US-Cuba Normalizations: Strategic Impacts For U.S. National Security

Part of the JGI/LACC/ARC/U.S. Southern Command Policy Roundtable Series, this commissioned paper discusses the strategic impacts regarding the renewed relationship between the U.S. and Cuba. Piccone discusses the implications for U.S.-Cuban bilateral relations, U.S. relations in the region, and U.S. relations on the global level.https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/jgi_research/1034/thumbnail.jp

Latin America’s struggle with democratic backsliding

“Latin America has entered a new stage in its wobbly consolidation of liberal democracy. A slew of important presidential elections in 2018 demonstrated that the basic mechanics of representative democracy and competitive politics are functioning. However, old problems related to questionable campaign finance and new problems related to social media put stress on political systems burdened by high levels of inequality, corruption and crime, and weak rule of law. Electoral outcomes mainly shifted to the right, especially in Brazil, while Mexico embraced a populist leftist. The real democracy story in the region was of crisis and despair, as Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, entered uncharted territory of near-collapse, with a repressive Nicaragua following close behind. The region’s democracies have struggled to respond effectively to the unfolding disaster. The United States has chosen a punitive approach to leftist regimes but otherwise left more room for authoritarian China and Russia to contest traditional U.S. influence in the region and potentially divide further a polarized and fragile hemisphere

U.S.-Cuba Normalization: U.S. Constituencies for Change

The United States and Cuba made important strides after the re-launch of diplomatic relations between the two countries under Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro in 2015-2016. These changes were both psychological and symbolic as key themes of mutual respect, sovereignty and reconciliation gained ground. They were also pragmatic, cutting across a wide range of issues from travel and hospitality, which has helped catalyze a major increase in U.S. travelers to the island, to telecommunications and migration. These measures reflected the emergence of an effective coalition of U.S. constituencies that organized individual and joint efforts to regain the advantage over the traditional pro-embargo approach of the Cuban diaspora. With the inauguration of Donald Trump in January 2017, however, forward momentum in bilateral relations has nearly ground to a halt as the hardline Cuban exile community has reasserted primacy in shaping U.S. policy toward the island. Nonetheless, the Republican Party is divided over how far to roll back the changes made by Obama as specific constituencies with the most to gain from normalization defend their interests in continued normalization. The author analyzes the various U.S. stakeholders pushing for relaxation of the embargo and how the Obama administration’s policies benefited them. It will also look at the role of the U.S. Congress and the prospects for rapprochement in the years ahead

Democracia e tecnologia digital: os desafios singulares que a tecnologia digital representa para os governos democráticos e como estes governos, junto com a sociedade civil, precisam reagir

- Artigo publicado em três idiomas: português, espanhol e inglês.- Título em espanhol: Democracia y tecnología digital: los singulares desafíos que la tecnología digital plantea a los gobiernos democráticos y cómo deben responder estos, en colaboración con la sociedad civil- Título em inglês: Democracy and digital technology: the unique challenges that digital technology is presenting to democratic governments and how they, together with civil society, need to respon

Promoting human rights in the Middle East : a multilateral approach

by Ted Piccone and Emily Alinikof

Venezuela: A Path Out of Misery

Since the last report of the Brookings Institution Working Group on Venezuela in April 2017, the crisis in Venezuela has considerably worsened. As of fall 2018, the country is in a rapidly deepening economic and humanitarian crisis, marked by growing scarcity of food, medicine, and basic staples. Despite having one of the world’s largest oil reserves, Venezuela’s oil production is declining and electricity and water shortages have lasted for weeks in certain areas of the country. Hyperinflation, the product of monumental government mismanagement, has continued to deplete Venezuelan salaries and savings. The consensus among outside observers is that the severe and poorly planned economic measures announced in August 2018 by President Nicolás Maduro will accentuate the crisis

A Six Year, Low-resolution, Multibroadband Transit Photometry Study of HD 189733b

Transmission spectroscopy offers an invaluable opportunity to characterize the atmospheres of exoplanets. We present new ground-based optical transmission spectra of the hot Jupiter HD 189733b, derived from nine transits observed over a six year time span (2016–2021) using near-simultaneous $u^{\prime} g^{\prime} r^{\prime} i^{\prime}$ broadband observations. We achieve an average (best) precision of 435 (280) ppm by implementing an optical diffuser on the prime focus spectrograph from the 2.3 m Wyoming Infrared Observatory telescope. The data provide new measurements of the apparent planetary radius with respect to the stellar radius, the spectral index of atmospheric opacity, and the time variability of the two quantities. Our results indicate an enhanced spectral slope in the optical regime ≈2.4 times steeper than would be expected from canonical Rayleigh scattering and that is consistent with earlier measurements of a super-Rayleigh slope (SRS). While the effect of stellar activity on the transmission spectrum complicates the measurement of the spectral slope, our multiepoch data set over six years can measure and average over stellar variations, yielding a mean spectral index of −9.9 ± 4.4. The 1200 K equilibrium temperature of HD 189733b places it in a sweet spot for the formation of SRSs and is consistent with vigorously mixing hazes in the atmosphere. Additionally, we find variations in the depth of the lightcurve during two of the transits, explainable as an increase in occulted star spots during June 2021. Although the star is active, the mean level of stellar activity does not seem to vary dramatically over our six years of observations, leading us to conclude that the variability in stellar activity is modest at most