Samantha Power: belief

Transcript context

…And as I note in my afterword, we are performing some form of counterterrorism operation now in 40 percent of the countries in the world. Of course, not all us performing combat roles or anything like that, but some kind of support or combat role in 40 percent of the countries. No, there has to be a right sizing for the sake of the families who are the ones who bear this burden because that is not actually the face of America that is the most winning face. Our soldiers, of course, are making an amazing contribution in some of those places, but having these large bases where locals don’t get to even interact that much with our soldiers — it perpetuates a perception of America as a militarized nation. But also it speaks, I think, to the imbalance that I write about as one of my conclusions in the book. How can it be that we have almost more people serving in military marching bands than serve as diplomats representing the United States when our military leaders are the first to say that they can’t do the conflict resolution, they can’t deal with the underlying socioeconomic or ethnic or other tensions, or the land grabs, or the climate change that shrinks the resources that people are fighting over? They’re just a set of problems where we need the other tools in our arsenal, and other countries comparably need to expand their diplomatic and socioeconomic benches to be able to pool our resources to make more of a difference to deal with the causes of these conflicts rather than just setting up bases and playing whack-a-mole. The one thing I will say is that I do think we’re moving into a period where we do need to make investments in state solvency elsewhere. And by “we,” I don’t just mean the United States. I mean the broader international community, such as it is, but with the United States probably, as always, playing a leading role. One reason that we’re constantly asking about humanitarian intervention or why we have 100,000 peacekeepers in countries around the world is that the militaries in those countries are either preying on their people or are incapable of — take Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, Chad — incapable of thwarting Boko Haram, which is preying on the people. Indeed, the militaries are so either corrupt or abusive themselves that they end up fueling or effectively aiding the Boko Haram recruitment process by committing such human rights abuses that people say, “There’s no difference between the Nigerian army and Boko Haram,” which can’t be the case. So, even though it can sound like militarization, we have some of the best trainers in the world. I think we should be more, not less, ambitious working with other countries’ militaries. And there’s a real gap in the international system around police. There’s actually very, very scant police training capability. d be more, not less, ambitious working with other countries’ militaries. And there’s a real gap in the international system around police. There’s actually very, very scant police training capability. If you think about global goods and collective goods, training other cities’ or other countries’ police forces, depending on how the police are structured, is an incredibly important investment in the rule of law, or prodding them to train their own police, or for themselves to hold their own soldiers accountable. I think that you could imagine some of the resources that are now expended in places where we’re in combat that the American people don’t even know about. But to actually invest alongside other countries in professionalizing some of these training apparatuses — I think that would be a worthwhile investment. Last question: The US Congress seems to have voluntarily surrendered so much of its authority over foreign policy, and indeed the war-making authority. How do we fix that? Should we fix it? And does fixing it mean we won’t get to undertake as many beneficial humanitarian interventions as otherwise?…

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