Samantha Power may not have officially converted to the
Conservative ideology but she is––at least as far as Pax Americana is
concerned––a diehard Neocon that wants to micromanage the affairs of the world.
To understand how the human mind operates under such
conditions, we must acknowledge the existence of tension between our desire to
accomplish something––however controversial it may be––and the desire to appear
like we're doing the right thing.
In the case of Samantha Power, she expressed her desire for
accomplishment in the embrace of the doctrine called, “The responsibility to
Protect (R2P).” But sensing––most likely at the subconscious level––that this
concept is closely associated with the neocon philosophy; she tweaked her views
on all other matters, and made them coincide with the going liberal trend at
every moment.
These are the complex realities that must have come into
play when she sat down to write “How Mike Pompeo Could Save the State
Department,” an article that appeared on March 14, 2018 in The New York Times.
The first that the reader encounters as to her preferences in the field of
foreign policy, is this sentence: “He [Pompeo] can make it his mission to
revitalize America 's
diplomatic corps and get back to trying to solve problems in the real world”.
To explain what this boils down to, she cited the need to
appoint ambassadors where a number of vacancies cry out to be filled. She also
mentioned the need to “promote investment, protect Americans abroad and combat
terrorism,” all of which are normal, routine tasks expected to be completed by
the State Department. But that's not all that Samantha Power has said or done.
What she did after that was to pursue two parallel paths: one that is typically
liberal and one that's neoconish but with a twist. It is that Samantha Power
embraced the Pax Americana component of neoconservatism but rejected everything
else.
Her liberal bent came to the fore when she complained about
more American military personnel being deployed abroad than diplomatic
personnel. She also quoted “our military commanders” as saying that they cannot
achieve their mission without the diplomats addressing the underlying issues.
She praised the American effort to help end the Ebola epidemic, and urged
Pompeo to work on ending the nuclear standoff in North
Korea as well as the war in Syria .
As to her opposition to conservatism, it came to the fore
when she criticized what she considers Pompeo's extreme positions. She pointed
the finger at his “opposition to the Iran
nuclear deal, his skepticism on global warming, and his support for torture and
the prison at Guantanamo .”
She warned that they are: “antithetical to American security and will diminish
his pull with valuable allies”.
Despite her rejection of conservative ideas of that kind,
she began to show a disposition to cross from the liberal camp to that of the
conservative at the point where the two overlap. The first sign to that effect
came when she expressed the wish that America
would work to bring about “a democratic transition in Zimbabwe or a cease-fire in Yemen ”.
From that point on, Samantha Power moved closer to the
neocon ideology with this: “We also need to stop seeing diplomacy as a
relationship solely between governments.” And she revealed her diehard neocon
credentials with this: “Mr. Pompeo should encourage relationships with
[foreign] unions, youth, business leaders, religious figures and minority
groups.” That's what showed her to be in full micromanagement mode.
Power then showed how wedded she was to that mode of
operation. She did so when she praised former Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice for trying to build an expeditionary foreign service that would go over
the head of foreign governments and deal directly with local groups. She called
that idea, “the kind of activist diplomacy needed in a rapidly changing global
landscape”.
Unfortunately, that's where Samantha Power displayed both
the bankruptcy and the danger of harboring the worldview by which she is
animated. Yes, the world is changing rapidly like she noticed––producing
generations of youngsters angry at their elders for letting foreign governments
interfere in their internal affairs––but she failed to appreciate the danger
posed by the explosive part of that equation.
Instead of learning from the 2012 Benghazi
experience as did many others in America , she complained that the
“diplomats retreated.” She has thus demonstrated that her fanatic devotion to
the neocon principle of having America
micromanage the world, is more powerful than her ability to recognize danger
when she meets it.