Samantha Power On The ‘hell’ In Gaza And Holding Onto Her Idealism

For a self-proclaimed idealist like Samantha Power, the last four years have been tough.

As administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, she’s been a key player in delivering U.S. assistance to Ukraine and managing responses to humanitarian crises in Armenia, Haiti, Sudan, Congo and other regions of the world. And of course, no humanitarian crisis in recent memory has been quite as devastating and all-consuming for the U.S. aid agency as the war between Israel and Hamas, which has left the Gaza Strip in ruins.

In an exit interview with POLITICO Magazine, Power voiced regret that the Biden administration wasn’t able to stop the war more quickly: “I wish we could have ended the war in Gaza far sooner, and certainly done more to bring more hostages home sooner and done more to end this the hell that the people of Gaza have experienced.”

But she also recounted how the nonstop humanitarian efforts by those at her agency and elsewhere have helped maintain her idealism. “Even against the backdrop of horror,” she said, “there are people who just don’t give up and leave it all on the field and see the humanity and never get blinded by the statistics.”

Power began her rise to the top of Washington’s foreign policy scene with her Pulitzer Prize-winning 2002 book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, and later served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under the Obama administration.

As she prepares to cede her agency to an incoming Trump administration deeply skeptical of foreign aid, she has crafted a pitch for why a MAGA-run Washington should embrace USAID’s mission: “It’s hard to be a great competitor if you don’t show up.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Have you gotten any sleep this week? 

Not a lot. A lot to do before we leave on Monday.

How deflated are you that you're handing off the reins to a second Trump administration?

Well I'm looking forward to hearing who my successor will be. This is an incoming administration that has said an awful lot about the importance of strategic competition. We are America's ground game in many respects, bringing a very different model of development.

We are an agency that has thousands of people around the world representing the United States, both because it's in the interests of the American people to have health systems that are more secure and can spot infectious diseases and tackle them, to change regulations so it's easier for American businesses to invest, but also to show up and to show the importance of investing in the partnership — and not investing in a manner that just leaves countries saddled with debt.

So there's no guarantee that that vision for what USAID can and should be in the world will be embraced. But it definitely aligns with some of the perspectives that different incoming members of the administration have articulated.

So what’s your pitch of USAID’s value to someone in the MAGA world skeptical of U.S. foreign aid? 

The last time the Trump administration was in office, it grappled with a once-in-a-century pandemic. When USAID makes investments in surveillance capacity, when it can deploy a rapid outbreak team within 48 hours of detection, that's fundamentally in the interests of the health and security of the American people.

It's no secret that industrial policy and economic statecraft are increasingly important in this world of geostrategic competition. USAID has teams, hundreds of people in developing countries, where the PRC [People’s Republic of China] may already have established access to critical minerals, who have won trust over generations with the very ministries that are making decisions every day about who to partner with next.

There are many people in both parties who also still believe in the old-fashioned idea that when America projects compassion and earns respect and trust, that kind of soft power, that political capital can be important.

The best testament to USAID's contribution is the surge in PRC-backed and Russian-backed propaganda maligning USAID and our work around the world. And it's really picked up a lot over the last year and a half. We counted 81 malicious and false propaganda campaigns, really dedicated campaigns, aimed at denigrating USAID and our reputation. So we're doing something that is getting on their nerves.

The other pitch I'd make is 11 out of the United States’s top 15 trading partners all started as recipients of U.S. foreign assistance. The Republic of Korea, which was a recipient of massive U.S. assistance after the war there and through the decades, is now the fastest growing development and humanitarian partner that USAID has. I look forward to the chance to make the pitch and to hear more about how they define their overall objectives. It's hard to be a great competitor if you don't show up.

But for each of those 11 countries, there’s plenty of research that casts doubt on the ability of foreign aid to actually lift countries out of poverty. Haiti sticks out as a clear example. Does a second Trump administration present an opportunity to rethink the way USAID works and not repeat mistakes of the past? 

We actually built an Office of the Chief Economist. And we have built out our capacity to take our programming and run it through the grinder to look at cost effectiveness and bring more and more rigor to our work.

I think there's a necessity because even if we were able to sustain our budget, we're not keeping up. We're not keeping up with extreme weather events. We're not keeping up with coups and conflict. Congress in a bipartisan way, has been immensely committed to the agenda that we are carrying out here. And yet we saw that our resources had to just be stretched further and further.

The other thing that we've done is massively increased our investment in private sector partnership. And that's something I look forward to telling my successors about because it's not broadly understood that USAID over the last four years has increased private sector contributions to our development work by 40 percent. Once you get the private sector involved and you're doing job creation and so forth, that's the model for development that all of us want to see proliferate around the world so there can be an opportunity.

Let’s turn to Israel and Gaza. Some countries have used the words famine and genocide to describe the crisis there. To borrow your words from your own books, do you think the U.S. was a “bystander” to the suffering in Gaza? And even if you want to avoid words like famine and genocide, do you concede that there were some pretty horrific things that happened in Gaza that were enabled by the United States and this administration's policies? 

If we took you downstairs to the response management team and you were there with that staff and you saw them fielding phone calls from humanitarian agencies trying to bring supplies into Gaza and encountering challenges along the way of all kinds or in moments even where humanitarians come under attack by IDF forces or by looters —

The macro picture is devastating. There's no other way around it. I think at least 13,000 kids killed since Oct. 7, according to U.N. numbers. The displacement of at least 1.9 million people, the destruction of cropland. The recovery here is going to be extremely challenging, and the losses are indescribable to the civilians there. But I can tell you — the teams that work this 24/7, the food that has arrived, the winterization supplies that have arrived — USAID has been absolutely critical in the cockpit of engagement.

It's a complicated picture. But if you see up close that activity and that lobbying and that pressure and that pushing and that problem solving and troubleshooting, it is something that, I think, means that whatever the debates are that have roiled USAID, U.S. policy about events on the ground, the work has mattered and the work has made a difference. Has it made enough of a difference? Without that pushing, a horrific situation would have been even worse.

No one doubts the devastation or what USAID has done. But take a step outside of just USAID here. Do you think that the U.S. abetted or enabled additional suffering in Gaza? Some of what you said so far sounds like sanitized talking points. Would you give a different answer on Monday when you leave office? 

Know what I'm going to go back and do [after this interview]? I'm going to be in calls on how to surge humanitarian assistance once we get, I hope, an opening to do so on Sunday. And on the heels of what we hope is a fully shored-up of cease-fire agreement. I'm in this job until noon on Monday, and I'm going to do every last bit of good that I can and support the teams above all who are doing that good on the front lines.

But look, on U.S. policy, Israel was brutally attacked on Oct. 7, and the U.S. president from the beginning was very clear that the United States would stand with Israel as it defended itself.

The United States is the largest donor to the humanitarian response. So far, the biggest challenges in getting humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza have been kinetic conflict, looting, access, challenges that we've advocated on from the beginning. But those resources matter as well.

After I'm out of the administration, I will reflect on the picture here. I mean, we are a brass tacks agency that is working the logistics and the operations 24/7. I make my views on the broader policy questions known in the appropriate settings. And now is not the time I'm going to reflect on what we could have done or should have done.

Has the Israel-Gaza conflict challenged your idealism? After all, you titled your memoir Education of an Idealist. Has this challenged your sense of what the U.S. government can actually accomplish on the international stage? 

I started my career as a journalist in Bosnia living the siege of Sarajevo, in a place where people were herded into concentration camps on the grounds of their ethnicity. I'm not and never have been very Pollyannaish about either the inhumanity man is capable of or what people far away are going to do about it.

Where my idealism comes from is seeing again and again people of good faith, maybe also people jaded by lots of conflict, doing the best they can to help vulnerable people. The experience that Israelis had on Oct. 7, and the aftermath is as horrific as anything. Visiting a kibbutz and being walked around by somebody whose parents were executed as they huddled with their kids and heard that that happened, engaging with Gazans who made it out — in one case, I think, one individual lost 17 members of his family in a single airstrike. I mean, the human consequences of this war have been horrific.

I see U.N. workers in the most difficult operational circumstances I've ever seen humanitarians work, lobbying us to lobby for visas so they can get in so that they can actually get back into Gaza. I see private American citizens trying to use whatever connections they have to get kids out so they can get to St. Jude's and get the cancer treatment they deserve.

Even against the backdrop of horror, there are people who just don't give up and leave it all on the field and, and see the humanity and never get blinded by the statistics, which in Gaza are so devastating, but just try to help as many people as they can. That's what we've done here. And, and I really pray that's what the next administration will continue to do.

Let’s turn to Syria. If you had [Donald] Trump's ear, would you recommend to him that the U.S. lift serious sanctions to try to expedite the delivery of more humanitarian aid, more development and help the country rebuild after Assad’s downfall?

We've been having these these debates within the Biden administration about how to meet the moment and in the case of USAID and our line of work, when civilians are flooding back from Lebanon or from Jordan or from Turkey, to be in a position to support them and to not have sanctions that were imposed at a different time impede that. Because with ISIS still present in Syria with the remnants of other extremist groups, you want as much stability as possible and humanitarian assistance.

We in the international community have to be very careful that on the one hand, there is sincerity behind Syria’s new leadership to build a more democratic and inclusive Syria despite the track record of many of the individuals involved, and it is really important that an implosion of the economy not suffocate the testing of that proposition. But on the other hand, rushing in, so soon after the liberation of these territories from the monstrous [Assad] regime presents a lot of risks. I think caution and calibration are warranted.

You can always reimpose the kinds of sanctions that have deterred investment up to this point. it's just too soon. But you don't want to wait too long before you come to that decision point.

On Ukraine, the incoming administration wants to end the conflict within the first 100 days. It's very unclear what they're going to do to follow that up in terms of military and economic assistance. What would happen if the U.S. cut nonmilitary aid and didn't help Ukraine rebuild? 

A quick word on examples of what U.S. assistance has bought the American people and bought the cause of standing up to aggression and brutality: Ukraine's agricultural exports are basically back to their pre-Feb. 20, 2022, invasion numbers. That's extraordinary given that [Vladimir] Putin still controls a number of the Black Sea ports. Given that he shut down the Black Sea Grain Initiative with the goal of strangling the economy, given that his forces have taken over a lot of prime agricultural real estate. But that's USAID coming in and investing in granaries and new farm equipment and low interest loans and providing seeds.

For every dollar of taxpayer resources that we have spent, we have brought in $6 in private sector investment. These are companies like Bayer and others who are going to continue doing their work in reconstituting Ukraine’s breadbasket, even if it's a smaller breadbasket because of Putin's occupying forces. That has brought down global food prices. That has an effect here, in terms of inflation. But it certainly has an effect in sub-Saharan Africa where those spiraling food prices in the wake of the invasion were absolutely devastating to people living on the margins. It's not in the U.S. interest to see unrest and instability that grows out of economic pain. So there's a knock-on benefit to the investments that we make in Ukraine.

There's a lot of advocacy around the investments we've made in the Ukrainian military. But I think less has been made of the stabilizing effects and benefits of the economic support. Economic support has kept teachers and paid health workers. And if the war does end, you will see this play out in Ukraine's economic self-sufficiency. Ukraine's economy grew by 5 percent in 2023, I think 3.9 percent last year. The tech sector has grown by 7 percent during this horrific conflict. So even though Putin is launching unprecedented attacks on energy infrastructure, you will see by and large, the electricity, the heating, the ability to get through winter is being maintained. And that is really because of the ingenuity of the Ukrainians above all, but with the support and the generosity of the American people.

To lose that means that attacks on energy infrastructure really do run the risk of causing another massive flight of Ukrainians. You could see another huge exodus from Ukraine. The odds of Ukraine showing up at the negotiating table with the strong hand they need not only to get a peace — which I know the incoming president wants — but to get a sustainable peace, a just peace, Ukraine has to come to the table with a strong hand. And if economic life support is cut off, that is going to weaken the hand of Ukrainians,

One of the reasons they have been able to fight in the way that they have and earn the awe of the democratic world is not just the weapons that have been provided, but is this economic support. And it's going to be a big part of positioning them for any just and sustainable peace.

Let’s talk about Sudan. The Biden administration just in the last few days issued sanctions on the two top warring leaders in Sudan and a genocide declaration only days before leaving office. From the outside, this feels like a last minute, rush-something-out-the-door move as a salve of our conscience. What's your response to that criticism? Is there more the U.S. could have done before these final days to stop these atrocities? 

We have had a special envoy traversing Planet Earth to try to bring the parties to the table. We have had war crimes and crimes against humanity declarations that came a year ago, I think at the tail end of 2023, and these atrocity determinations are important. But fundamentally, the actors involved in fueling this conflict don't care about their people and they don't seem to care that much about their reputations. I can't speak to the State Department. I know that there was an effort to lead with diplomacy and to have the specter of these sanctions and these determinations to try to motivate the parties to do the thing that really matters most, which is end this war and let humanitarian aid flow.

But all of this information was known months ago. And the genocide determination could have come months and months ago. I mean, you wrote the book on this. It's not only a technocratic process, it's a political decision to declare a genocide. Why wait this long?

Like I said, there was an effort to leverage.

Obviously there's no escaping the calendar and when this is happening. But I can tell you, as somebody who's pretty practiced in diplomacy, that sometimes the specter of a sanction can be impactful. We got mileage, I think, out of some of this deterrence and pressure. But at the end of the day, it's just not enough.

Could it have been enough if these actions were taken months ago? 

Even if the sanction was not itself deployed, the tool of the threat of the sanction was something that we were seeking to leverage. You saw Emirati companies sanctioned on Jan. 7. That’s something I'm sure is not welcome there.

But our priority with any of the countries involved in supporting the parties on the ground is to get them to cease support so that the actors on the ground don't have access to the kinds of weapons they're using against their people.

The core issue is how to change the cost-benefit for these players who are still getting support from outside, who are in some cases seeing more support now than they had before —

Can you name the foreign countries [involved in arming and funding the war]?

And who still still believe that there is a military solution. These guys both think that they're going to win militarily and they will burn the country down in pursuit of that objective.

Can you name those countries?

[Waves hand away.]

Some rapid fire questions before we go. What is something that you wish you had known when you became USAID administrator?

It turns out that three quarters of USAID's overseas workforce are nationals of the countries in which we work. And I think USAID is America's superpower. It’s often unheralded, maybe not all that well understood in certain quarters. But having these economists, former ministers, food security specialists, doctors — if we're working in Uganda, they're Ugandan. And if we're working in Nepal, they're Nepalese. If we're working in Vietnam, they're Vietnamese. If we're in Guatemala, they're Guatemalan.

The knowledge, the institutional memory they bring, the trust they broker on behalf of the United States, I learned it quickly. All it took was traveling and just being kind of blown away by them. They're called Foreign Service Nationals. I would have moved even more quickly at the beginning to empower them and to lift up their voices.

Any regrets?

I wish we could have ended the war in Gaza far sooner and certainly done more to bring more hostages home sooner and done more to end the hell that the people of Gaza have experienced.

Any advice to your yet to be named successor? 

Given the moment we find ourselves in, America has to show up in the world with humility, but also with ingenuity and ambition. This team of 15,000 people, most of whom are deployed overseas, are taking on the toughest challenges of the 21st century. They have, with our support, expanded the American foreign policy tool kit. Those tool kits are now available. Those new tools, as well as the more traditional ones, are available to the new administration. It is in the interest of the American people to use those tools to advance our interests.