Bringing Islamic State survivors to the UN: Obama’s ambassador Samantha Power on breaking out of bureaucratic isolation

Obama’s ambassador to the UN on how she avoided bureaucratic isolation while tackling ISIS, why presidents prefer golf, and finding ‘one’s slice of change that one can make’.

Crises are an ever-present fact of government, but nowhere is this more true than in foreign policy.

“We had this expression that I don’t know I’d heard before government, which is that of ‘clean wins’. It’s very rare that you get clean wins in government,” says Samantha Power.

“We stave off what seems like an incipient massacre in South Sudan, South Sudan becomes an independent country and breaks away from Sudan because of all our diplomatic work with China and other countries to ensure people vote in the referendum to break away,” she told Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre on Wednesday as part of her new book tour.