U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
On June 5, 2013, U.S. President Barack Obama announced her nomination as the new United States Ambassador to the United Nations.
Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham backed Power's nomination, as did independent senator Joseph Lieberman. Power also received support from U.S. diplomat Dennis Ross, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League Abraham Foxman, Israel's ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren, lawyer and commentator Alan Dershowitz, the director of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, the director of the Israel Project, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the President of the Rabbinical Assembly, the Eastern Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center Rabbi Steven Burg, the National Jewish Democratic Council, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, publisher Marty Peretz, and military writer Max Boot.
Her nomination also faced some opposition. Former U.S. ambassador to the UN John R. Bolton and a former acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Frank Gaffney, criticized her for a 2003 article she authored in The New Republic, in which Bolton claims she compared the United States to Nazi Germany.
Power was confirmed as UN ambassador by the U.S. Senate on August 1, 2013, by a vote of 87 to 10, and was sworn in a day later by the Vice President.
Power's advocacy of deploying the United States armed forces to combat human rights abuses has been criticized as running contrary to the idea that the main purpose of the military is for national defense. Critics said that the military operations she supported in Libya, Syria, and Yemen led to the loss of lives and furthered extremism. Michigan State Professor Shireen Al-Adeimi has said, "These interventions, however, were anything but humanitarian: They led to a sharp increase in the loss of human lives, exacerbated a refugee crisis, enabled extremist groups, and caused an overall exacerbation of already-tenuous civil conflicts". It has been argued that Power's humanitarian idealism faded after she entered the State Department and began associating, both professionally and personally, with hardline realists like Henry Kissinger.
Chemi Shalev wrote that individuals have described Power as being pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli, on the basis of statements which she made in a 2002 interview with Harry Kreisler. When asked what advice she would give to the president if either the Israelis or the Palestinians looked "like they might be moving towards genocide", Power said that the United States might consider the deployment of a "mammoth protection force" to monitor developments between the Israelis and Palestinians, characterizing it as a regrettable but necessary "imposition of a solution". She clarified that remark on several occasions, including in an interview with Haaretz correspondent Shmuel Rosner in August 2008.
In July 2014, Power expressed support for Israel's right to defend itself during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict.
In December 2016, she expressed support for the Obama administration's refusal to veto a resolution against Israeli settlements in occupied territories. Power told the 15-member U.N. Security Council: "Israeli settlement activity in territories occupied in 1967 undermines Israel's security, harms the viability of a negotiated two-state outcome, and erodes prospects for peace and stability in the region."
Speaking in September 2013, regarding the U.S. Government Assessment of the Syrian Government's Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21, 2013, Power told a news conference that the American intelligence findings "overwhelmingly point to one stark conclusion: The Assad regime perpetrated an attack." She added, "The actions of the Assad regime are morally reprehensible, and they violate clearly established international norms." Power went on to criticize the failure of the United Nations structure to thwart or prosecute the atrocities committed in the Syrian conflict, which is now well into its third year. She said, "The system devised in 1945 precisely to deal with threats of this nature did not work as it was supposed to." She added, "Even in the wake of the flagrant shattering of the international norm against chemical weapons use, Russia continues to hold the council hostage and shirk its international responsibilities. "What we have learned, what the Syrian people have learned, is that the Security Council the world needs to deal with this crisis is not the Security Council we have." Power has herself, however, been criticized by journalist Jeff Jacoby for her lack of commitment to stopping the conflict, who wrote that she has mostly "acquiesced in the president's [Obama's] unwillingness to act."
In 2014, speaking on the crisis in Ukraine, Ambassador Power, told reporters that Washington was "gravely disturbed" by reports of Russian military deployments into the Crimea. "The United States calls upon Russia to pull back the military forces that are being built up in the region, to stand down, and to allow the Ukrainian people the opportunity to pursue their own government, create their own destiny and to do so freely without intimidation or fear," she said. Power declined to characterize Russian military actions when asked if they constituted aggression. She called for an independent international mediation mission to be quickly dispatched to Ukraine.
In July 2014, during a forum at Hunter College commemorating the 45th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, Power said that, in spite of significant progress in the US, the LGBT rights movement was "far from over", noting that "There are some parts of the world where the situation abroad is actually taking a sharp turn for the worse for LGBT individuals." She stated that homosexuality remains criminalized in nearly 80 countries, that Brunei was moving towards becoming the eighth country to enact capital punishment for same-sex sexual acts, and that Russia and Nigeria had also instituted anti-LGBT legislation in the last year. Referring to a law signed in February by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni that imposes a life sentence upon anyone found guilty of repeated same-sex sexual acts, she said: "Unfortunately, Uganda's anti-gay legislation is not an outlier. Nor is the climate of intolerance and abuse that it has fostered." This speech occurred on the first anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down a portion of the Defense of Marriage Act, and a week after the Obama administration announced travel bans against Ugandan officials responsible for anti-LGBT human rights abuses.
In March 2015, Power described defense cuts planned by Europe and countries such as Britain as "very concerning" in light of the "diffuse" challenges facing the world, such as the Ebola crisis in west Africa and the threat from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). She flew to Brussels to urge European nations to abide by a NATO pledge to devote to defense at least two percent of their national budget, and she suggested that their current spending already risked being insufficient.
Power faced criticism for her silence on Obama's failure to recognize the Armenian genocide, especially after its 100th anniversary in 2015. A long-time advocate for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the United States, Power details her efforts to convince President Obama up until just before his 2015 speech in her memoir. She described the day during which she also gave birth to her son Declan in 2009 right after her failure to change Obama's decision as "an example of loneliness" she experienced at the White House. Power apologized for the Administration's failure on Twitter in 2017.
In June 2015, Power spoke to the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee while negotiations were taking place with Iran regarding granting relief of sanctions on the country in return for them scaling back their nuclear program. She told the Committee that the US would retain the ability to reinstate sanctions against Iran without unanimous support from the UN Security Council, though she said she could not provide details until a deal was finalized.
Power supported the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen against the Shia Houthis and forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
In 2016, while speaking on the situation in Syria, Power said, "What Russia is sponsoring and doing is not counter-terrorism, it is barbarism," "Instead of pursuing peace, Russia and Assad make war. Instead of helping get life-saving aid to civilians, Russia and Assad are bombing the humanitarian convoys, hospitals and first responders who are trying desperately to keep people alive," Power said. A September 9 ceasefire deal between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov aimed at putting Syria's peace process back on track effectively collapsed on Monday when an aid convoy was bombed.
Power, in her last major speech in the role, told the international community it must do everything it can to stop what she described as a Russian assault on the world order. Outlining Russian actions such as the annexation of Crimea, the bombing of civilians in Syria, and the hacking of America's election, Power drew a picture of a state whose primary aim is to sow chaos and wreak havoc on the "rules-based" world order that is girded by international law and run in bodies like the United Nations. "Russia's actions are not standing up a new world order, they are tearing down the one that exists, and this is what we are fighting against," she said in a speech at the Atlantic Council on January 17. "Having defeated the forces of fascism and communism, we now confront the forces of authoritarianism and nihilism." Those who argue, as Trump, has, that undoing sanctions against Russia will make the Kremlin more amenable "have it backwards," Power said. "Easing punitive measures ... will only embolden Russia," encourage North Korea and Iran to follow them and send the message that all they need to do is "wait it out," Power argued.
On May 31, 2017, the House Intelligence Committee subpoenaed Power's testimony and relevant records as part of its investigation into the unmasking of Americans whose conversations she obtained from intelligence surveillance.
