“Kennan believed that language helped make policy and that vague, expansive language would lead to vague, expansive policy,” writes author Nicholas Thompson in a 2012 Foreign Affairs article about Cold War strategist George Kennan. As the humanitarian situation in Syria gets even worse, as questions over the use of chemical weapons loom larger, and as the […]
Inflammatory phrases like “Havana’s human rights hell” and “11 million Cubans enslaved for the last 50 years” are just that—inflammatory. They do nothing to encourage any sort of international understanding or change on the part of the Cuban regime. Nor do they advance the cause of detente between the United States and Cuba, or indeed, Cuba and […]
The AP ran a story today titled, “US-Cuba immigration talks under cloud of mistrust.” The course of the article makes the current US-Cuba relationship and future prospects look pretty dismal. But we had always expected progress to be slow, and mutual recriminations do not disappear overnight. I, for one, am not discouraged. Still, one cannot […]