Tag Archives: cuomo

Photo of the day: Hollande meets the Castros

hollande-castroPhoto credit to Alex Castro / AFP.

Since US president Barack Obama announced on December 17 of last year that the United States will seek to normalize relations with Cuba (for the first time since 1961), there’s hardly been a day without some little nugget of news about the world opening a little more to Havana.cuba

In some cases, it’s been US-based companies, from Netflix to iTunes to AirBNB, announcing that they will take steps to do business in Cuba.

In other cases, it’s news that airlines will establish new routes between American cities and Havana — or, potentially, a ferry from south Florida.

But there’s also been a steady stream of world leaders making the trip to Cuba — the European Union’s high representative for foreign policy, Federica Mogherini, visited Havana in March, New York state governor Andrew Cuomo led a delegation in April. Pope Francis, who facilitated normalization talks between the United States and Cuba, is set to pay the island a visit in September, and US secretary of state John Kerry is tentatively planning a trip as well.

Today, however, on the same day that Cuban diplomats said that the country would exchange ambassadors with the United States by the end of the month, it was French president François Hollande’s turn. Hollande met with both president Raúl Castro and his brother, former president Fidel Castro. In remarks at the University of Havana, Hollande called on the United States to end its decades-long embargo of the island country, adding that the embargo has slowed the pace of Cuban development.

Despite the recent increase in official visits from international figures, Hollande is the first French president in more than a century to visit Cuba, and he’s the first Western leader to visit the Castro-led regime in Cuba since former Spanish prime minister Felipe González in 1986.

Hollande’s visit — and the endearing tone with which he embraced the Castro brothers — wasn’t universally popular with everyone.

Prominent writer Yoani Sánchez gently chided Hollande in a post at her Generation Y website (via the English version) for failing to meet with any dissidents or activists during his visit:

On this visit we needed reaffirmation that the France of the Rights of Man still believes in the unshakeable values that recognize the rights of individuals to disagree, to express their differences without fear and to organize around them. We demanded some words of support, words that would confirm for us that the government of the European country is willing to support, in Cuba, the desires for freedom that have so marked and modeled its own national history.

A man who has declared that French and Cubans have “shared the same movement of ideas, the same aspirations, the same philosophical inspiration, cannot believe that he has visited a country where citizens have chosen by their own free will to subordinate themselves to a totalitarian power. Does Hollande think that we have tacitly chosen the cage? Does he suppose, perhaps, that we are comfortable in our chains?

Don’t rule out Joe Biden in 2016 U.S. presidential election

biden

Although today’s been a big day for U.S. president Barack Obama, it’s been nearly as big a day for his vice president, Joseph Biden, who was also sworn in for a second term as vice president — and a vice president who’s had a very important role to play in the Obama administration with respect to foreign policy.USflag

Biden, who first ran for president in 1988, and who served in the Senate from Delaware from 1973 until becoming vice president in 2009, hasn’t exactly made it a secret that he harbors presidential ambitions in the future.

Even if Biden ultimately decides against a run, his ability to project a credible shot at a 2016 campaign means that he won’t descend into lame-duck status over the next four years, which means he’ll be as relevant as ever on international policymaking.

He’s had a few good news cycles recently, and as outgoing secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton starts to bid farewell to the limelight to consider the next stage of her own career, it’s worth noting that if Clinton and Biden both run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, Biden won’t be a pushover — though Clinton is currently very much the favorite.  Biden, who’s 70, isn’t so much older than Clinton, age 65 and recently subject to her own health scare (Ronald Reagan was the oldest person to be inaugurated, at age 69 when he took office in 1981).

Even The Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein thinks Biden is a serious contender.

So in between bouncing around inaugural balls, here are five quick points on why you can’t dismiss Biden — and why he’ll continue to retain political currency on the U.S. foreign policy conversation as 2016 approaches: Continue reading Don’t rule out Joe Biden in 2016 U.S. presidential election