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With sharp right turns across Europe and Hezbollah safely losing in Lebanon, it surprises little that world news headlines only briefly blinked with two momentous events involving formerly vehement anti-communist faction now seeking them out. Below the surface, what China cementing economic ties with Japan and the Organization of American States welcoming Cuba means for now and the future may be very different than what appears to be the case on the surface.
Japan and China, the world's second and third biggest economies respectively, formally agreed to 
combine their might to fight the current economic crisis at their second "High-Level Economic Dialogue," over the weekend. The two countries are a strange mixture of partners in manufacturing and competitors for markets and resources. But what is stranger still is that in the name of the economy they both seem eager to forget their severely strained historical ties going back a century, and look towards a future in which the US apparently has no part, if this summit is an indication. With Communist China shifting to a domestic consumption society and Japan being the exporter par excellence, this may be a match made in economic heaven, though with other countries standing outside the gates.
The Organization of American States (OAS), a bloc set up specifically to counter the proliferation of Communism during the Cold War, reopened its doors to Cuba late last week. Unlike The China-Japan reconciliation, this one seems much more symbolic than pragmatic or strategic, excluding the US' possible ulterior motives such as obviating domestic opposition to direct communist reconciliation. The invitee, no worse off than it has been for the past half-century, may thus have found no reason to change the status quo in rebuffing the offer, hopefully not burning bridges in the process. With the hemisphere concerned with a pending post-Castro situation, Castro is being provocatively nonchalant.
The one reconciliation, between China and Japan, presents itself like a rescue mission for the world now and to come, but may really be the first step in a bilateral global domination. That the second reconciliation, between the US-backed OAS and Cuba, has already failed presents itself like a vindication of those who see nostalgic, symbolic gestures as inherently empty, but are too short-sighted to see their deeper import today and tomorrow. These two current events point to a third that cannot be ignored, North Korea: these Communist reconciliations may be creative dress rehearsals for a near-future encounter with that new nuclear force.
