The hostile U.S. policy, euphemistically known as “regime change,” has been thwarted. The Cuban Communist Party is confidently in power. The Castros have navigated through all the challenges of the years. In Latin America and the United Nations, Cuba is accepted, and the United States is isolated.
It is quite legitimate for American progressives to criticize various flaws and failures of the Cuban Revolution. But the media and the right are overflowing with such commentary. Only the left can recall, narrate and applaud the long resistance of tiny Cuba to the northern Goliath.
For those actually supportive of participatory democracy in Cuba, as opposed to those who support regime change by secret programs, the way to greater openness on the island lies in a relaxation of the external threat.
Despite the U.S. embargo and relentless U.S. subversion, Cuba remains in the upper tier of the United Nations Human Development Index because of its educational and healthcare achievements. Cuba even leads the international community in the dispatch of medical workers to fight Ebola. Cuba is celebrated globally because of its military contribution to the defeat of colonialism and apartheid in Angola and southern Africa. Now a new generation of Cuban leaders who fought in Angola is coming to power in the Havana and its diplomatic corps. For example, Rodolfo Reyes Rodríguez, Cuba’s representative to the United Nations, today walks on an artificial limb as a result of his combat in Angola. …
Because of the anti-Cuban slant of mainstream thinking, the media will make much of the anger of the Cuban right exemplified by Sen. Marco Rubio. But while it’s too early to know, it’s hard to imagine his presidential ambitions being enhanced by arguing in 2016 that Obama should have tried to overthrow the Castros.
And here’s a prediction: if the president has his wish, the Obama family will be seen on the streets of Havana before his term is up.
FROM THE RIGHT: Rich Lowry, in the National Review.
Candidate Barack Obama said that, as president, he would talk to anti-American dictators without precondition. He didn’t mention that he would also give them historic policy concessions without precondition.
His surprise unilateral change in the U.S. posture toward the Castro dictatorship came without even the pretense of serious promises by the Cubans to reform their kleptocratic, totalitarian rule.
The trade of Alan Gross, the American aid worker jailed in Cuba for the offense of trying to help Jewish Cubans get on the Internet, for three Cuban spies is understandable (we also got back one of our spies, and Cuba released several dozen political prisoners as a sweetener).
The rest of Obama’s sweeping revisions — diplomatic relations and the loosening of every economic sanction he can plausibly change on his own — are freely granted, no questions asked. It is quid with no pro quo.
After waiting out 10 other U.S. presidents, the Castro regime finally hit the jackpot in Obama, whose beliefs about our Cuba policy probably don’t differ much from those of the average black-turtleneck-clad graduate student in Latin American studies.
Every dictator around the world must be waiting anxiously for a call or a postcard from Obama. The leader of the free world comes bearing gifts and understanding. He is willing to overlook human-rights abuses. And his idea of burnishing his legacy is to clinch deals with his country’s enemies.
Who helped negotiate the one with Cuba? Harry Truman had Dean Acheson. Richard Nixon had Henry Kissinger. Barack Obama has Ben Rhodes, the deputy national-security adviser who has what it takes to collapse U.S. policy toward Cuba and get nothing in return. …
FROM THE LEFT: Jonathan Capehart, in the Washington Post.
“I never bought this lame duck deal. I just didn’t. I just think, you know, it’s a mindset,” said former president Bill Clinton at an event last month in Little Rock, Ark., when he was asked what advice he would give President Obama on how to maximize his final two years in office. “It’s a great honor to go to work in the White House and it’s crazy to say you’re a lame duck and waste a single day of that precious time.”
Coupled with his executive action on immigration, Obama’s stunning and historic announcement that the United States would restore diplomatic relations with Cuba is another example of his not wasting a single day of that precious time.
Of course, the president has his critics. You didn’t expect him to upend 50 years of failed doctrine without criticism from “the Cuba Lobby,” did you? Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) was so enraged he even scorched Pope Francis, an integral part of yesterday’s development. And the anger was bipartisan. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) was blunt. “I think it stinks,” said the outgoing chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee and son of Cuban immigrants.
I couldn’t disagree more. Not that I don’t understand whence the opposition emanates. Communism is a failed doctrine which the regime of Fidel and Raul Castro used to oppress the Cuban people for more than 50 years. Thousands of Cubans lost their lives trying to escape to the U.S. on makeshift rafts. But if democracy is ever to triumph over the Castros, it will need the oxygen of freedom.
In this modern age, the free flow of ideas that will come with increased interaction will do more to erode the Castroses’ hold than anything thrown at them over the last half century.
FROM THE RIGHT: Jonathan S. Tobin, in Commentary.
It should be conceded that the American embargo on Cuba, which can only be lifted by Congress and not by presidential fiat, has not been effective in isolating that country or in promoting change there. But even if we recognize that this is true, neither should the U.S. be blamed for the endemic poverty in Cuba. After all, many American businesses have obtained exemptions for conducting commerce there and virtually every other nation on the planet does have trade with Cuba. Poverty in Cuba is caused by Communism and the repression that is inherent in the system that the aging Castro brothers have imposed on this tortured island prison.
The arguments for opening U.S. trade with Cuba revolve around the idea that engagement will undermine the Communist system and the regime. It should also be noted that when you consider that America has intense economic relations with China, the world’s largest tyranny, the insistence on isolating a far smaller one in Cuba doesn’t seem to make sense. Seen from that perspective, President Obama’s decision to end 51 years of diplomatic estrangement and to open up trade with it will probably do little harm and perhaps lead to some good.
But there are two underlying dynamics to the decision that are deeply troubling.
The first is that this rapprochement has been achieved by blackmail by a vicious totalitarian state rather than an honest and open diplomatic process. Though we are supposed to believe that Alan Gross’s freedom was incidental to the agreement, it’s clear that his unjust imprisonment raised the price of the payoff Obama was preparing to hand the Castros in order to achieve what he is claiming as a foreign-policy triumph. This is a clear signal to other tyrannies that Washington can be fleeced if a U.S. hostage can be held for ransom.
Second, while America’s efforts had not led to freedom for Cuba, it’s far from clear that what will follow the president’s decision will actually end the Cuban people’s long Communist ordeal. Here, the China precedent is both instructive and chilling.
Though he paid lip service to the cause of promoting freedom when he spoke today, as with so many of his foreign-policy initiatives, the president’s focus is more on repudiating longstanding American policies than on actually helping anyone in Cuba. We can hope that Cubans will benefit to some extent from this decision but it is doubtful that they will be freer or that their prospects for liberty have been improved.
FROM THE CENTER: Javier Corrales, at Foreign Policy.
Why was Obama able to accomplish what nine other presidents have not? What changed to make this breakthrough possible? Psychologists, political scientists, and historians will debate these questions for years to come. But it is clear right now that a number of crucial shifts in both Cuba and the United States’ domestic politics converged to create this historic opportunity.
From the Cuban side, what seems to have tipped the scales is a confluence of economic insecurity with political security. Economically, the government is panicking. It introduced mild reforms in 2010-2011, such as opening the real estate markets, expanding the areas where self-employment is allowed, and liberalizing foreign investment. But to this day, the impacts of these reforms have been utterly disappointing, producing no major turnaround in Cuba’s chronic economic decline. Despite all the help that Cuba has received from Venezuela and China, the island remains a land of misery.
Paradoxically, Cuba’s economic decline has been accompanied by rising political security for the regime. Although Raúl Castro’s economic reforms have attracted most attention in the media, he has made his biggest inroads in politics. Raúl’s task when he inherited the reins of government in 2006 from his brother Fidel was to “de-Fidelize” Cuba. That meant turning key political institutions — the armed forces and the Communist Party — more pro-Raúl and less pro-Fidel. This entailed making these institutions less drunk with the dogmatic, anti-American, anti-capitalist radicalism that Fidel popularized in Cuba since 1959.
So Raúl today has military and party support, even if the economy he presides over is sinking. This combination of economic desperation and political confidence is the basis for international relations risk-taking.
From the United States, what has changed is the formation of an odd coalition of conservatives and progressives on the Cuba question. Americans are used to the idea that U.S. politics are irremediably polarized, so it might come as a surprise to non-experts that on the question of the Cuban embargo, poles have sort of converged.
Historically, the lobby in favor of lifting the embargo was mostly made up of progressives. But since the 2000s, as the United States began to allow trade with Cuba in some areas, important business groups in the United States became increasingly interested in seeking profits from the island.
At the same time, the Cuban-American lobby, which in the past contained some of the loudest voices speaking out against renewing contact, has split, with a new wing eager to normalize relations. The main drivers are Cubans, themselves: namely those who arrived in the United States more recently and maintain closer ties with friends and family back home. They want greater facilities to travel and to send remittances back to Cuba. The earlier generation of Cuban immigrants, many of whose families left shortly after the Communists took power, wanted to see the island isolated until the government fell. …
This diplomatic breakthrough in U.S.-Cuban relations could not have happened before but it is easy to understand why it happened now. From the point of view of Cuba, the breakthrough was possible due to the unusual situation of a government in economic desperation while simultaneously feeling cocky politically. From the point of view of the United States, the agreement was reached because this is one of those rare issues where polarization has abated. The president has ample support from both the left and the right.
FROM THE LEFT: The Editorial Board of the Guardian.
It is no surprise that Barack Obama is attempting to make use of his final two years in the Oval office to try to polish his legacy, especially in foreign policy. Other U.S. presidents have gone down this road.
And if the president is now ready to act boldly, what other thorny issues might be tackled with a big dose of creative diplomacy? It is tempting to draw a wish list, from the Iran nuclear talks to Syria, to Russia’s relationship with Europe. The paradox of Mr. Obama’s Cuba success is that many of the crises that have led to much criticism of his leadership style now appear, in contrast, even more painfully unresolved.
Yet decisive action is what we have seen on several occasions recently. Liberated from electoral constraints, Mr. Obama has made swift moves on some of the trickiest issues. This is a “lame duck” president who has made use of the powers that the constitution bestows on him to try to find solutions and get things done. There was the unexpected bilateral agreement with China on limiting carbon emissions. There was the executive order on immigration. And now Cuba.
This has been a clear illustration of Mr. Obama’s preferred way of doing things on the world stage. The thaw in relations with Cuba comes as a vindication of his initial policy of the outstretched hand towards hostile regimes or rogue states. It demonstrates that patience and secrecy can bring results – as it took two years of hidden negotiations, and the help of the pope, to get this far. It is also about pragmatism: it made no sense indeed to pursue a U.S. policy of 50 years that has brought none of the desired results. Now the Obama administration will be on a better footing with Latin America, in the runup to the 2015 summit of the Americas.
Can such an approach now be applied to other intractable problems? We know there has been much bilateral contact – some of it secret – between U.S. and Iranian officials. The ongoing nuclear talks are about stopping proliferation but there is also a larger historical ambition at stake. Mr. Obama would certainly like to make history with Iran in much the same way that Richard Nixon did with Mao’s China in the early 1970s.
Creative diplomacy is still much required in the Middle East, where it is hard to see how a dominantly military strategy against Islamic State can in itself, and even over time, bring a solution to the region’s woes.
The wish list could go on, of course. If the U.S. joined the UN convention of the law of the sea it might find it easier to get China to adhere to an agreed set of rules as it pursues its power games in the Asia-Pacific region. Mr. Obama could also do more to make the U.S. part of the international criminal court, giving a major boost to the fight against impunity.
It was one of Mr. Obama’s younger, less experienced advisers on security matters, Ben Rhodes, who did the groundwork on the Cuban deal. There was certainly audacity there. And now there is hope for more.
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