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Tag: cold war
Can Biden And Putin End The Ukraine Crisis Without Shots Fired?

Can Biden And Putin End The Ukraine Crisis Without Shots Fired?

A 19th-century Mexican president once summarized his country's plight: "So far from God, so close to the United States." Ukraine has the same problem, but with Russia. And its geographic proximity is particularly worrisome right now.

President Vladimir Putin, who annexed Crimea from Ukraine in a 2014 invasion, has raised fears he is planning another attack. He has massed troops near the border of the former Soviet republic, demanding that NATO renounce the possibility of Ukraine ever joining the alliance or providing bases for its forces.

The U.S. foreign policy establishment and its allies in Congress have taken this opportunity to remind us that they have no new ideas and that all their old ones are bad. They claim that American credibility is on the line and warn the Biden administration not to show insufficient resolve.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) said any accommodation on our part would "embolden Vladimir Putin and his fellow autocrats by demonstrating the United States will surrender in the face of saber-rattling." Retired Adm. James Stavridis, a former commander of NATO forces, declared, "Appeasement does not work any better now than it worked for Neville Chamberlain in the late 1930s."

There are a couple of flaws in their reasoning. The first is the gap between their fierce rhetoric and their mild remedies. Even McCaul and Stavridis don't think the U.S. should go to war if Russia invades Ukraine. Our support for Ukraine does not extend to putting our troops in harm's way. In case of a Russian invasion, whatever we might do to help Ukraine or punish Russia will not make much difference.

The second is that credibility is a false idol. President Joe Biden's critics accuse him of damaging ours with his chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. If Biden doesn't respond appropriately on Ukraine, they insist, China will assume it can swallow up Taiwan without paying a price.

But just because the U.S. leaves one conflict or avoids another doesn't mean it will follow the same course in another place or at another time. Bill Clinton pulled out of Somalia but intervened in Bosnia.

George W. Bush was forced to issue a meek apology to China in 2001 after an American military plane collided with a Chinese fighter and crash-landed on a Chinese island, where its crew was held hostage. But that didn't stop him from invading Afghanistan or Iraq.

As for "appeasement," diplomacy requires compromise, and not every compromise is the moral equivalent of surrender. When Ronald Reagan signed a 1987 treaty banning intermediate-range nuclear missiles from Europe, angry conservatives compared him to ... Neville Chamberlain. Two years later, though, the Berlin Wall came down.

Putin's posture is hardly evidence of Hitler-like ambitions. Suppose that Mexico were to enter an alliance that put Russian or Chinese troops on its soil to deter U.S. bullying. We would never tolerate it, any more than President John F. Kennedy was willing to tolerate Soviet missiles in Cuba.

The Russian president has indicated that, in parallel fashion, he is not willing to tolerate NATO troops, tanks, missiles and warplanes in Ukraine. The Kremlin is following "the NUPIMBY principle — No Unfriendly Powers in My Backyard," says Stephen Van Evera, an international relations scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "States almost universally resist the close approach of hostile powers and alliances toward their borders."

Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, scoffed at such concerns, tweeting: "NATO has never and will never attack Russia." But in a dangerous world, nations can't count on the benign intentions of other nations — not in the short term, and certainly not in the long term. What counts is capabilities.

In this crisis, the U.S. wants to ensure the security and independence of Ukraine. Russia wants to eliminate the prospect of another NATO ally on its border. Fortunately, there is a solution that achieves both objectives without war: an agreement that Ukraine will be a neutral country, in exchange for Russia's commitment to back off and leave Ukraine in peace.

There is a good precedent for this solution. In 1955, Austria had to commit itself to neutrality in the Cold War to get the Soviets to end their military occupation of one zone of the country. As a result, wrote historian Tony Judt, Austria soon emerged as "a model Alpine democracy: neutral, prosperous and stable."

Ukraine has not been so lucky. But with a recognition of reality and some creative statesmanship, it could be.

Follow Steve Chapman on Twitter @SteveChapman13 or at https://www.facebook.com/stevechapman13. To find out more about Steve Chapman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Danziger: Keep That War Cold, Please!

Danziger: Keep That War Cold, Please!

Jeff Danziger’s award-winning drawings are published by more than 600 newspapers and websites. He has been a cartoonist for the Rutland Herald, the New York Daily News and the Christian Science Monitor; his work has appeared in newspapers from theWall Street Journal to Le Monde and Izvestia. Represented by the Washington Post Writers Group, he is a recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army as a linguist and intelligence officer in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. Danziger has published ten books of cartoons and a novel about the Vietnam War. He was born in New York City, and now lives in Manhattan and Vermont. A video of the artist at work can be viewed here.

Obama Arrives In Havana For Historic Visit To Former Cold War Foe

Obama Arrives In Havana For Historic Visit To Former Cold War Foe

By Matt Spetalnick, Daniel Trotta, Jeff Mason and Frank Jack Daniel

HAVANA (Reuters) – President Barack Obama arrived in Cuba on Sunday on a historic visit, opening a new chapter in U.S. engagement with the island’s Communist government after decades of animosity between the former Cold War foes.

Obama landed at Havana’s Jose Marti International Airport aboard Air Force One, the presidential jet with “United States of America” emblazoned across its fuselage, a sight almost unimaginable not long ago.

Stepping down onto the red carpet in a light drizzle, Obama and his family, smiling broadly and with umbrellas in hand, were greeted by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez. They then boarded a black armored limousine, with U.S. and Cuban flags fluttering from the hood, and headed out in their motorcade.

The three-day trip, the first by a U.S. president to Cuba in 88 years, is the culmination of a diplomatic opening announced by Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro in December 2014, ending a Cold War-era estrangement that began when the Cuban revolution ousted a pro-American government in 1959.

Obama, who abandoned a longtime U.S. policy of trying to isolate Cuba, wants to make his shift irreversible. But major obstacles remain to full normalization of ties, and the Democratic president’s critics at home say the visit is premature.

Traveling with first lady Michelle Obama, her mother and their daughters, Sasha and Malia, the president was to visit the newly reopened U.S. Embassy and then play tourist on his first night on the Caribbean island, taking in the sights of Old Havana.

He will hold talks with Raul Castro – but not his brother Fidel, the revolutionary leader – and speak to entrepreneurs on Monday. He meets privately with dissidents, addresses Cubans live on state-run media and attends an exhibition baseball game on Tuesday.

 

Symbolism and Substance

The trip carries both symbolism and substance after decades of hostility between Washington and Havana.

It makes Obama the first sitting American president to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge arrived on a battleship in 1928.

It is also another major step in chipping away at remaining barriers to U.S.-Cuba trade and travel and developing more normal relations between Washington and Havana.

Since rapprochement, the two sides have restored diplomatic ties and signed commercial deals on telecommunications and scheduled airline service.

Major differences remain, notably the 54-year-old economic embargo of Cuba. Obama has asked Congress to rescind it, but the move has been blocked by the Republican leadership.

Underscoring the ideological divide that persists between Washington and Havana, Cuban police, backed by hundreds of pro-government demonstrators, broke up the regular march of a leading dissident group, the Ladies in White, detaining about 50 people just hours before Obama arrived.

Plainclothes police blanketed the capital with security, while public works crews busily laid down asphalt in a city where drivers joke they must navigate “potholes with streets.”

Welcome signs with images of Obama alongside Raul Castro popped up in colonial Old Havana, which the president and his family will tour later on Sunday. Obama has used executive authority to loosen trade and travel restrictions to advance his outreach to Cuba, one of his top foreign policy priorities along with the Iran nuclear deal.

But Cuba still complains about the occupation of the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, which Obama has said is not up for discussion, as well as U.S. support for dissidents and anti-communist radio and TV programs beamed into Cuba.

Speaking to reporters, Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment minister Rodrigo Malmierca Díaz said Obama’s regulatory moves “go in the right direction.” But he added: “We can’t reach a normalization of relations with the blockade still in effect and without resolving other themes of high importance.”

 

Making Engagement Irreversible

The Americans in turn criticize one-party rule and repression of political opponents, an issue that aides said Obama would address publicly and privately.

The Ladies in White and their male supporters protested after a Palm Sunday service and were pulled into police vans after they sat down to block a street. A similar scene plays out every Sunday, but this time it was more intense than usual. The government dismisses the dissidents, who are funded by U.S. interests, as mercenaries seeking to destabilize the country.

Obama’s critics at home accuse him of making too many concessions for too little in return from the Cuban government and of using his trip to take an unearned “victory lap.” But Obama’s more practical goal is to do everything he can to make sure his Cuba engagement cannot be rolled back, even if a Republican wins the White House in the Nov. 8 election.

Although general U.S. tourism to the island is still officially banned under the embargo, a sign of changing times was the presence of groups of U.S. travelers marveling at the vintage American cars rumbling through the streets.

Little progress on the main issues is expected when Obama and Castro meet on Monday or at a state dinner that evening.

Instead, the highlights are likely to be Obama’s speech on live Cuban television on Tuesday, when he will also meet dissidents and attend an exhibition baseball game between Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays and Cuba’s national team.

Underlining Obama’s political challenge at home, the office of U.S. Representative Ed Royce, Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the president’s policy “has only served to prop up the communist Castro regime.”

 

(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason aboard Air Force One, and Marc Frank and Nelson Acosta in Havana; Editing by Mary Milliken, Alan Crosby and Peter Cooney)

Photo: Air Force One carrying U.S. President Barack Obama and his family flies over a neighborhood of Havana as it approaches the runway to land at Havana’s international airport, March 20, 2016.   REUTERS/Stringer 

Cuban Migrants Get Unfair Advantage Over Other Latinos

Cuban Migrants Get Unfair Advantage Over Other Latinos

The Cold War is over, but it still deeply distorts U.S. immigration policy.

Consider the bizarre situation at our southern border. A wave of migrants is expected to appear there, hoping for safe passage into the U.S. and an expedited path to legal status and eventually full citizenship. They will get it.

These lucky migrants won’t be Mexicans fleeing drug cartels. They won’t be Hondurans, who must endure the world’s highest murder rate. And they won’t be citizens of El Salvador, where the Peace Corps just suspended operations due to the increasing violence.

No, we deport those people.

They will be Cubans. In recent months, increasing numbers of Cubans have been leaving their island country, flying to Ecuador first and then traveling northward through Central America. They wish to migrate to the U.S., fearful that thawing diplomatic relations will end the special treatment that Cubans who leave the island have long received.

That special treatment needs to end.

The hypocrisy that is embedded in U.S. immigration law will be on full display as the Cubans begin arriving, which could happen within the next few weeks.

Since 1966, the Cuban Adjustment Act has given Cuban people an extraordinary advantage over other migrants wishing to enter the U.S. The law was originally intended as a political and humanitarian reply to communism and the oppression of Fidel Castro. No proof that a person has suffered persecution. Where he or she arrives from is enough.

When people attempt to arrive through the Florida Straits, the policy that developed was dubbed “wet foot, dry foot.” If a Cuban can get one foot on dry U.S. soil, they can stay and are offered permanent legal status in a year and many other benefits of welfare and help to restart their lives.

The benevolence of the law made sense in decades past. But a good argument can be made that many of the migrating Cubans are fleeing not persecution but economic turmoil. And in doing so, they are not any more desperate, perhaps even less so, than those fleeing the violence and poverty of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Thousands of Central Americans arrived and asked for asylum in the summer of 2014. But those people are the wrong type of Latino for our policies. Many of them are indigenous, poor and have little formal schooling. So they were held for months in detention camps at the border. Many were eventually released, free to stay the U.S. at least until their pleas for asylum status or legal residency can be assessed by an immigration judge. Raids and deportations of undocumented immigrants continue.

Meanwhile, as many as 8,000 Cubans who have been stranded in Costa Rica will soon be making their way northward through Mexico, after agreements were worked out by several Latin American governments. The Obama administration plans to open refugee screening centers in Central America, an attempt to stem the flow of non-Cuban migrants.

In this election year, especially in light of the GOP’s appeals to anti-immigrant sentiment, the migrant Cubans will present a political test.

GOP presidential contender Sen. Marco Rubio, whose parents left Cuba before Castro took over, has introduced legislation to curb abuses of the American generosity toward Cubans. The Sun Sentinel of South Florida in 2015 documented cases in which Cubans claiming to be exiles were taking U.S. government benefits or committing other types of fraud, even after returning to Cuba.

How far Rubio’s legislation and the companion bill in the House will advance remains to be seen. And there is virtually no appetite in an election year to overhaul immigration for the benefit of more than just Cubans.

Amnesty is still a curse word in most GOP circles. In decades past, that didn’t matter in the case of Cubans, who could be counted on to become Republicans.

If the GOP is to have any hope of salvaging the Latino vote this presidential cycle it will have to traverse this sticky thicket, also acknowledging the needs of other Latino migrants. They have to beat back the anti-immigrant bleating of Donald Trump, as South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley did in her response to the State of the Union speech.

They must vow to be just. They must promise to rewrite immigration law to weigh all humans’ needs equally and fairly, with no favor based on country of origin or likely partisan affinity. And they must not bow to nativist screeds.

(Mary Sanchez is an opinion-page columnist for The Kansas City Star. Readers may write to her at: Kansas City Star, 1729 Grand Blvd., Kansas City, Mo. 64108-1413, or via e-mail at msanchez@kcstar.com.) (c) 2016, THE KANSAS CITY STAR. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC

Photo: A Cuban migrant shows a U.S. flag design on the cuffs of his pants at the Costa Rican border with Nicaragua, November 18, 2015. REUTERS/Oswaldo Rivas