This article examines change and continuity in the United States' recent foreign policy toward Cuba. In the context of the posthegemonic regionalism of the Pink Tide and regional disputes over Cuba's position in the interamerican system, the Obama administration's rapprochement was driven to protect the institutional power and consensual features of U.S. hegemony in the Americas. The Trump administration reversed aspects of Obama's normalization policy, adopting a more coercive approach to Cuba and to Latin America more broadly. Against the emerging scholarly proposition that the international relations of the Americas have crossed a posthegemonic threshold, this analysis utilizes a neo-Gramscian approach to argue that the oscillations in U.S. Cuba policy represent strategic shifts in a broader process of hegemonic reconstitution. The article thus situates U.S. policy toward Cuba in regional structures, institutions, and dynamics.

This commentary details the United States’ progress in advancing climate change law since President Barrack Obama’s re-election in 2012, in spite of congressional dysfunction and opposition. It describes how the Obama administration is building upon earlier regulatory efforts by using existing statutory authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from both new and existing power plants. It also explains the important role the judiciary has played in facilitating more robust executive actions, while at the same time courts have rejected citizen efforts to force judicial remedies for the problem of climate change. Finally, it suggests some reasons why climate change has gained more prominence in the Obama administration’s second term agenda and considers how domestic actions help the United States to reposition itself in international climate diplomacy.