http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/18/world/americas/cuba-off-the-blacklist-leaves-only-north-korea.html 2014-12-17 23:46:38 Taking Cuba Off the Blacklist Leaves Only North Korea as Cold War Vestige Political historians said the steps announced on Wednesday were akin to the steps taken to normalize relations with China and Vietnam. === The normalization of diplomatic relations with “If we normalize relations with Cuba, it cuts our Cold War vestige list in half,” said Cliff Kupchan, an analyst at the Eurasia Group, a political-risk research and consulting firm in Washington. Political historians said Both of those countries, still run by nominally communist governments that have remained part of the post-World War II geopolitical landscape, now have extensive and deeply rooted relations and friendly connections with the United States. Although Cuba is far smaller than China or Vietnam, the prospect of an improvement of ties with the United States could have profound implications for better United States relations throughout Latin America, a goal that President Obama first pledged to reach more than five years ago. “What this has the potential to do is restore a tone in U.S.-Latin American relations that might bring us back to the hopeful moment in the spring of 2009, when President Obama expressed a commitment to Latin American countries to open a new chapter in relations with the region,” said Eric Hershberg, director of the American University Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, who was visiting Havana when the normalization steps were announced. North Korea, a The American policy of ostracizing countries considered hostile has not been limited to communist governments. The most prominent example is Iran, which has been subjected to an increased array of American sanctions that followed the Islamic revolution of 1979 and the American hostage crisis in Tehran that came after it. The United States broke diplomatic relations with Iran during the A designation on the The prospects for any improvement in relations with Iran remain uncertain, despite some optimism that negotiations on that Syria, an ally of Iran’s, which has been listed as a state sponsor of terrorism since 1979, has been subjected to tightened American sanctions because of the nearly four-year-old civil war there. Although diplomatic relations have not been severed, the United States Embassy in Damascus suspended operations in 2012 and Mr. Obama has called for President Bashar al-Assad to step down. Additional sanctions against Syria, coincidentally, were The other large noncommunist country considered a pariah state, in the American government’s view, is Sudan, the vast African nation run by President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who has been indicted on a charge of genocide and other crimes at the International Criminal Court because of mass killings and atrocities in the Darfur region. The United States first put Sudan on the state sponsor of terrorism list in 1993, and imposed further sanctions in 1997 over what the Americans said were Sudanese efforts to destabilize neighboring countries. Additional sanctions were imposed in 2007 in response to what the The United States and Sudan still maintain diplomatic relations. But the American Embassy in Khartoum does not have an ambassador. Diplomatic relations with Myanmar