The Political Scene: A New Cuba

“There had been eighteen months of secret negotiations, seven meetings that took place in Canada, under the good offices of the Canadian government, and also by Pope Francis in the Vatican, to help make this happen,” Jon Lee Anderson says about the restoration of diplomatic relations with Cuba. Anderson joins his fellow New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos and host Dorothy Wickenden on this week’s Political Scene podcast to talk about the new relationship between the two nations. They discuss the differences between Raúl and Fidel Castro that made the agreement possible, the impact that Marco Rubio’s opposition could have on his Presidential campaign, and the diplomatic lessons we can draw from U.S.-China relations. “China today is still a one-party state. It’s not like Cuba is going to wake up next year and suddenly have freedom of expression, freedom of worship, rule of law, judicial independence, human-rights protections,” says Osnos. “We will still represent an oppositional political culture that is not going to be relieved just because we have this new, much more open economic relationship.”