Category: International

* Hard to believe–even in a land that defies reason routinely–that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki remains adamant about running for a third term. Given his divisively sectarian policies that helped create a viable Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), couldn’t he step down and take one for Team Iraq, whose only chance of remaining sovereign and avoiding a larger bloodbath is for Maliki to get the hell out of Baghdad?

* This is hardly the forum to hash out the entangled, labyrinthian history of Jews and Palestinians. It’s as frustrating as it is tragic, including the recent murders of kidnapped teens that have ignited further rage and retaliation.

This time, however, there is a local connection with 15-year-old Tariq Abu Khdeir, a Palestinian-American from Tampa, on the receiving end of a beating before being arrested by Israeli police officers in East Jerusalem. The U.S. State Department is now investigating–as well as hoping to help defuse the escalating tension. Surely among its likely questions to Israeli authorities: After beating this kid, and we all saw the wince-inducing images, you then put him under house arrest as well?

* We know the onslaught of unescorted children crossing the Rio Grande into the U.S. is an untenable situation–in border security, in Beltway politics, in budgetary allocations and in human tragedy.

We know these children, mainly from Central America, are victimized by smugglers, but we can only imagine what they are escaping from. For the record, three Central American countries are among the top five countries with the highest murder rates in the world. According to the most recent figures from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, Honduras is first; El Salvador, 4th; and Guatemala, 5th.

* It was understandable that the centennial of the beginning of World War I would be marked by a ceremony in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. This is where “the war to end all wars” was ignited 100 years ago with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary and his wife Sophie. There was even the unveiling of a statue.

It was unconscionable, however, that the statue was that of Gavrilo Princip, the assassin. And that an actor dressed as Princip read a poem the assassin had written and fired two celebratory shots in the air before yielding the stage to Serbian folk dancers.

It’s not nearly enough that this was in Bosnia-Serb East Sarajevo. And that historic animosities still resonate. And that Ferdinand was inspecting occupying troops in 1914. You don’t celebrate that which triggered events that resulted in 20 millions lives lost. This is not cause for revelry, but for revulsion.

This was also a sobering reminder that there are places in the world–erstwhile Yugoslavia and eminently-partitionable Iraq come immediately to mind–that still smolder behind arbitrarily-drawn sovereign borders.

* You can’t make this up. Apparently cheesy, summer American movies just hit a new low. It’s called The Interview, and it stars, as it were, Seth Rogen and James Franco. It’s a comedy that spoofs the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The North Koreans, who apparently find little in life that is funny, including having a fat kid with a bad haircut for a leader, are more than outraged. They are, in fact, in full overreaction mode, usually reserved for territorial incursions and spies. They want the U.S. government to block the release of The Interview. Failing to do that, said a Foreign Ministry spokesman, would be an “act of war”–not just another sophomoric summer movie imposed on the American public.

And, oh yeah, the North Koreans still plan to prosecute those two American tourists they detained earlier this year.

Amateur Hour update: A bad idea, poorly implemented, disingenuously defended. Other than that, what’s to criticize in the Obama Administration’s failed, covert attempt to build a Twitter-like social media site in Cuba? Of course, ZunZuneo was nothing more than a U.S. Agency for  International Development effort to encourage political discussions on the island nation that we haven’t had normal relations with in more than half a century. Of course.

Let’s be honest. We get that no foreign development program, including the Marshall Plan, is politically neutral. Nobody’s is. But it must be recognized that self-serving foreign aid is a double-edged sword. First do no harm has more than Hippocratic-oath applications.

Here’s an illustrative anecdote passed on by Ted Hencken, the Baruch College professor who authors the El Yuma blog. He told of a 2007 trip to Cuba when he spent time in Pinar del Río province with Dagoberto Valdés, the editor of the independent Catholic monthly Vitral.

Valdés said  he had been visited by Joseph Sullivan, at the time the head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. Sullivan was impressed with Valdés’ critical Cuban analysis. He asked how he could help. Valdés’ less-than-nuanced response: “If you really want to help us, I ask that you not help us at all.”

In other words, guilt by Yanqui association is no help to Cuban influentials. Plus, the promotion of democracy, which we haven’t quite yet perfected in this country, shouldn’t come at the expense of another country’s sovereignty.

*What with all that’s going on in Ukraine and speculation about Vlad Putin’s end game, there’s been no lack of Cold War references of late. That remains a rhetorical reach. This is not a Cold War rerun, because it’s not the U.S. vs. the U.S.S.R. with Berlin and Havana trip wires and proxies fighting each other from Angola to the Middle East to Latin America. There is no “Dr. Strangelove II” in the works.

This is not Nikita Khrushchev’s East Bloc Soviet Union. We’re not confronted with the 21st century version of the Cuban missile crisis. Jihadists–not Commies–are the world’s existential threat. And this, to be sure, is not the command-economy USSR.

In fact, the forces that worry Russia most are market forces. For all his KGB knavery and nationalistic bluster, Putin knows Russia’s role in the global economy. He also knows Russia’s 100 billionaires aren’t what Engels, Marx and Lenin envisioned.

A broader conflict could endanger Russia’s oil and gas revenue, which accounts for nearly 3/4 of its export income. On the first day after the Crimea takeover, the ruble plunged and the stock market–yes, Russia has a stock market these days–tanked more than 10 percent.

And Crimea is no prize beyond nationalistic symbolism. It’s known for its organized crime and disorganized economy. GDP per capita in Crimea is about $5,000. In Russia, it’s about $14,000. About 40 percent of Crimea’s annual ($500 million) budget had been subsidized by Kiev. That’s now Russia’s responsibility.

No, this is not Cold War renewal. This is a Russia with half as many people (142 million) as the old U.S.S.R. A Russia with a stock market and vulnerability to Visa and MasterCard service as well as Fitch and Standard & Poor’s credit rating downgrades. A Russia that was in slow-growth mode before Crimean sanctions. Economic projections for this year now call for zero growth.

And this is a U.S. with, candidly, no less vexing issues with the disparate, 28-member European Union–forming a united front and moving on from NSA snooping–than Russia.

Too bad, however, that it’s not Mikhail Gorbachev in charge in Moscow. As Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan found out, he was somebody the West could work with.

* A key point, and it’s beyond ironic, with taking issue with Putin over Crimea, is “self determination,”a tenet the West has always venerated.  It was good for the American colonies and Kosovo and probably Catalonia. At its core–masked troops and Russian security forces-overseen referendum notwithstanding–self-determination, however idealized, is what the Russian-rooted and Russian-speaking majority of Crimea want. And, ironically, may deserve.

* You can call it weak, or inconsistent or even incoherent, but the foreign policy of President Barack Obama is fundamentally flawed because it is inevitably dependent on an enlightened, cooperative world.

* The only problem, and it’s hardly inconsequential, with taking issue with that punk Vlad Putin over Crimea, is “self determination,”a tenet the West has always venerated.  It was good for the American colonies and Kosovo and probably Catalonia. At its core–Russian security forces-overseen referendum and authoritarian KGBer notwithstanding–self-determination, however idealized, is what the Russian-rooted and -speaking majority of Crimea want. And, ironically, may deserve.

* You can call it weak, or inconsistent or even incoherent, but the foreign policy of President Barack Obama is fundamentally flawed because it is inevitably dependent on an enlightened, cooperative world.

Reports of serious security lapses, a cheating scandal, drug possession, low morale and burnout in the U.S. nuclear missile corps have recently been revealed. In fact, half the missile launch officers at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana had to be removed from duty. Malmstrom, by the way, is home to 150 nuclear-armed Minutemen 3 intercontinental ballistic missiles. It represents one-third of this country’s ICBM force.

And this just in. Maj. Gen. Michael Carey, commander of the Air Force’s arsenal of land-based ICBMs, has been relieved of his command. Something about a drunken bender while in Moscow for a nuclear security exercise and meetings with Russian counterparts.

Would that these were subplots from Dr. Strangelove. Alas, in a world where jihadist evil is the new, existential normal, we’re reminded–in disturbing fashion–what threats to life-as-we-know-it still lurk.

Presumably those Americans attending the Sochi Winter Olympics have done their homework and are mindful of the State Department’s warning about Russian state security. “Travelers should be aware that Russian federal law permits the monitoring, retention and analysis of all data that traverse Russian communication networks, including Internet browsing, e-mail messages, telephone calls and fax transmissions.”

A less diplomatic rendering: Leave your phone and computer at home. Otherwise, it will be corrupted.

It’s all a function of Russia’s SORM–or System of Operative-Investigative Measures–the network with the wherewithal to snag every password, sensitive file or other electronic communication within range. And now it’s too late for house guest Eddie Snowden to be a whistleblower.

*It was beyond shocking–and embarrassing–for South Africa to have that fake sign-language interpreter sharing center stage with world leaders during last week’s Nelson Mandela memorial service.

Not only could a phony, violence-prone, schizophrenic imposter have been an assassin, he sacrilegiously overshadowed the farewell salute to one of the world’s foremost icons, who deserved so much better.

Moreover, for those delving beneath the surface of post-apartheid Pretoria, such a scandalous breech was a reminder that post-Mandela South Africa remains a formidable work in progress. In fact, by all accounts South Africa simmers with societal uncertainty and any true sense of social justice and economic fairness remains a dream deferred.

*One last word on “the handshake” heard around the Twitter world and all across Little Havana. President Barack Obama should have been criticized had he NOT shaken the hand of Cuban President Raúl Castro. How do you snub someone, ironically an atavistic, Cold War adversary, on your way to give a eulogy for one who was the very embodiment of reconciliation?

It is also worth noting what President Obama said in his remarks that included a rhetorical back-hander obviously aimed at, among others, the human rights-challenged Castro. “There are too many leaders who claim solidarity with Mandiba’s (Mandela’s) struggle for freedom,” said Obama, “but do not tolerate dissent from their own people.”

Pitch perfect.

Not that it surprised anyone, but how, well, unMandela-like, was that knee-jerk response by South Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen to President Barack Obama’s handshake with Raúl Castro before the president gave his Nelson Mandela eulogy in Johannesburg? She called the gesture, among other things, “nauseating.”

How ironic. Mandela was the very personification of reconciliation. Actually, how nauseating of Ros-Lehtinen.