Ever the maverick, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said that because Cuba is excluded from the summit of the Americas currently taking place in the Trinidadian capital Port-of-Spain, he will veto any final communiqué. To make such a statement even before he knows what the final communiqué will say comes over as petulant. If he felt so strongly about it, it might have been better to have boycotted the summit altogether — but then Chavez loves nothing more than a political platform. Staying away would have deprived him of the chance to do something he revels in — traveling abroad and giving other the benefit of his views.
Much more significant than Chavez’s views about Cuba, however, are President Obama’s. His decision last week to lift restrictions on sending money there and on Cuban Americans visiting the island has cracked the 50-year-old freeze between the US and Cuba and heralds the normalization of relations between the two countries and Cuba’s full reintegration into the regional and international communities.
This is as much a result of changes in Cuba as in Washington. Both have new administrations unburdened with the political animosities of the past. Since taking over from his ailing brother just over a year ago, Raul Castro has quietly eased restrictions in what is one of the world’s last communist countries. He has made political rapprochement with the US a key objective, not least because it clears the way to sanctions being lifted and, from that, the economic ties and investment that Cuba desperately needs, all the more so given the present economic crisis.
Relations across the Florida Straits are now beginning to resemble a tennis match worthy of Wimbledon. After announcing the reductions in restrictions, Obama declared the ball to be in Cuba’s court and that he was looking for signals from Havana that it plans to liberalize. Within hours, Raul Castro did just that, saying he is willing to talk about anything with the Americans, including political prisoners and human rights. The ball is now back in Obama’s court. It is inconceivable, given his record in trying to reach out to others, that he will not continue to play this for all it is worth. Although he is not going to end the tourist ban or lift sanctions without concrete evidence of political liberalization in Cuba, what is being started is a dialogue between the US and Cuba.
In fact, Cuba is not on the agenda of the Port-of-Spain summit. The issues are the financial crisis, the environment, immigration, democracy and security. But given events, it will not be far from everyone’s mind. The Latin American mood is that it is time to end its isolation. It is the ghost at the feast. Even so, the summit has far more important, if related, functions. It provides the meeting place between Latin America and the new American president. As such it will enable good relations between the US and Latin America to be re-established after the tensions of the Bush era. It is not just to Muslims and Europeans that Obama is reaching out. He is on a Latin American and Caribbean charm offensive too and, on present form, he will achieve it.
How to fight Somali piracy
Piracy is a problem that the US can only solve in partnership with Western allies and East African governments, said The New York Times in an editorial yesterday. Excerpts:
We applaud the US Navy for the rescue of Richard Phillips from Somali pirates, and Capt. Phillips for giving himself as a hostage to safeguard his crew. The cruel fact is that even as Americans celebrated the rescue, the Somali pirates — in what is business as usual off of Somalia’s long ungoverned coast — were grabbing more ships. There are now 17 captured ships and about 260 hostages waiting to be ransomed. The short-term answer is more patrols and better cooperation with regional states; a long-term solution, alas, remains elusive.
The US and French governments were fully within their rights to authorize deadly force against the heavily armed pirates. Though the bandits may only be looking for ransom, their trophies have included giant oil tankers and ships full of sophisticated weapons. They have seriously disrupted shipping in one of the busiest maritime passages in the world, and their tactics could easily be adopted by terrorist groups — including Islamist groups inside Somalia linked to Al-Qaeda — looking to cripple global commerce. President Obama has rightly pledged to work with nations around the world to fight this plague. The United States and its allies and other affected states will have to increase their patrols in the Indian Ocean, as well as their coordination and cooperation. They must also consider the pros and cons of placing armed teams on cargo ships to repel pirate attacks. The pirates simply cannot be allowed to roam the seas unchallenged. But Somalia has the longest coastline in Africa, with countless small ports, fishing villages and inlets, so military means alone are not likely to end the piracy. That can happen only with the revival of a semblance of government in Somalia.
This is tough. Somalia has known only varying degrees of anarchy for 18 years now.
