The biggest reason that memoirs from the Obama Administration tend to avoid lingering on humanitarian intervention is simply that the record provides little to brag about: a disaster in Libya and in Syria, and a quagmire in Afghanistan, where the prospects of millions of women, empowered by the removal of the Taliban, hang in the balance. In Iraq, Obama’s decision to withdraw American troops, against the advice of his military, opened the door to isis, whose fighters massacred thousands of Yazidis and Christians, and other minorities. In other places where Obama turned down requests for military assistance—as in Ukraine—the counterfactuals are just as murky. Could Obama have done more? In retrospect, the answer is always yes. Would the results look better? Knowing the answer would require, as Power said of the decision to intervene in Libya, a crystal ball. ♦