Samantha Power: ‘US is pulling away from its democratic allies’ | Talk to Al Jazeera

In September 2016, nearly two months before the then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s election, United States President Barack Obama spoke at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).

“As I address this hall as president for the final time, let me recount the progress that we’ve made,” he said, “A quarter-century after the end of the Cold War, the world is by many measures less violent and more prosperous than ever before …”

But with millions displaced worldwide, unresolved conflicts from Yemen to Syria, Iraq to Afghanistan, and armed groups like ISIL (ISIS) and al-Qaeda launching attacks against civilians, was Obama’s speech too optimistic?

And in the years since, how has US foreign policy changed under President Trump? And what should have been done differently?

Samantha Power served at the US ambassador to the UN from 2013 to 2017.

As Obama’s top UN diplomat at the time, she was responsible for securing international consensus on a variety of pressing issues at the UN Security Council (UNSC) and the UNGA.

To discuss the Trump presidency, the difference between Trump and Obama’s responses to global health crises, China’s increasing influence on international organisations, and ongoing conflict in the Middle East, she talks to Al Jazeera.

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Occupying 652,000 square kilometers (252,000 sq mi), it is a mountainous country with plains in the north and southwest. Kabul is the capital and largest city. The population is around 32 million, composed mostly of ethnic Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks.

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