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I'm here today with Samantha power who is currently professor of practice at the Harvard Kennedy School and also the Harvard School of Law she started her career as an NPR wartime correspondent including in the former Yugoslavia her ptor prize winning book a problem from
Hell focused the attention of the world on the issue of genocide and revolutionized our thinking about foreign policy Samantha power of course later served in President Obama's cabinet and she was his ambassador to the United Nations and she is also the
author of other books but most notably she has a memoir just out called the education of an idealist a memoir Samantha welcome great to be here Tyler very first question which personality characteristics do you feel make for a good Diplomat uh great question not
asked enough I think by people who practice diplomacy probably I'd start with listening and trying to really hear where the other person is coming from and often they're coming from a standpoint of receiving instructions from their head of state or from their
Minister for starters or if they are the minister they're implementing kind of what is perceived as National will but they also are individuals who are sometimes very independent-minded and they're fighting within their own systems so often there's a tendency to
just kind of see the instructions or the dictat that comes at you and think think that that's the sum total of uh sort of what the individual in front of you represents or wants to advance but in fact you have to pry a little bit and
and try to loosen the individual up to get some sense of where they fall within their universe and I only know that because it's true of me as well or anybody practicing diplomacy on behalf of the United States you have to listen really carefully to understand the
situated self in many ways and which personality features make for good wartime correspondence and are they the same as those which make for good diplomats they're similar uh certainly listening and really trying to see sort of where the people that you're
interviewing whether policy makers you know who are failing to or succeeding in managing a conflict or more likely in the case of a work correspondent the individuals who are affected by conflict or are participating in Conflict so really trying to hear sort of what's
motivating them how they're affected by conflict but then and I think this would also be true of a good Diplomat uh being able to bridge a distance between the readers or the viewers that you have in mind back in your home country and then
these experiences that most of your viewers and readers hopefully will never uh have themselves and that requires keeping an eye on both and and trying uh to sort of see what is adaptive you know what works for a reader learn from that uh you know if you get a lot of
responses to a story because they see themselves in the individuals that you managed to describe then chances are that's something you should try again and and um so really listening and and hearing both sides of the spectrum I think as a war correspondent how risk
averse are good diplomats and does that conflict with what you need to be a good wartime correspondent well again it's hard to sort of convey to people outside the realm of Prosecuting foreign policy or practicing diplomacy but most
diplomats are quite bounded uh in the sense that it's very rare actually for a diplomat to be able to sort of lean much Beyond where they know their head of state has entitled them to go uh when they do they often get smacked down by the people who work above them so I was
very fortunate but again it's not it's not a common circumstance to be both a diplomat representing the United States and a member of the president's cabinet so I was able to spend enough time with President Obama to have a sense not only
of what my explicit instructions were but where the gray areas were at the margins and how far to push and so in in being in that privileged position of spending more time with him I was more inclined I'd say to be risk-taking than
somebody who's literally receiving a cable from their minister or from their head of state to go forth and and do X or Y on behalf of their country I took a lot of risks in my public Persona I mean they don't sound like RIS certainly not like the RIS I took as a war
correspondent but I thought it was really important to try to break out of a kind of stale linga Franca that exists around contemporary conflict so the tendency is just to describe conflicts in very mechanical I think very antiseptic ways and what I would do when
I was projecting publicly let's say at the UN Security Council or at a press Stakeout is to tell the stories of individuals that I had met who had suffered the consequences of conflict so this is again back to being having been
a journalist but trying recognizing that diplomats who I'm disagreeing with are human beings and that they're as unlikely to be moved by rote talking points as I am unlikely to be moved by ro roote talking points or changed internally emotionally or changed as a
practical matter so my only hope of kind of breaking them out of the rut that they are in not may my only hope but but a a main source of hope is to kind of remind them that this isn't just some run-of-the middle conflict that this
isn't just a day job that there are these individuals you know who might be the same age as your daughter or your sister or your mother who are suffering these consequences and we have a responsibility to try to shake things up a little bit because what we've been
doing you know hasn't been working or we wouldn't be in in a position of having this conversation so so again it's storytelling but it's more about breaking people out of their comfort zone so they they can hear aresh uh what is happening in the world so if I think
about Richard Holbrook he was one of the diplomats who helped broker a solution in former Yugoslavia if I read your edited volume on H Brook he sounds so sane and rational if I read the new George Packer biography of Holbrook he sounds somewhat crazy and maybe a
womanizer or obnoxious or faant of disregard for protocol how should I Square these pictures what's the actual truth well about Richard hallbrook it would be unusual for any individual in a self-portrait to depict himself as a womanizing crazy person person for
starters right but I also think I mean George's book also depicts a person who aligns with the the Holbrook that we know from Hook's own Patrol namely somebody super energetic and creative and you know working all sources of Leverage I mean I think he was a complex
individual who was sort of both and everything I was very lucky to have been mentored by him and I think that's one thing that's a story I told in the edited hook volume that that isn't a Salient I think uh in Packer's account
but it's very wonderful but also quite unusual for an established Diplomat whether one who is self-involved and egotistical or one Andor one who is super talented and creative Hook was both of those things but for for anyone in those categories to spend the time
that Holbrook spent cultivating young diplomats I think that speaks to you know also a depth of character and a and a a deep reverence for the United States a kind of patriotism because I think he saw it wasn't like let me have my refracted Glory or let let let all of
these minions go forth in the world and there'll be many hbrooks you know going around I think he really thought it was incumbent on him to groom the next generation of diplomats to go forth on behalf of us interests and so I think you know any kind of black and white
portrait of someone with that range of qualities uh would be you know would be would be flawed I think I think George does an excellent job capturing the ying and the Yang now you migrated to the United States from Ireland at the age of
nine when you first arrived here what was your biggest surprise everything was huge and and so when we arrived in Pittsburgh which was my first Hometown in America I actually thought the airport had to be the biggest airport in the history of the world and uh you
hadn't been to Dallas yet I don't know yeah it would be years really because I didn't travel that much as a kid but I remember we moved to Atlanta then when I was in high school and then I got to Hartsfield International Airport I
thought my gosh what is going on like these airports but just coming from Dublin or Shannon Airport was would have been where we flew from uh it was a different world and then just the the selection I mean we had the the old school TV which of course Americans did
have many generations before I guess uh here in this country but we had the three channels you know the antenna where you try to get one one of the channels was only in Irish all the time GA the gaic language and then sudden you get to America and at that time I think
there was 13 or 14 channels but within a few years there'd be 60 and then God knows how many we have now so just that sense of abundance I think but you know some things were were similar even if the the form changed like sport was huge
in Ireland even for a small country Irish football or soccer or hurling or whatever and then you come to America and you look around it's just a different set of sports but that same kind of enthusiasm and energy so I just there were sort of categories that one
could slot the new into that I that I brought with me I guess in which ways do you feel your thought isn't in some manner still Irish in orientation in a way that would distinguish you from say American Born individuals well it's hard
to know because I can't run the the counterfactual but and so I don't know what's just because my my mother is a physician and very empathetic toward her patience and do I learn from that or you know am I moved by having come from a small country a PO at that time a poor
country that was sending with a history of Oppression right with a history of Oppression with a history of its the Dignity of its people being trampled is that why I care so much about individual dignity you know again I can't run the
history a different way but I I do think that it is incumbent on large countries and large powers and large personalities to see the individual worth and dignity the people around them you know whether the you know the person who who works for you or you know this
the small country in the United Nations that may only have a population of 10,000 but nonetheless every one of those 10,000 people on one level counts on the United States let's say to deal with climate change or something like that and so so the the idea that you
know that that some countries are are sort of intrinsically better than others or or any kind of superiority complex I think that would have been I would have been innately suspicious of that I suppose even as I rejoiced in all that made America amazing to me both as a kid
and as a diplomat now China is very much in the news as of late so let me ask you some very easy questions about China it's such an easy topic now as you know China for years had promised the United States and also President Obama that it
would not militarize the South China Sea and then they went ahead and they did that and perhaps looking back this has turned out to be more important than we might have thought at the time what was or would have been the best proper response to China militarizing the South
China Sea I think that first of all there was an awareness across the administration I think uh of how this wasn't just about a pile of rocks you know this was about uh whether countries especially an ascendant country like China that was going to just Ascend and
Ascend and Ascend for the foreseeable future whether they were prepared to play by the rules of the road or whether might made right and these are enduring questions that have been with us through history whenever there's a rising power
but but also whenever there's a a falling power you know how do different countries deal with kind of major changes in their status and and what level of entitlement do they bring to to their practices I think what we did was challenge them work with others to
challenge them in the court of public opinion of course but also at the international court of justice you know invoking the rules of the road invoking the rule of law and then to continue to try to maintain freedom of navigation in
these critical areas it's it's very challenging because it's also the case that you don't have an American public or or an American constituency let's say that would be terribly enthusiastic about a military confrontation over uh questions of you know land grabs in the
south to see so you're balancing an invocation of the rule of law a recognition that the some of these claims are contested and that it's not for us to decide you know whether this belongs to Vietnam or to China but but to to kind of again invest in a
rules-based order where every country you know doesn't just grab what it wants but is prepared to abide by these rulings and unfortunately what we're seeing with China is it just swats away those rulings you know sort of as the United States has done in the past as
well I should note and there is a tendency especially among strong powers to cherry-pick those findings that they like so I'm not sure going back maybe more of an emphasis on the freedom of navigation Dimension which is something
that all the countries of the world including China should be able to agree upon we did you know really pivot to use the phrase that President Obama used at the time to Asia and make very significant new Investments both in terms of trade and the trans-pacific
partnership and negotiating that which I think would have been an enormous Boon and also a real signal to China you know that all of these countries are going in a in a different direction and that and that you can't separate out the military
land grab from the economic and and that there are you know communities of values also that can come together but that of course has been sort of walked away from by the by the Trump Administration but we also made sizable military investments in the region really
deepening uh our presence in Asia so beyond that again I think you you it's it's a balancing act um so I'm not sure looking back I'm not sure that China was going to be bucked if we did six more freedom of navigation exercises and I'm not sure again that the military
confrontation approach some some seem quite reckless in their prescriptions you know well why didn't you well answer like how would that play itself out and you know you can't be you have to stand up for what's right and stand up for the
rule law but it's not as if consequences potential consequences have no bearing on that calculus here's a reader question and I quote can the US really push hard on global human rights anymore if doing so would simply Drive countries into the arms of China Myanmar for
instance and quote well I'd separate a few different dimensions I mean right now you know this is we're not going to be living in a Trump World um for for an infinite amount of time some of us hope that it'll be a very short amount of
time from where we sit to today but but right now it's very hard to credibly stand up for human rights just given the actions and commitments uh and practices of the Trump Administration and I say that not as one who is a but say we had your preferred President right whoever
but I think it's not as if the world doesn't remember children in cages or you know orphans people orphaned by the United States who now can't find their parents or or the Kim Jong-un Love Fest or the you know like it's not as if that's a blip that's going to be part of
our National Heritage in a funny way and so so but I but it just to bracket the question of how we recover from a trump presidency and the and the human rights practices and affections of this President I think that the the core of
the of the questioners uh concern is is more geopolitical it's more well uh any country now can Forum shop and if if they don't like what they're hearing from us they'll just say okay well I'll go and do my belt and Road initiative with China so so that's an enduring
question irrespective of whether we can clean up our act in the wake of trump and what I'd say is I actually look at it a little bit differently which is that in an age of China's increasing aggression Beyond its borders it's you know Crackdown and increasing
assertiveness in the near abroad you know I'm not sure you can call Hong Kong the near abroad but you know the fact that China actually goes to Thailand to round up a Critic of China of its incarceration of the Wagers or the fact that it is
prepared to act Beyond its borders in very aggressive ways whether in the South China Sea or again on in order to keep itself insulated from criticism China is now at the UN trying to sort of alter the rules of the road and the core human rights principles that have
undergirded the International System for more than 70 years they're trying to make the the rules kind of more pro-censorship more about State consent and not about there being a set of higher principles against which states should be measured
or judged and so they're out there being China and they're out there not yet in a fully in a full mode of let us export our domestic values internationally they're not that is not their number one game plan right now their number one game plan is inter internal stab
above everything else and of course sustained economic growth and economic sustenance and provision for their for their people but day by day you're seeing more and more of this exporting and so what the United States could do is in deference to the the logic of the
question is to say well you know China's out there doing its thing and if we start whining about human rights you know what good is that going to do or to look at our values our democracy our traditions our respect for the Dignity
of individuals as a comparative advantage in what is a bit of a scrum geopolitically and there I think we would actually have a lot of friends What I Hear most from European Partners or democracies in Asia and Africa is we're all alone you know now China is
trying to change the rules of the road and we're kind of scattered among ourselves we're trying to learn how to build coalitions Without You United States and that's not just because of Trump's human rights practices that's also because of his lack of Engagement
with International institutions and we really as democracies if we believe in this model if we believe everything we've been saying for a very long time about the links between democracy and prosperity and the links between democracy and stability over time then
it's actually in our interest to see that model uh strengthened and not to go into Retreat um so I actually think that you're going to see American politicians and leaders talk more not less about values in an age of China's rise do you
think it's a fair criticism that us human rights Advocates have been a little soft in criticizing China or a little bit LAX that you have an incarceration of maybe over a million people and it sometimes claimed there's a kind of soft implicit censorship at
the think tank level think tanks who get money from China universities reliant on Chinese students a lot of companies of course have business in China and has the whole thing been soled pedal compared to say how Yugoslavia was talked about in the
1990s well we know Hollywood Movie Makers won't make a movie where a Chinese person is the villain and they insert Asian looking individuals as Heroes typically to appeal to the Chinese market which is now number two have we painted ourselves into a box of
censoring ourselves well let me agree with a part of the premise which is given the scale of the brutality and really the atrocity being carried out against a people the weer people in China we're seeing woefully insufficient coverage and
criticism so I agree with that premise in part just because of the gravity of the harm it's very hard to imagine what would be sufficient I mean that's unbelievable like they can't get out it's not as if mean they talk about re-education Rehabilitation it's not
like there's some test where you say I love you know uh president XI and I wish I wish he could be dictator not only for life but for a hundred lives and then you get out of jail like you're you're this is mass incarceration with
no shelf life so I don't I don't and and there's there's no one can escape this if you if you are a weager and and speak your language and practice your culture I mean it's sick so woefully insufficient in terms of the soft pedaling I guess I'd want to look at
that as an as an empirical question I mean I think part of what's going on is you don't hear a lot of criticism coming from the United States government every now and then because of the religious freedom sort of commitments of different individuals within the Trump
Administration you'll hear some discussion of the weers more than you might let's say in Saudi Arabia or because there's a a broader attack on China because of trade and and other things this sort of gets lumped in with that and there seems more Comfort
criticizing them than countries with which we are aligned and and seem totally unprepared to to criticize again like Saudi Arabia so but but it's not as if the Trump Administration has a human rights policy as such it's not as if they're looking at the conditions inside
particular countries if they were they'd probably be nervous about discussions of detention given the amount of detention being done um in the migrant and immigration context by the Trump Administration not that there's any parallel but nonetheless you know it's
the kind of thing that would be thrown back at them so you know I think that there's not enough noise but I I just it's hard for me to to know whether or not that La that latest Brookings piece isn't going all in on that or you know
because of censorship or because of corporate influence it's it's plausible that that's a factor or because they actually feel that they don't have a great recommendation as to what can be done you know I I found find in advocacy
you see the most spirited advocacy in circumstances like Bosnia where policy makers are on the brink of doing one thing or another and act is feel like in making their recommendations or in taking over the oped pages that you know they're sort of one step away from
really making a difference on the weager policy even if we were in office the Obama Administration or the next Democratic Administration it's hard to speak with confidence that any particular tool that you employed would convince the Chinese government to think
differently about this repulsive uh and brutal uh policy that it's practicing and so I think that is another Factor but I'm sure the money is is is a factor as well and it is terrifying I see even even here the extent to which you you know you see such a willful a willful
attempt on the part of the Chinese government to sort of insinuate American college campuses to to Really shrivel up the safe spaces in which criticism of China can occur even you know thousands and thousands of miles away from where
any instability might might take root and might actually threaten the regime and again with us more recessive on these questions we the United States that is I think you're just seeing an embolden China using the money that it has using the economic leverage that it
has around the world using the student exchanges that many of us really do think are a good idea as a general proposition in part to increase connections among our peoples as our governments grow more estranged but I mean they are they are all in on this
strategy of sort of sanitizing China's reputation globally and and think tanks and independent institutions educational institutions absolutely have to defy the intimidation and the really kind of deao bribery that China brings to bear in order to advance that agenda why is
democracy so rare in the Middle East another easy question yeah well and it seems there's this if not a healthy democracy but a vibrant democracy in Iraq right I don't know I wouldn't go that far I mean in so far as there are
elections someone wins it seems who win corresponds to have the votes actually should be counted I suppose but then it's also the case that if you were a member of One sect or another that dictates whether or not you have due process or whether I mean so if you want
to use make democracy just about whether you hold election I just an independent Judiciary of not the rule of law a democracy but I mean it's it's worth defining one's terms but I look I think Tunisia is now as it happens as we speak you know going through a a transition
um where the rule of law had to kick in in the wake of the death of the president and even though Tunisia is uh experiencing terrorism economic stagnation the very level levels of corruption arguably that gave rise to the Arab Spring in the first place you
know it's a Plucky democracy that has seen I think its leaders do something that other leaders in the Middle East haven't done which is to move away from the kind of Winner Takes all mindset and I think you know why why has democracy
not taken hold in other countries you have families that brought you know that almost wrote how-to manual for how to inflict the most Savage atrocities on their people that in the case of Syria in the case of Egypt and LCC a different kind of manual you know
not the same uh extreme tactics of incendiary weapons and napom and chemical weapons and mass torture and so forth but none less willing to to pull out all the stops to keep power because self-preservation and a mindset where if you practice your religion or believe
that religion has a different place in society you are like a terrorist I mean that's the the sort of Egyptian mindset could it have gone another way in Egypt After mubarak's Fall um with a different outcome to their first democratic
election or indeed with the same outcome which was probably inevitable given and you know sort of popular will all all told if the person elected to represent the Muslim Brotherhood had not had a winner takes all mindset in Tunisia you
had the equivalent of a Muslim Brotherhood Victory but he recognized that the society is so divided that there had to be some kind of pacted transition and it's a tragedy that in the case of Egypt at a time when the society was clearly divided in again
along similar lines as in Tunisia that the idea on the part part of the Muslim Brotherhood leadership was Mory was I'm in power I may not have another election which was always the big fear and then CeCe comes in and he says now I'm in
power and now this part of society that doesn't represent my worldview you are to be excluded from you know any any hand in governance and effectively I may never have another free election and so elections weren't supposed to bring to office people who would have an election
once in order to rubber stamp their own power but I think I think I mean it's not only bad luck uh there are no Democratic institutions that have taken hold over time you know that have the kind of resilience and the and the rule of law behind them to have kicked in but
Egypt also suffered some bad luck I think in who the individuals were who who were elevated and part and you know in a lot of these societies you see some of the best leaders leaving and not or staying and becoming entrepreneurs or
Civil Society members and being so repulsed by what politics has represented that they wouldn't dare to be part of public life or public office but if I look at Iraq since the surge not the last year and a half but it seems there have been some pretty high
economic growth rates some of that's oil but it's not all oil is there the danger that 203 years from now people look back they simply see Iraq as a successful us operation the country is a funny kind of democracy it's growing it's getting wealthier the rest of the region is
doing much worse is that a possible scenario well I I I mean I think what you could maybe somebody could conclude 30 years from now I mean we'd like them to conclude right that democracy is the better form of government uh or the worst former
government apart from all the others perhaps and to see those returns and to with Tunisia to be able to point to a couple examples of what democracy can bring and and so forth I mean I think that would be a wonderful outcome what no I think self-respecting historian
would be able to say is that what the United States did was well prosecuted was well thought through I think it'd be very hard to argue that you know you have to break eggs to to make an omelet and this was just what it had to look like I mean you could imagine wildly
different scenarios ultimately leading to the same kind of outcome but without uh a degree of bloodshed that is um certainly unprecedented in that country's history even by the standards of having been governed by Saddam Hussein you know I think in the end they
might say yes we staggered our way out of this completely bungled us-led Invasion and we took matters into our own hands with the support of the United States ongoing um including by this Administration by the Trump Administration but also by the Obama
Administration and once the lessons of everything you know sort of ham-handed that had been done had been applied we were able again to stagger ourselves into some kind of solvent political structure and then lo and behold we were able to build our our own democracy I
think that would be a it would be great if Iraq became another exhibit of how over time when you allow people to hold their leaders accountable you will end up with leadership that advances the the needs of the of the larger population
that would be that would be a great outcome and in some Dimensions as you say on the economic axis you know the fact that state owned Enterprises and other things have been taken over and there is uh the Iraqi entrepreneurial Spirit has been Unleashed on that axis
uh good things are happening but it's it's a very difficult place for Iraqis to live if we think of the cases where us humanitarian interventions should not happen by your judgment and we ask what is most likely The Binding constraint
when we should not intervene what is it you think is the scarce factor is it the attention of the president the tolerance of the public having enough Quality Senior diplomats the money it would cost number of military troops what's the relevant margin at the margin you're
going to hate me but I I find it very hard to discuss in the abstract because you know again there there it is so multifactoral and the so for example if you're talking about looking historically which I know is not what you're asking but if you look at let's
say the East teamour intervention right which was why as a success that was a population of 1 million people the entire 90 let's say 99% of the people in the relevant area supported the intervention the intervention from outside was Australian Le so there was
at least some Regional expertise um and not the kind of tortured history that let's say Portugal or the Netherlands or whatever you know some kind of colonial pass so was sort of maybe you could argue just enough Regional heft but but
not with quite the I mean there a lot of issues between Australia and East teore but not quite the same baggage maybe so a little more legitimacy in terms of culture and nationalism and it had the broad support of the UN Security Council so you you raised a number of issues I
mean I guess what I would say is what is the harm on the ground that you're even contemplating a humanitarian intervention in response to many people argued in the United States in the Bush Administration that what Saddam was
doing to his people in 20022 2003 warranted that that crossed some threshold for humanitarian intervention it was a huge country not a million people it was had a huge uh sectarian cleavage that the Bush Administration of course completely underestimated uh it
had zero International legitimacy it had a huge amount of attention from the president initially great popular support because of the foe link mainly I suppose to to 911 or into weapons of mass destruction but I would argue that you don't even get to that question of
is it a humanitarian intervention because a dictatorship even one as brutal as that one there was no clear and present danger to huge numbers of lives or to or no imminent risk of genocide or something of that nature and it in part
it kind of takes care of itself because when there isn't that precipitating trigger you have a very hard time securing International legitimacy never mind International legal support through the security Council which is hard to get uh in the best of circumstances so I
guess I'd say that and and indeed this was said at the time I think that you know your ability to build an International Coalition to use military force the breath and the and the and the sort of pluralism of the Coalition itself that
might be brought to bear it usually that will have some relationship with the underlying harm and the sense that there's a kind of trigger you know either for something for a Slaughter uh in in a country or a trigger for an intervention you know in in Syria which
was the most vexing issue that that I've dealt with in my career where I think we we should have leaned in and at least taken you know taken some steps militarily to see whether limited intervention might have kickstarted our diplomacy might have created some
protection for some number of syrians I think if you're looking at that from where the president was sitting President Obama that is and now president trump it it you see just the the similar to Iraq but the the underlying complexity
among the factions on the ground so the humanitarian trigger is higher than anything arguably since the Rwandan Genocide but as you do your cost benefit calculus the complexity of what you are seeking to influence just shatters really any of the other examples uh that
we've dealt with over the last three decades and so again to to look at it to say that there's one cabining factor One Rate limiting factor the fact now that there's very little American domestic constituency very little American domestic constituency for using military
force when our most vital national interests are not implicated I think that's a fact right now on the left and the right there is a shrinking constituency for internationalism generally and so I think one has to be all the more careful about sort of
getting too far in front of where the public is because already you're seeing in very dangerous ways I think a backlash against the war fatigue in Iraq and Afghanistan and a kind of tendency to say like this is what foreign policy
buys you instead of in the case of Iraq this is what a poorly planned poorly executed military intervention buys you and so we need to restore a kind of constituency and a and a and a faith that we can have a productive foreign policy and I think that part of what
that will entail was is putting diplomacy and burden sharing at the front of of our sort of messaging and of our packaging and of our actions and so I think you're it's right now humanitarian intervention if it happens it is and it's happening in different
places around the world but is much more likely to be done by Regional organizations like the African Union than it is I think to be orchestrated by great powers and and given the gap between or given the the trail the lagging public opinion you know again
until some successful actions are are prosecuted uh depending again on the circumstances that may be a wise thing but that doesn't mean that the United States doesn't have a role for example in training and equipping the troops that are going into a Central African
Republic or into a Mali or you know into places where lives can be saved I very much enjoyed reading your just published Memoir and I recommend it to all of our listeners and readers and one thing that shines through in your account of your
own life is your passion for sports so if I may a few questions along that direction very simple are baseball games too long why not make it seven Innings why not make it 12 it's boring right for you for me it's so many games are over
three hours shouldn't the game be you know 2 hours 17 minutes look I mean if the pitchers could live with shorter warm-ups uh between Innings if the what's left of the advertising industry could live with um fewer uh fewer ads sort of delivered in that manner you
know I could live with slightly shorter games but I think so far the kinds of adjustments that have been contemplated for example or that are being indeed put in place this year like holding your hand up and saying here are your four
balls for your for your intentional you know here's your intentional walk I'm not going to go and do the four pitches I personally think that's a loss uh and maybe just shows you what a purist I am but I find this suspense and the fact that even if one out of 20 or I don't
even know what the numbers are probably worse probably probably more obscure than that but just the one out of 50 uh balls that go Ary on an intentional walk that's part of the drama so much of what happens in baseball is about what has
happened before that informs your experience of what is happening before your eyes so I just think to buy yourself four minutes here seven minutes there I mean the bigger issue and and Susan jacobe actually had a wonderful uh little book on this called why baseball
matters but the bigger issue is we do have a an aging constituency for the game uh a youth potential constituency that can't stay off its phones and that believes in instant gratification for just about everything and so like the sort of oneclick consumer wants drama
wants action doesn't you know the slow buildup the idea that you know who how how many pitches the pitcher has thrown by the fifth inning then is going to have bearing on which crappy middle reliever the Washington Nationals are going to bring in you know
those sort of Joys that people who've been groomed on the game and who didn't receive the game in the first instance as kids with these competing uh in this world of distraction we we do have to Grapple with the fact that um we're not
winning those new converts now I think a lot more could be done by bringing baseball to the inner city and to communities that just haven't had the space or the resources to make it happen because the truth is the greatest conversion for people are the greatest
attraction to the game comes from people who've played the game and have had to work those mechanics and those philosophies and those strategies themselves so maybe maybe less focus on length because frankly a nine if a if a if a one- nothing nine ining game is
boring for somebody a one- nothing six ining game is going to be boring for somebody should Pete Rose be allowed into the Hall of Fame no you know oh I I don't know I don't know can I say I don't know once at my lifeline we have robot Empires robot
Empires for baseball so you have artificial intelligence judge if a pitch is a ball or a strike and probably this would be much more accurate than humans can I just say that I thought you said should we have robot Empires oh no Empires that grows out of our discussion
of China I'll have you know um and the rise of artificial intelligence and the like robot umpires I I watch a lot of tennis as well as baseball and I think it is very it is very useful in tennis to have a machine that tells you what is
true my worry in baseball is that your two concerns sort of compete with one another I mean I mean I guess you're imagining a robot umpire 247 like not as a not as a a port of as much as you want that's the question so the idea would be the catcher glove would be like the
tennis I suppose I mean if if it's if on TV we can see what a strike is maybe there's no downside to that I think to get the angles right at second base or to get the not that they make great calls at first uh an overwhelming percentage of the time but to get the
the well maybe you could even find a way I guess technically to get the tie gooses to the runner question at first but I think applying tags that's something we're going to need to retain some we're not we're going to have to retain the the human element there and
maybe there's sort of a weirdly an appeal from a robot to a person in C in some of these subjective circumstances but on a home run ball there's no reason you shouldn't be able to ascertain you know on the question of whether a home
run has gone over the line or is below the line or it you know I don't know how you would do the foul ball you could probably have some magnetic field along along the yellow foul pole you know where where the people sitting in those stands have
electromagnetic Rays going into their uh into themselves that would be very very healthy for the game no um I don't know I think it could get really carried away but but it is it is I think useful to have instant replay where you know at least there's uh a court of appeal and I
think on balls and Strikes I hadn't really thought of it much before I've been a little preoccupied with you know the destruction of our democracy and other things but uh L important but but uh but I think it's not a bad idea if yeah if we can do it at home that I mean
that's the migration tennis took right was that the they had that technology available and the fans were like wait why can we see at home whether that was an ace or a fault and we're in that world now the technolog is just so good
that the media has what why are the pitchers and and the catchers and the Batters denied it Bob Dylan or Van Morrison oh borne Van Morrison married into Bob Dylan okay Star Wars or Star Trek born into Star Trek married into Star Wars what's your favorite novel
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell why Spanish Civil War journalists questions of taking sides I don't know I read it when I was in Bosnia as a kid uh in my early 20s and it made a deep impression felt like the world around me there was
something Timeless about it your favorite Memoir I was told that you read a large number of Memoirs before writing your own I yeah for my sins and that was a terrible idea future Memoir writers don't read books along the lines of what I'm going to describe now the best and I
mention it with great joy the best Memoir I read was Andre agy's Memoir open and I love that book now that you hear that I love sports you'll think listener uh you'll think oh she loves Sports I when I was growing up I I couldn't stand watching Andre agasse for
all of the reasons of images everything and the hair and the not wearing white in Wimbledon and and and I'm I've never read a sports Memoir in my life weirdly uh so I'm recommending this not because I like tennis and not because I like
sports or because I somehow uh am some big or was some big Agy fan but it is the it's about friendship and family and grit and it's it's just beautiful in every respect I recommend it to everybody and overall where is it or why is it that so many Memoirs fall short
what do they get wrong why aren't they better than they are as a genre they're like self-help books business books travel books on average maybe disappointing not yours but so many I mean look it's I found it I I have taken on some very ambitious book projects in
the past and I found this so much harder I mean partly how do you write in the first person and not sound like an like and not just sound like you think you're worthy of speaking for in my case 500 pages in the first person to
not be presumptuous to have the right what Cass would call the right implied author you know to be a person that the reader whether they're interested in your story or not that that the the voice that you're projecting is is the voice of a person they'd want to spend
time with I mean that's it's really presumptuous I mean we have the Irish like to say that you shouldn't even use the first person in therapy and that's how I felt writing I felt immensely self-conscious at the beginning but I think to the degree that
I got mine to work and I hope I did it really requires a ruthlessness with your own story you know that that just because something happened doesn't mean it belongs in the book just because it's interesting to you doesn't mean it's interesting and because I was focusing
specifically on kind of learning how to make a difference in the world I think subjecting the stories that I was including to to the to remembering what my purpose was which would be very different than other memorist purposes but I had a I had a very distinct
purpose in writing the book people are turning away from public service they don't believe they can make a difference in their communities they think the problems are too big I wanted to write a book that opened up the world of service
of different kinds even of Journalism and of teaching and of of as well as of government and to show the a kind of nobility of effort if not always God knows in outcome and to show the Integrity of that at a time when some of these institutions are being ridiculed
and so I knew my purpose I think if you know why you're writing a memoir and it isn't just you know again to vent or to get back at somebody or to sell books or to and if you if you have a purpose then to subject what you're writing to that
constant kind of call back is it is it doing any work for my for my ultimate purpose now if I look at my Syria chapters is that an inspiring case of here's why you should go into public service 500,000 people died and you know you thought you could
prevent atrocities and you go into government it turns out you know some conflicts are incredibly complex and maybe beyond your reach or Beyond uh certainly the reach of outside actors and and so forth and and so why why muddy up my my happy message about the
importance of trying to make a difference with something so complex because that's life right is that you're you're not going to win them all and you're not going to be able to to to certainly affect the world in the way that you would like but the question is
can you make a positive difference enough of the time to make it worth your uh effort and so so I think because I knew my what I was trying to do with the Memoir to to include those cases where I as a as a citizen and as a an actor in
some of this history where I was crushed and disappointed and flattened by the irr an of what I was doing that's that's a really that proved to be a really important part of in the end you know being able to urge people to to to get in the fight and so I again I think the
ones that that flop or that lose you are ones that either didn't know what they why they were doing what they were doing to begin with OR lost sight of that someplace along the way there's some fairly personal elements to your story so you talk about going to therapy you
talk about the kind of men you dated and what that meant for your life were you on the margin of putting more of that in or less of it in did you have second thoughts you know what I I mention my my sort of meta purpose which of course is
has evolved as I've written the book and become clearer to me than right when I started but what I saw I think um in teaching when I came back to teaching after being a member of President Obama's cabinet and being in this incredibly blessed position that I was
in was somehow I was now other I was somebody who had been a senior official and I had my act together clearly I must have had my act together or how could I have been representing the United States of the United Nations I mean very much
in the same way that I would have seen a mine Albright or aene kpatrick when I was a kid you know just these sort iconic women who are out there standing up to Russia and and that can be very appealing and you can have some students will come up to me and say I want to be
America's ambassador to the UN you know how do I go about doing it and I'll say well not not that way probably uh because if you focus on a title rather than what you want to do in the world you're probably not going to get very far uh but some people are drawn to
power to the position or whatever and I I get that and I want to work with those students too but but many just think I I think I I want to try to make a difference but I don't know that I could ever be that person like I don't have my
act together to that extent I don't have that kind of conviction I don't have that and so the reason I include the personal and especially the material about self-doubt and about the what I call the Batcave which is my head at times bats are swirling around and can I
do this and have I gone too far and did I go on too long in that meeting with President Obama and this sort of self-recrimination but by opening that up I want young people to know that whatever doubts they're experiencing whatever their romantic foibles you know
that's what it looks like right to grow up and to you sometimes you grow up in the public eye sometimes you grow up in the in the confines of your own relationships and your own family and your own home but and I did a bit of
both and so the idea that my public Persona would somehow cause young people to think that I was some other species of person I did not want that to happen to your the essence of your question about whether there's more there's always more Tyler you know but uh yeah I
there's something that happens to oh this is actually interesting and somebody pointed this out to me I would not have picked this up on my own um Lee Eagle the writer pointed this out to me so when you're writing a memoir that you
start if you're me anyway you start pretty boxed up and again anxious about using the first person and saying who am I to write a memoir I didn't make Middle East peace what the hell am I doing here start with that disposition then you gradually kind of
unfurl yourself and you realize that you have to build the portrait of a character and the and the a the readers have to get to know the writer and so it becomes almost a literary exercise but you can't make anything up because it's a memoir so you have to use the material
of your life to build a a kind of thick portrait that people will get to know and hopefully root for I wanted people to root for me and the ideals that I had I want them to share those ideals hopefully but Lee seagull pointed out to me that as you sort of unfurl there
comes a moment where you then think that you have to say everything and you start to just TMI too much information you know your readers and and and you actually can lose your dignity you can you can you you just because you've lost your sense you
initially had an appropriate sense of what TMI is I mean my my past preemo self I think is the right balance of what you share and what you don't I share a lot as it is but but then I decide okay I was really going to go out there and then you lose a sense of where
the boundaries are and so to go back over it and to say Okay I want to give enough of a portrait where this is a distinctly human person that the that the reader gets to know but also like they don't need to be in my in you know they don't
what work is every one of these scenes doing for the larger for the larger story and if it doesn't meet that threshold and if and if let's say I'm making the same mistake with different men six times they only need to hear about what what one it happening once if
I did it five other times it's the the part can stand for the whole for a final closing segment I just have some super simple questions about foreign policy again so over the course of the last summer Iran apparently seized two
British tankers there have been other incidents in the straight of forus in some way connected with Iran from a game theoretic point of view why would they do this why does this make sense the one thing that they would know that would give them some point of Leverage
is the extreme War fatigue within the United States and really within the Western World and so by kind of upping the stakes arguably I mean who knows why the hell they're doing what they're doing but by upping the stakes they're they arguably could be you know
sending a signal like this is you want to get in this game you know you're it's not as if we are an island and you can just break the deal penalize us gratuitously penalize the people who are still trying to maintain the terms of the deal and that there won't be
collateral consequences outside the nuclear space because the nuclear consequences as they begin to enrich and violate the terms of the deal having legitimately argued that we had violated the terms of the deal you know the the the effects of those are not day-to-day
effects in the news world it's a bit abstract right for the for the the public and even for for policy makers it's an incremental abreg but acts like this you know sort of show that they have leverage that they are active militarily in parts of the world where
we have a vested interest in maintaining freedom of navigation and so I think they're showing that they can hit and and that they that they can hit in domains outside the nuclear domain I think that is probably what they're doing why won't
Germany and some of the other larger NATO countries spend 2% of their GDP on defense Germany's not even coming close how can that make sense how can they expect NATO to last isn't NATO a good deal for them from a game theoretic point of view please explain that to me
yeah it's I find it outrageous but I also noticed over the last couple decades that we're really good at understanding our own domestic politics and even with some of our closest allies we tend not to internalize or or pay much attention to
their constraints and you know the real problem and this isn't just about defense spending but there's a a big problem across Europe in that if we were in a world of referenda I'm not sure many of these European countries would have defense
budgets or we' even have militaries in some cases and so so if you ask should they the answer is unequivocally is it an incredible deal for them yes should they be alarmed by the fact that successive presidents who are very different George W bush Barack Obama and
Donald Trump have all harped on this issue Trump of course the most sort of vocally but and tweetly uh and and not to this point very effectively but but nonetheless we all agree that this there has to be burden sharing and I mentioned earlier a
kind of shriveled constituency in the United States that we have to win back the way we in the United States will build back the kind of foreign policy that our European allies want to see us having is when they find a way to step up and bring their constituents along
maybe there'll be an opening in a post-trump world where we can we because on some level we also have to we as American leaders have to speak directly to the constituents who then elect the parliamentarians who then pass the budgets I mean this is not about there's
not a bunch of dictators who are like H I've done a public opinion poll and you know they don't want to go the full 2% this is about you know the chancellor of Germany who also has to get that budget uh through a parliament you know in a
coalition government and so forth and so again I'm not an apologist for their politics but I'm a believer that they need to work a lot harder to try to change their constituencies just as we're going to have to do the same on this end should the United States have
800 military bases in about 70 countries and territories under what theory of the world does that make sense and as I note in my afterward you know we are performing some form of counterterrorism operation now in 40% of the countries in
the world not all not of course not all us performing combat roles or or anything like that but some kind of support or combat role 40% 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 it isn't I mean our solders of course are you know making an amazing contribution in some of those places but you know having these large bases where locals don't get to even interact that much
with our soldiers you know it just it perpetuates a perception of America as a as a as a militarized nation but also it speaks I think to the imbalance that I write about also as one of my sort of conclusions in the book of just you know how can it be that we have more almost
more people serving in military marching bands than serve as diplomats representing the United States when when our military are is the first our military leaders are the first to say that they can't do the conflict resolution the under they can't deal
with the underlying socioeconomic or ethnic or other you know tensions or the land grabs or the climate change that shrinks the resources that people are fighting over I mean they just a set of problems where we need the other tools
in our Arsenal and other countries comparably need to expand their diplomatic um and and socioeconomic benches to be able to pull our resources to 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 you know a a a period where we we do need to make investments in state solvency elsewhere and by by we I don't just mean the United States I mean the sort of broader International Comm such
as it is but with the United States probably as always playing a leading role whereby you know the 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 praying on their people or are incapable of take Nigeria Cameroon ner Chad incapable of thwarting boo Haram which is praying on the people and indeed the militaries are so either corrupt or abusive themselves
that they end up fueling or you know effectively aiding the boo Haram recruitment process by committing such human rights abuses that people just say well what there's no difference between the Nigerian Army and and Bam which is which can't be the case so the in even
though it it again can sound like militarization you know we we have some of the best trainers in the world I think we should be more not less ambitious working with other Count's militaries and there's a real Gap in the International System around police and
there's actually a very very scant police training capability in the you know if you think about like Global goods and Collective Goods training other cities or other Count's police forces depending how the the police are are structured is an incredibly
important investment in the rule of law or proding them to train their own police or or or to for themselves to hold their own soldiers accountable but I I I think that you could imagine some of the resources that are now expended you know again in in in in
places where we are in in combat 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 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 we I think the fact that we have not authorized the fact that that our military is active in as many conflicts in the world today and that we have not been able to secure from the US Congress an authorization for the use of force
effectively since 2000 depending how you date the authorities under which our current soldiers are are operating 2001 with 911 in the wake of 911 and then the flawed uh vote on behalf of the Iraq War that's 16 years that's you know we're
going on two decades since the 911 authorization under which most of our operations abroad are being are being waged that is a it's it's a failure to perform congress's Duty as stipulated under the Constitution and I think under the War Powers Resolution as well but
it's also it's it's such a disservice to our troops and and their families I mean we say that that we're all for the troops and we're giving the troops this and we're giving the troops that we fail them consistently on benefits and we
fail them in overseeing how their lives are being spent and by spent I mean you know for the most part I mean just being how their days are being spent where they're being deployed I mean there's just that conversation has not happened domestically in too long so yes if you
did a referendum of the American people or if if that were played out as we saw in the Syria Redline episode I think you would see great skepticism about the use of force I think there should be great skepticism in many many cases when our
Vital national interests are not involved but if you see a circumstance like the Ebola outbreak where we used our military in such a constructive way and where we did a congressional notification but because that really wasn't didn't rise to the level of War
we weren't engage in combat at all but it's an example where where if Congress were playing in the the larger space of the deployment of our military generally we could have had you know a constructive and maybe in some Ideal World eventually again a
bipartisan discussion of why problems that happen over there matter to us over here instead the Obama Administration carried out the intervention in support of the the local efforts on the ground which were heroic and um sort of dauntingly complex and
because of our polarization problem which we haven't talked about Republicans by and large on party lines basically sniped at criticized undermined you know threatened to quarantine even those American Heroes who went over uh to be part uh of the
intervention and it's funny like for all of the valorization of what our troops do Ebola is there's like a carve out for Ebola because it was Obama's successful intervention to end a major public health Calamity and and they decided that the potic ICS of of supporting that
you know didn't didn't you know weren't good or or whatever and so just in general we need more buy in for our foreign policy and and given the the large weight that the US military is carrying in shouldering the foreign policy burden that oversight role is
incredibly important I think you know again if we could somehow return to a time where Republicans didn't snipe at what what Democrats did you know I hope we're still in a world where Democrats if Trump did something like I think you saw this with the Syria chemical weapons
response that some Democrats came out in favor of that because it's something they had favored Obama doing and they were consistent but probably the fact that it was Trump doing it overrode their cost benefit of the action itself
proved not to be a terribly effective action over time anyway but we need you know when our lives are at stake the lives of our soldiers are at stake but also when American lives are at stake which is what is at stake in many foreign policy decisions you know I just
wish we could return to the sort of nun Luger you know era of bipartisanship where we could work on really hard problems together if you had that kind of backdrop then you could imagine more congressional oversight but also not the evisceration of our foreign policy
generally and so we are in a bit of a chicken and egg situation where polarization makes the prospect of securing Congressional authorization for anything large harder to imagine but that gets back to the first principle where we have to deal
with our polarization and start working together you know on on issues of all of all Stripes I recommend to you all Samantha's new Memoir the education of an idealist and thank you very much Samantha power great to be here Tyler thanks for listening to
conversations with Tyler you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes Stitcher or your favorite podcast app and if you like this podcast please consider rating it on iTunes and leaving a review this helps other people find the show