Corridors of Power: BBC series calls for more US global meddling

Directed by acclaimed Israeli filmmaker Dror Moreh, Corridors of Power: Should America Police the World? features scores of interviews conducted over several years with former senior US officials, including Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice. Several are now dead, including Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell and Henry Kissinger.

The docuseries excoriates US foreign policy since the end of the Cold War, arguing that Washington has failed to stop genocide and atrocities when it should have intervened, while also executing bungled operations followed by chaotic withdrawals.

Moreh’s conclusion is that the US must be more interventionist. But voices from non-Americans are conspicuously absent from the docuseries. Iraqis, Afghans, Yemenis, Syrians - do they believe the US should intervene more and seek to police the world? Do they think this is the solution? Do Palestinians? We never find out.

Instead, the seven-and-a-half-hour series is packed full of American officials agonising, ruminating and philosophising, often in a grandiose manner, about the US and its role in the world. This is very obviously the perspective Moreh wants to explore, and the absence of Gaza from the production makes it appear nothing short of absurd.