By Daniel P. Erikson
Focal Point, Vol. 8, Issue 1, February 1, 2009
When Barack Obama won the White House last November, he pledged to focus on the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that continue to dominate the U.S. foreign policy agenda. But the peculiar results of his election have also positioned him to quickly end a third war that has been smoldering in the Straits of Florida for nearly a half a century: the long cold war between the U.S. and Cuba.
Cuba has been a nettlesome issue for American presidents ever since a 32-year-old Fidel Castro seized power there during the Cuban Revolution of 1959. The administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower looked askance at Castro’s early moves to expropriate American properties. John F. Kennedy was genuinely horrified by Cuba’s open embrace of the Soviet Union, which culminated with the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. The U.S. then imposed a comprehensive economic embargo on Cuba that endures to this day, as Fidel Castro outwitted and outlasted ten U.S. presidents, brushing aside assassination attempts and ever-tighter economic sanctions as he held fast to his grip on power.
But even Fidel Castro could not escape the ravages of time. In July 2006, at the age of 79, he was struck by a devastating stomach illness that forced him to relinquish most of his duties to his younger brother and heir apparent, Raúl Castro. That transfer of power became permanent last February, when Fidel formally ceded the presidency after 49 years in power, and was replaced by Raúl, who began to implement a series of economic changes. Raúl’s early decisions to legalize consumer goods such as cellular phones and DVD players and boost worker pay were warmly embraced by most Cubans, even as feisty Fidel inveighed against “concessions to the enemy ideology.” No one should be fooled into believing that Raúl’s agenda includes democratic reform, but a China-style economic opening is no longer unthinkable, and the mere prospect of any meaningful change after 50 years of stagnation has sent a wave of energy through the island’s restless youth that is hungry to embrace the globalized world of the 21st century. This is a “revolution of expectations” that has far-reaching potential to reshape Cuban politics and society in ways that favor U.S. interests in a more politically free and economically vibrant Cuba. It is a revolution that American engagement could do a great deal to further.
Indeed, the original foreign policy rationale for maintaining the Cuban embargo —the desire to contain communism in the Western Hemisphere— vanished long ago with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The U.S., in one of many lost opportunities, decided against reaching out to Havana with assistance and instead sought to tighten the screws on Cuba even further, with the passage of the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act and the 1996 Helms-Burton Act. Of course, as virtually everyone who has had passing contact with the issue knows, Cuba by then had ceased to become a foreign policy concern of any importance, and U.S. actions were almost wholly driven by the need to appeal to anti-
Castro Cuban exiles in the all-important swing state of Florida in order to win its 27 electoral votes. But that, too, is changing. In the 2000 election, Cuban-Americans were still fuming over the Clinton administration’s decision to return six-year old Elián González to his father in Cuba, against the wishes of Miami’s exile leadership. As a result, outraged Cuban exiles abandoned Al Gore at the polls and voted 80 per cent for George W. Bush, which helped to deliver his 537-vote margin of victory in Florida despite his defeat in the national popular vote. Bush repeated the trick in 2004 by authorizing new travel sanctions on Cuba to help win support in Florida, but his decision also alienated many Cuban Americans with family on the island.
In 2008, by contrast, Barack Obama vowed to allow greater Cuban American travel to Cuba and engage in a dialogue with the Cuban government, and he won about 35 per cent of the Cuban American vote, a slightly larger share than his Democratic predecessors. But Obama handily won 51 per cent of the state’s voters based on the strength of his appeal among other demographics, and in any event Florida’s 27 electoral votes were not crucial to his convincing 365-173 win over Senator John McCain. In short, Obama has tremendous political scope to act on Cuba policy if he so chooses.
Still, Obama’s campaign statements indicate an incremental approach, especially regarding the absurdly unsuccessful U.S. embargo, which he vowed to maintain when delivering his major Latin America policy speech before a group of influential Cuban-Americans in May 2008. There is little question that the three anti-Castro Cuban-American legislators recently re-elected to represent South Florida —Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen— will work overtime to make sure he keeps this pledge. Indeed, it is far from clear that the strong Democratic majorities in the 111th Congress will herald much change on Cuba policy, especially since the Cuban American lobbies that favor the embargo actively gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to both Republican and Democratic congressional candidates during the last election cycle.
If Obama fulfills his pledge to drop travel restrictions on Cuban Americans and initiate “direct diplomacy without preconditions” with Cuba, then this alone would be a radical break from the policies of the Bush administration.
President Obama reached the White House through a shrewd campaign strategy, rousing oratory, and his ability to tap into the hunger for change in the American electorate. His triumph represents the first real window of opportunity to fundamentally realign U.S.-Cuban relations to come along since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. An early move in this direction would undoubtedly please virtually all of America’s allies, including Canada, which joined the 185 countries that condemned the embargo in a UN vote last October. The United States and Cuba have been locked in a cycle of hostility and retribution for more than a half-century, but Obama may yet prove to be the leader with the vision and skill to finally bring an end to the Cuba wars.
Daniel P. Erikson is senior associate for U.S. policy at the Inter-American Dialogue and author of The Cuba Wars: Fidel Castro, the United States, and the Next Revolution (Bloomsbury Press, 2008).
Focal Point, Vol. 8, Issue 1, February 1, 2009
When Barack Obama won the White House last November, he pledged to focus on the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that continue to dominate the U.S. foreign policy agenda. But the peculiar results of his election have also positioned him to quickly end a third war that has been smoldering in the Straits of Florida for nearly a half a century: the long cold war between the U.S. and Cuba.Cuba has been a nettlesome issue for American presidents ever since a 32-year-old Fidel Castro seized power there during the Cuban Revolution of 1959. The administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower looked askance at Castro’s early moves to expropriate American properties. John F. Kennedy was genuinely horrified by Cuba’s open embrace of the Soviet Union, which culminated with the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. The U.S. then imposed a comprehensive economic embargo on Cuba that endures to this day, as Fidel Castro outwitted and outlasted ten U.S. presidents, brushing aside assassination attempts and ever-tighter economic sanctions as he held fast to his grip on power.
But even Fidel Castro could not escape the ravages of time. In July 2006, at the age of 79, he was struck by a devastating stomach illness that forced him to relinquish most of his duties to his younger brother and heir apparent, Raúl Castro. That transfer of power became permanent last February, when Fidel formally ceded the presidency after 49 years in power, and was replaced by Raúl, who began to implement a series of economic changes. Raúl’s early decisions to legalize consumer goods such as cellular phones and DVD players and boost worker pay were warmly embraced by most Cubans, even as feisty Fidel inveighed against “concessions to the enemy ideology.” No one should be fooled into believing that Raúl’s agenda includes democratic reform, but a China-style economic opening is no longer unthinkable, and the mere prospect of any meaningful change after 50 years of stagnation has sent a wave of energy through the island’s restless youth that is hungry to embrace the globalized world of the 21st century. This is a “revolution of expectations” that has far-reaching potential to reshape Cuban politics and society in ways that favor U.S. interests in a more politically free and economically vibrant Cuba. It is a revolution that American engagement could do a great deal to further.Indeed, the original foreign policy rationale for maintaining the Cuban embargo —the desire to contain communism in the Western Hemisphere— vanished long ago with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The U.S., in one of many lost opportunities, decided against reaching out to Havana with assistance and instead sought to tighten the screws on Cuba even further, with the passage of the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act and the 1996 Helms-Burton Act. Of course, as virtually everyone who has had passing contact with the issue knows, Cuba by then had ceased to become a foreign policy concern of any importance, and U.S. actions were almost wholly driven by the need to appeal to anti-
Castro Cuban exiles in the all-important swing state of Florida in order to win its 27 electoral votes. But that, too, is changing. In the 2000 election, Cuban-Americans were still fuming over the Clinton administration’s decision to return six-year old Elián González to his father in Cuba, against the wishes of Miami’s exile leadership. As a result, outraged Cuban exiles abandoned Al Gore at the polls and voted 80 per cent for George W. Bush, which helped to deliver his 537-vote margin of victory in Florida despite his defeat in the national popular vote. Bush repeated the trick in 2004 by authorizing new travel sanctions on Cuba to help win support in Florida, but his decision also alienated many Cuban Americans with family on the island.
In 2008, by contrast, Barack Obama vowed to allow greater Cuban American travel to Cuba and engage in a dialogue with the Cuban government, and he won about 35 per cent of the Cuban American vote, a slightly larger share than his Democratic predecessors. But Obama handily won 51 per cent of the state’s voters based on the strength of his appeal among other demographics, and in any event Florida’s 27 electoral votes were not crucial to his convincing 365-173 win over Senator John McCain. In short, Obama has tremendous political scope to act on Cuba policy if he so chooses.Still, Obama’s campaign statements indicate an incremental approach, especially regarding the absurdly unsuccessful U.S. embargo, which he vowed to maintain when delivering his major Latin America policy speech before a group of influential Cuban-Americans in May 2008. There is little question that the three anti-Castro Cuban-American legislators recently re-elected to represent South Florida —Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen— will work overtime to make sure he keeps this pledge. Indeed, it is far from clear that the strong Democratic majorities in the 111th Congress will herald much change on Cuba policy, especially since the Cuban American lobbies that favor the embargo actively gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to both Republican and Democratic congressional candidates during the last election cycle.
If Obama fulfills his pledge to drop travel restrictions on Cuban Americans and initiate “direct diplomacy without preconditions” with Cuba, then this alone would be a radical break from the policies of the Bush administration.
President Obama reached the White House through a shrewd campaign strategy, rousing oratory, and his ability to tap into the hunger for change in the American electorate. His triumph represents the first real window of opportunity to fundamentally realign U.S.-Cuban relations to come along since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. An early move in this direction would undoubtedly please virtually all of America’s allies, including Canada, which joined the 185 countries that condemned the embargo in a UN vote last October. The United States and Cuba have been locked in a cycle of hostility and retribution for more than a half-century, but Obama may yet prove to be the leader with the vision and skill to finally bring an end to the Cuba wars.
Daniel P. Erikson is senior associate for U.S. policy at the Inter-American Dialogue and author of The Cuba Wars: Fidel Castro, the United States, and the Next Revolution (Bloomsbury Press, 2008).
Otro que dice lo obvio. Seguiremos esperando.
ResponderEliminarOtro que dice lo obvio. Seguiremos esperando.
ResponderEliminary mientras tanto bob menendez de aliado de mel martinez para que no pase la ley del presupuesto que incluye unas babosadas sobre cuba, dos de las cuales obama las puede resolver con un plumazo porque son decretos, no ley, como son las restricciones de viajes y remesas. entonces el otro incoloro de bill nelson, que necesita los votos cubanos para re-elegirse se viste de payaso y se une al circo. y no se da cuenta que ya los cubanos votaron contra él la última vez y van a volver a votar en su contra cuando le toque la re-elección. entonces ahora están diciéndole a obama que en vez de a través de una ley, que agarre el bolígrafo y mande al carajo los decretos de bush, y se acabó: ganó la libertad de cuba.
ResponderEliminarhoy menendez hablaba de derechos humanos en cuba, pero la periodista de univison lourdes meluzá, como buena militante anti-castrista no le preguntó por que contra cuba si, y contra china, libia, viet-nam, los paises árabes, etc nada de nada en ese tópico.
circo, puro circo.
lg rodriguez
Este descendiente de vikingo de donde salio? Nada nuevo, Y Lg con la misma boberia que si China , Vietnam, etc., al menos estos que menciona Lg son mas utiles a los EEE.UU. que la dinastia Castrada, digo, Castrista.
ResponderEliminarpor lo que te darás cuenta 21:34:00de que todo es una hipocrecia y oportunismo.
ResponderEliminarlg rodriguez