How Will the Covid-19 Crisis Restructure International Relations?

26:01Samantha Power:The leader, as the leader of the world. I mean, this is what President Xi's announcement last week of a$2 billion vaccine contribution to try to pool vaccine knowledge and ultimately distribution to developing countries. He actually did that not as China bilaterally as China has usually done, but did it within the World Health Organization where the U.S. has vacated its premise. The other thing we're seeing, though, and I think this is really instructive in terms of a happier story about how things can develop, is that those countries like New Zealand, Australia, Korea, Denmark, Germany, that have managed to get a grip on the pandemic within their borders, have created something called the First Movers Club.

26:43club.

26:44Samantha Power:And they are now seeking to pool their energies as democracies within international institutions to create a kind of block that offers its expertise, its resources. But also, we don't want to live in a world where the China model of governance then gets imported into international institutions. And for the first three years of Trump's leadership, middle powers have tended to just be recessive in those organizations, kind of waiting for the United States to show up again. And now the pandemic has really brought home that that, at least in this administration, is unlikely to happen and time to get busy.

27:21Samantha Power:If we don't want to see the norms that have defined international statecraft for the last 75 years altered and looking more and more like Chinese norms, those countries are going to have to raise their voices and take leadership roles they haven't really taken up to this point. Okay, if you just joined us, this is HPR Quarantine. Our guest is Ambassador Samantha Power. If you have questions for her, please put them in the comments. We'll try to get to some in a little bit. Samantha, I want to ask, I want to take on the question, you've just written this book, Education of an Idealist. You know, when I think of shattered idealism for myself, you know, I view myself as an idealist and I find, you know, governments let you down, NGOs let you down, you know, almost everything lets you down.

28:07I actually find solace sometimes in the world of business. I don't mean to overstate business as good as opposed to being neutral. But, you know, there are companies that within the ecosystem of a business can try to do the right thing and to try to create an environment that cares about whatever issues matter, environmental, social governance, sort of other things, these little microcosms. So my question for you is, you know, where does an American idealist like yourself find solace these days?

28:37Samantha Power:Thank you.

29:06Samantha Power:warming planet around us, companies that have been able to get through this pandemic without big blows, you know, stepping into the void where charities and others are really flailing. You know, I just saw last week Oxfam pulling out of 18 countries because they can no longer pay the bills there. UN humanitarian work all around the world shriveling up as resources get diverted to deal with really difficult domestic circumstances for developed countries. And so for the private sector to do more of that, I mean, again, it comes back to individual agency. In my own career, as I write about in the book, I just saw too often individuals change the world.

29:52Samantha Power:And it may be that the slice of the world that they changed was small. Again, the climate kept warming, even as we were able, in support of the people in West Africa, to bring the Ebola epidemic to an end. But, you know, if you set your sights on changing everything at once, then that is a recipe for disillusionment. And maybe just watching the last dance over and over and not changing the world around you, it can be really tempting to turn off. if you think you can solve the biggest problems of our time, either by yourself or all at once. So I fastened when I was in government on an idea that actually writers who I think are beloved in the business world, the Heath brothers, they wrote a book called Switch.

30:41Samantha Power:And they had this idea and it really resonated for me in government, which was shrink the change, find that small slice of change that actually is within your scope. So for example, when I was in the cabinet of the president of the United States as UN ambassador, at the very time I was at the highest levels of government, we were experiencing something that continues to this day, which is a human rights recession all around the world. We're now in the 14th straight year of human rights being in decline. Now we had an explosive growth in human rights and civil society and so forth after the the end of the cold war, but those trend lines have gone in a negative direction in part because of the xenophobia and nationalism you mentioned earlier.

31:26Samantha Power:But I'm thinking here I am human rights advocate actually at the highest levels of government. What am I doing about the human rights recession? And if you, if you, if you ask the question in that way, again, you could just feel immensely small. And I think people right now, given the crisis are feeling very, very small and disempower me. But instead I sat down with my team and I read about this in the book and I said, what can we do that's just a tiny piece of this? And we decided we were going to set our sights on just getting 20 female political prisoners out of jail. It was so modest for the U.S.

31:58Samantha Power:government to be doing this next to this, all these years of freedom and decline. But we profiled each of these women on social media. Some were exposing corruption in their government. Some were protesting sexual harassment in China. And we hung jumbo photos of these women in the U.S. mission to the U.N. in the window when heads of state were coming to town in September for the General Assembly. We teamed up in a bipartisan way, the forgotten practice of bipartisan-backed diplomacy, where we got the 20 U.S. female senators who were in the U.S. Senate at the time, Republican and Democrat, to back the campaign.

32:34Samantha Power:And 16 of the 20 women were ultimately freed from jail and went back to making trouble and holding their governments accountable. And I use this example not because by any means changed the world, but to describe the effect on my team and the way that they went about their business, the tangible nature of that, which was so concrete and yes, so small, next to the abstraction of freedom and decline. People who in COVID are now, you know, created shopping angels networks. I know just shopping for elderly neighbors, you know, gives you a sense of meaning and purpose and impact. So you can't change all of these structural trends that are defining our plight at a given moment.

33:19Samantha Power:But it is a mistake to think that you can come up with a, usually, a solution commensurate with the scale of the challenge. The question is, what is your slice? And I think in thinking that way, it breeds an idealism and a greater sense of empowerment. Now, can we, I know we've got some other things that we want to talk about on the sports front and everything, but I wanted one kind of big, still sort of big heavy question for you, because I'm curious what you think about the whole notion of national security and what, it feels at the very least like we've broadened the definition of it. It feels like the definition is changing of what that really means.

34:00And it kind of seems like it has some scary implications. And I'm wondering what you're thinking on that is.

34:05Samantha Power:Yeah, I mean, I think that rhetorically it has been altered for some time. We have talked about national security as entailing threats that cross borders. You know, we rhetorically, certainly since 9-11 at the very least, have talked about, you know, the ways that borders don't insulate us from terrorists who can move their finances in a different way or slip into a country under one kind of visa and do dangerous things. We've had the rhetoric also about pandemics in every national security strategy, I think, at least again since 9-11. But our resource allocations are absolutely overweighted toward believing that military force is our national security weapon of first, second, third, fourth and fifth resort.

34:59Samantha Power:And so you see colossal underinvestments, for example, in the Centers for Disease Control or in public health infrastructure as compared to what we would invest in the wars that we are fighting in multiple theaters around the world. So I think that the challenge now as we look forward is how do we resource appropriately the global threats that don't respect borders? And that includes resourcing international institutions that are themselves, unfortunately, the amalgamation of the national interests of the governments that comprise those institutions. Namely, China is going to have a bigger and bigger say in how those institutions work as they become a bigger and bigger donor to those institutions.

35:43Samantha Power:So that's going to make our path in those international institutions more challenging. But there's no workaround for global threats. You've got to work with other countries on the globe by definition and find vehicles and venues to do that. We don't have the ability to walk away from China in a climate discussion when China is the number one emitter of carbon. That option is not available to us. So how do we look out for those global threats, strengthen those international institutions and even those collaborations with those we vehemently disagree with on a whole host of other issues? How do you compartmentalize competition?

36:21Samantha Power:More than that, though, how as part of dealing with global threats, particularly, again, the nontraditional ones like pandemics and climate security, how do you bring nontraditional actors much more into those international coalitions than they have been? I mean, I know from my time at the UN that, yes, governments talk a good game about multi-stakeholder initiatives and private-public partnerships, but it's states that drive the response. States have to drive a significant share of the response, given their significant share of responsibility and the resources they can bring to bear. But the private sector actors, philanthropists like Bill Gates, doing so much more than probably more than two thirds of the countries within the UN in this pandemic, they need to have much more significant, respected voices in the decision making of these bodies.

37:17Samantha Power:And so those bodies are going to have to get modernized and the complexion of who's participating is going to have to change. At the same time, the traditional great power threats haven't gone anywhere. So the notion that we might have had right after the Cold War, that everybody was trending in a liberal democratic direction, that, of course, has been dispelled with Putin's reassertion of Russian power via 19th, 18th century tools like taking over parts of other countries. but also China and the way it coercively makes its way through the South China Sea, the way it also leverages its economic statecraft, there are really different outcomes within the UN that are going to be very detrimental to our interests.

38:06Samantha Power:This is going to be a very combative relationship with China on a whole series of fronts, including, of course, the economic front for some time. But we don't have the option of just privileging the great power competition and confrontation over managing those global threats. So it's going to take a subtlety and a sophistication of statecraft that we really haven't seen because it's not all or nothing where we throw out the old playbook. when great power conflict and tension and gifts, that old playbook still has something to teach us, but it requires a much more creative use of the tools in the toolbox and much less reliance on military force, which frankly has largely drained American capital and prevented us, I think, from seeing this fuller picture that has existed for some time.

38:56I do love that phrase, by the way, how do you compartmentalize competition? I mean, it just seems to speak to we're going to have to work with partners, countries, different actors that might not be so thrilled about you, but you basically have to do it. I do worry and I wonder if you worry that in a time when we move forward, when we have fewer and fewer resources, as we move into inevitably into tougher economic times and paying for all this debt, I think, I mean, aren't you concerned? It feels like the challenge you're putting forward is even greater to resource against, whether it's military versus some of the things you're talking about?

39:32Samantha Power:I think it's absolutely, it's hard for two reasons. One, it's a resource-constrained environment. But two, I think to come back to a point that one of you made before, we're just so polarized that the risk is whoever the president is, that there's a polarized reaction to what he or she eventually is putting forward. And so if you actually believe what we're talking about, which is that, and believe what we've, and institutionalize lessons from what we have just, what we are continuing to experience with the pandemic, this is national security. Americans, even in hard times, invest in protecting one another.

40:14Samantha Power:American leaders invest in protecting their citizens. If you take to a natural conclusion the gravity of this risk, then it requires making room for those investments in international infrastructure. But the challenge is because we are divided on that question, because at least for now, you know, the head of the Republican Party has not embraced the idea that protecting our security requires strengthening our alliances and working in coalitions within international institutions. That is likely to be a very divisive issue at a time when resources are going to be scarce. So it's the worst combination.

40:54Samantha Power:So I do I do. I worry very much about that. All right. So let's go into a lightning round. We're sort of, we have a little bit of time, but I do want to get a couple of questions. Maybe we get quick questions, quick answers. This is from Ada in the UK. What advice do you have for other women who want to work in the field of national security? um well i i write in the education of an idealist a lot about that because the truth is having been a journalist and uh human rights advocate on the outside i hadn't really been so self-conscious of being a woman in the workplace until i went and worked in national security um and i say it would be the same in the uk it's just amazing how uh you can look around some meetings and feel as if you're in 1945.

41:41Samantha Power:And that became even more dramatically the case when I got to the United Nations, which still has never had a female secretary general and where fewer than a quarter of the ambassadors are female, which resembles actually the percentage of women represented in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives until the 2018 election. So in some ways, what goes on at the UN and what goes on in national security is, you know, out of step with certain sectors where women have made more headway, at least in terms of equitable representation. But in certain respects, it's reflective of politics and public policy life more generally.

42:22Samantha Power:What do I recommend? What I learned the hard way was that the solidarity that women bring to the workplace is everything. Again, I didn't self-identify. So I was wondering, I was having some trouble in the early days of my time working at the White House as President Obama's human rights advisor. I thought, is it because I'm new to government? And because I used to be a journalist, people think that I'm a journalist kind of almost undercover at the White House. Like, are my ideas not being taken as seriously as I might like because of something to do with me? Is it because I'm the human rights advisor, which is sometimes likened to being the skunk at the law party, because there was a lot of habits in national security that cut in a pretty traditional status direction and don't like the confrontation sometimes involved in raising human rights concerns.

43:10Samantha Power:So I'm thinking, you know, but all of my questions were, it must be me. I must be, I just need to get better and I need to improve. But then I sat down with the other female so-called special assistants to the president that were six of us out of 26 all told, 26 special assistants all told. And each of these women, one was working on nonproliferation. Another had come from the Pentagon. It was in charge of European affairs. They'd been around the block. They weren't promoting human rights. They weren't novices in the U.S. government. They weren't former journalists. And they were having exactly the same issues.

43:43Samantha Power:And once we each came together and understood that something in the culture was a little bit amiss, we were much better ourselves at raising collective concerns and being able to say what was us and what was the culture and pushing back. And I brought that spirit when I was UN ambassador to that job and created a group for all the female ambassadors to come together. We had dinner about, you know, psychology and the confidence code. We brought the authors of the confidence code to talk through how we were holding ourselves back at times. I had Gloria Steinem come to dinner, Madeleine Albright, first female U.S.

44:24Samantha Power:Secretary of State. And so but we also brainstormed about what we could do as a as a network on issues related to sexual violence or on representation of women within the UN system. So I think there's there's strength in numbers. And even though our numbers sometimes in the boardroom or in the situation room aren't what they will be and need to be, the numbers that you have can actually be quite potent if you find one another. so uh we have to ask you know you are are a well-known outspoken red sox fan how are you surviving without sports other than it sounds like watching and maybe re-watching the last dance over and over again um it's actually dave roberts uh steel where i have a son uh declan who's a washington nationals fanatic and you won't believe it but he's trying to convince me that Derek Jeter actually applied the tag to Dave Roberts' critical steal in 2004.

45:25Samantha Power:So we're having a pitched verbal battle. That is - You just got to watch it over and over again to find out. I think that's our own career. It's a home school. It didn't go over well. The combination of just not knowing the play, there's just too much of an investment. Baseball's all about the reward on investment. so the last dance has been a little bit of a offered some solace different sport but um a nice way to to remember what sports offers uh all of us and a family bonding device but but we're hopeful that they're going to get baseball back it's not going to look like it used to but uh my son i should know because he's a washington nationals fan he's pretty mixed he's he's i mean he's he watches 162 games a year he's he's a fanatic but he's a little bit torn between uh being getting to be the world series champion forever the sort of perennial you know but mommy if they never play again probably uh and so he's when he thinks about empty stadiums not being able to have a full season uh you know having lost anthony rendon and he waits that against actually just being able to call himself world champion for longer, he's more torn than you'd expect.

46:45Your greatest moment of international diplomacy was when you thanked the Japanese government for the two Japanese relief pitchers who helped deliver the World Series to the Red Sox a few years ago. Thank you for remembering.

46:56Samantha Power:Thank you for remembering. All right. So quickly, we'd like to do a little segment called Here Today or Here to Stay. And let's just do really quick on that. Josh, you want to do one? Okay, so graduation rituals. We are, you know, I have a daughter who's leaving high school this spring, and it is clearly, there we go, there's the sign. Now, this sign is one, and dogs, too, my dogs, which you didn't hear today. I think you heard Audie's dogs. Sorry about that. That's okay. But this is actually a sign that's a line of signs, a mile long, with each individual's name on it. You can go take your picture with it, And it's just such a great way, I think, when you can't have the big, you know, when we can't all congregate.

47:41And I've seen many, many different ways that we see people celebrating these milestones that are kind of fun and interesting. And maybe even a little bit better than sitting through that long high school graduation. Not that I was going to mind it, Charlotte. But, you know, they I just I sort of hope that that stays on at long after this moment. I don't know what you guys think. Yeah, I love these. I spoke to somebody, a parent who who was present at a kind of a Zoom version of their child's college graduation. And, you know, it's not the way you want to do it. But on the other hand, she said there was an intimacy with the speaker that you don't necessarily get if you're in a stadium and, you know, tens of thousands of kids are graduating and there's a tiny little speaker far, far away from you.

48:29So there's actually something positive. I love these things on the street. I really hope we look, I hope we keep appreciating frontline workers and I hope we keep appreciating health workers and I hope we appreciate graduates the way we have. I mean, they're there. The pandemic has driven us apart, but it's the moments when we've reached when we've realized new ways to connect have been really moving. And I hope they do survive. Yeah. Yeah.

48:52Samantha Power:I was slated to give four commencement speeches and talk about needing to learn to say no. And this struck. And I had already begun to think about the different universities. I was doing two high schools and two universities. And so it's sort of an interesting kind of sort of insight into what different schools are doing. So one of the universities I was supposed to speak at canceled altogether and is having no Zoom anything, unfortunately. Another asked for a written ode to the graduating class. And among the high schools, one of them, which is here in Massachusetts, I'm actually going, I think it's at the end of this week or next week, and standing at an empty podium.

49:42Samantha Power:And they're doing the live stream. So they'll be talking about Korean baseball. So it's weird. It's hard to get used to. But, you know, I think to the degree that one of the things I'm really looking forward to, and I just have my fingers crossed that as a professor myself, that the students are going to be back on campus in the fall. But I do think that all of the things that you take for granted about the social, about, you know, those after class conversations you have with the professor or among students, you know, just the spontaneity and so forth. I think that when we go back and it won't look the same, yes, classes will be not as crowded.

50:24Samantha Power:People will be walking in one direction and wear a mask and this and the other. But the one thing that would be great to be different when we do return is just that smelling of the roses, right, of group dynamics, group settings, of in-person friendships. It's so stilted in a way because you have to call up and can we have a Zoom drink or can we have a Zoom flirtation? And to just be looking around and anything that makes us not take for granted the joys that we have that become kind of part of our wallpaper, I think that could be a lovely benefit on the back end when we do come back together.

51:04Samantha Power:Yeah, I agree. All right. So I want to thank Ambassador Samantha Power for being our guest today on HBR Quarantine. really generous of you to give us a lot of your time and good luck surviving this very, very strange moment going forward. You too. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for all the great comments too. Thank you. Thanks, Samantha. And Josh, you want to talk about our guest next week? Sure. Our guest next week, which next week it'll be Monday, just the normal Monday when HBR quarantine resumes with Adam Grant, who's a psychologist and a professor at Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

51:42Adam will talk with us a little bit about remote collaboration during this time, as well as keeping that company culture, or not keeping it, I guess. I guess that's what we'll have to talk to him about. What is it that companies want to do and take from this moment moving forward? So that should be a great conversation. Also, just to remind you, the shameless plug for HBR, if you enjoy what you're seeing here and you want to get more of this, go to hbr.org where you can subscribe. And I just want to thank you all for coming this week. And I hope you have a great rest of your week. So long.

52:36Okay, we're back on. So we're back and we know we're back. We know we're back. We're back. We like to come back after the show to do a quick little post-bortem on the show. So that's what this is. Now, why didn't you talk about my blazer? Oh yeah, sorry. Well, this is the time now. Josh, look, blazer. Nice blazer. I know. I dressed up for the show for, well, the ambassador and the show. Yeah. I thought there was a lot of really interesting things to think about. We had a lot of questions that I wish I'd gotten to. A ton. But we went along. Were there any questions that you think of as memorable that we didn't get to?

53:18Well, I mean, who thought dog was barking? What's that? That was kind of a nightmare on my side. I had children walking around in the background. I had dogs barking. But he wasn't in his boxers, at least. I mean, I felt like any moment now, someone was like coming in with a cigarette, bathrobe. That was just pure, pure chance that it was. I could have been Dave even. I didn't, I was just like, this is stuff I don't want to see. Yeah. So we have to work on that. You've got to work backstage in your, in your, whatever it is where you are right now. But there were definitely questions, you know, if you wanted to hear more from Samantha about how COVID-19 has impacted America's reputation, you know, as a global leader.

54:01And I would have been interested in hearing more about that. Let's see, what are some others? We want to learn more about Ebola, which obviously was very different in the response and the kind of coalition that existed. But whether there were more kind of overt lessons that could be extracted from that and applied to the current situation. I think one of the big parallels that she resonates with me talking about is what we do in business all the time. What we write about is how you divide those resources. when she started talking, you know, just so much about the overweighted to the military response, and then how do you move resources?

54:39Really, I mean, you can, what a great commencement speaker she would be. The other thing about sports, you know, I, this is such a strange time for those of us who, you know, for whom sports is an important part of our kind of daily rituals. The sports station in Boston in the area last night was playing a replay of the first Super Bowl from 1967 just kind of playing it with all the the pregame stuff and you know without kind of wasn't highlight it was just beginning to end three and a half hours of the first Super Bowl. Green Bay? Yeah Green Bay versus Green Bay. Yeah okay wasn't even called the Super Bowl then that's how that's how long ago it was.

55:25For those of us who are just starved for something. I'd be interested to know, did they original advertisements and what was an ad buy for the Super Bowl back in, what, 1961? That would have been... But then again, I... I think it was all just like real tobacco. I want to know who the musician was at halftime. Yeah, that's true. Don Ho, I think. That's before Don's time. maybe wow that really dates me if I come up with a ridiculously dated I set you up for that there you go okay well that was good we should do this again next week on Monday alright I'll see you see you on Monday thanks for tuning in real goodbye real goodbye

56:21Thank you.

56:51Samantha Power:Heinz and Allbirds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into... Sign up for your$1 per month trial at shopify.com slash special offer.