# Obama shakes hands with Raul Castro. So what? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 10, 2013, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-shakes-hands-with-raul-castro-so-what/675985 "2013-12-10T15:32:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-shakes-hands-with-raul-castro-so-what/675985/121 "2013-12-12T19:39:21Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > Suggesting that he’d have avoided Mandela’s funeral out of support for apartheid, or dislike of Mandela, is unsupportable. Well, what are the odds he’d have been invited in the first place? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-shakes-hands-with-raul-castro-so-what/675985/122 "2013-12-12T19:42:25Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > They have sugar. [QUOTE=BobLibDem] And cigars. And baseball players. [/QUOTE] Oh, true. And we’ve been without those things since the embargo, so maybe we should rethink all of this. 😛 [QUOTE=Really Not All That Bright] They offered to pay the taxable value of the expropriated assets, and were rebuffed? Why? Because United Fruit and other US claimants were cheating on their Cuban taxes by claiming their land and other chattels were worth a fraction of what they were actually worth. Then they got pissy when the Cubans offered to pay their own assessments. Granted, the original offers were to pay compensation in the form of bonds, but later offers to pay in cash (with what I assume was Soviet money) were blocked by the US government. Read the piece I linked to. I’m no champion of Cuba - I could hardly care less about the place - but the nationalization “crisis” was largely of the US’ and US claimants’ own making. [/QUOTE] I’ll check out the link tonight in the hotel room. I sort of recall what you are talking about here, but my impression is they were offering pennies on the dollar which is why it was rejected at the time (besides there being a hefty portion of cold war politics involved). Regardless, if they want to shift the current stalemate NOW, they are going to have to make concessions that make it worth the political capital to do it. I don’t think that’s going to happen until both Castro’s are safely underground. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-shakes-hands-with-raul-castro-so-what/675985/123 "2013-12-12T19:44:55Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Well, what are the odds he’d have been invited in the first place? Every living ex-president attended, so I’d say pretty good. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-shakes-hands-with-raul-castro-so-what/675985/124 "2013-12-12T20:03:43Z")
> [@XT](#): > > I’ll check out the link tonight in the hotel room. I sort of recall what you are talking about here, but my impression is they were offering pennies on the dollar which is why it was rejected at the time (besides there being a hefty portion of cold war politics involved). You really only have to read the first three or four pages, IIRC. It worked out to “quarters on the dollar”; the US claims administrator came up with a figure of $4 billion based on the claimants’ own valuations, and the Cubans had a figure of $1 billion based on the tax valuations. They didn’t offer to compensate the Batistite refugees, though (on the grounds that they had abandoned their claims by emigrating) which admittedly complicated things a bit. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-shakes-hands-with-raul-castro-so-what/675985/125 "2013-12-12T20:35:47Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > Yes, he did. His . . . . . . stated . . . > [@Human\_Action](#): > > . . . concern was that economic sanctions would further harm the black underclass, and that economic strife would make South Africa more likely to fall to a socialist revolution, an outcome he wanted to avoid, being a noted anti-Communist and all. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-shakes-hands-with-raul-castro-so-what/675985/126 "2013-12-12T20:36:54Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > Every living ex-president attended . . . Well, except for GHWB. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-shakes-hands-with-raul-castro-so-what/675985/127 "2013-12-12T21:13:19Z")
I’ve never regretted a joke so much. Jeez, people, unclench. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-shakes-hands-with-raul-castro-so-what/675985/128 "2013-12-12T22:54:10Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > Every living ex-president attended, so I’d say pretty good. How many of the living ex-presidents actively supported keeping Mandela in prison? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-shakes-hands-with-raul-castro-so-what/675985/129 "2013-12-13T00:29:52Z")
Pretty much up to the point where it became bad for business. Which has a way of spurring evolution and enlightenment amongst the conservatives. ---
**Author:** ![Claverhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Claverhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claverhouse)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-shakes-hands-with-raul-castro-so-what/675985/130 "2013-12-13T03:09:34Z")
Didn’t the United States expropriate some other people’s land at one point ? ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-shakes-hands-with-raul-castro-so-what/675985/131 "2013-12-13T03:36:51Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Well, what are the odds he’d have been invited in the first place? While I sympathize with your stance, if the Israelis were invited(though Bibi declined) Reagan certainly would have been. Mandela believed in burying the hatchet and very much understood how geopolitics worked. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-shakes-hands-with-raul-castro-so-what/675985/132 "2013-12-13T03:39:25Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > How many of the living ex-presidents actively supported keeping Mandela in prison? Did Reagan go that far. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-shakes-hands-with-raul-castro-so-what/675985/133 "2013-12-13T04:08:37Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Did Reagan go that far. Did you read this thread? ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-shakes-hands-with-raul-castro-so-what/675985/134 "2013-12-13T04:37:09Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Did you read this thread? Er… yes. I don’t see anywhere in the thread evidence that Reagan specifically supported keeping Mandela in prison. He opposed sanctions on Apartheid South Africa and believed they wouldn’t effectively bring about an end to Apartheid, but just because I oppose sanctions against Iran doesn’t mean I support the Mullahs. I’m sure there are plenty of people on this thread that objected to sanctions against Saddam’s Iraq who engaged in vastly worse mass murder against the citizens of his own nation than any of the various Apartheid leaders did against South African blacks. Based on such logic, people like myself and the rest of the people who objected to sanctions against Saddam’s Iraq and the Mullahs’ Iran “actively supported” the imprisonment of countless political prisoners by both regimes. I’m no fan of Reagan and certainly no fan of the way he used racist stereotypes and appealed to racists to win the Presidency, but geopolitics causes people to do odd things. I’m a fan of Churchill, who overthrew my country’s ruler and imposed the Shah on us because he felt he needed to defeat Hitler, and a much bigger fan of Chris Hani, who openly supported the crushing of the Solidarity movement in Poland, and Nelson Mandela who openly supported Yasser Arafat, Mummar Qaddafi, and Fidel Castro even after he was free and the leader of South Africa, because he felt doing so was necessary to support his cause. Now, if I’m wrong, perhaps you can point me to the evidence put forth on this thread that Reagan actively supported jailing and keeping Mandela in prison. I asked an honest question, not a gotcha. I didn’t think he went that far, but it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility that Reagan did. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-shakes-hands-with-raul-castro-so-what/675985/135 "2013-12-13T05:41:57Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > He opposed sanctions on Apartheid South Africa and . . . . . . said he . . . > [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > . . . believed they wouldn’t effectively bring about an end to Apartheid . . . ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-shakes-hands-with-raul-castro-so-what/675985/136 "2013-12-13T07:44:11Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > . . . said he . . . I’m not sure the point of this. Are you under the impression that it’s clever? Lots of people at the time thought that the sanctions would fail and historically sanctions have typically not toppled dictatorships but instead hurt the common people as anyone familiar with Cuba, Iraq, or countless other countries can testify to. There’s actually a great article about it here in Slate, which goes so far as to point out that sanctions may have been far, far less effective at bringing down the Apartheid regime then others believed. [http://www.slate.com/blogs/the\_world\_/2013/12/06/opponents\_of\_sanctions\_on\_south\_africa\_were\_wrong\_but\_that\_doesn\_t\_mean.html](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2013/12/06/opponents_of_sanctions_on_south_africa_were_wrong_but_that_doesn_t_mean.html) > [@](#): > > **his basic argument isn’t a particularly unusual one, and one frequently applied to other regimes, from Cuba to Iran to North Korea. He argues that sanctions will merely punish ordinary South Africans while strengthening the government:** > > Thanks to an oil embargo against South Africa, it is nearly self-sufficient, with the world’s best process for producing oil from coal. Thanks to an arms embargo, South Africa, which was 60 per cent dependent on imported arms 20 years ago today is 90 per cent self-sufficient and a net arms exporter. > > Today, the international sanctions against South Africa, along with the public divestment campaign in the United States and other countries, are remembered as the textbook examples of how international economic pressure can create the impetus for political change in repressive regimes\*\*. Of course, it would go too far, and give far too little credit to Nelson Mandela and his allies, to argue that international pressure was the main reason that apartheid fell. In the years since, some economists have even questioned just how much impact they really had.\*\* > > In a 1999 paper, Phil Levy, then of Yale, argued that sanctions had far less of an impact on the situation than other factors including “the effectiveness of the political opposition of the black majority; the inefficiency and growing economic cost of the apartheid system; and the fall of the Soviet Union.” > > A study by two University of California economists that same year looked at the widespread anti-apartheid divestment campaign, which movements ranging from opponents of Israel’s West Bank settlements to climate change activists have pointed to as a model, and found that “Despite the prominence and publicity of the boycott and the multitude of divesting companies, the financial markets’ valuations of targeted companies or even the South African financial markets themselves were not easily visibly affected.” ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2013, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-shakes-hands-with-raul-castro-so-what/675985/137 "2013-12-13T13:49:51Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > . . . stated . . . If you have information demonstrating that Reagan’s actual motives were different from his stated ones, please provide it. Otherwise, what the man said is what we have to go on. One could use your rhetorical device to indict most any historical figure on any decision they made. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Well, except for GHWB. Correct, I was mis-remembering on that point. > [@Miller](#): > > How many of the living ex-presidents actively supported keeping Mandela in prison? None, so far as I know. Of course, Reagan didn’t either, but instead [openly and specifically called for Mandela’s release.](http://dailycaller.com/2013/12/08/reagan-gets-a-bum-rap-over-mandelas-death/#!) (I use the Daily Caller as a source only because they embedded Reagan’s speech in the article, and I’m not relying on the article itself). ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-shakes-hands-with-raul-castro-so-what/675985/138 "2013-12-20T13:16:32Z")
> [@Jack\_Batty](#): > > I’ll tell you one thing … if it were Ronald Reagan at Nelson Mandela’s funeral, he sure as shootin’ wouldn’t have shook Castro’s hand! > > Oh, who am I kidding; Reagan would never have gone to Mandela’s funeral. Years ago, Reagan wouldn’t have been elected because he was divorced and re-married! ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-shakes-hands-with-raul-castro-so-what/675985/139 "2013-12-20T14:30:58Z")
> [@](#): > > In a 1999 paper, Phil Levy, then of Yale, argued that sanctions had far less of an impact on the situation than other factors including “the effectiveness of the political opposition of the black majority; the inefficiency and growing economic cost of the apartheid system; and the fall of the Soviet Union.” How did the fall of the Soviet Union impact apartheid? ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2013, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-shakes-hands-with-raul-castro-so-what/675985/140 "2013-12-20T14:56:52Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > How did the fall of the Soviet Union impact apartheid? [In the words of F.W. de Klerk:](http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/impact-collapse-ussr-south-africa-grade-12) > [@](#): > > "The collapse of the Soviet Union helped to remove our long-standing concern regarding the influence of the South African Communist Party within the ANC Alliance. By 1990 classic socialism had been thoroughly discredited throughout the world and was no longer a serious option, even for revolutionary parties like the ANC. > > At about the same time, the ANC was reaching a similar conclusion that it could not achieve a revolutionary victory within the foreseeable future. The State of Emergency, declared by the South African Government in 1986, and the collapse of the Soviet Union - which had traditionally been one the ANC’s main allies and suppliers - led the organisation to adopt a more realistic view of the balance of forces. It concluded that its interests could be best secured by accepting negotiations rather than by committing itself to a long and ruinous civil war." [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-shakes-hands-with-raul-castro-so-what/675985.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-shakes-hands-with-raul-castro-so-what/675985.md?page=8)