President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey met in Havana with Cuban President Raul Castro Thursday to discuss building closer ties between the two countries. While Turkey and Cuba only share a minor trade partnership due to economic sanctions, they appear to have made inroads toward a cultural relationship.
That nearly ten nations in the Western Hemisphere do not have U.S. ambassadors appointed to them sends the wrong message regarding Washington’s interests and priorities towards its continental neighbors.
Yoani Sánchez and her followers will rely heavily on social media to maintain momentum for their new journalistic outlet as it will be solely digital.
The move comes a few months after Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa complained that the U.S. embassy had a “scandalous” number of military personnel in the country.
That the U.S. government was effectively paying the Cuban regime (through its state-run cell-phone company) to subsidize this failed program is only the tip of the iceberg.
The Obama administration has brought a momentum to improve U.S.-Cuba relations.
Given the U.S. involvement in the Colombian conflict for the past decades, it makes some sense why the FARC would have regarded the presence of a U.S. citizen (a former Marine on top of all) deep in a conflict area as a potential threat.
Said treaty is an ambitious attempt to regulate “the international trade in conventional arms, from small arms to battle tanks, combat aircraft and warships”.
The geopolitical fight over the Syria crisis is not the Cold War Redux, but that doesn’t make it less scary.
The latest sign of a thawing in relations — if not treatment of his own domestic opponents — since Raul Castro ascended to the Cuban presidency.
