Biden’s pick to lead USAID, Samantha Power, is known for her Hawkish policies, which include begging President Obama to bomb Syria and ramp up efforts to overthrow Assad, and supporting the overthrow of Gaddafi that has been disastrous for Libya…

With all eyes on the upcoming inauguration, President-Elect Joe Biden quietly announced his pick to lead the U.S. Agency for International Development. But while she was a seasoned member of the Obama Administration, Samantha Power has also been very outspoken when it comes to foreign policy and her support for US interventions around the world.

If the name sounds familiar, Samantha Power was the US Ambassador to the United Nations under the Obama Administration. She is now making a return to government as the administrator of the US Agency for International Development.

While Power was critical of civilian casualties when Russia was the alleged culprit, she was also a top supporter of overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, and she repeatedly pushed the Obama Administration to do more to try to overthrow Bashar-al Assad in Syria. In fact, during an interview from 2019, Power claimed her most difficult encounters with Obama were over Syria, saying, “I think if he had to do it all over again, probably he would do the same thing because his fears of entanglement, his sense that the American people were not with him, those beliefs have not changed.”

Yet at the same time, Samantha Power was silent on the civilians who were killed by US airstrikes, on the disastrous decision to arm so-called “moderate rebels” in Syria, and on US support for the devastating war in Yemen, which created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Biden has now chosen to make USAID a part of the National Security Council, so it is likely that she will have a significant role in the direction of his foreign policy.

That does spark concern then that the US will ramp up tensions with Syria, that will work to overthrow Assad at all costs — and that it will also increase tensions with Russia. Power has named Russia as one of the top threats to the US, and she has been very outspoken in her criticism of Moscow when its views clashing with US involvement. While Biden will be praised for choosing a woman to fill this role, Samantha Power is yet another hawk-ish addition to his cabinet who has repeatedly advocated for war.