Category: International

* Anyone else miss the Cold War? Back when both sides had a key component in common: Nobody wanted to die. That kind of leverage is obviously incongruous with a “martyr” mentality.

* One of the ironic downsides of the whole Ukrainian-Russian-Czar Vladimir mess is that the West needs Putin in any global confrontation with jihadis who have perverted Islam and represent an existential threat to all in their path. We really miss Mikhail Gorbachev.

* Last Friday Israel published bids for the building of 450 new housing units in West Bank settlements. It’s more than Palestinians looking askance at this development. The U.S. officially doesn’t approve either–especially the timing. Another reason why President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu will not be sitting down together next month–when the PM is in town to address a joint-session of Congress–pretending they even like each other.

* Here’s the part about that Jordan-ISIS “negotiation” that truly makes no sense, even beyond ISIS’ delay–or inability–in guaranteeing proof that a captive pilot was still alive. Why is it that Sajida al-Rishawi–the terrorist, would-be barter bait–was even alive to be barter-able? She was  sentenced to death for her role in that notorious 2005 hotel bombing in Amman that killed 60 people–the worst terror act in Jordanian history. She was a suicide bomber. Her suicide belt failed and she tried to escape.

Al-Rishawi wanted to die, but she remained alive for a decade before finally being hung this week. Innocent journalists and aid workers who wanted to live have been brutally, summarily executed. How perversely and tragically ironic.

* China is now legally encouraging more households to have a second child. For decades prior, most urban Chinese families could have only one child.

Now that’s BIG government.

* The U.S. Census Bureau will be testing a new classification in the next 10-year census. If the Bureau determines–via focus groups–and Congress concurs, the changes could be implemented for the 2020 Census. Specifically, the feds would allow a new Middle East-North Africa (MENA) classification. Arab-Americans, the majority of a MENA category, have heretofore been classified by default as white. Many U.S. Middle Eastern communities have been lobbying for the new classification.

Indeed, their point is valid, if you consider keeping abreast of America’s changing racial and ethnic identities a valid priority. A racial category so broad that it could range from Scots to Yemenis makes no sense.

* Venezuela’s government didn’t like it a bit when the former leaders of Mexico, Chile and Colombia–Felipe Calderón, Sebastián Piñera and Andrés Pastrana, respectively–came to Caracas last weekend to attend a pro-democracy symposium organized by the foes of President Nicolás Maduro. In fact, Pinera and Pastrana were prevented from visiting with jailed opposition leader Leopoldo López.

One key takeaway for the  U.S.: It matters much more when fellow South American leaders–not Norte America’s Uncle Sam–make the case for democracy in Venezuela.

* There was a time when U.S. partisan politics “ended at the water’s edge?” Those were the days.

Now we have the unconscionable “gotcha” perpetrated by House Speaker John Boehner and friends, who invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress in March. Neither the White House nor the State Department was consulted ahead of time–merely informed hours before it all went public.

This is more than a matter of protocol violation and a nose thumb to the president, who is hardly pals with Netanyahu.

By giving Netanyahu, currently behind in his re-election campaign, an ultra high-profile, Congressional forum, Boehner and fellow conspirators hope to ratchet up pressure on the president and the administration to maintain a hard line in negotiations with Iran over economic sanctions and its nuclear program. At best, they will have made the job of the president more challenging. At worst, they will have undermined negotiations.

According to Catholic dogma, when the Pope speaks “ex cathedra”–or “from the chair” with papal authority on doctrines of faith or morals–he is infallible. Obviously, Pope Francis was winging it the other day in Manila when he weighed in on necessary limits of free speech.

We all get the “yelling fire in a crowded theater” proscription. Ditto for a “Viva Fidel” parade down Calle Ocho in the middle of Little Havana. Common sense and the common good take precedence over a principle in the abstract.

But what Pope Francis was defending was free-speech limits when confronting that other major freedom: religion. Specifically, Islam.

“You cannot provoke,” the Pope explained. “You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others.” To illustrate, he used an eminently fallible analogy–a friend who curses out someone’s mother can expect a punch–that missed the point in the context of the Charlie Hebdo mass murder.

Of course, the Pope wasn’t justifying that horrific Charlie Hebdo over-reaction by extremists, just issuing a cautionary note to those who would take critical, satiric, poor-taste liberties with a religion. Even if, quite arguably, certain practitioners–in the name of their religion–have more than earned societal opprobrium that includes being lampooned, satirized or condemned.

How ironic and, frankly, civilized that contemporary Christians–even fringe fundamentalists– never slaughtered anyone, not even Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, over “Jesus Christ Superstar” or Tom Lehrer over “The Vatican Rag.” (Google it.)

How’s that for setting the tolerance bar low? Indeed, what would Jesus, if not Mohammad, say?

Je Suis Charlie. “We are all Charlie.”

Would that we all were.

But, mercifully, most of us are. And it’s worth remembering that the good guys–across this world’s religious/cultural spectrum–are the majority.

It’s just that the minority are far from fringe elements without recourse–militarily, technologically and psychologically.

And as long as there are societal inequities, mutating zealotries, obscenely boundless rationalizations, craven evil and geopolitical subplots, this insidious condition will be with us. As long as the human condition has a dark side and there are holy books ripe for cherry-picking justifications for anything, this reality will linger.

It’s an existential threat that can only be countered by a coordinated effort that moves on three overlapping fronts.

It’s about mutual, inter-and-intra societal respect and integration. It’s about proudly and defiantly standing up for the principles of democracy and its inherent freedoms. And, most importantly, it’s about a unilateral and universal Muslim leadership role that unequivocally condemns abominations in the perverted name of religion.

But the devil, as it were, is in the details.

Respect and integration, for example. It must go both ways.

Pick up a copy of “While Europe Slept,” Bruce Bawer’s stark warning back in 2006 about what Europe was seemingly allowing in the name of liberal immigration and cultural diversity. Would “live and let live” prevail? Would Islam be Europeanized? Was it so much “Eurabia” alarmism?

Try asking around Paris these days, where innocents were slaughtered in the name of the Prophet Muhammad, who unlike, say, Jesus, can never be depicted, let alone satirized. When journalists, a police officer and Kosher shoppers are gunned down because of Charlie Hebdo cartoons, retail terrorism is the new normal.

The biggest French march since V-E just took place. It was an incredible show of solidarity–including dozens of world leaders–that underscored unity against terrorism. It symbolized the sort of coordinated, unintimidated, forceful response that is nothing less than mandatory. Nobody walked in fear.

And, yes, the U.S. should have been represented by someone more prestigious than Jane Hartley, the U.S. ambassador to France. French President Francois Hollande was linked–literally–with German Chancellor Angela Merkle and Mali President Boubacar Keita. Other notable, front-row marchers included Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abas, who disagree on most things.

Yet the country that continues to lead the allied effort to halt ISIS atrocities and al-Qaeda plots–and has 9/11 forever seared in its collective consciousness–couldn’t turn out anyone above the rank of ambassador?  Boubacar Keita was there–but no Barack Obama, Joe Biden or John Kerry, who even speaks fluent French? Poor form. Mixed message.

Sacre bleu.

But ultimately no response matters more than that of those who represent more than a billion Muslims who want peace–not anti-Western jihad. Whether presidents, ayatollahs, high-profile imams, community leaders or key media influentials, Muslims across the globe need to proactively step up and publicly make the case that the unconscionable–from Boko Haram horrors and ISIS beheadings to inexplicable journalistic vengeance–is always condemnable.

Tampa-based Hassan Shibly, executive director of the Florida Council on American Islamic Relations, affirmed no less the other day. “I think no one mocks Islam more than those criminals who commit the most disgusting acts while hijacking the name of our faith,” said Shibly. “Those criminals that commit those terrible acts have ridiculed Islam much more than that newspaper did.”

We’ll give the last word, for now, to Charlie Hebdo. There will be a 3-million-issue press run of its next issue. In 16 languages. In 25 countries. With a Muhammad image on the cover.

Bon chance.

No one saw this coming when it came: the stop-the-presses agreement to normalize relations between the United States and Cuba. Whether you welcomed it or whether you were outraged by it, you were caught off guard. Whether you were Kathy Castor or Marco Rubio.

But what was really behind this unforeseen decision–after more than a half-century of Cold War time warp? Some context.

We knew the U.S. would likely be making at least some concession(s) leading up to April’s Summit of the Americas in Panama.

For the first time in memory, Cuba had been invited to the 34-nation gathering. New Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela had gone out of his way about the propriety and significance of the Cuba invite. The U.S., of course, was not pleased, and there was speculation about how President Barack Obama would–or should–handle it.

It was a given that there would be inevitably awkward, Obama-Raul Castro optics. Even worse was the possibility of embarrassing, loud lectures from the countries most stridently opposed to America’s Cuban policies–polices that are uniformly seen as indefensible among America’s hemispheric neighbors.

Concession, yes, but normalization? It was still blind-siding.

After all, we’re still talking about a pragmatic president with a track record of nothing beyond incremental progress on Cuba.

And speaking of incrementalism, I hearken back a few years for some additional context.

In 2007 I sat down in an Ybor City restaurant with Frank Sanchez, the former mayoral candidate who would later become Barack Obama’s Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade. He was then a key Obama liaison to the Hispanic community and a major Florida fundraiser. Sanchez had the future president’s ear.

After generic campaign talk about Florida and the I-4 Corridor, we got down to specific issues. Among them: How did Sen. Obama, who was pushing to make history as an African-American candidate, feel about Cuba? Would Cuba be part of a bigger historical pivot?

Sanchez chose his words carefully.

If the Castro government institutes a host of democratic reforms and releases political prisoners, he said, then an Obama administration would certainly be responsive. But first it needed to see signs of change.

As for pushing to lift the embargo? No, that was “turning on a dime.” And there would be no dime-turning on Cuba. Obama favored “incremental” steps. He considered the embargo as “leverage.”

I left thinking I could have been talking to a John McCain adviser. I didn’t hear anything new beyond the possibility of making travel a bit easier for Cuban-Americans.

So, the upcoming summit stage in Panama seemed likely set for softer rhetoric and maybe an “incremental” move or two. Perfuming-the-pig progress.

But then there’s a certain historical, political reality in this country.

The final two years of a two-term president is typically focused on foreign policy. Time to get out of the lame-duck weeds of domestic politics. Time, frankly, to take some legacy shots.

What with all the Amateur Hour fallout from health care reform, a Muddled East policy mired in mixed messages and compromised post-Newtown, gun-control priorities, the Obama legacy has been looking increasingly like: first black president. But that’s what it was the minute he took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2009.

Back to Cuba’s place in the equation.

It should have been low-hanging fruit all along, but the Obama Administration fared no better against the well-organized, well-motivated, well-financed anti-Castro Cuba lobby than its intimidated predecessors. The sovereign state of South Florida was still, inexplicably, dictating foreign policy on relations with Cuba. The debt, in effect, was still owed from The Bay of Pigs infamy.

But now it’s the “fourth quarter,” as the president has termed it.

Cuba now beckoned. There will eventually be a reset button on some American president’s watch. Might as well be this one’s.

And, arguably, it won’t be that long–as generational change becomes more pronounced in South Florida, as the Castro brothers inch closer to their biological expiration dates and as abnormal relations with Cuba are increasingly being seen as a counterproductive, vendetta-agenda Cold War relic.

The next big move, however, is not Obama’s.

Executive orders can’t carry the entire day. Congress controls funding for things such as embassies. Senate confirmation is required for ambassadorial nominations. Only an act of Congress can formally end the five-decade-old economic embargo. And who knows what geopolitical stunt may yet come out of Havana while a Castro-surnamed leader still presides.

But an endgame had been ineluctably approaching. Might as well accelerate the process in the name of legacy–and doing the right thing. Finally.

* Does Rick Scott have an evil twin?

That was my first thought upon hearing that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is calling for mandatory testing of journalists in his war against the “drug mafia.” So, yeah, it could be worse.

Good to hear that “enormous progress” came out of that 10-day, 33-nation conference that recently gathered at MacDill Air Force Base to discuss strategies for defeating the barbarous Islamic State. That was the assessment of Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, CentCom commander.

Indeed, it was reassuring–and a little surprising–that so many countries were willing to step up and formally sign on. That’s been an issue in the Muslim world.

But still it’s sobering–collaboration notwithstanding–that none of the nations that participated were officially identified. Hardly an oversight.

This just in from Venezuela, home to the world’s highest inflation. Price caps, typically imposed on essential products by the socialist government, now include a decidedly non-essential one. As the highlight of this year’s Operation Merry Christmas, President Nicolas Maduro has included price-capped Barbiedolls.

Surely, the irony isn’t lost on Caracas toy stores or shoppers. Under the late president Hugo Chavez, Maduro’s mentor, the Barbie doll was derided as a symbol of capitalist consumerism. But no, still no word on rumored, cut-rate G.I. Joes.