Obama also discussed the issue at length with the pope during his public visit to the Vatican in March....The pincer movement of economic modernisation and regional and spiritual cajoling...
Obama is determined that the pincer movement of economic modernisation and regional and spiritual cajoling will help bring about the longer-term breakthroughs in human rights and democracy that he concedes are largely absent from the existing deal so far.
A "pincer movement" is "a military maneuver in which forces simultaneously attack both flanks (sides) of an enemy formation.... [O]pposing forces advance towards the center of an army that responds by moving its outside forces to the enemy's flanks to surround it. At the same time, a second layer of pincers may attack on the more distant flanks to keep reinforcements from the target units."
So picture economic modernization and and spiritual cajoling closing in and attacking like that.
By the way, "pincer movement" has 2 layers of metaphor, since the military term is itself a metaphor.
"Pincers, often red-hot, have been used as an instrument of torture since ancient Roman times or earlier."
Torture ≈ cajoling.
By the way, Samuel Johnson called "cajole" "a low word." The OED defines it as "To prevail upon or get one's way with (a person) by delusive flattery, specious promises, or any false means of persuasion."
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The pope may be a well-meaning man, but coming from Argentine, democracy and capitalism are both foreign concepts for him.
They told me that if I voted for Kennedy, the president would be taking orders from the Pope...
Is anyone making book yet on what of Obama will not melt into air?
In this case, the Pope is what the Russians used to call a "useful idiot".
Now wait a goddamned minute. You can't show pictures of torture devices like that. That stuff is designed to maim and hurt like crazy. Water is torture.
It may be worth remembering the coverage of Pope John Paul II's visit to Cuba almost 17 years ago:
Dateline January 24, 1998:
Addressing tens of thousands of people who gathered for his open-air Mass in Santiago, President Fidel Castro's hometown, the pope said Catholics had "the duty and the right to participate in public debate."
"The good of a nation must be promoted and achieved by its citizens themselves," he said in a homily.
"In this way each person, enjoying freedom of expression, ... and enjoying appropriate freedom of association, will be able to cooperate effectively in the pursuit of the common good."
The pontiff also said that true freedom "includes the recognition of human rights and social justice." And while the pope said the church was not seeking any type of political power, he said the church nevertheless needed "sufficient freedom and adequate means" to spread its message.
I'm in agreement with the President on this one.
Unfortunate use of the word "pincer' by Obama. He seems to try to spice his language with military words.
I'm looking forward to him working "conjure" into his speech.
Of course this whole thing originated from the altruistic folks in Cambridge, MA
The administration taking heads and their sympathetic media counterparts were blathering hard about the need for Cubans to have telephones. Rattling off numerous statistics about current coverage and access for Cubans, and 'goals' for improving those stats. I can't figure out the politics here- more Obamaphones= votes? Another excuse for 'infrastructure' spending? Obliquely appeasing some Florida voting blocs now that Jeb's in?
They told me that if I voted for Kennedy, the president would be taking orders from the Pope...
I know. Am I the only one who finds this deeply strange. Obama isn't catholic. Who care what the pope thinks about our trade embargos? He's not in charge.
m stone -- the phrasing comes from Reporter Dan Roberts.
Any student of Civil War History can only wince at the proposal of a pincer movement. At least Roberts didn't call it a double envelopment in the spirit of Cannae (or Elkhorn Tavern, if you will).
surfed: "I'm in agreement with the President on this one."
You are in agreement that the US should continue to trade everyday citizens for captured foreign espionage agents on our soil?
Upon reflection, do you think this might create a "perverse incentitive" and set a precedent for any foreign power picking up any American anywhere for leverage purposes when those foreign nations seek the release of their agents captured here?
This Pope seems like a nice guy but I also think he has his history in Argentina feeding his own story in this circumstance. I am guessing he heard a lot more about Cuba and what assholes we were for having the embargo. What's that phrase: you keep repeating a lie and before you know it, it is the "TRUTH". That is what has happened with this Pope and his understanding of the Cuba situation.
@rehajm -- That article is pretty interesting and not what I imagined.
Pat Doherty, who before he became a peacemaker in Northern Ireland was a bigshot in the Irish Republican Army, went to Miami to talk to the Cuban-American community. Roelf Meyer, who was the chief negotiator for the white minority government at the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa, went to Cuba, explaining how he and the ANC’s Cyril Ramaphosa were able to negotiate a peaceful transfer of power. Some Cubans traveled to Dublin to learn how the British and the Irish brought a peaceful end to The Troubles.
I dig the etymological heterogeneity of English. A word like pincer has roots in French, from Latin, and from Proto-Germanic.
The pincer movement is also called the double envelopment. Its objective is complete destruction or surrender of the enemy.
Pincer = torture? That's what you get out of that?
Pincers are used for many things, including trimming horses hooves. Why would you assume that the military tactic refers to torture? Water is used for torture, does any other use of the word water refer to torture?
Ann, you a law professor, should know that etymology and coincidence are not dispositive for a word's meaning. This is like the ancient Greeks' tortured (there's that word again) explanations of natural science based on etymology.
Cuba looks like a little nothing burger (a slider?). Another Caribbean island left in the dust of the global economy. We’ll probably get stuck with some portion of the economic cost. All the people who ruined that country are dead or dying. Hopefully Cuba is pressured to release political prisoners in the deal.
"economic modernisation?"
Soviet style economics is not a modernization we should aspire to.
Unless you are a marxist and occupying the white house, I suppose.
Obama is most comfortable with tyrants and thugs. I wonder why ?
A guy who lives up the street has Doberman.
Sometimes there's a pincer movement on my lawn.
The Castro family is just the God Father of a Cuban Mafia after it has killed off the rest of the Cuban families and threateneds the USA with instant death to 30 million of us using Russia's nuclear missiles.
Popes have no problemo with that They have always lived in harmony with the Mafia in a division of labor over the enslaved peasants.
Pope John Paul II, working with Polish Solidarity, Catholics in Poland and East Germany, Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher, not only killed the Iron Curtain but the entire Soviet Union - peacefully.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that between Pope Francis and President Obama, it isn't Pope Francis who has the role of useful idiot in this opening of Cuba. Further, I'd suggest that the Florida political action committees representing Cuban refugees who want their property back, and Florida sugar producers, will be heard from shortly and loudly.
The pope, after all, was elected by the worldwide population of Catholic Cardinals, not the Democrat voters of the United States. Which group do you think has more political savvy and diplomatic experience?
I wonder what the pope's role will be in the messy government dissolution that is (likely) about to happen in Venezuela?
The "Holy Spirit" gave Pope Francis to the Church---As a test much like the Borgia Pope Alexander-VI.
Obama and the Pope are somewhat unlikely endorsers for the idea of "economic modernization" as a force for political liberalization-- an idea mainly associated with Milton Friedman.
While I agree the time has come to change our relationship with Cuba, I refuse to believe the Pope has one iota of influence on Obama.
Obama is simply doing what he always does, in this case playing the Pope for his own image.
We have a Pope and a spare. Francis better stop sounding like Prince Charles.
Or Robert Cook.
How many Catholics take the Pope or The Church seriously.
He's a fool like the Dalai Lama and the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Obama is most comfortable with tyrants and thugs. I wonder why ?
The Pope is a tyrannical thug? Awesome message headed toward 2016. Rubio already rose and smacked that bait.
There are Popes and there are Popes.
Catholics are not obliged to agree with the Pope on matters that aren't doctrine.
Popes have no problemo with that They have always lived in harmony with the Mafia in a division of labor over the enslaved peasants.
Yours was a hateful, ignorant, and stupid remark.
Economic modernization begetting political liberalization certainly didn't start with Milton Friedman. This was a liberal (of the antique sort of liberal) trope from the 19th century.
Has anyone actually bothered to examine the Pope's alleged support for Mr. Obama's policies?
Paul said:
Obama and the Pope are somewhat unlikely endorsers for the idea of "economic modernization" as a force for political liberalization-- an idea mainly associated with Milton Friedman.
I say the both of them as endorsers of the "spread the wealth" ideas of Karl Marx.
Millions of Europeans have travelled to Cuba over the decades; and many countries in Europe - the Swedes for example - have been major traders with Cuba over this past half century.
So, why hasn't that led to an opening up of Cuba, of a lessening of the stranglehold that the Castros have held?
I'm not convinced.
Make an argument for this change; but it seems to me suggesting that trade will lessen the grip that the dictatorship has on the country has shown to be false.
It hasn't worked so far.
Catholic economic theory exists. It is driven by, in my opinion, a set of unexamined assumptions about economic behavior that date back to the late 19th century and have never been reevaluated on empirical grounds. On top of these assumptions is a set of ethical judgements that are inevitable given the economic suppositions.
Ultimately the policy requires a sort of corporatism, a "third way" system that was trendy and cutting edge in much of Europe from the 1890's. A lot of this stuff drove the programs of the Fascists, though they certainly didn't invent it. European style Christian Democrats (the bulk of the "right" in much of Europe) inherited this.
Down in Commie Hell, Obama's Uncle Frank is feeling even prouder of young Barry.
Interestingly, Cuba pre-Castro was very far along the way to being a modern European style welfare state. Agriculture was not a Latin American stereotype of landed gentry oppressing the landless peasants, but was on the whole industrially organized with union represented employee workers and management.
Their unions were very powerful, mainly communist, mainly black/mulatto, and were a mainstay of support for the Batista regime.
Dictatorships vary, but are rarely arbitrary or totally tyrannical, they depend on a base of genuine popular support and balancing of interests.
Overall the Cuban economic structure of the 1950's was proceeding well along the lines of what the Church would be comfortable with.
Also interestingly the Church was always weak in Cuba - and this goes back centuries. Cuba was always extremely under-churched and general society was irreligious, certainly by US standards.
Economic liberalization leads to political liberalization.
How's that worked in China?
And the ability of the Cuban security system to control that small island is far better than the Chinese security.
We've convinced ourselves that because it was this process - the development of a middle class, the landed gentry, that forced kings to liberalize - that led to political freedoms in the west that it will work elsewhere.
I'm not convinced.
Blogger mccullough said...
How many Catholics take the Pope or The Church seriously.
About a billion.
Interesting article on Pope Francis and economic policy here. In which I learned that the leftist economist Joseph Stiglitz is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and very tight with the head of that group, who also happens to be a Argentinean.
The answer to the question of why some countries "modernize" economically and some do not is still pretty vexed. I thought Acemoglu and Robinson's Why Nations Fail made some fairly compelling arguments from historical analysis. Like most things in life, the answer is probably some murky mixture of geography, demography, biology, culture, and institutions. If anything, trade and diplomatic engagement with Cuba would be a plus for the United States. That should be our primary criterion for foreign policy decisions, and that alone would make engagement a worthwhile endeavor.
"Their unions were very powerful, mainly communist, mainly black/mulatto, and were a mainstay of support for the Batista regime."
Few know that Batista was mulatto. Or "black" as Obama would say.
SMGalbraith wrote: How's that worked in China?
Well they haven't killed 70 million of their own people anytime recently.
The question of why some countries develop economically and others dont is the main question of the whole field of development economics. And the question is not just vexed, everyone is just plain stumped at this point. Nobody has a convincing model beyond hand-waving.
"Catholic economic theory exists"
Yes, and it has resulted in the economic failure of most Catholic countries from Spain to Venezuela. The English/American form of economic freedom is Protestant in origin. Some would say Calvinist as they believed that earthly success was an indicator of virtue and passage to Heaven after death.
It has been written in more than one place that the revocation of the Edict of Nantes , which sent the Huguenots to England, also sent the Industrial Revolution there. England and Germany, both Protestant countries, were far ahead of France by 1890. Napoleon did not help, of course, but then others were just as harmed by his adventurism yet they succeeded and France did not.
Lars Porsena
Check the attendance at Mass. American and European Catholics attend inconsistently and younger ones attend even less.
Catholics in US and Europe have better attendance than the moribund mainline Protestants, but not by much.
The collapse is inevitable. Listening to the Pope is like listening to Al Sharpton. A lot of ignorance combined with a lot of bullshit.
Not only was Batista black, so was most of the Cuban Army, inluding its senior leadership. The army was Batista's principal support.
This dates back to the Cuban Revolutions of the 19th century which were in no small part race wars. The revolutionary army of 1898, which more or less inherited the country, was largely black.
Also interestingly the country got a lot more white after 1898 due to heavy immigration from Spain.
In some ways the Castro revolution was a white middle class uprising against a black power structure, neither representing much of the population. It wasnt much of a war in truth.
The 13 New English Colonies that split off and came to be the USA were founded to be a Christian nation. What they were not founded to be was a Catholic nation.
Back at that time, the colonies of countries that were inside the Holy Roman Empire (a/k/a the Empire of Spain) were founded exclusively as Catholic nations, or else. The or else was Pope directed absolute monarchs and Hierarchy of Church officials ordering inquisitions and the burning alive of suspected Christians.
That may be another hateful, stupid and ignorant remark to hear. But it's what happened. And it is what has been happening to peasants in un-free Cuba but calling it Marxism.
The English were even better at killing Catholics than the Spanish were at killing Protestants.
And every European state save a couple of small ones had a state church. This idea still persists in things like the role of the Queen of England as head of her church, or church tax withholding in Germany.
For what its worth,
Fidel Castro's dad was a poor peasant conscript from Galicia, Spain, sent overseas in 1896 to put down a revolution.
My great-granpa was a poor peasant conscript from Leon, Spain (from just the other side of the mountains), sent overseas in 1896 to put down a different revolution.
"Well they haven't killed 70 million of their own people anytime recently."
Yes, but they stopped doing that when Mao died.
Since they've modernized/liberalized their economy, circa 1990, what is the evidence that they've liberalized their political system?
The argument is (crudely put) that trade creates a middle class and that middle class demands more of a say in how they are governed. And that creates political freedoms since the rulers are dependent on the wealth generated by the middle class.
Much like the landed gentry did with the British monarchy.
That's the theory.
I don't think this has worked in China so I'm skeptical that it will work in a smaller, more easily controlled country like Cuban. Castro and is cronies know what the idea is; they aren't idiots.
@buwaya puti:
I largely agree with you about developmental economics. In fact, to me the entire economics profession seems to be little more than voodoo dressed up in some fancy-sounding mathematics verbiage.
@SMGalbraith:
I agree with you that that is the crude version of the thesis and that its universal applicability is in question. South Korea's economic modernization under an authoritarian government is an oft-cited example, and that took almost 40 years. China's economic reforms really began in the late 1970s under Deng Xiaoping's chairmanship. There are a lot of important distinctions in regards to China, in my opinion. For one thing, it is huge. It has more than four times the population of the US. Second, the distribution of its economic growth has been very uneven. For all its shiny new skyscrapers and bullet trains, its GDP per capita still lags behind such economic powerhouses as Costa Rica, Barbados, and Bulgaria. In other words, it still has a huge percentage of its population that is extremely poor.
I think you can get a good perspective on China's trajectory from Fukuyama's book The Origins of Political Order. He makes the case that China's long history of centralized control and bureaucracy would not lead inexorably to representative politics and rule of law, especially compared to the dozens of competing principalities that eventually coalesced into Western European nation-states.
"Obama is determined that the pincer movement of economic modernisation and regional and spiritual cajoling will help bring about the longer-term breakthroughs in human rights and democracy that he concedes are largely absent from the existing deal so far."
If I thought he really believed in that I might take what he said seriously. To me, he's always seemed a lot more interested in dealing with power players than people power.
Sounds like someone was Schlieffen on the job.
When the dust settles and the racial turf wars are fought, what the U.S. will be left with is a corrupt, bottomless money pit to dump dollars we we don't have. And when this happens, the leftists will be preening and saying, "See how well communism works?!"
A leading indicator will be a major infiltration (infestation?) of Cuba - ironically via the U.S.- of MS-13.
MS-13 is an ethnic gang (Salvadoran) and would have difficulty organizing trust among the Cubans. I am sure they have their own gangs.
NB...There are Roman times Red Hot Pincers on display. But have no fear those were reserved for Jews who pretended to be Catholics to stay in Spain.
Torture by the Inquisition in Spain was highly regulated and the methods were limited to those officially approved. Red hot pincers were not in the repertoire.
The English, on the other hand, tended to be much more lassiez-faire even about official torture and all sorts of barbaric things could be expected.
Obama is a naive, horrible deal maker, and, a ruthless, calculating ball busting tyrant.
Obama is a naive, horrible deal maker, and, a ruthless, calculating ball busting tyrant.
I think you're overstating things significantly. Obama is a terrible deal-maker, but beyond that, he's just dishonest, probably in-line with most politicians.
To be calculating, he'd need the intellectual courage to examine his premises and prejudices.
"Obama is a naive, horrible deal maker, and, a ruthless,"
Well, all I've heard from liberals and progressives for the past five years is how terrible he's been negotiating with the Republicans.
He's caved in, he hasn't made good deals, he's given in too much...
Like with the cromnimbus deal.
@buwaya Putin...That is the point. Catholics tortured with official approval of the Pope. He wanted his power over the peasants lives protected. The new guy in Vatican City renaming himself after Saint Francis also wants to see careful regulation by Marxism to protect Cuban peasants. Marxists also only torture under approval those the Party leader calls Counter-revolutionaries which we all know means heretics endangering poor men by preaching freedom from a corrupt class of Party commissars like Castro or Church Clerics like him.
Obama is a naive, horrible deal maker, and, a ruthless, calculating ball busting tyrant.
This is an accurate description of tyrants. Whether it's an accurate description of Obama is another story.
Tyrants aren't able to get their way through reason, or negotiation. So they turn to tyranny.
We certainly know that Obama is horrible at getting his way through persuasion and deal making. He is more of a temper tantrum throwing baby.
But has he become a tyrant because of the inability of others to see just how right he is?
Looks like it.
The Pope's opinion is important when he agrees with me, otherwise he's just the leader of some regressive religion who can be safely ignored (or mocked).
Or:
So...the Pope's wishes are important to the Obama Admin when they are the same as Obama's interests, and the Pope's wishes aren't important to the Obama Admin when they're not. Noted.
"Obama also discussed the issue at length with the pope during his public visit to the Vatican in March...."
Do you remember the Althouse discussion at the time of that meeting? A lot of funny double talk was given out about what was discussed and what was not discussed. At the time people assumed that the pope had layed into Obamba on the abortion issue, or that Obama had tried to spin the pope on ACA impact.
Turns out they were talking about how to help prop up the Castro regime. Who knew?
The reason I bring it up is NEXT time they use language similart to what they did last march we will know they are up to something.
At the time everyone tortured with the official approval of the authorities, Pope, Emperor, Queen, Prince-Bishop, Duke, Abbott, Abbess, governors, ship captains, parish priests, municipal judges, down to Corporals of Infantry.
Beatings, lashings, tortures punitive and iterrogatory were normal in the course of administrative affairs.
You know what a pincer movement requires? The other side of the pincer.
Obama continually screws up negotiations because he can't coordinate with his own side. Springing this unilaterally on Congress is setting it up for failure, just like all of his many other unilateral adventures.
Obama, the Pope, and Raul Castro all sit down to plan the future.
This sounds like the setup for a joke.
Are you sure Stephen Colbert is leaving his job?
@buwaya...Ok, torture was a normal part of slave labor Empires from the days of Rome's glorious rule over a 90% slave population.
It once imported into the coastal south in emulation of the British Empire's Roman Empire governance methods over black Africans in prison to the death in a few years from working the sugar islands of the Caribbean.
But most Protestant Americans will not let you enslave them and torture them. So we remain highly alert to any tradition poping up from the Spanish Empire normalizing the slave practice using a Pope as a cover for that wonderfully lucrative evil.
The Pope is a moron! (And I say that as a life long Catholic.) It is sad that he actually believes he is supporting social justice and doing something positive for the world. But in sad reality he is supporting an ideology that was responsible for over 100 Million deaths in the last Century. I understand BHO is stupid. I am sad the Pope is equally stupid. What I don't understand is why he has such disdain for the poor and disenfranchised that he claims to champion.
Torture was a normal part of European life and the process of justice in every country. Judicial violence was entirely normal. It had nothing to do with "slave empires". Masters beat their apprentices, squires their peasants, husbands their wives and children, sergeants their soldiers. Judges and mayors and sheriffs and alguaciles had more complex tortures available to punish malefactors or obtain confessions.
As for the US, it inherited British administrative practices. There were persons in the colonies lashed, put in stocks, and some even suffered the peine fort et dur. There was flogging in the US Navy until around 1850.
And then there were slaves.
All of the reasons given in support of Obama's unilateral, secret, relaxing of Cuban embargo, ignore the simple fact of exactly why it was placed to start with. Strangle a communist despot that has murdered 100's of thousands of Cuban citizens and fomented terrorism across the globe.
Obama has not addressed any of those concerns.
There is also the stolen property of US citizens.....Zip on that. No concessions or reimbursements. Castro bros. get a bailout and US citizens get a thumb in the eye.
Finally the supposed relief for the Cuban people. The US is not denying the Cuban people anything. Cuba has 100's of Nations that they trade with, That Cuba gets what they need and desire. The Castro bros just deny any of it to the people. The Castro Bros will continue to deny the people. It is what they do, have done,will continue. They are still communist dictators.
Obama has not addressed any of these issues, and his apologist refuse to address any of these issues.
@ buwaya... Yes, that was British Empire normalcy. Are you perhaps from India that bowed down to that for 200 years?
We have a tradition that fought an eight year war for freedom from that Empire and defeated it again when we were re-invaded by it 30 years later.
We cling to our opposition to those Imperial habits in a Bill of Rights that is designed to blocks its methods from use here.
If Pope Francis and his hierarchy wants to see free men they should get our Bill of Rights enacted all over the world.
Er, you are missing my point.
The US itself, or rather the local judiciary and also the US Federal Government entities like the US Army and Navy were doing exactly the same thing the British were. The declaration if Independence changed nothing in this area. The US Navy that fought the Royal Navy in 1812 also flogged.
As for India, British Indian troops from the beginning (Robert Clive's sepoys, and all later ones) were not flogged because the Indian soldiers thought it insulting and barbaric. So the British made allowances.
Trad,
He's Filipino, dumbass. That's why his English is better than yours.
Please let's not pretend the English were naive amateurish virgins to torture. You prate of the Scotch-Irish mystique; know you nothing of how the uprisings were dealt with? Ever been to the Tower of London? Spanish cruelty is legendary to be sure but the forefathers of this nation were not behindhand. Who are you trying to kid?
Note that flogging was not considered cruel and unusual punishment.
The Americans who came here from East Anglia and from Devonshire and from the Scotland borders each brought different ways with them. The issue is not military discipline or penal laws. The issue is "rights" of men.
Rights of man never comes up from a slavery based hierarchical government tyranny. And the men of 1775 to 1782 did start a Revolution unique in all the world at the time. And they hated the British for very good reasons. And many still do. Which was the cause of Ontario getting its English speaking population overnight.
You are wrong to blow smoke that they governed like the British because they were the British.
My original point in this regard was that the Spanish, and for that matter the European Catholic states in general, were not particularly cruel nor were they more prone to torture than any other Europeans of their times. And that included the Spanish Inquisition. And in this respect too (in the matters of general cruelty and legal torture) the settlers of what would become the US were no better than their European contemporaries.
Political rights and social structures are another matter.
The reason I bring it up is NEXT time they use language similart to what they did last march we will know they are up to something.
When we were kids, my mom would call down to the basement "What's going on down there?" And we would reply in unison, "Nuuh- thing!" She was always thus clued in that she needed to come downstairs to check it out, pronto.
Bigot "Traditional Guy" of the "Scotch-Irish mystique" seems as always to forget the proto-nazi "penal laws" inflicted on the "peasants" of Catholic Ireland by anglo-protestant Britain, with his "Scotch-Irish mystique" folk as the henchmen.
Hey Phil...You must still be angry over bloody legends about Cromwell's victories like Drogheda.
Cromwell was one of the Puritan East Anglian guys that charged Charles I with treason for arranging a Catholic French army to invade from Ireland and kill the Parliamentary forces.
The Scots borderers that colonized Northern Ireland under Henry VIII had nearly all left northern Ireland for the New World colonies by 70 years after Cromwell. So they did not do any Catholic killing other than at a fair Boyne River fight in 1690 against another French Catholic Army again seeking to invade England through Ireland to restore Charles II's Catholic son.
There is much history available about those Reformation/Counter-Reformation wars by Professors at Universities whose names don't contain Loyola
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