During a 2007 speech at the University of Oregon, Samantha Power, President Obama's nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, told a questioner that changing "our whole order" regarding world governance "would be welcome."

However, she said the new order "isn't going to happen any time soon, given who has the power and who have the guns."


Instead, she advocated "convincing those building blocks, those nation-states who comprise the UN, that it is in their national interest to give something up in the short term in order to get something back in the long term."

"The way that the UN will ultimately find a constituency in this country is, when we do as we're doing now, finally, around global warming and we understand that you can't deal with transnational threats unless you strengthen transnational institutions," Ms. Power asserted. "You can't, just as a structural matter," she added.

She then claimed that "counter-terrorism provides an opportunity to reintroduce American's to international institutions," as well. Explaining that, in her view, "we cannot get cells in 111 countries on our own."

Ms. Power also saw "an opening and a moment to potentially actually invigorate the conversation about, you know, a different relationship to international institutions" in what she viewed as "the loss of faith in our competence."