The Knife Edge of Samantha (Soft) Power

Samantha Power is an imperialist with a human face. She gets passionately angry, she sheds tears. She expresses the deepest regrets when U.S. power claims innocent lives abroad. But she knows who’s innocent, and who’s not. That was her prerogative as one of President Obama’s top national security advisors. In the Obama administration, Power could always be counted on to urge military intervention – in Libya,  Syria, wherever she thought that U.S. might made right.

 And now in the Biden administration, the president has named Samantha Power to oversee U.S.A.I.D. She is still a consummate imperialist – articulate, worldly, a relentless advocate for the U.S. as global watchdog, But now she will be in charge of the country’s “soft power” – foreign aid (with strings), diplomacy, cultural missions (propaganda). She’s always been a spokeswoman for empire with a human face. But now Power gets to wield the carrot instead of the stick.

 “It’s not like U.S.A.I.D. is going to invade somebody,” remarked Gayle Smith, who ran the aid agency for President Obama and has also been retooled for the Biden administration.

 But those of us who are veterans of the Vietnam antiwar movement remember the dark side of A.I.D. While U.S. soldiers were shooting and napalming Vietnamese, the aid agency was trying to win their hearts and minds. The propaganda efforts of U.S.A.I.D. were the flip side of the imperial coin. There was always a sinister symmetry between A.I.D. and the CIA.

 In the topsy-turvy world of Washington politics, Senator Rand Paul – the libertarian nutjob from Kentucky – is what passes for a man of conscience, at least when it comes to America’s overseas follies. During Power’s Senate confirmation hearings last month, Paul grilled her about her past affection for U.S. military exploits. Wasn’t there a contradiction between Samantha Power the humanitarian and Samantha Power the imperialist? “If you’re talking about humanitarianism,” the senator pointed out, aside from natural causes “wars are the number one cause of famine around the world. Are you willing to admit that the Libyan and Syrian interventions you advocated for were mistakes?”

But Power batted away Paul’s efforts to re-set her. She saw nothing wrong with her military interventionism under Obama. And to bipartisan cheers from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Power made clear that she will use her soft power perch at U.S.A.I.D. to target China, framing that rising power’s global reach as a growing threat to America’s, well, global reach.

Rising to the flag-waving occasion before the Senate committee, Power roundly condemned China’s “coercive and predatory approach, which is so transactional” in its dealings with developing countries that ultimately become dependent on Beijing through what Power snortingly referred to as “debt-trap diplomacy.” Hmm, reminds me of another superpower.

I’m all for President Biden finally declaring an end to America’s 20-year Afghanistan expedition, which the press likes to call our country’s longest war. (Memo to news desks: Afghanistan is the longest OVERSEAS war. The longest war fought by the U.S. government was actually the 100-year crusade to exterminate Native peoples.)

But while ending the endless war in Afghanistan, President Biden is also making clear that the U.S. will maintain its permanent war status. Our enemies are now China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, Biden’s intelligence apparatus just announced. And Samantha Power’s soft power will be part of the U.S. arsenal.

When it comes to U.S. imperial policy, meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Samantha Power will wield her soft stick on the National Security Council