As an intern at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC in 1993, Power immersed herself in the breakdown of the former-Yugoslavia, self-publishing a detailed timeline of events for journalists and policymakers, and eventually forging a letter on stolen Foreign Policy letterhead to obtain a UN press pass in order to see the conflict up close.

In the years that followed, Power made frequent trips to the Balkans, writing stories for newspapers and magazines in the hope that her writing might generate support for US intervention. Power’s reportorial account of those years – describing harrowing encounters with Serbian soldiers, near-death experiences on mountain roads, the gallows humour of besieged Bosnians, and the dystopian effect of the war on the Balkan landscape – is engrossing. Yet by 1995 she was growing sceptical of her own role: ‘With no end to the war in sight, I was starting to feel increasingly like a vulture, preying on Bosnian misery to write my stories.’ After returning to the United States later that year, Power enrolled in Harvard Law School but remained obsessed by the Balkan situation. Arriving in Boston to the news that NATO airstrikes had broken the Sarajevo siege, Power cried tears of relief.

Samantha Power (photograph via Wikimedia Commons)

While at Harvard, Power began work on a treatise about American inaction in the face of genocide. A Problem from Hell: America and the age of genocide (2002) won the Pulitzer Prize and made Power, at thirty-three, one of America’s most prominent and uncompromising voices on the moral necessity of humanitarian intervention.

The second part of The Education of an Idealist traverses Power’s time as a member of the National Security Council and then as ambassador to the United Nations. With refreshing candour, Power records her early struggles to master bureaucratic processes, manoeuvre politically, and deal with the gendered language and entrenched sexism of the US national security apparatus.

There were other challenges. Power gave birth to her two children while working for Obama. Their presence, perhaps unusually for a political memoir, is ubiquitous – whether it is daughter Rian, a noisy feeder, being overheard while Power was on the phone with Secretary of State John Kerry; or son Declan muttering, during a White House conference call, ‘Putin, Putin, Putin … When is it going to be Declan, Declan, Declan?’ Power’s ability to manage an overwhelming number of work and family responsibilities is inspiring.

The Obama administration was not without foreign-policy achievements in Power’s portfolio. US-led (or US-supported) military interventions prevented the mass slaughter of civilians in Libya, the Central African Republic, and the Sinjar Mountains near the Iraq–Syria border. US leadership in the fight against Ebola in West Africa may have prevented a calamitous global outbreak of the disease. Smaller advances – defeating a resolution in the UN General Assembly to strip same-sex couples of spousal benefits, and passing a UN Security Council resolution requiring the United Nations to expel whole peacekeeping units whose soldiers were accused of sexually abusing civilians – are cited as evidence of moving the needle positively.

The raw and often startling honesty that Power brings to the personal and professional aspects of her narrative does not always translate into a convincing account of some of the Obama administration’s less understandable foreign-policy choices. After declaring a ‘red line’ on the use of chemical weapons, Obama baulked at taking action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for deploying sarin gas against thousands of civilians on the outskirts of Damascus in August 2013. As the book reveals, Obama planned to order airstrikes immediately following the attack. However, in the nine days it took for UN weapons inspectors to withdraw, Obama’s position changed. The president instead sought Congressional approval for airstrikes, a move interpreted as a way to avoid military intervention. Power criticises UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon for not withdrawing UN inspectors swiftly enough and expresses her view that the president should have ordered the airstrikes. However, Power stops short of explicitly criticising Obama. A later chapter is principally devoted to justifying her decision not to resign over the issue, though, confusingly, Power also emphasises the mounting consequences of the administration’s failure to intervene in Syria. Other uncomfortable topics – the administration’s limited efforts to counter Russia’s strategic reassertion, its failure to deal with the rise of ISIS, and its unwillingness to reckon with the civilian deaths caused by America’s targeted-killing program – are substantively avoided.

The Education of an Idealist offers a captivating account of Power’s early life and career. The detail and candour make the book a valuable guide for a career in international relations. However, Power’s involvement in, and defence of, Obama’s unambitious foreign-policy agenda and inconsistent actions might have diminished some of the author’s hard-won credibility.