Photo credit = Dirk Hansen. Last Friday, April 6, Time magazine published controversial excerpts from an interview with Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen: "I love Fidel Castro," Blurts Ozzie Guillen, the new manager of the Miami Marlins, in his Jupiter, Fla.,...
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says that Barack Obama is behaving just like George W. Bush. Reuters, June 25: Obama said on Tuesday he was "appalled and outraged" by a post-election crackdown...
Do you have secret longings for the cold war? Vladimir Putin apparently does. Here's the AP lede from 2 days ago: Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is calling for Russia to regain its influential...
Yesterday I was running a short simulation exercise on the Cuban Missile Crisis for students in my summer program, and lo and behold, what appeared in the paper, but:Russian bombers capable of...
How do electoral politics influence US foreign policy? Look no farther than Miami Dade County and US relations with Cuba. Cuban-Americans remain a highly mobilized electoral block in that state's largest county, and they tend to be single-issue voters, supporting the candidate who is tough on Fidel's Cuba. So, you have a history of candidates talking about the need to crack down on Castro to curry favor in the Cuban community and put Florida in play. Do a few hundred more votes in Florida really matter? Well, since 2000, making this point is like shooting fish in a barrel. Recall that...
Let me followup Peter's post on Cuba. Legendary and colorful retired pitcher Luis Tiant had this to say about the Cuban embargo: "I think it's crazy," Tiant said. "Everybody does business with Cuba - Latin America, China, everybody - and what is the difference? We are 90 miles from Cuba. We don't have a relationship with them. That's crazy. It makes no sense to me."The people have suffered enough. They've gone through a hard life. Forty-six years I've been out. I hope it changes."As for Peter's question about the choice between domestic politics and the national interest? While neither of...
If there is one domestic lobby that has captured US policy toward another country, it is the Cuba lobby that pushes for ever stricter sanctions on the Castro regime. The power of this lobby in Presidential politics can’t be overstated—it is a very large, issue specific, and highly organized voting bloc in Miami Dade county in Florida. Win Florida, win the White House, we all know that story well. Thus, we regularly see leading national politicians competing to out-tough the other in order to make inroads into the Cuban vote in south Florida.Today’s big news, that Fidel would formally step...