BBC documentary in 8 parts. At the end of WWII, leaders from around the world stated that “Never Again” would they stand by if events like the genocide carried out by the Nazis took place, but the realpolitik of the Cold War often saw these promises set aside in the interests of global stability. Spanning the administrations of four US Presidents, Corridors of Power: Should America Police the World? is a riveting examination of how American leaders responded to reports of genocide, war crimes and mass atrocities from the end of the Cold War until 2016. After the fall of the Soviet Union, America stood alone as the world’s only global superpower, but what responsibilities came with that power? Rare archive and in-depth testimony from decision makers gives insight to the workings of the inner sanctums of the White House to better understand not the “what”, but the “why.” Featuring interviews with leading US political figures, including Madeleine Albright, James Baker, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Hillary Clinton, the series, narrated by Meryl Streep and directed by Dror Moreh, focuses on a 25 year period that reveals how our past can dictate our future. E01 Iraq – For Every Insect There Is an Insecticide After the Islamic revolution and the capture of 50 American hostages, Iran became a bitter enemy of the United States. To counterbalance Iranian influence in the region, the White House turned to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. US support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war ignored massacres, such as widespread use of chemical weapons against both the Iranians and the Kurdish ethnic minority in Iraq, as Washington maintained its close relationship with Baghdad. But with the end of the Cold War, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait turned his American ally into an enemy. Would the US now intervene to help the Kurds? E02 Bosnia – Our Soldiers Are Not Toy Soldiers After the fall of the Berlin Wall, President George HW Bush declared the age of a new world order, where the 'rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle'. For a new generation of leaders, the west’s victory came with a responsibility – to use force to make the world a better place. Bosnia was their first test. Communism had held the disparate ethnic communities in the Balkans together as Yugoslavia, but following the seismic political changes in eastern Europe, the country deteriorated into a series of bloody wars. Should the incoming young President Bill Clinton and the then US ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright use force to save innocent civilians from a genocide whose brutality and horror was being captured on the home movie cameras of its perpetrators? E03 Rwanda – That Was a Local Thing Why did the entire world stand by in 1994 as nearly one million people were murdered over one hundred days of incomprehensible terror in Rwanda? American diplomats describe events on the ground and in Washington as this tragedy unfolded. What did the White House know, when did they know it and why didn’t they act? The horrendous results of ignoring the genocide in Rwanda haunts the Washington decision-makers to this day. President Clinton refers to it as 'the greatest failure of my life.' E04 Kosovo – In the Name of Our Future Three years after the civil war in Bosnia, the world looked like a very different place. The Bosnian genocide had been stopped, but Muslim separatists in the Kosovo region rekindled old conflicts that led President Clinton’s White House to consider Serbian President Milošević’s regime a threat to their own civilians. With post-Soviet Russia in crisis, Boris Yeltsin, the Russian president, criticised at home for being 'an American puppet', strongly opposed any western intervention against their old allies in the Balkans. Nato did intervene, but at what cost? Boris Yeltsin is forced to resign, leaving a young and promising KGB officer named Vladimir Putin to take his place. E05 Darfur – Carrots for a War Criminal In 2003, the Sudanese government began a widespread ethnic cleansing campaign in the western part of the country. With the memory of the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda still fresh, hundreds of thousands of Americans went out to protest and demand protection for the citizens of Darfur. Despite the US being bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration did not stand aside, but couldn’t take the US into another war. Following Obama’s 2008 election success, many of the people that fought so vocally for Darfur came into office. Could they make a difference? E06 Libya – If You Break It You Own It Barack Obama's first presidential trip abroad was to Cairo. He turned to the younger generation in the Arab world and told them 'you, more than anyone, have the ability to remake this world'. A year and a half later the Arab Spring broke out, but when Muammar Gaddafi declared his intention to go to Benghazi and 'disinfect it, street after street and house after house', Obama faced a dilemma. Should he heed the call to save innocent civilians from a potential massacre? E07 Syria – The Risk of Doing Nothing In his acceptance speech for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, President Obama stated: 'I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans'. When the Arab Spring-driven demonstrations against the Syrian regime were brutally put down, Obama, stung by failure in Libya, did not want to be dragged into another war in the Middle East. But when the Syrian regime began to consider the use of chemical weapons, Obama warned they would be crossing a red line. E08 Syria – A Loop of Imperfection America’s unwillingness to act after the chemical attack, caused Syrian rebels to despair; no-one would come and save the day, leaving a vacuum that would be filled by the forces of Isis, turning Syria into hell on earth. Obama’s conclusion was that there was no scenario where intervention in Syria would give a desired outcome. With over half a million killed and millions of refugees fleeing Syria’s borders, Obama's vision of a Middle East where the youth would create a democratic and free world for itself, had collapsed. Cast & Characters Meryl Streep (Narrator), Sandy Berger, Samantha Power, Tony Lake, Leon Panetta, Ben Rhodes, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Hillary Clinton, Jake Sullivan, Derek Chollet, Richard A. Clarke, Antony Blinken, Alexander Vershbow, Wesley Clark, Denis McDonough, Wa'el Alzayat, William Burns, James A. Baker, Strobe Talbott, John Shattuck, George Moose, Chuck Hagel, Leon Fuerth, Peter Galbraith, George Shultz. Directors: Dror Moreh Writers: Mark Danner, Dror Moreh Producers: Jennie Amias, Mandy Chang, Mark Danner, Estelle Fialon, Solomon Goodman, Jo Lapping, Beth Levison, Alisa Lyudinshina, Vinnie Malhotra, Dror Moreh Composers: Eugene Levitas Runtime: 7h 36mn Country: UK, Israel Language: English