Very few Americans care, but the president will be visiting Myanmar (Burma) on the first foreign trip of his second term. He will also visit Thailand and Cambodia. The Myanmar piece is the most important, however, since it signals an end to the country’s isolation. The Obama administration has worked quietly and tirelessly to help Myanmar move from military dictatorship to democracy, and this visit is a ratification of the country’s progress. It’s an important accomplishment.
Obama should work to do the same thing with Cuba. American-born Cuban Americans voted overwhelmingly for the president on Tuesday. There is no longer any political reason for the Democrats to worry about normalizing relations with Cuba. Just as with Myanmar, there are preliminary steps that the Cuban government will need to take, especially on the release of political prisoners. But, by the time Obama leaves office, we should have lifted all sanctions and trade and travel restrictions with Cuba.
As for the Israel-Palestine question, a second-term Democratic president is in the best position to make progress. That is exactly what Prime Minister Netanyahu feared. However, the continuing fracture in the Palestinian leadership makes progress difficult. I do not know what the president will do, or whether or not he will, like Clinton, make a full-court press to reach a settlement.
What I do know is that the president will find it easier to achieve foreign policy successes in his second term than legislative ones. Myanmar is a start.
The two-state solution is dead. Israel continues to move farther and further to the right; both in distance, and degree. Netanyahu has now grown closer with that fascist Lieberman, and the settlements continue unabated. The only shot is to simply put pressure on equal civic rights for all, and give citizenship to the people of the Occupied Territories. It’s the only just solution, and it’s really the only realistic solution at this point. Mock it for its lack of seriousness, but I’d say the two-state supporters are the ones who lack seriousness, as there is no pathway for it to work.
I think it is serious: Tony Judt advocated a similar position in the last few years of his life.
About Cuba…I hope he can normalize stuff down there, but Bob Menendez and Bill Nelson will do everything they can to stop that.
I wrote this about a one state solution 4 years ago
And Israel continues to grow unpopular around the world:
With 50 percent of respondents ranking Israel negatively, Israel keeps company with North Korea, and places ahead of only Iran (55% negative) and Pakistan (51% negative).
I am afraid that you are correct about the one-state alternative being the only viable one.
But it will be very ugly to get there, given the attitudes now so prevalent in Israeli Society.
My diary last month:
Israel and Apartheid
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Sorry about that. Trying again:
Israel and Apartheid
A single – Jewish – state in all of historic Palestine was Ben Gurion’s plan, and was the plan behind the colonization (euphemistically called “settlements”, or worse yet “neighborhoods”) of the Occupied Palestinian Territories since 1967 and before. The Zionist/Israeli strategy has always been to create “facts on the ground” that obviate any other outcome, and so they have done in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The only fly in the ointment has been and remains those bloody Palestinians. They won’t go away no matter what the Israelis do to them, and on top of that they multiply like rabbits.
The Israelis just may be hoist on their own petard. Their actions just may lead, ultimately, to the only truly just solution – a single multi-ethno-religious, truly democratic state that exists for all its citizens, and not just the ones from the “right” ethno-religious group.
Our nation’s blindered and unthinking de-facto alliance with Israel is one of our worst strategic errors. There is simply nothing gained by it, diplomatically or militarily. Instead, the US–as Israel’s principal supporter, backer and ally—is now tarnished by every brutal act that regime commits as it morphs ever further into a rogue, authoritarian, militarist state.
If Obama had the courage just to start posing questions about the benefits of the relationship, and openly questioning the likelihood of the (long dead) two state solution (and Likudian Israel’s hostility to it), that would be a sea change.
Euzoius, I agree with you on everything except the statement that Israel is morphing into a rogue, authoritarian, militarist state. Israel has always been, from the beginning a rogue authoritarian, militarist state. The only significant change is that it has lost all pretense at finesse, and is now a brazenly rogue, authoritarian, militarist state.
It’s great to see the President acting Presidential and getting out of what was a very self obsessed US Presidential election campaign and demonstrating there is a bigger world out there with important consequences for all of us. He also needs to rack up a success before the almost inevitable failure to avoid the fiscal cliff. Everything the President can do without Congress being able to stop him is a plus. He needs to build a positive momentum of achievement which will make “the do nothing Congress” look all the more churlish by comparison.
I don’t think the US will do much anything with Cuba until Fidel is definitively, undeniably dead and buried. I think our government simply hates him too much, and maybe even fears him, to raise him up as an equal partner in peace. He’s the only one left they tried to eliminate and failed in the attempt. Kim Il Sung died like twenty years ago, Ho Chi Minh died, the Soviet Union fell, but damn if that Cuban commie fuck didn’t outlive almost all of his onetime assassins. Plus, Congress won’t do shit.
As for Israel, I’m not going to be so arrogant and foolhardy to make predictions about what will happen without knowing who their next government will be. I will say that maybe a better project, a necessary predecessor to the peace process, is to help create the conditions for a unified Palestinian government. Reincorporating Gaza back into the fold would be a worthy accomplishment.
Most evidence I’ve seen shows their government will get much worse. And the demographics aren’t getting much better: the hard-right orthodox are growing much faster than the liberal cohorts.
Plus, Kadima isn’t any better. They welcomed president Obama with the 2008-2009 Gaza bombing campaign.
The US has $3.1 billion that might convince Israel that an apartheid state is unacceptable.
Plus consistency in standing up for international law and human rights would be a refreshing change after thirty years of thumbing our nose at both.
The Israeli treatment of Palestine has been in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions on occupied territories for 45 years.
I wonder if there will start to be a disinvestment campaign for Israel just as there was for South Africa as the nature of the apartheid state becomes clearer.
TarheelDem, there IS an international disinvestment campaign for Israel. It is the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, and it is growing and has had some success. Google BDS for information.
And let us also be sure to recognize that Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians did not begin in 1967. They began, in fact, well before the State of Israel came into being, and include but are not limited to the massive ethnic cleansing in 1948, and another very large ethnic cleansing of parts of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem in 1967. In addition there is the little-known 1967 systematic and intentionally selective ethnic cleansing of some 96% of the Syrian population of the Golan Heights.
“‘m not going to be so arrogant and foolhardy to make predictions about what will happen without knowing who their next government will be.“
It has never made a difference before who Israel’s government was, so why would it start making a difference now? In the past so-called left-wing governments have actually done more to damage the prospects of a two-state solution than right-wing governments have. As was noted frequently by Israelis and others, Likud talks about building settlements, Labor builds them.
Labor or Likud, the ultimate goal, beginning with the Alon Plan in July, 1967, has been the same – to expropriate and colonize the land in the OPT, make life increasingly untenable for Palestinians, and ultimately annex the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It would have happened by now except that the Palestinians, as usual, simply will not give up and go away.
There are three accomplishments that would position Obama as the foreign policy President. Normalization of relations with Iran, Cuba, and North Korea. The tactic of non-recognition does not strengthen America and it is a political football that in fact weakens our foreign policy. It is a de facto act of hostility.
Being the co-architect of a new global system of international relations that does not rely on the US being the sole superpower and policeman of the world. It’s time to bring our troops home from Europe, for example, and let the EU handle its own collective security. Timing for this transition might wait until Europe comes to its economic senses.
Re-empowering international institutions. And empowering the International Labor Organization to actually support a race to the top instead of a being sidelined as corporations race labor wages to the bottom. Getting the International Criminal Court treaty and the Kyoto Treaty ratified. (There are a whole bunch of other examples of the worst kind of American exceptionalism to redress.)
And there is one other foreign policy trip that he needs to make. He needs to go to visit some of the most heavily Republican counties of the US and do some retail politics. “Say it to my face” is an excellent tactic to unify the country right now IMO, given the temporary discrediting of Fox. Maybe a visit to Philadelphia MS to declare the end of the Reagan era is in order. Or historical Presidential visits to Randolph UT, Boise City OK, Cumberland KY, Sharon Springs KS, Spearman TX, and Garden City TX.
Are you proposing a two state solution to the Republican problem? 🙂
Isn’t that what got JFK in Deally Plaza, doing retail politics in TX when they were perhaps even crazier than now?
Apparently we’ll never know. Theories range from Castro’s resentment over assassination attempts on him to the mob’s irritation with RFK’s crackdown to Southern anger over the support of civil rights to LBJ’s ambition (the 1960s play “MacBird”).
These are all small communities, no need for open motorcades, and the Secret Service has fairly strict procedures for crowd control now as they proved during the health care debate.
There is a large segment of the population who have been convinced by conservative talk radio and Fox News that the President does not see himself as President of all of America. Retail politics is the only way to dispel that narrative. People respect politicians that honestly listen to their point of view even if they don’t agree with them.
It seems to work in Iowa and New Hampshire. Because they get the attention every four years.
Yes, Booman!!!
I started a reply and it grew. Now a stand-alone post.
Obama? Cuba? VIVA Cuba, Mr. President!!! Please.
Later…
AG
David Petraeus is the story of the morning with much speculation of whether he is leaving his CIA post.
The intriguing part is the link to the CIA’s part in Benghazi and though Susan Rice has been relentlessly attacked by the Right; it is relevant to note that it was under Petraeus’ CIA leadership that the attack was borne out…
If Rice were to be up as a replacement for Hillary, one would have to think that having Petraeus step in to help clarify what happened and clear her name would be a worthwhile negotiation of his leaving. From his standpoint, as a Republican, he needs to stand up and clean Benghazi up if he hopes to continue any kind of political aspirations.
The news story I saw said he resigned over an affair.
I posted before the affair got picked up, sigh. Now I’m hearing that FBI is investigating a woman who was his biographer over reported inappropriate access to his emails with classified info. What a waste.
Petraeus is a self-aggrandizing weasel whose only real skill is self-promotion. To call his performance in Iraq inept is too kind.
If he loses his career over an affair it will be the equivalent of putting Al Capone in prison for tax evasion instead of for his real crimes. I’m sorry for his wife, but he has really stepped in it, and I hope he never gets the stench off his shoes.
Just how much of Cuban relations can be normalized by the President, without the support of Congress?
“We’re going to normalize relations with you, but the embargo is still the law. Deal?” I don’t think that would work.
Now, if he would only stop using and threatening to use military violence against Muslims…