, Ms Power was a senior foreign policy adviser to former US President Barack Obama. She was one of the most ardent supporters for American intervention against the Syrian regime.
At the 11th hour, Mr Obama retreated from his plan to strike Syria in September 2013, no doubt much to Samantha Power’s dismay.
“I wish we had tried more than we tried” in Syria, she says. Still, she’s not sure what level of military involvement would have been required. Syria is “a huge country with huge cleavages that we didn’t even understand from afar”, she says.
Ms Power spoke to the Irish Independent in the library of her old alma mater, Mount Anville School, in Dublin. She spent her early years in the junior school here and has just toured her classroom after delivering a lecture to more than 600 pupils. She is “a bit overwhelmed” by the nostalgia. “The smell of the chapel; the little spot I used to hide when ballet was on. I hated ballet more than I can describe.”
During her tour of the school, she tells me a little girl of about six raised her hand and said: “How are we going to stop Trump from making things bad everywhere?” It is the sentiment of many today.
“My worry is that things get normalised” with this president, says Ms Power. “You stop noticing the outrage of something and the civic decline that is afoot.”
He gave a speech in Korea recently and “plugged one of his resorts” and I didn’t even notice. It was “complete profiteering on the back of the American presidency”.
“I didn’t notice because he does it all the time. Things that were not sayable before are now sayable; things that were not done are now done; there is a legitimisation of extremism quite frankly.
“It’s going to take something very special to recover from this.”
Donald Trump’s approval rating is low at 36pc, but his base remains relatively solid. According to Realclearpolitics.com, approval in so-called “Trump counties” – places where he did far better than Mitt Romney did in 2012 for example – his ratings barely slipped; from 50pc to 48pc. “It’s true his base is sticking and people are horrified internationally that he still
has the support he does”. On the other hand, it’s “declining every day”.
“If we were to keep eroding, then I think there would be a real question as to whether he’d run again.”
The post World War II world order is changing fast. Donald Trump is retreating from the multilateral system developed through the UN and other forms of international cooperation. “This will be a void that China will seek to fill,” she says.
China’s rise and its world view will be very damaging; they don’t see human rights and democracy as stabilising; they see it as the enemy.
“They want to shape the UN in a manner where it doesn’t play in the democracy space or the human rights space. That’s happening.
“The problem then is conflict and extremism are bred.
“There’d be no Isil if former Iraqi prime minister Nouri Al Maliki had treated the Sunni with a modicum of respect or given them basic rights,” she says.
Ms Power agreed Isil had been given room to flourish as a direct result of the Iraq invasion in 2003. “For sure,” she says, but even on the heels on a “major American mistake”, “Isil was able to take root because of this degree of disenfranchisement” from the Iraqi government.
These conflicts are festering and Chinese President Xi Jinping is “licking his chops” at the thought of the collapse of the liberal democratic values.
On Russia, Ms Power says the Kremlin is a “major threat”.
“The combination of the assault on our democracy plus the assault on democracy in Europe is alarming.
“If Putin decided Ireland is worth it, you could see it happening here.
“Every western audience is a worthy target to sow doubts about democracy.
“It has extremely aggressive ambitions”, it is a nuclear power and it has a veto on the Security Council that allows it to prevent any “meaningful” UN actions.