Olive branches are lifelines for dictators

Olive branches are lifelines for dictators
By Jackson Diehl
The Washington Post
Published: November 9, 2015

At the heart of President Barack Obama's foreign policy is a long bet:
that American engagement with previously shunned regimes will, over
time, lead to their liberalization, without the need for either a messy
domestic revolution or a bloody U.S. use of force. 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 U.S. dollars, they would be saved by them.

So far, the dictators' bet is paying off. The latest evidence of that
came on Sunday in Myanmar, when the generals who still rule the country
staged an election carefully structured to preserve their power. The
constitution under which it 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 the lifting of 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.

That Iran's supreme leader is pursuing a similar course became clear in
recent days as the arrests of two businessmen with U.S. 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 that Obama hopes for.

Hence the taking of more U.S. 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 any U.S. response means that 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 Raul Castro, the 84-year-old 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. Thanks to that, tourism arrivals are up 18 percent
this year, and billions 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 this, 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 meanwhile shunned offers from U.S. businesses and
dramatically cut U.S. imports. Pritzker did not sign a single deal
during her high-profile visit last month. Instead, Cuban officials are
using 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 U.S. food are
down 44 percent this year, imports from China are up 76 percent.

Remarkably, the administration appears happy to accept this. The latest
high-level envoy, State Department senior adviser David Thorne, told
Reuters in Havana last week: "The pace is really going to be set by the
Cubans, and we are satisfied with how they want to do this." 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 U.S.
business and cracking down on anyone favoring liberalization. No wonder
the dictators are winning.

Jackson Diehl is deputy editorial page editor for The Washington Post.

Source: Olive branches are lifelines for dictators - Opinion - Stripes -
http://www.stripes.com/opinion/olive-branches-are-lifelines-for-dictators-1.377957