South America

Professor Nicholas Burns appeared on CNN to speak about the week's chaos in the White House, as well as recent events in North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela. 

"When colonial power structures ravage the lives of ordinary people for decades on end, and those people have no recourse to political, social, or economic redress of grievances, they will usually turn to God and their religion as a last resort to salvage their humanity. If the colonial exploitation continues unabated, that explosive situation will usually end in something dramatic and disruptive — revolution, mass uprisings, civil wars, and large-scale internal displacements and illegal migrations..."

Following 18 months of secret talks facilitated by Pope Francis and the Canadian government, President Barack Obama announced Wednesday that the United States and Cuba will re-establish diplomatic and economic relations, ending a political stalemate that began more than half a century ago.

Under the agreement, the United States will open an embassy in Havana; many existing travel, trade, and banking restrictions imposed on American citizens and businesses will be loosened; and Secretary of State John Kerry will review Cuba’s presence on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Additionally, Obama said, two American prisoners in Cuba, contractor Alan Gross and an unidentified U.S. intelligence officer, were released in exchange for three Cuban spies who had been jailed in the United States since 2001.

In separate phone and email exchanges, the Gazette turned to two Harvard authorities on Cuba and American foreign policy to interpret the importance of the U.S. policy shift with the island nation, one of the last bastions of communist rule in the world, and where the agreement likely will lead, both economically and politically. The changes also have implications for Harvard.

Nicholas Burns is the Sultan of Oman Professor of the Practice of International Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). A former U.S. ambassador to NATO and Greece and a career Foreign Service officer, Burns is also director of the Future of Diplomacy Project at HKS. Here are their insights.

Jorge Domínguez is co-chair of Harvard’s Cuban Studies Program, focusing on Cuba’s domestic and international politics and economics. He is also vice provost of international affairs at Harvard and the Antonio Madero Professor for the Study of Mexico at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

These interviews were lightly edited for length and clarity.

"For obvious reasons the coup against President Mohamed Morsi has been compared to the coup against [former Chilean president Salvador] Allende. Emotionally the picture is compelling: democratically elected presidents forced out of office by generals who profoundly hated their politics and who then pursued increasingly violent campaigns against the remaining civilian opposition. In the world of American academic politics the comparison is especially powerful because it suggests that the anti-communism that drove policies a generation ago and now seems shameful and regrettable is surfacing again as “Islamophobia” or an irrational hatred of Islam. Saving democracy, a lost cause in 1973, is now possible and a moral imperative as the events of the past are replayed in a different part of the world with a different cast of characters."

"The fascinating simultaneous demonstrations and challenges to democratically elected regimes in Egypt, Turkey and Brazil this month suggest that we need to look for an explanation for something structural in newly democratized societies, rather than seeking cultural explanations. The silliest common cultural line of analysis often asks about the compatibility of 'Islam and democracy,'' without our ever hearing an analogous discussion of, say, 'Judaism and democracy' or 'Christianity and democracy.'"