The Americas Archive

FIDEL’S FAMILY MATTERS — If Fidel Castro had wanted to establish a dynasty he has the sons to do it, although none — as far as is known — holds government or party office. The least visible is oldest son Fidelito, a Moscow-trained physicist now around 58, and totally out of the limelight. Cuban exile circles in Miami say two other siblings, Alexander and Alexis, are both cameramen. Then there’s Alejandro (El Comandante apparently has a thing about Alexander the Great) the computer programmer, Antonio the orthopedic surgeon, and the youngest, Angel, occupation unknown. Fidelito’s mother is Marta Diaz-Balart, whom […]

Making a choice among great works of art is, no doubt, a fool’s errand. And yet, this weekend billions of us will turn our eyes to the unofficially anointed top competition for the best films in the world, Hollywood’s Academy Awards, better known by their anthropomorphic name: the Oscars. In honor of this weekend’s awards event, I decided to take a look through the history of cinema, in search of the best films on world politics. A fool’s errand it was, trying to narrow down a long history of moviemaking into just a dozen great movies. But I persevered. The […]

A U.S. warship prowling the Pacific Ocean has officially ushered in the Missile Defense Age, firing an SM-3 missile-killing rocket to destroy a satellite tumbling toward Earth. “The intercept occurred, and we’re very confident we hit the satellite,” Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, calmly reported. Like the Rocket Age, which terrified Americans when Sputnik orbited the globe and then transfixed the world when Armstrong took his giant leap on the lunar surface; like the Jet Age, which turned the skies over Korea into a killing field and then opened the way to inexpensive, high-speed […]

Under normal circumstances, it’s nearly impossible to get countries to restrict the use of widely available weapons that are seen as militarily advantageous. At the moment, however, two groups of countries are competing to sharply cut back on one type armament that humanitarian groups claim pose a particular danger to civilians in war zones: cluster munitions. Cluster munitions are bombs, rockets, and artillery shells that disperse smaller submunitions over broad areas. These grenades or bomblets, sometimes numbering as many as 600 submunitions from a single munition, can fail to detonate immediately yet maim or kill if disturbed later. Officials of […]

MIAMI — A post-Fidel Castro Cuba, led by Fidel’s younger brother Raúl, appears poised to open itself up to limited foreign investment under the close supervision of the communist island’s military, which controls much of the economy, according to experts. The island nation’s energy resources hold particular economic potential. During the last 19 months, in which Raúl Castro has acted as Cuba’s “interim leader,” little has changed for average Cubans, who continue to face shortages of food and basic necessities. However, the 76-year-old brother of Cuba’s long-time “Commandante” has sought new deals with resort developers from Canada and Europe in […]

I didn’t find much to disagree with in Dan Drezner’s Newsweek corrective reminding folks that reports of America’s demise have been greatly exagerrated. Drezner concurs that in relative terms, America is certainly in decline. Part of that is the short term effects of the Bush administration’s various misadventures, and part of it due to the rapid rise of what Parag Khanna calls the Second World (and what others refer to as the BRIC’s: Brazil, Russia, India and China). Drezner makes some good points about the resilience of American markets, as well as the structural realities that make them the global […]

Reuters reports on the Pentagon’s announcementthat it successfully intercepted a failing spy satellite last night.There’s no confirmation on whether its toxic fuel tank was destroyed,although an explosion upon the intercepting missile’s impact indicatesthat it was. Also no word yet on the eventual groundfall of thematerial debris. Danger Room’s Noah Shachtman has got a great rundown of the technical challengesof the operation, including the eyebrow-raising tidbit that the finalcommand for the intercept launch was given by Bob Gates himself. Talkabout a high-voltage video gaming experience. WPR has been all over this story, with a solid piece on the diplomatic context of […]

Two major stories, two major symbols: Fidel Castro and Kosovo. I think it’s obvious how Castro’s retirement represents the disappearance of the last vestiges of the 20th century. Sure, there’s still N. Korea, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could qualify as well. But the least you can say about the latter two is that, while anchored in the geopolitical realities of the last century, they still managed to evolve in recent years. Kim Jong-Il has a warhead, after all, the Palestinians have an Authority, and an optimist might still hold out hope that there’s a way forward on both fronts. Castro […]

The Pentagon’s decision to shoot down a failing U.S. spy satellite has prompted speculation about why the orbiter must intentionally be destroyed and has reignited debate regarding the military and diplomatic implications of using weapons in space. Last week, Pentagon officials said that a three-ship convoy just north of the Hawaiian Islands would track the satellite and shoot it down in the next two weeks using a modified SM-3 missile fired from an Aegis cruiser. The satellite, launched just over a year ago, experienced a technical failure almost immediately after reaching space and is currently circling in a low orbit, […]

DRUG TRAFFIC — On Feb. 5, Director of National Intelligence J. Michael McConnell told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that “Venezuela has been a major departure point” for Colombian cocaine since 2005, and Venezuela’s “importance as a transshipment center continues to grow.” On March 1, the State Department is expected to address the same issue in its annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, one of those report cards about other people’s faults that State grinds out every year — this one, of course, about the anti-drug war worldwide. Three years ago, the Venezuelan government halted regular cooperation with the […]

WHOSE BBC? — The present author well remembers a discussion that took place in a London home in 2005. The topic was bias in the British media and whether it could not perhaps affect the British public’s perception of international matters such as the Iraq War or the Middle East conflict. The conversation had already become somewhat heated when my host — a longtime Labor Party activist and advisor to the British government — suddenly exclaimed: “We have our BBC!” The objectivity of “our” BBC being apparently beyond doubt and my interlocutor, in a similarly proprietary spirit, having only shortly […]

WASHINGTON – Despite little evidence that a massive program of aerial coca crop fumigation has worked in Colombia, and despite serious reservations by the Pentagon and by Afghan president Hamid Karzai, the U.S. State Department, backed by the White House, is quietly pushing the expansion of aerial poppy eradication into Afghanistan as a way to fight the Taliban. Soon Afghanistan, which produces 92 percent of the world’s opium and 80 percent of the world’s heroin, may be the target of a program of Plan Colombia-style aerial crop eradication. With the Afghan war entering a tenuous new phase, the stakes are […]

Many of us can recall when it was hazardous for tourists to drink tap water in much of Europe. Although times have changed and most Europeans (and tourists) now take clean drinking water for granted, an estimated 120 million people — one person in seven — on the continent do not have access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation, according to a recent analysis by the United Nations Economic Commission on Europe (UNECE). This makes them vulnerable to water-related infections, such as cholera, dysentery, E. coli, viral hepatitis A and typhoid. To remedy this situation, UNECE produced the 1999 […]

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Oscar Morales never imagined that his idea a month ago to mobilize a protest march on Facebook against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) would turn into the biggest protest march against an illegal armed group in Colombia’s history. On Monday, from Colombia’s border jungle towns to the capital, an estimated 4.8 million Colombians took to the streets in protest against leftist guerrillas. They were joined by thousands of other Colombians in some 130 cities across the world, with the biggest rallies taking place in Latin American capitals, Madrid and Washington. Public schools closed for the […]

The disintegration of historic American alliances, particularly U.S.-Europe relations in the wake of the Iraq war, has been much analyzed in recent years. But the untold story of U.S. alliance disintegration is the Asia-Pacific region, where America’s strategic preoccupation in Iraq and China’s rapid ascension are gradually altering and degrading America’s influence. Unfortunately, the U.S.-South Korea (ROK) alliance has followed this trend. Over the past five years, President Bush and South Korea President Roh Moo-hyun have together undermined bilateral cooperation. To be fair, the Bush administration has made major overtures to South Korea, including transferring control of wartime operations from […]