Obama Has a Point

At the Summit of the Americas, held in Cartagena, Colombia, President Barack Obama said that the criticism of his administration’s policies was “caught in a time warp, going back to the 1950s” — his call for the “diplomacy… [of] the Cold War” to be overthrown.

Obama has a point. In today’s world, there no longer exists the confrontation that took place in the 20th century — between the U.S.-led capitalist nations and the communist bloc headed by the Soviet Union — which threatened world destruction and was carried out in the most varied of fields, from military to sports.

What is not clear is why Obama, being conscious of these antiquated dynamics, is in actuality continuing to carry out his country’s Cold War-era diplomacy, particularly with regards to Cuba (a country that, in 1960, had trade, economic and financial embargoes imposed upon it by President Dwight Eisenhower). Why does Washington persist in reprising formulas from the 1950s? Why insist upon the exclusion of Cuba in the Cartagena Summit, as though we were in the 1960s? Perhaps time has not passed? The least we can say is that Obama is exhibiting strange behavior.

If you disregard this anachronism and inconsistency, one could argue that the events of the Summit actually represent a step forward in the evolution of the continent’s diplomatic relations. For the most part, Latin American leaders did not behave submissively, as they often did during the Cold War, and worked with the State Department in a series of meetings and debates to build consensus. This in itself is a substantial modernization of diplomacy in the Americas.

Still, the Latin American leaders have, in their relative timidity, squandered the opportunity to take new, stronger and more effective steps in establishing a new relationship between themselves and the United States more attuned to the times. A joint draft declaration sufficed for them, with exacting plans for the issues of security, sovereignty, Cuba, the Falklands, drugs and the international financial system. Yet these days, the resistance of the “hawks” does not only spring from the offices of Washington.