President Obama is in Mexico today attending what’s been called the “Three Amigos” Summit. The mainstream media is billing this summit as a chance for Obama to meet with his Mexican and Canadian counterparts to discuss trade, migration, swine flu, energy, the environment and joint efforts to counter rising drug violence. For a nice overview of this summit I recommend this Q&A from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. This is part of their Critical Questions series highlighting various international topics on the agenda. Other topics in the series examine energy and climate change at the summit and the economic issues faced by the three leaders.

Photo Credit: The Associated Press

A new U.S. policy toward Cuba, announced today, will offer a greater opportunity for Cuban Americans to personally share the benefits and demonstrate the appeal of freedom, democracy, and prosperity to the people of Cuba. As The New York Times summarizes:

The White House announced that it is abandoning longstanding restrictions on family travel, remittances and gifts to Cuba, and is also taking steps to open up telecommunications with the island, a significant shift in policy that fulfills a promise President Obama made during his election campaign.

This new policy of personal engagement is very different than the policy of placing Cuba off limits to individuals and to U.S. trade. In the physics of international relations, every action may produce an equal and complementary reaction (with apologies to Newton). In other words, a hardline policy may produce a hardline response and strengthen the hardline faction in the target country. The draconian U.S. trade embargo on Cuba strengthened Castro by allowing him to act as the defender of his revolution in the face of the American embargo. Hopefully, this new policy will strengthen reformers in Cuba and promote calls for economic development. In Memo to President Obama, Council on Foreign Relations scholar Julia Sweig explains why the time has come for this new opening to Cuba. And here at FPA, blogger Melissa Lockhardt researches Latin American trends for the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California. This week, she looks at the potential for a thaw in the long strained relationship.

The London G20 Summit is now history and by many accounts, it was a success for the U.S., with new initiatives made with Russia, China, and a new collaborative style of U.S. diplomacy on display by President Obama and his team of advisors. The summit’s concluding statement has been archived on the G20 website here and the AP has posted the highlights here, while Bloomberg has a great recap of the new finance regulations. The leaders agreed to expand the funds available to the IMF to help struggling economies, to crack down on tax havens and hedge funds, and to reject protectionism. The leaders failed to agree on a coordinated global stimulus plan to boost the world economy, with rifts appearing between those countries who wanted more stimulus spending and those that felt current efforts were adequate. The G20 countries will meet again at the U.N. in September to review the progress they have made on ending the global financial crisis.

This report in The New York Times demonstrates why President Obama’s trip this week to the G20 Summit in London, the NATO Summit in Strasbourg, and the EU Summit in Prague will be fraught with difficulties and not at all like his campaign trip to Europe when he was the center of adulation and praise. The report notes that Obama will be challenged to demonstrate U.S. confidence and leadership at a time when that leadership has been called into question. International economic stimulus spending, troops for Afghanistan, weapons proliferation and missile defense will top his agenda. President Obama will conclude his European trip with a stop in Turkey, a predominantly Muslim country and member of NATO that hopes in time to become a member of the EU. Obama is expected to reiterate U.S. support for Turkish membership in the EU.

In this op-ed, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger sees great promise for American leadership in addressing the global financial crisis:

Not since the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy half a century ago has a new administration come into office with such a reservoir of expectations. It is unprecedented that all the principal actors on the world stage are avowing their desire to undertake the transformations imposed on them by the world crisis in collaboration with the United States. The extraordinary impact of the president-elect on the imagination of humanity is an important element in shaping a new world order. But it defines an opportunity, not a policy.

Kissinger warns Obama not to rely on his popularity alone and encourages him to forge partnerships with other countries, particularly China, in charting a course toward a more stable world order.

I read a wide variety of online news sources and I’m used to seeing certain names pop up on certain sites as regular contributors. It's rare though for a name familiar to me from foreign policy sites to suddenly appear on the trendy pop culture sites, so I noticed when this opinion piece from Joseph Nye appeared in the popular Huffington Post website. Prof. Nye wrote the book on soft power and so it's no surprise that he is advocating here a mix of hard and soft power by the Obama Administration as the best means of achieving U.S. foreign policy goals:

Obama's election itself has done a great deal to restore American soft power, but he will need to follow up with policies that combine hard and soft power into a smart strategy of the sort that won the Cold War. Democracy promotion is best accomplished by soft attraction rather than hard coercion, and it takes time and patience. Here he should lead by example and remember the historical wisdom of being Reagan's “shining city on a hill.” Closing Guantanamo, while it raises tough questions about the future of some detainees, will give such a signal. As for democracy promotion, it is in our cultural genes. The United States should always encourage the gradual evolution of democracy but in a manner that accepts the reality of diversity.

Prof. Nye is suggesting that the U.S act as a responsible superpower, building and maintaining international institutions and consensual rules that provide for a free, open, and stable world order. Of course, one can argue that this has been the American project since WWII, and the real challenge will be to reverse trends which saw the U.S. undermining those very institutions and rules that it created as part of that post-war international order.

Staying with the subject of the G20 Summit, I was looking over the White House website for the summit, they provide a fact sheet on the agreement reached by the world leaders last weekend in Washington, it makes for interesting reading. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace also takes a look back at the summit, noting two opinion pieces that offer advice for the U.S. effort to deal with the financial crisis:

Leaders from the G-20 countries met in Washington this weekend to discuss the global economic crisis. The inclusion of countries like China, India, and Brazil in these talks points to an important redistribution of economic power beyond the traditional industrialized nations. Albert Keidel explains how China's historic decision to fund a $600 billion domestic stimulus package provides a road map for future U.S. policy. David Rothkopf argues that President-elect Obama will need to promote stronger multilateral institutions to govern global markets.

It's interesting that much of the commentary I’ve read about the summit has noted the historic nature of Bush's invitation to the leaders of emerging economies to join the summit. For a leader in search of a legacy it may be that his inclusion of these countries may have done more to promote multilateralism than the efforts of other countries whose actions seem to be based more on a thinly veiled anti-Americanism than a true desire to build a new international consensus.

Here are some additional international headlines on the summit:

• The Daily Yomiuri (Japan) - G-20 leaders resolve to overcome crisis
• Business Standard (India) - G-20 for overhaul of financial rules
• Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) - US agrees to share world's financial top billing
• Independent Online (South Africa) - World leaders vow closer co-operation
• Financial Post (Canada) - Tradition and reality outweigh rivalries
• Deutsche Welle (Germany) - Media Questions Merits of G20 Summit
• The Age (Australia) - G20's first steps

Center for American Progress Action Fund vice president Nina Hachigian comments to Politico on the implications of the financial crisis for the U.S. role in the world:

The financial crisis is horrible, but it's reinforcing two central truths. First, that we really have to focus on home and getting our domestic house in order and getting our domestic economy growing again. In order for us to continue to be successful, to attract capital here, we really need to invest in our domestic education and health care infrastructure. … The other thing the financial crisis highlights is that we are all interdependent and what we do here can affect Europe. We need investments from Asian countries - this is all one boat that we are in together.

According to this post-summit report from The New York Times the world leaders gathered in Washington demonstrated a willingness to accept that interdependence and embraced new policies to make that interdependence more transparent and accountable. Specific actions will be hammered out in the coming months at the ministerial level while the G20 heads plan for the next meeting to be hosted by President Obama.

President Bush will welcome world leaders to Washington this weekend to address the global financial crisis. He has already signaled his resistance to increased regulation of global finance in advance of the competing agendas the leaders will bring to the table. This AP report examines the diverse proposals world leaders bring to Washington and it makes clear that Bush's status-quo approach may not sit well with his peers who are eager for  major reform on par with the Bretton Woods agreement which established the post-war  financial system. It's worth noting, that agreement was negotiated and implemented over many years, it's doubtful that a weekend summit will lead to a comprehensive successor. Perhaps this meeting will merely be an opportunity for the world leaders to set forth their initial negotiating positions while leaving it to a future conference, one attended by the new American president, to forge a new framework for the global financial system.

The U.S. Congrees has passed the financial bailout bill (Washington Post - House Approves $700B Financial Rescue Package):

In a dramatic reversal, the House today approved by a comfortable margin a $700 billion financial rescue package that will bring the greatest intervention of the federal government into the private marketplace since the Great Depression, attempting to prevent the economy from sliding into a deep recession. Just four days after the bill's initial demise sparked a free fall on Wall Street, the House approved the legislation 263-171. At 1:23 p.m., the measure cleared a majority of votes, and the chamber broke out in applause.

With the House approval following the Senate passage President Bush then signed the bill into law. We are now in the post-credit crisis era, but what now? Here is a very balanced report from BBC News about the role of the U.S. in the post-credit crisis world. From the headline you may think it's all negative, and to be sure, they do paint a somber picture of a U.S. stretched to the limit, both militarily and financially, but they also close with a note of optimism about the resiliency of the U.S. economic system. Let's hope they are right.