Can Samantha Power Stop Assad?

During her nomination to become the next ambassador to the United Nations on Wednesday, Samantha Power called Syria “one of the most devastating cases of mass atrocities that I have ever seen,” and said President Bashar al Assad has “written a new playbook for brutality.”

 Will the woman who wrote one of the most acclaimed books on the horrors of genocide be able to stop the bloodshed?

Power’s meteoric rise began when she was a journalist covering the wars in Kosovo, Bosnia and Rwanda. Her book, “A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” criticized U.S. leaders for not doing enough to stop genocides through the 20^th century. She won the Pulitzer Prize and has since ran a human rights group at Harvard before becoming a senior advisor to President Barack Obama in 2008.

In her book, she wrote of genocide that “no U.S. president has ever suffered politically for his indifference to its occurrence. It is thus no coincidence that genocide rages on.” Now Power comes face to face with her own determination. She has had Obama’s ear during his entire presidency, but the president has been reluctant to take action in such a volatile place like Syria where, his national security team warns, military intervention could lead to unforeseen problems in the region.

During her testimony on Capitol Hill, Power took a more measured stance than she did as a journalist fresh off of those 1990s conflicts. The U.S. has a responsibility to stop governments who commit atrocities against its people, she said, but “that does not mean the United States should intervene militarily every time.” There are other tools -- diplomatic, economic and otherwise -- that can be used without sending in the troops. And she pointed to the need for an international response.

She also said that “there are times we have to work outside the Security Council,” acknowledging that Russia and China have not been willing to stop Assad, while also tipping a hat to conservatives long wary of ceding U.S. national security decisions to the multinational U.N. “We see the failure of the U.N. Security Council to respond to the slaughter in Syria - a disgrace that history will judge harshly.”

But can a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations help end the bloody civil war in Syria? It certainly won’t be easy, according to one former office holder.

“Part of the issue is that China and Russia -- they have vetoes, it’s very hard to move them on this,” former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Defense One. “You don’t act alone.”

“If you can actually get the support of other countries, you go in with a legitimacy. It doesn’t always work, but it is important [to try],” said Albright, who held the same post in the 1990s. “I think she understands the strengths and weaknesses of the U.N.”

But working within a large international body is very different than a journalist’s job of shedding light on the problem from the front lines of a war zone. Power, who has been largely behind-the-scenes, will now have to harness her passion.

“She is among the most eloquent voices on genocide. That’s not lost on anyone,” said Gayle Lemmon, fellow and deputy director of the Women and Foreign Policy Program with the Council on Foreign Relations. “I think she’s going to remain committed to those issues,” Lemmon said, but now she has to work within the confines of the political arena. “Coloring within the policy lines is not an easy thing to do when you have the convictions she has.”

Still, without Russia and China it will be difficult to move the U.N. to act on Syria.

“That may prove to be her biggest challenge,” said Edward Luck, dean of the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies. “She will need to help the president find more effective means of engagement short of putting boots on the ground and then to convince the other members of the Security Council to go along.”

“If either side in Syria collapses without any international safety net in place or ready to go, we could see bloodshed of genocidal proportions,” he said. “So in some ways she is going to New York to try to prevent her worst nightmare.”