Normalizing US–Cuba relations: escaping the shackles of the past

President Barack Obama explained his historic reversal of half a century of US antagonism towards Cuba as necessary because of the failure of the policy of hostility pursued by his ten predecessors. But the old policy's failure was not new, and thus was not, in itself, an adequate explanation for the dramatic shift. This article uses theories of agenda‐setting, policy failure and policy change to explain the persistence of the US policy of hostility from 1959 to 2014 and the policy change announced by President Barack Obama in December 2014. Four structural factors account for the continuity in policy and, as a result of gradual changes in those factors, the eventual policy shift. They are: the security threat Cuba posed to the United States during the Cold War; the political influence of the Cuban American community; the diplomatic cost to Washington, especially in Latin America, of maintaining the status quo; and domestic changes under way in Cuba.     

Fishing Livelihoods,Seashore Tourism,and Industrial Development in Coastal Rio de Janeiro: Conflict,Multi‐Functionality,and Juxtaposition

Critical global political ecology and critical cultural political economy approaches are used in a study involving decades of research to evaluate the changing relationship between fisher livelihoods, seashore tourism, and urban industrial development in an economically dynamic region of coastal Brazil. As the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro expanded and encompassed fishing communities, socio‐environmental transformations created threats to fisher ways of life, opened new multi‐functional opportunities, and also introduced unrelated juxtaposed activities. As stocks fell due to overfishing and urban industrial pollution over the last two decades, small‐scale inshore fishing declined in the bay–lagoon systems located to the east and south‐west of Rio de Janeiro. Tourism increased but proved to be a poor substitute for declining fishing activities because it and other new multi‐functional activities rarely aggregated significant value to local livelihoods. Consequently, only a small minority of fishers benefited and remained on the islands and sand spits, while the great majority left for the mainland. New cultural and environmental functions were also absent, so that of the types of multi‐functionality identified by Wilson and Holmes, those present in the study area are weak and basically serve outside urban production and consumption interests.     

HOW DO BUILDINGS MEAN? SOME ISSUES OF INTERPRETATION IN THE HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE1

2 Juan Pablo Bonta, Architecture and Its Interpretation: A Study of Expressive Systems in Architecture (London: Lund Humphries, 1979), 232.
—Juan Pablo Bonta

3 Quoted in Andrew Ballantyne, “The Pillar and the Fire,” in What is Architecture?, ed. Andrew Ballantyne (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 7.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein

     

LIMITATIONS OF USING A COARSE RESOLUTION MODEL TO ASSESS THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON SEA ICE IN HUDSON BAY

The simulation of Sea-ice in a coarse resolution ocean general circulation model is examined in Hudson Bay and surrounding waters. Sea-ice distribution and duration compared well to climatological values, although ice thickness is undersimulated as it is in other modelling work. In Hudson Bay ice thickness variation was dominated by the atmospheric forcing as shown by the symmetric response of ice thickness to warming and cooling scenarios. Below ice heat fluxes play a more significant role in Foxe Basin and Baffin Bay where they mitigate air-ice heat loss by as much as 40 percent, thus limiting ice thickness and duration. Below ice heat flux reduces by 23 percent for the region of study (Hudson Bay, Foxe Basin, Baffin Bay, and Labrador Sea) for a global 3°C cooling and increases by 9 percent for a 3°C global warming. This asymmetric response is attributed to the ocean's asymmetric response to warming and cooling scenarios. In so much as Hudson Bay is dominated by atmospheric forcing rather than under ice heat as these results indicate, coarse resolution models may be useful in assessing the impact of change. However the necessary reconfiguration of the model grid render results from Foxe Basin and Hudson Strait less credible. On étudie la simulation de glace marine dans un modèle de circulation océanique générale à faible résolution dans la baie d'Hudson et dans les eaux avoisinantes. La distribution et la durée de la glace marine correspondent bien aux valeurs climatologiques, bien que l'épaisseur de la glace soit sous-simulée comme c'est le cas dans d'autres travaux de modélisation. Dans la baie d'Hudson, la variation de l'epaisseur de la glace est dominée par le forçage atmosphérique, comme on peut le voir d'après la réponse symétrique de l'épaisseur de la glace suivant les scénarios de réchauffement et de refroidissement. Les flux de chaleur sous la glace jouent un rôle plus important dans le bassin de Foxe et la baie Baffin, où ils permettent une réduction des pertes de chaleur air-glace allant jusqu'à 40 pour cent, limitant ainsi l'épaisseur de la glace et la durée. Le flux de chaleur sous la glace diminue de 23 pour cent dans la région étudiée (baie d'Hudson, bassin de Foxe, baie Baffin et mer du Labrador) pour un refroidissement global de 3C et augmente de 9 pour cent pour un réchauffement global de 3C. On attribue cette réponse asymétrique à la réponse asymétrique de l'océan aux scénarios de refroidissement et de réchauffement. Dans la mesure où, comme l'indiquent ces résultats, la baie d'Hudson est dominée par le forçage atmosphérique plutôt que par la chaleur sous la glace, des modèles à faible résolution peuvent être utiles pour évaluer l'impact des changements. Cependant, la reconfiguration nécessaire de la grille du modèle atténue la crédibilité des résultats obtenus dans le Bassin de Foxe et le détroit d'Hudson.     

The collapse of British foreign policy

British foreign policy has tried to balance between the United States and continental Europe for the past half-century, with an unambiguous commitment to a special relationship with Washington and an ambiguous commitment to European integration. New Labour has followed its predecessors in this, claiming that Britain can act as a bridge between America and Europe, or as a pivot around which transatlantic relations turn. In the wake of the Iraq war, deepened scepticism in Washington about whether close European cooperation is in America's interest, and scepticism across continental Europe that Britain can or should act as a privileged interlocuteur, have undermined both ends of the bridge on which British foreign policy claims to rest. The end of US commitment to Atlanticism, together with post-Cold War divergence between US and European interests and values, should have led to a shift in British priorities towards closer cooperation with other major European states and-from that shared perspective-an attempt to reconstruct a more balanced transatlantic relationship. The EU presents a sadly weak framework for such a strategy; but Britain's domestic debate, in which this government-like its predecessors-has allowed a Eurosceptic press to shape the language of foreign policy, has made it more difficult for any government to change direction. Recent government speeches on foreign policy, however, suggest that ministers still cling to the illusion that Britain has a 'unique' position between Europe and the United States.