Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Castro, Iran, and Obama's last grasps for a legacy

By Kit

Note: Since Andrew wrote up the Iron Man 2 review, I wrote this little bit. Now, since I am waiting for a clearer picture to emerge from Europe I am waiting until Friday to write about Greece. So instead, here is my take on a recent event that may have slipped under the radar.

Raoul Castro has presented his terms for a normalization between the United States and Cuba: Close the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba and shut down TV Martì and Radio Martì, the two anti-regime broadcasts blasted onto Cuban airwaves from Miami.

To agree to both of these terms would be to grant a huge gift to the most brutal regime in the Western Hemisphere an enormous gift in exchange for opening up an embassy and allowing American businessmen the opportunity to set up a couple of factories in Cuba. In the former it would be scuttling one our country’s most important overseas naval bases in the Western Hemisphere (overseas meaning “not based in the United States”) and in the latter it would involve removing from the Cuban populace their best opportunity for hearing news contrary to the regime’s propaganda.

Given the overly-generous honor system nuclear deal he offered to the Iranians, among certain grassroots and in the comment threads of many right wing sites you can already see the theories: Obama hates America, he is a Communist with Muslim sympathies, or, as Dinesh D’Souza postulated, he is a “neocolonialist” who thinks America needs to withdraw from the world and become “less arrogant”. All of these have their claims but none fit. If Obama was, say, a secret Muslim why does he spend so much time blasting them with drones? And if he thinks Americans should withdraw why has he sent tanks into the Baltics?

To better answer the question we should probably turn to a quote by Thomas Sowell on racists in a free market, “Racists prefer their own race to other races but prefer themselves to everyone else.” By which he meant that even racists want to make money and will make exceptions in certain cases if they think it will benefit them financially. If they will not, they will lose money. Even bigots have self-interests.

So do Presidents.

What does this have to do with his foreign policy? For 6 years he has treated that issue as either a distraction or something to use to craft his image as the opposite of Bush. The results have ranged from amusing to disastrous, he has continued Guantanamo because closing it became too hard but withdrew from Iraq, trumpeting it as a success until ISIS declared a caliphate, and has tried to make it appear that he has withdrawn from Afghanistan (he hasn’t). Obama’s foreign policy has often seemed to follow a certain line: If he can make himself look “more judicious” and “more cautious” than Bush he grabs a microphone and holds a Rose Garden press conference on the matter, if he cannot then he launches a couple of drone strikes and tries to pretend nothing is happening. Or, if it involves a major power, he just tries to pretend nothing is happening.

Now, however, things have changed. In the 6 years he has been president all he has been able to achieve is a signature healthcare bill that remains vastly disliked with even problems unrelated to the law being blamed on it, an Iraq that is even worse than the one he inherited (which was then by and large secure), and the recognition of same-sex marriage, a position he only supported after it had achieved a plurality of support among Americans. He has nothing, and the clock is ticking.

President Carter, despite presiding over probably the most dismal 4 years in post-war American history, at least had the START Treaty and Camp David Accords for his legacy. Those two items allowed his idiotic pronouncements on foreign policy to be treated as sage advice. Perhaps he can achieve something similar.

Perhaps he can achieve what Bush never did. A nuclear deal! And a normalization with Cuba, to boot! So he sends Kerry to Iran eager to offer whatever the Iranians demand. Nuclear inspectors can only inspect areas approved by Iran (I.e., areas that Iran has made sure are “clean”)? Check. Iran gets to deny it has ever worked on nuclear weapons? Check. Complete lifting of all sanctions? Check.

So, now Raul Castro sees these capitulations and has begun making demands as well. Close Guantanamo naval base and stop the Martì broadcasts. Under most American presidents this would be the beginning of haggling. Our President would say “No” to both of those and then Castro might offer something else and back-track on a demand or he would walk away and the President would bid him a pleasant adieu.

But with Obama, we’re not sure, he may very well take up the deal. The question will be: How much does he think his legacy needs a deal?


12 comments:

AndrewPrice said...

Kit, Excellent article! :D

I think you are spot on about Obama's utter lack of achievement, his desire to get something he can point to, and how his foreign policy is essentially "the path of least resistance." He's not a communist, a secret Muslim or a neocolonialist... he's just incredibly lazy.

In fact, go all the way back to Honduras and you will see the pattern. Make some big noise about his demands. When the other guy flips him the bird, he sends someone to offer them a sweetheart deal. When they still resist, he walks away and does something else. He has essentially left the "to do list" from Hell for whoever follows him.

In terms of Castro, what we should do is simply drop all the restrictions on our businesses going there but ignore Cuba's demands... treat the regime as irrelevant. Then we let the free market crush the regime.

In terms of Iran, I had to laugh the other day. After Kerry so smugly claimed to have put in place the perfect deal last year, he's now talking about being close to a deal. Huh? So he lied when he claimed he reached a deal? How strange...

AndrewPrice said...

BTW, Folks, I will be out for the next couple days on a road-trip vacation away from my computer. I'll be back soon.

Kit said...

"He's not a communist, a secret Muslim or a neocolonialist... he's just incredibly lazy."

Yep.

BevfromNYC said...

He's not a communist, a secret Muslim or a neocolonialist... he's just incredibly lazy

No, Obama is a "community organizer". And that job description entails making speeches to convince others to do the work.

On the other hand, Obama has found a clever way of closing Gitmo. It is now all be in the name of opening up relations with Cuba and the Cuban People and not about releasing dangerous terrorists out into the world...

BevfromNYC said...

ANDREW - HAVE A GREAT VACATION!!!! WE WON'T DO TOO MUCH DAMAGE TO THE BLOG WHILE YOU'RE AWAY!

{{{...or will we??? Bwhahahahaha...}}}}

Critch said...

Andrew wrote: "In terms of Castro, what we should do is simply drop all the restrictions on our businesses going there but ignore Cuba's demands... treat the regime as irrelevant. Then we let the free market crush the regime."
We have a winner! The best way to get rid of commies is with free enterprise...in fact, as soon as possible, give every GI on GITMO a couple of thousand American dollars in 10s and 20s and turn them loose on the local economy around GITMO, they will swamp it..

Anthony said...

I am curious about the terms of the Iran deal but I don't see it as anything to get worked up about. Western intelligence has been warning for a couple decades that Iran's nuke is 'right around the corner' (they will be right eventually) but no one wants to invade because it would nasty and bloody. Barring radical action no one is prepared to take, the bomb is an inevitability and if Obama cuts a deal with Iran, he will own it.

As for Cuba, the current policy is a joke which has strengthened the Castros. The Castros have claimed economic weakness of the country (which one invariably finds in communist regimes) is a result of the American embargo, not their ideaology and mismanagement. The fact that the U.S. allows them to export their problems is also a boon to them.

Obama is more incompetent than most, but presidential candidates talking smack about the few simple steps it would take to make the world right is a long and honored tradition in the U.S.

BevfromNYC said...

Anthony - I would agree with you about Iran's nuclear program except Israel Intelligence is warning us now. And it may not be so much that Iran is close to having a bomb that is the danger, it is that Israel is taking a pre-emptive posture because they view a nuclearize Iran as very real existential threat. And they are very willing to take radical action as they did this with Iraq in the late '70's and ended up destroying Saddam's nuclear plant in 1980.

Kit said...

The other question is how will Saudi Arabia respond to a nuclear Iran? Iran is Shiite and Saudi Arabia is Sunni and they are both big geopolitical rivals in the Persian Gulf region. Right now, both are fighting each other in a proxy war in Yemen.

Israel is not the only country worried about Iran.

Anthony said...

Bev,

In 1992 Israel was predicting Iran was no more than seven years away from a bomb.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1108/Imminent-Iran-nuclear-threat-A-timeline-of-warnings-since-1979/Israel-paints-Iran-as-Enemy-No.-1-1992

Though Israel had secretly done business with the Islamic Republic after the 1979 revolution, seeking to cultivate a Persian wedge against its local Arab enemies, the early 1990s saw a concerted effort by Tel Aviv to portray Iran as a new and existential threat.

1992: Israeli parliamentarian Benjamin Netanyahu tells his colleagues that Iran is 3 to 5 years from being able to produce a nuclear weapon – and that the threat had to be "uprooted by an international front headed by the US."

1992: Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres tells French TV that Iran was set to have nuclear warheads by 1999. "Iran is the greatest threat and greatest problem in the Middle East," Peres warned, "because it seeks the nuclear option while holding a highly dangerous stance of extreme religious militancy."

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I agree Israel is likely to hit key targets with bombs but by all accounts Iran has scattered and buried its nuke program in order to make that sort of quick strike less crippling than it was for Iraq.

Kit said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kit said...

"We have a winner! The best way to get rid of commies is with free enterprise...in fact, as soon as possible, give every GI on GITMO a couple of thousand American dollars in 10s and 20s and turn them loose on the local economy around GITMO, they will swamp it.."

Unfortunately, from what I've heard about the behavior American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines, such an act will probably destroy any chance of developing meaningful relations with the Cuban populations.

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