The Smithian

Samantha Power will come to the job [as US Ambassador to the United Nations] with a deep and nuanced understanding of how the UN works. Her latest book, Chasing the Flame, chronicled the life and death of Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top UN official who was killed when terrorists struck the UN Compound in Iraq in 2003. Since the publication of the book...Power has been a vocal advocate for the safety and security of UN humanitarian workers around the world. This is a critically important issue [as] The UN has become a preferred target of Jihadi organizations in South Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa and the Sahel...The UN is now gearing up for a major mission in Mali where the UN will almost certainly come under direct assault from Jihadi groups in a way that...could be unprecedented...On Syria, her influence could be lasting. Power is best known for her...A Problem From Hell: America in the Age of Genocide, which was hugely influential in liberal foreign policy circles. The book argues that the institutions of US foreign policy failed to respond adequately to the big mass atrocity events since World War II.

Fifteen years ago, Africa...particularly its...centre, was seen almost exclusively as an exotic high-risk investment destination for the brave and adventurous, for those with privileged connections to Africa’s dictatorships and large pools of capital to risk. Most investors had all but forsaken central Africa after Rwanda’s 1994 genocide...The Rwandan conflict spilled over into neighbouring Zaire (now called Democratic Republic of Congo), sparking a war that toppled one of its presidents, killed another, and drew in armies from nine different countries. But the economic interest in Africa has lately become intense. It is now routinely described as the continent of the future: by some measures it is soon to be the world’s fastest growing region, with a large and rapidly expanding consumer base—its middle class is now estimated to be larger than India’s...