Close-up of the book cover. Photo: William Collins.
‘The Education of an Idealist’, by Samantha Power
Review by Reg Naulty
In Australia, the word ‘idealist’ has connotations of inevitable failure. In the US, people are more accommodating. ‘It is perfectly reasonable to build castles in the air,’ they assure us, ‘you just have to put foundations under them.’ Although
born in Ireland, Samantha Power’s family moved to the USA when she was fourteen; she was educated and worked there. Hers has been the life of an effective idealist. This is her fifth book.
After graduating from Yale, Power went as a war correspondent to Bosnia. In 1994 and 1995 she worked in Sarajevo. After the break-up of communist Yugoslavia in 1991, the Serbs, who had been the dominant ethnicity, attempted to take over Bosnia, which had the greatest range of ethnicities – one of which was Muslim, centred in Sarajevo. The Serbs besieged it for several years. There, dodging shrapnel, was Samantha Power.
The war in Bosnia shocked the world with its ‘ethnic cleansing’ – a euphemism for genocide. Power wrote a book about it: A Problem from Hell: America and the age of genocide. Almost no one gets their first book published, but she received the Pulitzer Prize. It established her securely in US public life.
Barack Obama, then a senator, was becoming prominent, and looked like running for president. Power sent him a copy of her book. Five months later, in 2005, he invited her to dinner. He strongly believed in human rights. She became part of his election team, and worked closely with him throughout his presidency. He made her part of his National Security Council, where she never had things all her own way, other members of the Council not giving priority to human rights.
Nevertheless, the Obama government brought attention to human rights violations in places like Iran, Syria, Sudan, Russian-occupied Crimea and North Korea, which had a gulag system. It also brought UN pressure to bear on Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa, for his atrocities against Tamil civilians.
Power spent the last three years of the Obama presidency as US ambassador to the UN. These years are memorable for Russia’s support of repressive regimes and its deceit about the war in the Ukraine. Memorable too, was Barack Obama’s frustration about his inability to do anything about Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s alleged war crimes, because of the US’s reluctance to become involved.
Power rates the UN response to the terrifying Ebola epidemic in West Africa as one of the highlights of her career. The UN rallied against the epidemic and, with notable help from Britain, stopped the epidemic with surprising speed.
Power is a religious person, her main religious practice being private prayer. She does not appear to be a member of any church. Although only forty-nine, she has just resigned from a couple of professorships at Harvard. She is unlikely to go quietly. There are many idealistic Friends who work in humble obscurity. They will find this book an inspiring and pleasant read.
