After 50 years, later this month an American flag will again fly over the old U.S. Embassy in Havana and the Cubans will open their diplomatic representation in Washington.
Pres. Obama has justified the move because it was time to change a policy that has not worked. That, not to put a fine point on it, is not true. Over five decades Washington was able – sometimes with direct intervention as with the Contras in Nicaragua – to prevent the spread of the Castros’ Communism in Latin America. And it wasn’t for lack of trying by Fidel Castro with Soviet inspiration and help. The list of by Cuban Communist attempts to subvert other governments in the Hemisphere, sometimes with actual military infiltration, is too long to list here.
That, of course, poses the next question coming up quickly.
There is universal agreement that China is increasingly the U.S.’ No. 1 policy concern.
But perhaps never in the history of modern Sinology has there been such difference of opinion about what is happening in China and what – if anything – the U.S. should and could do about it.
One reason is some Old China Hands have changed sides rather abruptly, no longer convinced that there is “a peaceful rising China” — which incidentally is a slogan Beijing itself has dropped.
True, there have been times when there was enormous difference among China scholars, not least during World War II and immediately afterward when in 1949 the Communists took over. There were a lot of “they ain’t Stalinists, just agrarian radicals” around; some with very long greybeards still in business not having yet offered a mea culpa.
The good news is that there wasn’t a nuclear weapons deal with Iran by the June 30 “deadline.” The bad news is that there will probably be one this week, and it’s going to be a very bad one.
The world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism – as even Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has to admit Iran is – is as recalcitrant as the “P5+1” group, led by Vichy John Kerry, is eager to make a deal. The more the Iranians demand, the more the West caves in.
As we go to press, an agreement has already been reached allowing Iran to get its multi-billion dollar signing bonus in the form of relief of the international economic sanctions that forced them to the bargaining table. One of the disagreements – as of Sunday – was on the risible “snap-back” mechanism to reimpose the sanctions if (that should be “when,” not “if,” but suspension of disbelief is a principle tenet of Western diplomacy) Iran violates the agreement. It’s risible because there will be no reimposition of the sanctions. The French, for example, are lining up for oil contracts with Iran. None of the Europeans will allow sanctions to be reimposed, nor will Obama.
More East Jerusalem Palestinians are taking Israeli citizenship, learning Hebrew, and living in Jewish neighborhoods. But does that affect their identity?
Jerusalem — Suha, a young Palestinian lawyer, grew up in East Jerusalem and got her degree in the West Bank, then took a crash course in Hebrew to pass the Israeli bar.
Now she is planning to take a step that was once considered taboo among Palestinians living under Israeli rule in the passionately contested holy city: take an oath of loyalty to Israel in order to become a citizen.
“A lot of people are applying for it. Even people you would never expect: like sheikhs with beards. The lawyers that I work with all have it,” says Suha, who declined to give her full name so as not to risk rejection by Israeli authorities. “I don’t see the occupation going anywhere,” she says. “Eventually I’m going to do it.”
Ever since Israel conquered and immediately annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, the city’s hundreds of thousands of Palestinian residents have lived in limbo. Even as their blue residency cards afforded them Israeli social benefits and freedom of movement, they remained loyal to their countrymen in the West Bank and Gaza and resisted the Israeli system.
