The most impactful TV series I've watched recently is Corridors of Power: Should America Police the World?.
It's an insanely gripping investigation of the United States's response (spanning four presidents) to genocides and war atrocities around the world. From Iraq, Bosnia, and Rwanda, to Libya and Syria. There are interviews with many of the people around the presidents at those times. Secretaries of State, Secretaries of Defense, policy advisors, diplomats, etc. They all seem to talk openly about the internal debates that took place, though of course they shy away from that which they are not allowed to talk about. But if there's one thing to take away there, it is that there are no correct decisions to be made. One man said it aptly:
The president only has hard decisions to make, because all the easy decisions are made before they reach the president.
I long questioned whether this production is American propaganda or a genuine investigation and critique of how these administrations handled their immense power and responsibility in the face of these wars. But I've made peace with my conclusion that it's definitely both. The narrative is centred around a certain American superiority. Though that is also fitting for the viewpoints it investigates. I can only assume that all of these people that intimately worked on these administrations were convinced of their own morals and convictions. And that they were genuinenely compelled to protect civilians of countries where many other nation states had already turned a blind eye.
The moments I found to be most powerful in Corridors of Power are the many clips of original footage. Most of these wars took place in a world where personal recording devices became ubiquitous. And this series makes us watch minutes of uninterrupted video recorded by a soldier from the Bosnian Serb Army of Republika Srpska as they "toy" with the Bosniak men they will murder moments later, during what became the Srebrenica massacre. It shows executions by IS. It shows pictures from the aftermath of the Nyarubuye massacre in Rwanda. But not in a tasteless, sensational way (though it does make my stomach hurl from revulsion). The series is very much aware of the emotional weight these images carry.
Every episode radiates a sense of powerlessness and frustration in the context of "the international community". European countries are portrayed as flaky, submissive, and without any capabilities to sustain strategic efforts for long periods of time. Many votes for action in the United Nations get shot down by vetoes from Russia or other dissenting superpowers. (In a cruel twist, it is now the United States that is holding back the international community by vetoing every Gaza cease-fire resolution. Though I don't want to pretend that I fully grasp the intricacies of this conflict.) This all results in the inability of humanity to protect those most vulnerable and neglected. The tragedy for some of the interviewed individuals who were personally involved in those administrations is that they were forced to watch these crises slowly unfold over years, without them able to materially impact the outcome, despite being among the handful of people who could have.
Corridors of Power was made by Dror Moreh, in association with the BBC. I watched it on NPO Start (Dutch broadcasting), but it should be available on the BBC as well.