When I first read about our President's plans to re-estabish formal relations with Cuba, I wondered "Why now?"
There were many obvious reasons that came easily to mind.
The Castro brothers are old, and the world has completely changed since 1959, and Cuba has been rotting away ever since the Russians quit paying the bills. After Chavez died and Maduro was elected, Cuba lost the Venezuelan support that helped keep it afloat, and now Venezuela is more concerned with it's own troubles than with helping out a po' boy island that doesn't offer much in return.
But for the United States, the re-establishment made sense, economically and socially. Former Cubans are now an longstanding part of our population, and Cuba offers a long neglected market for our goods that is very easy to service from our shores.
But this morning, I began thinking about the timing and about the Iran treaty from a new perspective; the long game President Obama understands well and has used throughout his presidency so effectively.
Read on below the badly coiled orange lariat.
What does a community organizer do? That's a question that has been posed, especially by the right, ever since President Obama was elected.
It's a question that puzzled me, as I don't live in a big city and I don't know what they do. But I could make some guesses.
I guessed a community organizer uses the power of public opinion to accomplish the social changes that are needed. Essentially, any change is a problem in need of a solution.
Sometimes a solution is a direct confrontation with the powers that be. Taking it to the streets is an old American tradition that has often worked. But other times, taking a longer and more patient path only works; those in power, who have the power of greater numbers supporting them, have to be shown the advantages of change. Threats won't work as threats only causes the powerful to dig in more stubbornly.
It's not exactly a carrot and stick metaphor, as the powerful are not donkeys pulling a wagon. They are a strong big draft horse.
Trying to beat them with a stick won't work against a huge draft horse; the horse may lose its patience and destroy the wagon its pulling. A single carrot may not work either, in the long run, after it has become eaten one bite at a time. Another carrot may be needed to get the wagon to its ultimate destination.
So the problem becomes more complicated. It becomes a matter of multiple carrots and the control of the nibbling. A bit at a time until the objective is reached after traveling a long road.
President Obama, as I've often commented here, has the ability to see those complications that lie further down the road. To use a different metaphor, he is a true master of the long game. A game is never over until it ends, and a road never ends until it reaches its end as well.
Once he sets on an objective, Obama uses his considerable skills to see the objective is reached. For Obama, the cargo in the wagon are his objectives, and his wagon is being pulled by a very unpredictable and powerful draft horse.
Sometimes, he has to let the horse have its way. Sometimes he can control the horse's direction by force from the reins of his position. In either, as long as the horse is going in the general direction, even if the route is circuitous, that is good enough. Other times, that is the only way the horse will move at all unless it is baited with a dangling carrot. That's especially true when both horse and driver are traveling a road neither has traveled before.
Americans like to hold a grudge. That's a fact. The Cuban revolution offended us at first, and then threatened us severely when Khrushchev scared our pants off with his nuclear missiles. That was certainly enough for us to hold a grudge on Cuba for decades afterward. If the Soviet Union had not fallen apart, our grudge would still be fully justified.
Iran offended us as deeply when it seized our embassy and held our American embassy staff hostages 16 years after the Cuban revolution. Like Cuba, the United States had a large investment in Iran that was lost.
And like Cuba, Iran became threatening to our security in a manner that became as scary after 9/11/2001.
Like Soviet Russia, there was little the U.S. could do about Iran. We couldn't go to war with either unless we were willing to risk everything to uncertainty, just as we did in World War II.
Even worse, our fight in the Middle East was not one of nation against nation. We know how to wage war against nations, but we have never done well fighting guerrilla wars.
We are now mired in a sticky multi-level guerrilla war, where the guerrillas are constantly changing, the worst kind of war possible,with no guerrillas in the middle east that are on our side.
A guest on the Charlie Rose show on PBS summed up our problems with Iran and the middle east succinctly last night.
We tried direct intervention in Iraq and that didn't work. We tried indirect intervention in Libya and that didn't work. We tried no intervention in Syria, and that didn't work either. We are still threatened, though, by forces we have no real means to control in the long run.
For Obama, the problem solver, what path was left? Treaty negotiation. Who in the middle east can we negotiate a treaty with? Not Syria, that's for sure. But there is one nation, the most powerful of all, where it was possible.
Iran is the largest, most wealthy, and the strongest non-combatant in the region. It is also biggest potential threat for the United Sates in the middle east.
Obama's problem was doubly complicated.
Any negotiation with Iran before their failed Green Revolution of 2006 was impossible. America, the Great Satan, was a very good uniter for the Iranians 40 years ago when they deposed a Shaw they all hated.
But 2006 revolution was a big wake-up to the Iranian government. Iran has a growing population that has an average of 25 years of age, and those young people wanted another big change. 40 years was a long time ago for them, a time before most of them were born.
They want to retain their religion, but they want to become much more western in their civil society, and want Iran to become a regional and global power without war as a means to get it. They grew tired of Amadinejad's empty saber rattling, and voted him out.
The ruling Ayatollahs had to go along with the election results, or they would be facing another revolution, one they might not win a second time through force, and they saw what was happening in Syria.
At the same time, here at home, most Americans were not willing to give up their fears and resentments of Iran. And Iran's growing nuclear ability does present a legitimate threat in a very similar way Cuba once presented.
How does a problem solver in the White House overcome that hostility at home? By settling an older grudge that was easy to let go.
Establishing formal relations with Cuba gave Americans an opportunity to rethink our relations with Iran at a time when Iran was finally willing to come to the table and begin talking. At last, they were willing if we were willing.
Without Cuba, the treaty with Iran was not possible. Cuba made the conditions ripe for a very brief time, and for once, we harvested at the best period possible. So did Iran. We each plucked different fruit from the same tree.
A treaty is as good for them as it is for us. For both nations, the treaty allows either's greater ambitions and necessities a greater chance of being addressed in a more peaceful future.
The greatest benefit of the treaty for both nations is that no blood will be shed by either if both sides honor the treaty.
Iran never starts a fight, but Iran fights like hell when it must, and so does America. Talk talk is always better than shoot shoot, but getting both sides to talk is always a hard problem, in many ways harder than going to the guns. Opposition becomes a hard wall as it keeps on going over time.
Only a genius of a community organizer could have seen a small crack in the wall and found a way to use it.
At the best, the treaty could have better consequences for both nations than either can foresee now. At the worst, it's a long time out, a period that allows events to run their course without creating more serious danger to both sides.
My admiration of Barack Obama is boundless. He has consistently proven that when he says "I got this." he means it. We aren't going to see the likes of him for a long time to come.