Barack Obama has won reelection as America’s president. But while the economy – and avoiding the so-called fiscal cliff – will inevitably take up much of his time, there are numerous foreign policy challenges facing the next administration. GPS asked 10 leading foreign policy analysts to name 10 things that Obama should focus on next. The views expressed are, of course, the authors' own.
Keep Arab Spring on track
By Kenneth Roth
Kenneth Roth is executive director of Human Rights Watch.
The biggest human rights challenge facing President Obama in his second term is finding ways to help keep on track the reform agenda that launched the Arab Spring. Most important is ending the horrible slaughter of civilians in Syria. Obama should stop pretending that Russia’s and China’s obstructionism absolves the U.S. of responsibility to continue ratcheting up pressure to stop the atrocities.
In Egypt, the regional trendsetter, Obama has properly said he respects the election that brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power, but now he should press the government, like all others, to respect basic rights, including of women and minorities. In Libya, Obama should stop treating the country as a “mission accomplished” and actively help elected authorities build the rule of law. And Obama should keep his promise to “promote reform across the region” and stop the discrediting double standard of making exceptions for U.S. allies, whether friendly monarchs or Israel.
Editor's Note: The following text is from GlobalPost, which provides excellent coverage of world news – important, moving and just odd.
By Dave Trifunov, GlobalPost
Fidel Castro took just enough time to return jabs at Republican presidential candidates today, calling the GOP leadership race “the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been,” Huffington Post reported.
In a newspaper column published today by state media, the revolutionary Cuban leader suggested the hardline Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney took against his island nation shows there is little hope for Republicans.
"The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is – and I mean this seriously – the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been," Castro wrote, according to HuffPo.
By Fareed Zakaria, CNN
Can you remember what explosive crisis America and the world was fixated on last summer? It wasn't the deficit, jobs or Europe. It was an oil disaster. Remember the BP spill? Tons of crude gushing into the Gulf of Mexico? Well, in the weeks and months that followed, there was a lot of discussion about how to make sure it didn't happen again.
But what struck me this week is that we have a new dangerous drilling zone right on our doorstep - Cuba. Estimates suggest that the island nation has reserves of anywhere from 5 billion to 20 billion barrels of oil. The high end of those estimates would put Cuba among the top dozen oil producers in the world.
Predictably, there's a global scramble for Havana. A Chinese-constructed drilling rig is owned by an Italian oil company and is on its way to Cuban waters. Spain's Repsol, Norway's Statoil and India's ONGC will use the 53,000 ton rig to explore for oil. Petro giants from Brazil, Venezuela, Malaysia and Vietnam are also swooping in.
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Editor's Note: Christopher Sabatini is editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly and senior director of policy at the Americas Society and Council of the Americas.
By Christopher Sabatini, Americas Quarterly
The people-power revolutions that ousted the decades-old autocratic governments of Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and are rocking the rest of the Middle East have prompted Cuba watchers –yet again– to wonder when the last redoubt of Cold War dictatorship in the hemisphere is next. It isn't, and we have U.S. policy partly to blame. FULL POST
HAVANA, Cuba — There was no mention of it in the pages of Granma, the Communist Party newspaper, but when word came that Cuban authorities were considering the legalization of same-sex civil unions, it was a cause for quiet celebration here.
The announcement was made by Mariela Castro, daughter of Raul Castro and the director of Cuba’s national sex education center, during an interview with Spanish broadcaster Cadena Ser earlier this month. Castro, the island’s leading gay rights advocate, said Cuban authorities are already studying the proposal in preparation for the upcoming Community Party conference on Jan. 28. FULL POST
By Fareed Zakaria, CNN
What got my attention recently was the video above of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro shooting the breeze in their track suits.
Fidel Castro, of course, led Cuba for 50 years, starting in 1959. His pal Hugo Chavez has been president of Venezuela since 1999.
Chavez has been in Cuba to undergo chemotherapy for his recently revealed cancer.
He could have summoned the very best doctors to his home. He was invited to go to a world class cancer facility in Brazil. But he chose Havana.
Cuba has a cheap and surprisingly good healthcare system, but Chavez's attachment to Cuba is more than just medical - it's political. He's making the statement that he supports the Cuban model.
Unfortunately, that model is crumbling. It is totally out of sync with the modern world. FULL POST
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On news that Fidel Castro resigned from the Central Committee of Cuba's Communist Party, my colleague Ishaan Tharoor over at TIME's Global Spin blog reached into the magazine's archives to pull out the cover story on Fidel Castro from January 26, 1959. Here's an excerpt:
Fidel Castro himself is egotistic, impulsive, immature, disorganized. A spellbinding romantic, he can talk spontaneously for as much as five hours without strain. He hates desks—behind which he may have to sit to run Cuba. He sleeps irregularly or forgets to sleep, living on euphoria. He has always been late for everything, whether leading a combat patrol or speaking last week to the Havana Rotary Club, where a blue-ribbon audience waited 4¾ hours for his arrival...
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The recent uprisings in the Middle East have stirred up often surprising emotions and fears in Cuba, where brothers Fidel and Raul Castro have ruled for more than 50 years.
Cuban dissidents were quick to champion the cause of the young protesters in Tunisia and Egypt while exiles wondered out loud if Cuba’s communist government wouldn’t be the next to fall.
Prominent blogger Yoani Sanchez followed the events with daily tweets. On the day Hosni Mubarak fled, she declared: “Right now I feel like I’m in Cairo. I am shouting and celebrating with them. I call all my friends to say: there is one less dictator!”
The government she so frequently criticizes also threw its support behind the “revolutionary rebellion” in Egypt, comparing protesters to the ragtag rebels led by former president Fidel Castro in 1959.
Two years ago, the collapse of Lehman Brothers could have been the start of a huge meltdown in the nation’s financial system. But that was averted. Fareed looks at how the U.S. government’s bank bailout worked and managed to do something maybe even more incredible than save Wall St.: it got democrats and republicans in Washington to actually work together.
This week, an incredible GPS exclusive: we bring you face-to-face with one of Osama bin Laden’s comrade-in-arms – a man who says he said “No” to Bin Laden, not once but twice. He takes us inside the meeting in 2000 in Bin Laden’s hut in Kandahar when he told his host NOT to attack the U.S. And he tells us why just this week he wrote a letter to tell the Al Qaeda leader to lay down his arms once and for all.
Then, a look at all of the hot topics at home and abroad with an all-star panel featuring CNN’s newest prime time co-host, Kathleen Parker, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, Reuters’ Chrystia Freeland and Dan Senor of the Council on Foreign Relations. They tackle everything from the squeeze on the U.S. middle class to the potential of the Middle East peace talks.
Also, what in the world is going on in Cuba? Are we seeing the end of “la revolucion”? What one man has the power to change the Cuban economic system? It might not be who you think.
And finally, a last look at perhaps the most unlikely to be tapped with fighting poverty. She’s taking it one step at a time.
Read the full transcript here.
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