Obama keeps enabling authoritarian regimes

Obama keeps enabling authoritarian regimes
By Jackson Diehl
Saturday, Nov. 14, 2015, 9:00 p.m.
Updated 7 hours ago

At the heart of President Obama's foreign policy is a long bet: that
American engagement with shunned regimes will, in time, lead to their
liberalization, without the need for a messy domestic revolution or a
bloody use of force by the United States. By definition, it will be
years before we know whether the policy works.

It nevertheless is becoming clear that the regimes on which Obama has
lavished attention have greeted his overtures with a counter-strategy.
It's possible, they calculate, to use the economic benefits of better
relations to entrench their authoritarian systems for the long term,
while screening out any liberalizing influence. Rather than being
subverted by American money, they would be saved by it.

So far, the dictators' bet is paying off. The latest evidence of that is
in Myanmar, where the generals who rule the country staged an election
carefully structured to preserve their power. The constitution under
which voting was held bans opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from
becoming president and reserves a quarter of parliamentary seats for the
military.

Obama might claim that lifting U.S. sanctions and the two trips he made
to the country helped prompt this limited democratic opening. The
generals see it another way: The restricted system — and the inflow of
U.S. and European investment it enables — makes their political
supremacy sustainable for the long term. As proof, they can point to the
fact that they rebuffed U.S. appeals for constitutional reforms before
the election with no consequence for the new economic relationship.

It became clear that Iran's supreme leader is pursuing a similar course
when the arrests of two businessmen with American citizenship or
residency came to light. Having allowed reformist President Hassan
Rouhani to negotiate the nuclear deal with Obama, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
and the Revolutionary Guard intend to pocket the $100 billion or so in
proceeds while forcibly preventing what they call the "penetration" of
Western influence Obama hopes for.

Hence, the taking of more American hostages. To the imprisonment of The
Washington Post's Jason Rezaian and two other Iranian Americans, add
Nizar Zakka, a U.S.-based Internet specialist, and Siamak Namazi, an
Iranian American who has publicly advocated for better relations between
the countries. The lack of response from the United States means the
open season on Americans will continue in Tehran.

Khamenei, however, doesn't get the prize for the best jujitsu on Obama.
That goes to Raúl Castro, 84, the ruler of weak and impoverished Cuba,
who has managed to transform the resumption of U.S.-Cuban relations into
an almost entirely one-sided transaction.

Since announcing the end of the 50-year freeze between the countries 11
months ago, Obama has twice loosened restrictions on U.S. travel and
investment in Cuba. As a result, tourism arrivals are up 18 percent this
year and billions of dollars in fresh, hard currency are flowing into
the regime's nearly empty treasury. The White House has dispatched a
stream of senior officials to Havana, including Commerce Secretary Penny
Pritzker. The deputy secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas,
last month paid court to the general who heads Castro's repressive
internal security apparatus.

In response to that, Castro has done virtually nothing, other than
reopen the Cuban Embassy in Washington and allow a cellphone roaming
agreement. His answer to repeated pleadings from U.S. officials for
gestures on human rights has been to step up repression of the
opposition. According to the independent Cuban Commission for Human
Rights and National Reconciliation, there were at least 1,093 political
detentions in October, the highest number in 16 months.

Castro has shunned offers from American businesses and dramatically cut
U.S. imports. Pritzker did not sign a single deal during her
high-profile visit last month. Instead, Cuban officials have used the
prospect of increased U.S. trade and investment as "chum" to strike
bargains with other countries, according to a report by the U.S.-Cuba
Trade and Economic Council. While imports of food from the United States
are down 44 percent this year, imports from China are up 76 percent.

Remarkably, the administration appears happy to accept this.

"The pace is really going to be set by the Cubans, and we are satisfied
with how they want to do this," State Department senior adviser David
Thorne, the latest high-level envoy, told Reuters in Havana.

What about the lack of progress on human rights?

"As in other parts of the world," Thorne grandly replied, "we are really
trying to also say: 'Let's find out how we can work together and not
always say that human rights are the first things we have to fix before
anything else.' "

So the message is: It's OK to capture U.S. dollars while excluding
American business and cracking down on anyone favoring liberalization.

No wonder the dictators are winning.

Source: Obama keeps enabling authoritarian regimes | TribLIVE -
http://triblive.com/opinion/featuredcommentary/9406371-74/obama-american-authoritarians#axzz3rY8oPaY4