Submitted to a Candid World

Help is on the way.

As long as we continue to be perceived as miserly (which comparatively we are), hypocritical, protectionist, or arrogant in many parts of the world, we will fail to sustain the partnerships that are so critical to combating the transnational threats we face. … We need leadership guided by enlightened self-interest—the understanding that we win when others win and lose when others lose. … New American leadership should aim to maximize global public goods—global peace and stability, global economic opportunity and growth, public health, democracy, and respect for human rights. In turn, we would enhance our own security and secure our own leadership.

Susan Rice wrote these words in late 2003. In the same piece, she also wrote:

Are we on the right track? No, I am afraid, quite the opposite. I think the state of our national security policy can be summed up in three words: the big dig. It is a huge—and seemingly endless—mess of enormous expense. The United States and our national security policy are in a massive hole.

Yesterday, Obama introduced Rice as his intended nominee for U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. America has scored a major victory with Rice. I make no secret of the fact I am distrustful, disdainful, and downright horrified by neoconservative foreign-policy ideals. Reading several of Rice’s published articles and speeches, I can safely say she shares some of my misgivings. Rice played a major role during Obama’s campaign as a foreign-policy adviser, and in Rice’s work, I can see the development of Obama’s platform, informed by the keen insight and special diplomatic experience Rice uses to form coherent arguments in support of multilateralism and the pragmatic use of force.

She is plain spoken and fair in her analysis, but she is also not afraid to forcefully call out mistakes and to clearly state her viewpoint. To call her biography impressive is laughably insufficient, yet she presents herself as accessible, capable of amiable self deprecation and, again, not afraid to be critical of policy with which she disagrees. She published occasional blog entries on The Huffington Post before and during the presidential campaign in which she proverbially is able to let down her hair, with post titles like “Bush’s Speech: Is He for Real?”

Rice is critically important for her expertise on Africa and failed/failing states. Because sub-Saharan-African nations are mostly either failed or failing, they are magnificent staging areas for terrorist organizations. With the enormous interest China has taken in the region, the U.S. needs an informed, experienced diplomatic voice in the United Nations to build a strategic alliance in the Security Council to foster stability and development throughout Africa.

I am excited for the turn U.S. foreign relations is destined to soon take. Rice is going to be a major force, re-establishing the U.S. as a moral leader. Rice provides perspective on the U.N. post in her assessment of John Bolton’s nomination to same in 2005.

Samantha Power, a member of the Obama transition team, is a passionate, courageous journalist who was in the middle of the Bosnian War and who has worked extensively with refugees in Darfur. While Bill Kristol, with zero authority, advises Republicans on foreign policy, Samantha Power has risked her life to learn, to understand, and to advocate. She has been called fiery and blunt. (She is the Obama adviser who called Hillary Clinton a “monster.”) That Obama called Power back to consult on State Department affairs reinforces his position that the problems facing our country are far greater than any one ego. We must work together, within and abroad, to build global stability.