WASHINGTON — In naming Susan Rice and Samantha Power to key national security posts, President Barack Obama has turned to two prominent advocates of liberal interventionism, a foreign-policy credo that calls for the United States to act aggressively to defend human rights — by military means, if necessary.
Both are veterans of his 2008 campaign and have strong personal relationships with Obama. But they will be working for a president who has stubbornly resisted intervening in the most dire human-rights calamity of the day, the civil war in Syria. Given Obama’s fixed views, it is not clear whether even Rice and Power could prod him into action.
Rice, who is replacing Tom Donilon as national security adviser, and Power, who is replacing Rice as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, teamed in 2011, along with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, to persuade Obama to back a NATO-led intervention in Libya that was designed to head off a slaughter of the rebels in Benghazi.
The appointment of Rice is also a defiant gesture to Republicans who harshly criticized her for presenting an erroneous account of the deadly attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya. The post of national security adviser, while powerful, does not require Senate confirmation.
In her new role, Rice will be able to exert even more influence, occupying a West Wing office down the hall from a president who has concentrated foreign policy decision-making in the White House.
But as Obama and his aides have long argued, Libya is no Syria. The first was a clear-cut case in which air power could prevent Moammar Gadhafi from killing thousands of rebels in their stronghold; the second, a sectarian struggle, pits a regime with sophisticated air defenses against rebels scattered throughout the country.
Neither Rice nor Power has spoken out publicly in favor of a more aggressive U.S. response to the bloodbath in Syria, which is perhaps not surprising, given Obama’s well-known views and their own roles as rising stars in his administration.
Administration officials said that in the debate last summer about whether to supply the rebels with arms — a proposal pushed by the then-director of the CIA, David H. Petraeus — Rice sided with those who opposed it. Over time, however, officials said, she has become more open to lethal aid, given the stalemate in the civil war.
Gary Bass, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, said that in formulating its Syria policy, the administration would have to answer a basic question.
“Do you think of Syria as being a Rwanda or a Bosnia, where human rights concerns trumped everything?” he said. “Or do you see it as more like Iraq, where it’s not clear there’s a good side to get behind?”
There are other voices for stronger action, including Secretary of State John Kerry.
Power and Rice, who are friends, each bring their long, sometimes painful histories to this issue.
For Power, who made her name as a journalist covering the wars in the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia was a formative experience. In her book “A Problem from Hell,” she presented a history of genocide in the 20th century and a withering critique of the failure of the United States and other countries to respond to them.
For Rice, who began her career in the National Security Council during the Clinton administration, Rwanda was a crucible. President Bill Clinton’s inaction in the face of genocide there fueled many of the people who worked for him, including Rice, not to allow a repeat.
Years later, she told Power, who was then a journalist writing about the episode, that “I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required.”
Susan Rice file
Age: 48; born Nov. 17, 1964
Experience: U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, January 2009-present; senior national security adviser on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, 2008; senior foreign policy fellow, Brookings Institution, 2002-09; senior adviser for national security affairs, John F. Kerry presidential campaign, 2004; assistant secretary of state for African affairs, 1997-2001; special assistant to the president and senior director for African affairs, National Security Council, 1995-97; director for international organizations and peacekeeping, National Security Council, 1993-95; management consultant, McKinsey and Co., 1991-93.
Education: Bachelor’s degree, history, Stanford University, 1986; master’s degree, international relations, Oxford University, 1988; doctorate, Oxford University, 1990. Rice was a Rhodes scholar.
Family: Husband, Ian Cameron; two children.
The Associated Press
Samantha Power file
Age: 42; born Sept. 21, 1970
Experience: Former special assistant to the president and senior director for multilateral affairs and human rights, 2009-13; foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama, 2005-06, 2008; previously a columnist and correspondent for various publications including Time magazine, U.S. News & World Report and The Economist; and a professor of U.S. foreign policy, human rights and extremism at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Education: Bachelor’s degree, Yale University, 1993; law degree, Harvard Law School, 1999.
Family: Husband, Cass Sunstein; two children.
The Associated Press
