The Week In Review

It’s extraordinary to have a week actually worthy of its own coverage, isn’t it?

The New York Philharmonic became the first American music group in over half a century to perform in North Korea, an event which, of all developments, is surely the most uplifting. Although programming “An American In Paris” and “From the New World” onto a concert with an audience of prominent communists might have been a bit bold, we couldn’t have sent finer ambassadors. After all, Détente was once born in earnest over a few games of ping-pong; why can’t it begin again over Gershwin and Dvořák? (The cynic should immediately reply, “Because Wagner was the opener.”)

Of even greater international significance, of course, is the rekindling of the old feud in the Balkans between the ethnic Albanians and the Serbs. For those unaware, a little over a week ago Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia, an act of self-determination the majority of the West supported, but to which a few important nations have submitted objections. (In brief, they stem from self-interested concerns over setting a precedent, which could leave them vulnerable to internal separatist movements.) This distant skirmish, presently banished to the wasteland of Southeastern Europe, may well escalate into a international battle royale over the very nature of state sovereignty.

But because proximity is the only American criterion for awareness, siphoning attention away from all of this has been a mindless dialogue on the retirement – or rather, the abdication – of the zombie Fidel Castro in favor of his brother, Raúl. While the general question “When did leadership of any kind of republic become an inherited position?” might be both relevant and valid, we mustn’t allow ourselves to be gulled by the media’s heat-seeking flashbulbs; post-USSR, this little event is of practically zero historical significance.

Now, let’s be distinct; the liberty of the Cuban people obviously is important, and the case has always deserved more thoughtful consideration than it has gotten. In fact, given that now all the original egos of this little war are out of the picture, it’s de rigueur to at least temporarily suspend our Cold War era assumptions and reexamine the situation in modernity. But is this what has happened? Of course not. Actual discussion of the logistics of new diplomacy has been meager in comparison to the masturbatory antics of the media, who have mostly prattled on about aborted anniversaries, the ends of eras and the younger Castro’s “momentous decision.”

The reality is more complicated, frustrating, and sobering; in exchange for any hope of relations, the United States has continued to insist on a laundry list of concessions from Cuba, beginning with the wholesale abandonment of state socialism in favor of liberal democracy. Cuba, of course, has always responded by both rejecting Washington’s implicit mandate for oversight and demanding total autonomy with their objectionable internal affairs as a prerequisite for negotiation. Neither side has the inherent desire for compromise or the need for capitulation, and both have a significant amount of national pride at stake. So why, may I ask, are we continually so surprised at the depth of this particular stalemate?

Perhaps because no one realizes just how little effort has been made; on her 2005 short list of “outposts of tyranny,” Secretary of State Rice singled out Cuba – while omitting without apology ghoulish Saudi Arabia and others – and John Bolton accused the island nation of harboring weapons of mass destruction, a statement which doesn’t require (but surely benefits from) a witty postscript. Meanwhile, Raúl has deliberately made clear that he has no interest in reprising Mikhail Gorbachev; on the contrary, it’s business as usual in Havana, with Castro even proposing before the National Assembly that “[they] include Fidel” on important decisions, a resolution which, to no one’s surprise, passed unanimously.

In other words, don’t expect for either Havana or Washington to blink. This “end of an era” business is nothing more than a frivolous cliché, and it shall take much more than evocative rhetoric to soothe the dysfunction.