“Barack Obama is the worst negotiator that we’ve had as president since at least Jimmy Carter, and maybe in the history of this country,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said Wednesday.
Rubio was referring to the swap of three Cuban spies, one a convicted murderer, for one American spy and imprisoned aid worker Alan Gross. Perhaps Obama agreed to it because it was only terrible, not utterly appalling — like his recent release of five terrorists, including war criminals, in exchange for a U.S. Army sergeant who had gone AWOL in Afghanistan.
The senator’s critique of Obama’s negotiating skills could have applied just as easily to the president’s protracted and fruitless nuclear negotiations with Iran, which have achieved nothing except to give another terrorist regime an economic boost and extra time to develop a nuclear bomb. Or to his infamous hot-mic offer to accommodate Russian President Vladimir Putin’s wishes on missile defense after Obama’s re-election, when he would have more “flexibility.” Or to the time Obama allowed completely surmountable objections by Iraq’s government to derail the status-of-forces agreement that might have allowed a continued American presence there and stopped the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
Obama is an expert at losing negotiations from a position of strength. When hostile foreign leaders sit across the table from him, they know they are going to win. That and his extensive use of drone assassinations might be the two distinctive characteristics of Obama’s foreign policy.
The White House claimed Gross’ release was a humanitarian gesture unrelated to the spy swap. Uh-huh. In a note of bipartisan derision for this claim, both Rubio and Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., complained “it was a swap of convicted spies for an innocent American” that would encourage future kidnappings of Americans by regimes hoping to use innocents as leverage.
And the release of a convicted murderer, which is highly unusual even in the weird world of spy swaps, suggests that once again Obama is the negotiating partner more eager for a deal. The partner that is overeager is the one that loses.
Moreover, as with Iran, Obama’s plans to ease sanctions and move toward normal relations with Cuba provide a lifeline to a hated and weakened regime. The recent sharp plunge in crude oil prices, combined with runaway domestic inflation, has sharply reduced the subsidy that the friendly leftist government of Venezuela can provide to the Castro dictatorship. Cuba, as one might expect of a communist country, is destitute and depends heavily on the subsidies.
With Raul Castro on the ropes, it is he and his own terrorist-supporting despotic government that should be making unilateral concessions, not Obama. It is hard to disagree with Rubio’s assessment that this is a “desperate attempt by the president to burnish his legacy at the Cuban people’s expense.”
If the Cuban regime wants a lifeline, it should have paid a price for it. For example, how about demanding that Castro release all political prisoners and promise at least modest democratic reforms?
