Samantha Power is the US ambassador to the United Nations. She has spent much of her career promoting the responsibility to protect doctrine. In conjunction with other members of the Obama administration she is promoting the justification for the US move to conduct bombing raids on sites in Syria without UN Security Council or US congressional authorization.
US ties itself in legal knots to cover shifting rationale for Syria strikes
US government lawyers have invoked Iraq’s right to self-defence and the weakness of the Assad regime as twin justifications for US bombing in Syria, in a feat of legal acrobatics that may reopen questions over its right to intervene in the bitter civil war.
In a letter to the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, released near 24 hours after attacks began, US ambassador Samantha Power argued that the threat to Iraq from Islamic State, known as Isis or Isil, gave the US and its allies in the region an automatic right to attack on its behalf.
“Iraq has made clear that it is facing a serious threat of continuing attacks from Isil coming out of safe havens in Syria,” Power wrote.
“The government of Iraq has asked that the United States lead international efforts to strike Isil sites and military strongholds in Syria in order to end the continuing attacks on Iraq, to protect Iraqi citizens and ultimately to enable and arm Iraqi forces to perform their task of regaining control of the Iraqi borders.”
One of the arguments is that the weakness of the Syrian government somehow renders its claims to national sovereignty invalid. The US has of course spent two years funding rebel groups to undermine that government.
Power was also using the argument that the Khorasan group constitutes a link to Al Queda thus providing the legal cover of old UN and congressional actions. Of course presenting any evidence to support such a claim would be a violation of US national security, so it must be accepted on faith.
The UN is of course powerless to stop the US when it has decided to do something. It is the hypocrisy of trying to provide legal cover for what is in reality a unitary executive action that gives one a case of mental whiplash.