 Hello and welcome to this latest Lowey Institute Live event. This is part of what we're calling the Long Distance Lowey Institute in which we communicate our content and analysis online while we're unable to do so in person. A very warm welcome to everyone joining us from Australia and to those dialing in from overseas. I'm Michael Fulula, the Executive Director of the Lowey Institute. I'm delighted to be speaking today to one of the most influential and interesting scholar practitioners in the foreign policy world, Samantha Power. Ambassador Power made her name as a journalist and author. Her book, Problem from Hell, America and the Age of Genocide, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for its account of American passivity in the face of genocide and mass atrocities. She later became a professor at Harvard where she was the founding Executive Director of the CAR Center for Human Rights Policy. In 2005, she undertook a fellowship with then Senator Barack Obama, who later appointed her to his National Security Council during his first term as president. During his second term, President Obama appointed Ambassador Power as the US permanent representative to the United Nations and a member of his cabinet. At the end of the Obama administration, Samantha returned to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she teaches at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Law School. Last year, Samantha published her cracking new memoir, The Education of an Idealist, which is a New York Times bestseller and which I recommend highly. Before I go to our guests, some quick housekeeping. At the bottom of your screens, you'll see a Q&A button where you can submit questions. Later in this event, I'll put some of your questions to Samantha. As always, please include the name of your organization or any other affiliation when you send through your question. But first, I have some of my own questions. Welcome, Samantha Power, and thank you very much for joining me. Thank you. Great to be there, if only virtually. Let's begin by discussing your fabulous book. This memoir describes your journey from Hardigan's Pub in Dublin to the apartment of the UN ambassador at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. And I want to congratulate you on a book. On the book, I found it very affecting, especially the part about your dad's life and his death. I'm very honest also in a way that memoirs like this are not about your own struggles with self-doubt and your difficulties in balancing work and family. It's really a book that's worth reading. I want to begin by asking about your first step into the world, as it were, into the professional world as a journalist covering the Balkan Wars from 93 to 96. Samantha, what gave you the chutzpah at such a young age in your early 20s to move to the Balkans, which at that point was a dangerous place to become a war correspondent? Thank you so much. And again, it's great to be here wherever I at the hell I am. You know, I think that there are often circumstances in many people's lives where one finds oneself very, very moved by something and kind of has that thought bubble over one's head. You know, I'd like to do something. I wish I could help. And I think what pushed me over the edge was not that fact of having that I wish I could help feeling but more that I was working right out of college as an intern for someone who made me feel much older gentlemen in his mid sixties probably at that point he'd been US ambassador to Thailand when the Vietnamese and Cambodian boat people were coming and he was very influential in getting the Thai government to be welcoming. He was US ambassador in Turkey by coincidence when the Kurds were being attacked by Saddam Hussein in the wake of the Persian Gulf War. And he was out of the US government for the first time in 35 years he just been a career foreign service officer and career ambassador, and he was my boss and and he just created the sense of, you know, you've got it we all have to figure out what is in our power to do to make a difference and, you know, almost like, you know, the characters in in old African myths, you know, the sort of first person that the parent sees when the baby is born, you know, the baby gets that name. And that was what this guy Mordor Brown was to me was just somebody who planted in me very early in my nascent not even career but in this internship but just this idea that, you know, there's maybe, you know, I'm not going to go change the world in my early 20s with no experience but maybe there's a slice of this where I can make a difference and in seeking to make a difference, if even if all I end up doing is seeking. I will learn in the process and I will grow and and that mentality is one I try to inculcate in my students because you know there's a lot of gaming the system and I actually if you believe in Michael have students who come up to me say I want to be an ambassador one day. What should I do next, and I'm like well first of all change your objective like figure out what it is you're trying to do in the world or what it is you're curious about or want to learn about or would like to make a difference on and then your titles and your professional incarnations those ultimately will take care of themselves but that was what was kind of, you know, pumped into me I suppose early and then I had parents. My mother was a one of, you know, it came of age in Ireland at a time where women young women were not encouraged to go into the sciences she had a lifelong dream of being a medical doctor. It was deferred and deferred and deferred but in her, you know late 20s which you know in those days were ancient years for women to be going back to school but she went back to medical school and and pursue that dream and became a doctor and so she was, you know, a hated the idea of me going to the Balkans because of the risk, but you know wasn't one to say, stay home, you know was one more just or look shit if this has taken, if this has taken you over if this is what you're now dedicated to who am I to stand in the way given the trail that I've blazed so I think those are the two sort of foundational pillars in that choice. So that took you to the Balkans and you became a well known war correspondent a voice bringing the world's attention to some of the things that were some of the crimes that were happening in the Balkans you wrote this book which really took the world by storm. But I want to fast forward 10 years later you took another big step in your career, when you became a foreign policy fellow for Barack Obama when he was a newly elected US Senator for Illinois and I guess this began your transition from journalist and activist and scholar to policymaker. So what surprised you about becoming a policymaker. Well, it was a gradual sort of indoctrination I suppose a varied set of surprises along the way I'm probably still surprised certainly Trump has a capacity, all these days into his term to surprise me but at that time my first sort of job and it wasn't it was a fellowship as you say but my first entree into actually working in or with the US government was as an aid to Senator Obama. And, you know the book that you've been quoting is the education idealists. This was, you know, a pretty formative step in my education where I went in thinking in the wake of the disastrous invasion of Iraq, the reintroduction of torture into the American policy toolbox the setting up of the prison in Guantanamo I was pretty horrified by much of what the executive branch the George W. Bush administration was doing. And I was felt also quite small and powerless as a citizen as a professor as an activist. So I met Obama and thought okay well he works for the Senate. And the last I checked in the American Constitution, the Senate and the Congress is meant to be, you know, a check and a balance in order to blunt executive will when it is taking us in in dangerous directions and Congress has this really important oversight role, as the United States embarks on this so called global war on terror which seems to have no limits. And then I went into the Senate and Democrats were in the minority. That was the really the beginnings of I think a couple things that we now see on steroids today, one, the extent to which Republicans in the House and Senate, because they were of the same party as the president just kind of went along to get deferred and deferred and in the old days. And I don't think this is mere romantic, misremembering at work but there were a set of legislative prerogatives, you know, in that sense that our job yes is to be. In this case Republicans but could be the same probably with Democrats but just that we are of that party but we are also legislators and our job is to serve the American people above all rather than our party. The beginnings of seeing that that really wasn't working very well. The other thing that happened that year that I was only there a year plus working in the Senate with with Senator Obama. But is that the infamous do nothing Congress, which is infamous of course probably not in Australia but here in America it's like famously known as the do nothing Congress which was from the Truman Aaron was supplanted by this do nothing Congress, where gridlock was such between and among Democrats and Republicans, such that it got less done than this Congress that was famous for getting nothing done back in the Truman years. So it was my first taste not only of the failure of oversight but also of the paralysis that was beginning to take hold of the American political establishment, and I would note that the do nothing Congress that earned that horrible label for getting so little put the Marshall plan in place, you know and we were we were nowhere near, you know, even doing a sort of fraction of that in that year so it was a bit there was one of the rare instances, not a disillusionment but actually about tools that I had thought had more bite in American national security than they proved to have at least at that time and unfortunately that trend. I think has only been exacerbated as polarization has gotten worse in the United States. But the, when I went into the executive branch by contrast. I think the lessons are of a much more constructive type, you know how to build coalitions within the US government one of the first issues I took up was on the fate of Iraqi refugees and I was the President's human rights advisor. Often that pitted me in meetings against maybe the Pentagon's representative because I might be cutting off military assistance let's say to some former Indonesian paramilitary unit. And the Pentagon, often there's a lot of gravity toward just restarting military assistance, you know, without as much scrutiny of those of those records it's a bit of a caricature but you know in terms of broad strokes. And so often I found myself intention, but on the issue of Iraqi refugees and our responsibility to them, particularly to the subset of people who were looking to get out of the region because they had a well founded fear of persecution. It turns out there was a community of interpreters and translators who had worked for the American military, and my number one ally in trying to increase again the number of slots for Iraqi refugees along with the rigorous vetting program. We're US officers who have returned from Iraq, and we did the same in the Afghanistan context with a program that really carved out, you know, positions and resettlement opportunities for those who risked everything in order to assist our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan That's just an early example of seeing that you know if you caricature someone who's your bureaucratic nemesis on one issue. You know you're not likely to get very far if you dig in and see what the areas of overlap are, you know you might be able to make more bureaucratic progress so my education becomes more of that sort when I'm working for a president who does have executive power. Who I feel in most instances I have a kind of mind meld with and so he had my back in ways that were very helpful. Well let me ask you about your intellectual relationship with Barack Obama and you just described it as a mind meld. I mean you describe yourself in the title of your memoir as an idealist, but let me make an argument to you that in Obama you served the president who was arguably more realist than any since President Nixon and I remember the 2008 campaign I'm sure you do when Obama was asked to nominate the foreign policy figures that he admired and he mentioned George HW Bush and James Baker and Brent Scowcroft who just passed away and I also remember Obama in that campaign saying the greatest threats to America's national security have not been from when we should have intervened and didn't they were from when we shouldn't have intervened but we did. So was did you you had a mind meld but did you bang heads as well with Obama did you to what extent did you come at the world from a really different place from Obama. Um, you know I, I didn't sense much daylight in the way that you're describing it I mean I myself, I think would characterize myself as not not in the title of a book, because I want to sell books but you know as a consequentialist and we struggled with from our very different vantage points and he with so many responsibilities that exceeded mine and seeing a field much broader than the one that I could see but we're both trying to, you know, look on the front end of a policy crisis at the information we have available to us which of course is always not what you would wish to have in especially in the area of national security and then weigh the variables and you know whatever you think about who President Obama admires and why they admire them I mean I think one of the things he admired was the mobilization of a massive global coalition in the face of Saddam Hussein's takeover of Kuwait, which some would say you know believing in global cooperation that's not realism that's idealism that's belief in a world of cooperation and so forth it's certainly very different than than the current president. I think President Obama the fact that he wanted me in his cabinet was a reflection of wanting someone who brought a human rights and humanitarian perspective. He didn't mean that that side of him, or that that set of variables was going to prevail as he for the first term was digging us out of this massive economic hole. You know if I'm pushing climate change regulation in the first couple years he's very interested in getting the climate change legislation done he's also needing to restart the American economy almost felt like at least from scratch and so I think it has less to do with you know these labels. He'd be the first to say that as president I think that you know he has his own title for his own member coming out. Well his is also that his own story is the education of an idealist I don't I don't think you you go in to American politics in the way that he did with his life experience, including his the time he spent abroad. Climate change the way American foreign policy is done including by taking on big taboos negotiating with Iran normalizing relations with Cuba. Is that realism is that idealism. It's about trying to get things done for the American people and the world and recognizing, you know that for example in the Cuba context. There are many human rights advocates that were critical of that normalization on human rights grounds, but his point and my point very much supporting that initiative is what has an embargo done for the human rights of the Cuban people for the last five decades. You know, the definition of insanity is to try the same thing again again expect a different result and so, again I think the label is better in a way to drill down on on specific policy questions, like Syria, you know I was pushing for us to be more fun different occasion. Only get the president to care the Syrians but if I could only make that a factor in his calculus. It was more that I was unsuccessful in persuading him about the merits of the particular tool that I was proposing so yes we bumped heads but I don't think it was on ideological grounds that maybe some some would suggest. Alright let me ask you one more question about this this issue of Obama's approach to the world. There was reporting when he was president that he had said or he had joked that if there was an Obama doctrine it was don't do stupid shit and you refer to this in your memoir and you recount one of your mentors saying to you that don't do stupid shit translates to don't do shit. So I'm sorry to swear repeatedly on the low Institute live but but let me let me ask you what how do you respond to critics who say Obama was too passive in the world he was too willing to accept the thesis of American exhaustion to willing to accept the constraints on his action always thinking you know but where's the leverage and what will the other guy do rather than creating facts on the ground through American power and American will. You know I obviously have strong views on that on that argument which you hear and you hear from people who you know treat the Trump administration's manner of being in the world as kind of suitably robust right when we're more isolated and less successful in pursuing even the explicit policy objectives of the Trump administration like isolating Iran for example. A staple of this administration but they can't execute. Right because they don't have any sort of tactical agenda other than a kind of expressive look how tough we are and look. What we can do by ourselves rather than actually pursuing again a set of objectives so I'd say that I don't think President Obama was passive or hanging back or low on risk appetite when it came to sending the US military to combat an Ebola epidemic that very well could have become a global pandemic and did so over the objections of people in his own party so didn't just read the domestic political tea leaves and leave it at that but just went and got the mission accomplished for lack of a better expression but also most critically mobilizing a huge global coalition. The same on ISIS where we partnered of course very effectively with Australia and some of our other closest friends but building a 78 nation coalition. Yes it was after the US withdrawal from Iraq but recall that the withdrawal from Iraq was something that had bipartisan support within the United States and it was something the Iraqi government itself was insisting upon not itself anticipating the advent or the the sequel as it were to the Al Qaeda menace in Iraq in the in the form of ISIS. And so you know there was no way in fact even had Obama wanted to impose America's will and stay longer and reverse his own campaign promise that's not something that the Iraqi people or the Iraqi government that they elected wanted. So too on the Paris agreement again the politics shouldn't be so hard on climate change and I don't have to tell people in Australia that I mean the fact that this is still a device of issue. In light of the fact that in California in the last two weeks an area the size of Los Angeles has been gobbled up by forest fires in light of the millions of animals and other species that have been destroyed in the public health risks that Australians experience but we're a polarized country here in America and the Republicans have not embraced this challenge yet Obama went at it went to present she negotiated the bilateral agreement and then brought that to Paris that that foundational P2 agreement between the United States and China, and it took the show on the road and managed to bring even outliers like India that really felt with some reason that it was unfair to ask India to curb its emissions when it hadn't had a chance to develop in the way that advanced Western democracies that have to do but brought them online by using aggressive diplomacy already mentioned Cuba Iran I could go on. I think that where the criticism comes from is a conflation of Obama's concern about the overextension of the US military, the over militarization of US foreign policy in the post 911 world that that concerns very real and there was a desire to diversify the tools in the toolbox. But I think if if observers around the world fall prey to conflating American foreign policy with America's use of its military, it will actually weirdly be adopting the very mindset I think that has gotten the United States in trouble. A generation after generation, which is, you know, overdoing that one instrument of power and not seeing the force of America's example of America's economic leverage and its ability when it puts its mind to it to build really potent diplomatic coalitions as well. Thank you I want to come back in a minute and ask you about the Trump administration and also ask you about China but let me just stay on the UN Security Council for a second. You went you went up to New York you served your country as the permanent representative there and Australia was serving on the Security Council, I think for at least one of the years that you were ambassador. You may or may not be aware that the campaign for Australia to run for the Security Council was the subject of an intense partisan and media debate here in Australia and a lot of critics said this was a waste of money and it would require us to compromise our values because of all the. The different views of the United Nations and no one would pay any attention to Australia because we didn't have a veto so can I ask you as I know you don't want to get into Australian politics but as an American policymaker. How important is it for you that reliable countries that have an ability to have a positive effect on the world. Put themselves forward to serve on the Security Council and is it true that that the elected how do the elected members of the Council play a useful role in the Council's deliberations on international peace and security. Thank you for that question. I mean, let me just say that when I got to New York as US Ambassador to the UN, one of the first people to greet me was Australia's ambassador. In part because Australia was serving. It's it's to your term on the Council. Recognize that. The interest meant that we were going to be operating as far as I could tell looking ahead you know in in really important partnership. And so I want to offer a few examples before I get to your meta point about you know small countries or non permanent members generally just since we do have an Australian audience to talk about what Australia achieved. Because I think it's more than just about any non permanent member that I had the privilege of working with over my nearly four years in the Council. So I would start with the Syria humanitarian issue which again I walked into, but it was Australia and Luxembourg partnering in order to push the fate of the welfare of the Syrian people and try to take it out of the throat. And so I think that's one of the issues of the geopolitical rivalry or deterioration of ties between the US and Russia, and make it something that, you know, middle powers and smaller countries could throw their weight behind how could they not right it stands to reason that when people are being just because they happen to live in opposition territory that that should be something that you could rally broader support for, but had it stayed, you know, in the p five in the five in the hands of the five permanent members and just been Russia China the US UK France, you know, duking it out the US UK and France on one side Russia and China and the other. I don't think we could have broken through did we break through enough God know we know what what has happened in Syria, not only in that period but since, but it was Australia's leadership with Luxembourg that got us a humanitarian resolution across the line in order to open up for checkpoints in the northern part of the country that allowed food to get directly the people in desperate need rather than having to be rerouted as had been the case before through Damascus where Damascus was taking food off and charging you know bribes and all the rest. And that was, you know, just squarely in the Australian Luxembourg hands and then Jordan came along. And so that united front of small, smaller countries, not small countries, small the case of Luxembourg but certainly non permanent members pushing that, then you're able to bring the Africans and the Latin Americans and others along in a way that was very, very powerful. Another example was, you know shows less concrete results so far but life is long and that is on in 2017 and Foreign Minister Bishop coming to New York and so powerfully speaking on behalf of the Australians who had been killed by the Russian separatist attack on Malaysian Airlines flight. Again, you know it's hard to know do you draw a thick line or a dotted line between that and the accountability process in the Hague. We didn't of course get meaningful enforcement out of New York because Russia was going to be implicated but you know when it comes to the broader UN membership, very few were left in doubt about what had happened, about where responsibility lay and about who was isolated and about what was necessary in the medium and long term and I think Australia played a critical role. And then the last thing I say although I could go on is we're really important something very personally important to me was Australia was a key partner in helping us for the very first time in UN history, putting the fate of North Korea's people, not North Korea's nuclear program, but North Korea's people on the agenda of the Security Council. That had not happened before and Australia did it in in partnership itself which of course had to do that as well for the in behind North Koreans and you're on your shortwave radio which you can get, you know, sent to a gulag for listening to under the blankets late at night and you and you hear about the Security Council meeting on North Korea, and they're talking about North Korea's nuclear program and its proliferation and talking about the threat to international peace and security. And then the meeting ends, and you and the fact that your own government is basically like a weapon of mass destruction to you and your family and everyone you love is off the agenda. That was the status quo ante before Australia and Korea push this agenda to really look into what was happening behind North Korean lines. And of course Justice Kirby became critical in in chairing the Human Rights Commission on what the events again and the treatment of North Korean Americans behind the lines. So those are just a couple of examples but that's something again once the the wiring has been put in place people have to dismantle it and that's a legacy that Australia has left. Well, thank you very much and let me say also thank you to you for your work in helping seek to seek justice on behalf of the Australian, the Australians who were killed on MA 15 I know you did a tremendous job so thank you for that. Let me let me move on ambassador if I can let me ask you about the Trump administration. I mean there's a lot to talk about. It's probably a good moment to take a sip of wine actually. Let me ask you that the world has been has been shocked by America's poor performance in the Coronavirus pandemic now heading towards 200,000 dead. I'm sorry to say and we're all the world is used to seeing the United States as the epicenter of global power not the epicenter of global disease. Do you think that COVID has shown up frailties in America's society and America's governance and how how confident are you that America can snap back as not just as a as a positive force in the world but as a successful society if if Joe Biden is elected president. So I'd say a couple things I mean first just to underscore the essential truth of your of your question or your your comment about America's performance on COVID. I mean, you know what it has felt like in Australia, how difficult, particularly the relockdown, you know having felt like you picked it and then it comes back in Melbourne and Victoria more broadly. But you know we're 126 cases per million and your seven cases per million. So even if we control for population just to give the relative sense of how ineffective. Our approach has been let me put it that way when we put it neutrally in the first instance. Second, I think what we've exposed to the world is the costs of having an anti science, anti expertise, anti global cooperation administration. I mean, you know it's like the perfect storm of one of the things you would most want in a pandemic. Science, expertise, you know politics and party ism and polarization not getting in the way of sort of sound public policy. And then coordination with other countries so you can know what was coming at you but also and benefit from the lessons that others can teach you, but also so you would invest in supporting those countries that don't have the resources they need to combat the pandemic because you know for as long as it is raging anywhere in the world. It is on one level at least a threat to all of us and so we have, you know it's almost like out of a science fiction movie, the perfect storm of the wrong qualities and attribute administration for with a pandemic as we lead the world in infections and deaths and rates and so forth. Did you lose me there again. We lost you briefly but but please continue. Okay, I apologize so just simply making the point. Again of science, public policy expertise, international cooperation, just what you would need a pandemic being just what's missing here. One thing I think we have exposed is the costs of political polarization that is this virulent and just how we see across America that you know if you're a Democratic administration or if you're a Democratic leader, you're inclined to follow the CDC and follow the CDC what's left of it, the Centers for Disease Control, but if you're someone who feels and you know great affinity for President Trump, you're more likely to raise hey about raising mass, more likely to shun lockdowns and that's what the scientists have commanded and so it's really the most graphic example of party is and polarization the very dysfunction I mentioned that we began I began to see when I worked for Obama in the Senate office now costing lives and and showing how much it affects Americans, America's technocratic capacity to deal with problems within its own borders, and how that then affects the rest of the world because as our economy plummets, you know what it was always going to be a big blow to our economy but you know we've committed so many own goals as part of our response and it's the global economy that will pay a price and so that window into us into the new us. It's basically damaging. Having said that, Michael, you know this Trump election was in 2016 was settled by 78,000 votes spread across three states, you know roughly 25,000 votes in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, you know distributed differently but roughly, as Michelle Obama said the other night, you know in Wisconsin I think it was two votes per precinct would have needed to change in order for the outcome in that state to change. This is such a close call and that was the difference between a science based expert based internationally inclusive and cooperative based response and this. So does that mean that we are, you know, on a knife's edge going into this election, in terms of whether we can recover not only our leadership in the world but our competence at home. On a level yes, but it's also true as I think your question implied that it won't be enough to simply elect someone who believes in science believes in alliances, believes in the experts in the Republican Party which I'm not sure is on the verge of happening because even in a scenario where Vice President Biden becomes president, a scenario in which the Democratic Party takes the Senate, which is much more likely now than it was before coven and where we keep the house. You still have Trump's judges sprinkled now across the federal bench you still have our rules in terms of making legislation that require 60 votes basically to get across that legislative threshold, and you don't yet have Biden saying he's going to do away with the governor. And that you know if you we wouldn't get 60 votes. You know, to get a stimulus through, you know something that would benefit Republican states as well as Democratic states, unless the Republican Party changes it's more oppositional mindset and decides that it wants to cooperate, but there's nothing about the years that lead me to believe that they're on the verge of that epiphany, which is what is most, I think, daunting about the years ahead, and the question of whether we can recover our leadership. Let me ask you about Joe Biden you mentioned the Vice President there obviously you worked closely with him on the foreign policy side of the house over both terms of the Obama administration you write about how you found him supportive in you in that first term when you are a young staff on the National Security Council, but given that you've had this sort of personal association with him tell us a bit about what kind of a president you think he would make, and what his foreign policy instincts would be like he's obviously been around forever he knows a lot of national leaders he's got a lot of experience but what would is how how is instinct similar perhaps similar to different from President Obama. Yeah, well, I'd note one similarity, and then maybe one slight temperamental difference, and both have bearing both in domestic policy and foreign policy. So, by way of sharing the similarity I just share an anecdote, which I actually tweeted about weirdly recently because I just it dawned on me that it was relevant in the context of our current president who really likes having around him people who praise him and agree with him and celebrate him. But, you know, I, we talked earlier about the budding heads with Obama sometimes on, particularly on Syria. And, you know, I had experienced multiple times of non concurring or dissenting in discussions that we were having or feeling unsatisfied by, by where a discussion was going and raising let's say a contrarian view. And sometimes Obama who you know the weight of the world on his shoulders, you know, you get a little testy little irritable might verbally, you know, say something dismissive or like the famous example to famous only in my household was, we've all read your chapter, you know something like that like something just kind of, you know, and fundamentally disagreeing with wherever was that I was trying to take the discussion but when that would happen to me and it happened a handful of times, Obama would almost always come back, recognizing that, you know, he had me in the room for a reason he wanted these issues raised and he might have been a little curt or a little dismissive or testy. But in the intervening minutes, which to me felt like glacial pace of time moving it just felt like I felt so isolated and, you know, kind of, you know, alone, but on almost every instance in that intervening time before I had been rehabilitated by Obama. So Biden would slip me a note, and it would say something like, that's exactly why he wants you here, or you keep at that sister or my favorite was go Irish. I still have this stash of notes here, you know that he passed me and I think it just that's the area of similarity I think to have a sound I know it sounds so basic but sound process where you have divergent views colliding, with an authoritarian perspective so the president can make the best decision, you know that they can make but on the basis of hearing a full full spectrum of views very very different than our current circumstances. I think a difference would be, you know, Biden's kind of love of just history with retail politics and and and by that I mean. You know, you've all seen the images of a bind with his arm around this person and that person and I what comes to mind is like the old Lyndon Johnson photographs from when Johnson was trying to hustle the Civil Rights Act through and, you know, he's in one image he's famously, kind of leaning over a colleague up on Capitol Hill trying to, you know, extract from him the concession that he needed to get his to get him on board. And, you know, I think Biden just that old school politics he's the very thing that Trump is now trying to brand him with that he's been a legislator for his whole life but he's been doing compromises he's been doing deals. He's relational, you know, he's, he's the first to say that and it hurt him initially in the primary, because at times he would sound as if he, you know, hadn't, you know, been privy to the Obama years where where Republicans just turn their backs on on building relationships with Democrats. But he's got, you know, a Rolodex but that personal kind of chemistry and faith that persuasion, you know, can matter and I think the foreign policy implications are twofold. First, as I indicated earlier our foreign policy is just so much weaker when we don't have a bipartisan underpinning to it. And so, I think Biden gives us the best chance of all the Democrats who ran in the primary and the best chance of any of the candidates given to Trump as the other alternative, but of returning us to having some bipartisan foundation not for everything Republicans aren't going to embrace treaties anytime soon for example, but for alliances, you know, for NATO for probably some revisions to our approach to central trade, but not throwing baby out with bathwater you know there there is a core consensus I think they can be achieved. So in the foreign policy domain. It will matter that Obama has has built those relationships domestically and then the second dimension is the relationships I think that Biden already has with some leaders, but will build with others and and that I think I don't like Obama had very strong cordial relationships with lots of leaders with Australia there was a lot of turnover so it probably didn't go as deep as it might have. But you didn't get the sense necessarily that Obama delighted, you know, in his opportunities to have long wending phone calls with with Chancellor Merkel for example one of his favorite world leaders. There was a sense that it was like his favorite thing to do, and he, he adored her and respected her and respects her massively. Where's with Biden, you know I think you'll have the wherever the Australian Prime Ministers are in his tenure Prime Minister is in his tenure, if Prime Minister Morrison, you know continues to lead Australia, you know, you'll have the leader, it'll be on speed dial you know it'll be a degree of transparency and accountability on one level. You know, and, and even a warmth and personal friendship because I think for for Biden everything is relational. The understanding where a person is coming from knowing about their families and so forth so it can sound a little kind of touchy feely but it's the foundation for trust and trust is what America is so missing right now in the world. Let me ask you one more question Samantha that I'm going to take a couple of questions from the audience. Let me ask you about China. The US policy and US debate on China has hardened very significantly in the last couple of years. Let me ask you what kind of US policy towards China would you like to see and how would you balance the different priorities. There's a couple between criticizing a human rights abuses within China versus a more of an emphasis on constraining China's external behavior, supporting allies around China that might feel threatened by its behavior. And then on the other hand cooperating with China on issues like climate change which you mentioned earlier happened during the Obama administration so what what's your US policy on China would you like to see. So I think, you know, it is going to be a relationship that is the most complex that America maybe has ever been privy to. I mean, in a way as, as fearsome and at times chilling as the Cold War rivalry was with the Soviet Union it was relatively straightforward it didn't feel to George Kennan and others at the time but its contours were were evident. And, you know, depending on what doctrinal phase we were in its implications in in the develop in developing countries, you know, among our closest allies, relatively clear cut again not to at all romanticize its simplicity, but the dynamics that you've just described a combination of confronting China on everything from intellectual property theft to sort of free riding on the international financial rules that have undergirded the international system, you know, protecting its own and making market access really different for difficult for outsiders. There's some confrontational dimensions there, as well as human rights, right so it's not just human rights issues or the fate of the weavers or the fate of the Chinese people or what China is exporting to other countries to enable human rights abuses. It's also in the economic domain that that those confrontations are almost inevitable structurally I think going forward. Here's the competition piece, which is, you know, both thinking in terms of market shares and looking out for one's own middle class and how that cuts around the world but you know I know from my time at the UN and from what's happened in recent months that it's also about competing for votes at the end and and you know trying to bring more adherence to a US Australian, let's call it loosely, you know, democratic worldview, then adherence to a view that states dictate the not only the welfare of their citizens but also the rights of their citizens which is very much the China view within China within China but also what it's seeking to export into international institutions is doing so gradually, but at an accelerated pace, since the pandemic has struck and so that competition is going to be very rule very real and it's going to the outcome of those competitions day to day within international organizations are going to dictate the future of the internet, the future of surveillance technologies and whether there are rules on the road, you know, in terms of exporting those technologies and more the peace and security agenda and the Security Council could be upended beyond recognition if China chooses to use its veto in a way that just bows to whatever a state authority thinks is legitimate within its borders, we've seen that movie before and that was what brought us the United Nations in the first place right was a recognition that national law could not be all there was or you could get the Nuremberg laws and you could get, you know, again what was done behind German lines within Germany proper or within occupied territories throughout the war that was built an international human rights regime was to have a set of standards that went beyond what the state wanted well guess what China wants to go back in time and have state fiat really be the decider and and have those norms not exist because those norms mean that China is not consistent with those norms and so it's constantly feeling fractured by standards that it's not internally on the verge of meeting so there's the competition and then as you know the the collaboration the cooperation which makes it so different from the Soviet circumstance we can't tackle change that China not only being at the table but by being a driver of clean energy and we've seen a mixed picture I'm not in a glass house and being American and now they're being 100 days until the Trump administrations which are all from the Paris Accords take off takes effect I read today that it was 100 days away but nor is China in a great position because for all of its trumpeting of meeting being on at least on track to meet its Paris agreement the Paris commitments, it is building coal plants left and right as part of its belt and road initiative, and it is not taking a net emissions approach to its own contribution in the world which is going to hurt the Chinese people particularly in coastal areas, just as much as it's going to you know hurt people elsewhere in the world and so that but but we don't have an option of simply being in a competitive or confrontational mode that's where the Trump administration is right now. We have to somehow compartmentalize and that's going to require, you know, getting a more sophisticated politics here in the United States, but it's going to require China also learning to live with more friction in the relationship. Then it is accustomed to me now it's very accustomed to friction and only friction, but in a more sophisticated strategic relationship with a lot of dimensions. There is going to have to be both tension and accountability. I'm sure they will heap it in our direction as well where they see fit. And there have to be spaces carved out to cooperate or the planet is in peril, not just on climate but on space on cyber on so many other on so many other issues. All right, Samantha, we've only got a few minutes I'm going to see if I can squeeze in a couple of audience questions. The first one I want to take is from a mutual friend of ours, the former Australian Foreign Minister, Gareth Evans. And Gareth asks on the issue of responding to genocide and other mass atrocity crimes to which we both devoted a lot of sweat and tears over our respective working lives. Given the prevailing US culture of aversion to any new military entanglements. How do you think a Biden administration would react to another Cambodia Rwanda Srebrenica or Kosovo another Gaddafi or Assad. And how much would depend on the positions of Russia and China and how much would depend on the personnel around around a President Biden. Well, let me first say how much admiration and personal affection I have for your questioner. And, you know, credit Gareth through thick and thin for for carrying the flag for this concept that he did more than anyone in the world to popularize and, and you know, because I think there is a lot of misunderstanding, not withstanding Gareth's effective communication skills but I think people do come late R2P with the use of military force for lots of reasons that we don't even have to go into. I think what was so formidable about the, the doctrine is the idea of the toolkit. And I think that's what you could expect from Vice President Biden vice president Biden thoroughly supportive of the agenda, which is in the face of mass atrocity, making sure that the issue rises within the US government to a high level bureaucratically and it sounds kind of like inside baseball, but to a level where you can get decisions made in a hurry. And then, at that point, depending on what country we're talking about what region what circumstance, what, you know, level of timeframe we have to work with to open that toolbox and figure out which tools can be employed in order to try to affect the calculus of those who are committing those problems. And so, you know the minute we get into is he going to, is it going to, is Biden going to bomb or is he going to intervene, you know that's such a rare circumstance Gareth that either you or I would even think it's a good idea for the US military to be involved. Well, it's absolutely true that the United States is, you know, very fatigued by the so called endless wars, and I think there's not going to be huge enthusiasm for new military deployments, you know absent, you know, attacks on the United States and core US interests that one shouldn't get through our exchange earlier Michael this one shouldn't complain that with an indifference to mass atrocities and nor should our fatigue distract us from the fact that in Sub-Saharan Africa. For example, governments have made a lot of progress in trying to ready their forces to be part for example of peacekeeping missions that are deployed in a much more rapid fashion. The US headquarters is better, not still not at rapid deployment but at far more rapid deployment than they could do even five years ago and so there have been advances that make it possible to imagine catalytic US leadership along with that leadership of our closest friends like Julia, producing, you know, peacekeeping or peace enforcement presences on the ground that could make a real difference but well beyond that as you know, sanctions, denunciation negotiation which is, you know, doesn't happen hardly at all anymore as our diplomatic tool can be leveled up but really remembering that array of tools and not reducing R2P to something it never was which was, you know, send in the Marines or do nothing. That was never what the concept that you bequeat was meant to be. I'll ask you one more question. I don't want to go over time tonight in part because I don't want to test my luck with the Wi-Fi situation. We have a question from Amy Denmede and Amy says, Amy loves your book and she says you spent election night 2016 at the ambassador's residence with all the other female ambassadors to the United Nations and with Gloria Steinem I think hoping to share the experience of watching the US electorate's first female president and then I guess you had to kind of explain the result in a way to the colleagues. Amy asks where will you be spending election night 2020 and with whom and I guess the follow up question is what would it say to the rest of the world if after four years of the Trump administration Americans say more please how would you explain that. Well thank you for ensuring that I have nightmares this evening. It's early in the morning or relatively early in the morning there. This is my nightcap here. You're sending me, I think it's why I can't blame Amy, I'm blaming you Michael for making more salient that idea of a second term. Where will I be spending election night? Well, let me first remind you or alert you, I don't know which is needed but to the fact that we are very unlikely to know our results this coming election night, November 3rd, because of the pandemic and the need to rely on mail-in voting much more than we ever have in our nation's history. And so there are some who believe that we won't even know the election results until December if you can believe it. So depending on where we are in the pandemic, I suspect I will probably be on election night at home with my husband, a big Biden supporter, and my two children who are more invested in this race. I think that any sporting event, both my kids are big sports fans, but nothing is more important to them I think than seeing the kinds of things that they learn in school, you know, share, don't cheat, don't lie, be kind. You know, we're doing our best here as parents, it's hard enough, but to see those very core principles defied every day, you know, at the highest levels of the US government, they just, my kids just know how wrong and off that is and how shunned so many people of color and people of different, you know, ethnic backgrounds feel in this much less inclusive America. So we'll be bunkered, we'll be nervous, I'm sure particularly about the tactics that Trump and his people are likely to employ at the state and local level to try to suppress the vote and Trump has been pretty explicit about that being his intention so that's not even a political statement by me and in terms of what signal it will send. I will close by quoting Amos Tversky the great Israeli social psychologist who said, don't be a pessimist because if you're a pessimist you suffer twice. So, let us not suffer between now and whenever the election results are announced with that foreboding. You know, if the day comes we'll figure out how we will hold that administration, the second Trump administration accountable. Without Trump's mishandling of the pandemic, the fact that the economy is tanking and the fact that he is showing no personal concern or empathy for people who have suffered the effects, economic or health. That has really hurt him at the polls and Biden is the embodiment of the decency and the empathy that people are really craving at a time of national crisis. We will hope that for sadly a bunch of wrong reasons, you know, nobody wanted a pandemic or an economic collapse, but that it underscores how important it is to have a leader who's competent who believes in science and who feels empathy toward the people around him in his country and in the world. Samantha power. Thank you very much for being so generous with your time. I know it's late at night there in Concord, Massachusetts. Thank you for being good humid for plowing on despite the Wi Fi problems but persisting which in fact is a theme I think of your career. It's a theme of your tremendous book your tremendous memoir the education of an idealist, which I recommend. I know you're a big baseball fan. I think you're a member of Red Sox nation. I don't know if you if you've watched much cricket, but we really would love to get you down to Australia at some point to watch a test cricket match. So maybe we can do that in the future when the planes are flying again. I would love that. It would be terrific. Thank you so much, Michael. Thanks to everybody. Thanks for the terrific questions. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you everybody else for joining us on this Lowy Institute live event. Keep an eye out for other Lowy Institute products including our podcasts. I'm pleased to say that in the next episode of my podcast, the director's chair. I'll be speaking with a colleague and friend of Samantha Powers, Jake Sullivan, who's the senior policy advisor to Vice President Joe Biden. In the meantime, thank you again, Samantha power and from everyone at the Lowy Institute. Thanks for joining us today and stay safe and well.