From Havana to Brussels

It seems ironic that, as President Obama is trying got cement a legacy of bringing the world together, he is presiding over it as it comes apart.

Obama has been in Cuba this week, making the first visit there by a U.S. President since Calvin Coolidge visited there in 1928, and trying to advance relations with the Communist island nation.  The President has been pushing for greater human rights in Cuba while Cuban President Raul Castro (with Obama, below) has been trying to have the extremely ineffective U.S. embargo lifted, an act only Congress, now under the control of zealously conservative  Republicans, can do.  (Don't hold your breath!)  Obama has been trying to seal a few business deals through the initiatives he made without Congress's help, and the many American businesses that want to invest there are hoping to help make things run smoothly.  Pledging to do what he can, President Obama has seen fit to install some sort of formal relationship with Cuba that a Republican successor would have a difficult time tearing up.

Meanwhile, Europe is unraveling under the threat of the Islamic State, which continues to destabilize the Old Country through targeted terrorist attacks, the latest one in Brussels.  The coordinated bombings there at the airport and in the subway system was a message to authorities in Belgium and neighboring France after the arrest of a suspect in the Paris attacks of November 2015 that retaliation against the Islamic State will not only be answered, it will be severely punished.  I heard one commentator on TV say that the Islamic State considers Europe a province in the caliphate it seeks to establish.

This junior varsity league Obama once referred to is in the big leagues.  If this even counts as a bright side, Raul Castro might be able to rest easy over the fate of U.S.-Cuba ties even if the next U.S.President is a Republican - even if it's Ted Cruz.  A Cruz or Trump administration would be too busy dealing with the Islamic State to bother undoing progress toward normalized relations with Cuba.  And if the next President is Ted Cruz - who would patrol and run surveillance of Muslim neighborhoods in America - you should be more afraid of that than a Trump administration.