BBC Radio 4 2016-03-22

BBC Radio 4 2016-03-22

Good morning. Barack Obama has become the first sitting US president to visit Cuba for nearly nine decades. For 58 years, since Fidel Castro and Ché Guevara’s revolution, Cuba has been the pesky mouse nibbling at the toes of the elephant 90 miles to the north. The nuclear missile crisis of 1961 sent a shiver down the spine of America. You can still hear the rattle in Washington.

Now President Obama has decided the winter of embargoes is over. It’s no simple decision. Whenever you’ve had two generations of enmity, there’s plenty of vested interests in keeping the antagonism sharp; everyone has an opinion on the betrayal and disgrace of changing the status quo.

But there comes a point in any longstanding feud, between nations, families, or individuals, when you take stock of the energy it requires to perpetuate the tension, to circumnavigate meetings and bypass face-to-face encounters, and you just say, ‘Why are we doing this? In our effort to punish our enemy, stand up for whatever principle it was that needed upholding, and maintain the moral high ground, are we really achieving anything beyond exhausted self-righteousness?’

People tend to paint reconciliation as noble, costly, and self-denying. But often enough it begins with one or both parties saying, ‘I just can’t be bothered with all this resentment and cultivated bitterness anymore.’ Christians tend to emphasise the sacrifice of Jesus’ death – but Jesus’ ministry was all about showing that God will go to any lengths to get into a conversation with us – for God’s sake, not just for ours.

When you’re at odds with another person or another country, you have three choices. You can defeat them, through a fight or at law; you can shun them, through sanctions or the naughty step; or you can persuade them, through talks and conversations and listening and explaining.
However long you leave it, you always end up with conversation. A battle or a wall of silence may be heartfelt, and may seem like the only
language your antagonist understands. But it’s a matter of time – hours, days, even decades – before you end up having to talk to one another. Yet as global communication becomes more sophisticated, we end up living in smaller and smaller worlds of those who won’t offend us, disturb us, or force us to articulate our differences and reason through our disagreements.

What President Obama needs to do is to make a gesture that shows what’s to be gained by a new relationship, and find a form of words that promises a future that’s bigger than the past. After 58 years of tension, there won’t be any winners or losers. Battle and silence are ultimately distractions. All we finally have is conversation.