The Dumbest Policy Bush's new Cuba Policy Combines Ideology with Narrow Political Short-termism
Published on Monday, May 17, 2004 by The Nation
by Katrina vanden Heuvel
As if the military, political, and moral fallout from George Bush's regime change in Iraq isn't enough, the White House has now announced its intentions "to bring an end" to the Castro government in Cuba.
Last week's release of a 500-page report of the Presidential "Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba"-appointed by a year ago under a barrage of pressure from Cuban-American hardliners in the politically pivotal sub-state of Miami-marks a new escalation in the 45-year effort to roll back the Cuban revolution.
Peter Kornbluh, a regular contributor to The Nation who follows Cuba policy at the non-profit National Security Archive, compares Bush's new initiative to "an Operation Mongoose without the CIA covert sabotage and assassination efforts." The Commission, he notes, is adopting what the report describes as "a more proactive, integrated and disciplined approach to undermine the survival strategies of the Castro regime."
The Commission's recommendations, which Bush has adopted, add $45 million dollars to the budget for "hastening change" in Cuba. Among the new operations: a Pentagon- inspired plan to send a C-130 plane on a mission to circle Cuba and beam the signals of TV and Radio Marti onto the island; a major expansion of propaganda operations to discredit and isolate Castro, i.e. spreading the specious and threatening charge that Cuba has the capacity to make biological weapons; escalating the political operations of the US interest section on the island; and further efforts to squeeze Cuba economically by curtailing the ability of US citizens, including Cuban- Americans, to travel to, and spend money on, the island.
That last component not only violates the rights of US citizens--last year both the House and the Senate voted to lift the ban on free travel to Cuba, only to have Bush's Congressional allies, Bill Frist and Dennis Hastert, strip the legislation of that clause in committee--but hurts the very families in Miami whose votes Bush hopes to win in 2004. Under Bush's punitive rules, Cuban-Americans will only be able visit their relatives once every three years, instead of once a year, as is the case under the already draconian travel policies.
The new Bush policy means that Cuban-Americans will be prevented from seeing elderly parents still on the island for interminable periods of time and that relatives in Cuba will have to go without the emotional, financial and material support these already limited visits bring.
According to Silvia Wilhelm, who runs Puentes Cubanos, a non-profit group in Miami promoting exchanges with Cuba, these measures will only hurt ordinary Cubans, not the Castro government. "It will determine, in some cases, the people who will survive or perish," she says. "In the name of democracy, I might add." Even Cuba's leading dissidents--including Oswaldo Paya and Elizardo Sanchez, two of the island's best-known democracy activists, have rejected Bush's initiative. Paya has said that it is up to the Cubans, not the US, to design a post-Castro transition.
The Administration's new initiative, according to a recent editorial in the Financial Times, "combines ideology with the narrowest political short- termism." And, as is the case in every electoral cycle, it immediately transforms Cuba into a game of political kickball. John Kerry, who also wants votes in Miami, supports continuing the embargo, but favors lifting the restrictions on travel as a less threatening and more promising approach to bringing US influence to bear on an eventual post-Castro transition of power.
With brother Jeb in the background, Bush is taking the low road. For now his new Cuba policy will be associated with Secretary of State Colin Powell who chaired the Commission. But this just gives more weight to Powell's chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson, who seems to understand the folly of Washington's approach. In an interview in next month's GQ Magazine, he describes the embargo and efforts to isolate Castro as "the dumbest policy on the face of the earth. Its crazy," he said. We couldn't agree more.
The document also sets out in considerable detail the ways in which the US should implement this strategy and by extension the ways in which US companies might eventually control virtually every key aspect of the Cuban economy.
As the United States ratchets up confrontation so that Cuba’s future or it seems that of any other hemispheric nation, be changed to suit US thinking so has the United States begun to confront her own citizens so that their thought processes will be adapted to suit US thinking starting with the innocuous “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”
-Am
28 May 2004
David Jessop
For much of the past few weeks the attention of the world has been focused on the ever-darkening clouds over Iraq. This has largely obscured news that the US administration has decided to further increase its pressure on Cuba.
On May 20 the US President, George Bush, announced new measures aimed at trying to tighten the 44 year old US trade embargo with the aim of forcing ‘rapid and peaceful change’ in Cuba.
The ‘Initiative for a New Cuba’ seeks to have the US determine the basis on which Cuba undertakes political and economic reform, conducts elections, opens its economy and ends political discrimination. In return for Cuba adopting US policy, President Bush suggested that the US will ease its ban on trade and travel between the United States and Cuba.
There can be few other US policy failures so long lived as that relating to Cuba. Nevertheless and despite the obvious lack of success, US administrations, concerned about political funding and votes in South Florida and New Jersey, have continued to pursue an approach that has been widely discredited. Unfortunately, the pressure of US domestic politics is now driving not only US policy towards Cuba, but is causing all international dialogue with Havana to be skewed. As a consequence exchanges on vital issues such as human rights, development assistance, freedom of travel, security co-operation, investment and trade have all become politicised and differences where they exist, more difficult to resolve.
Today, US policy towards Cuba seems to have been ceded to a small group of ultra- conservative Cuban-Americans who now occupy senior positions within the National Security Council and key departments of the US Administration. These individuals, many of whom are responsible also for US policy towards the Caribbean and Latin America, believe that only though the steady ratcheting up of confrontation can Cuba’s future, or it seems that of any other hemispheric nation, be changed to suit US thinking.
To understand what is now envisaged for Cuba and the future role that the US sees for itself there, one only has to look at the recommendations put forward by the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba. This body was mandated by President Bush to identify the means by which the Cuban people can ‘bring about an expeditious end to the Castro dictatorship’.
It is this document that has now been endorsed as policy. It suggests ways to empower politically Cuban civil society; extend the flow of information within Cuba; deny financial and energy resources to the Cuban Government; develop an international propaganda campaign against Cuba; find new ways to encourage other nations and international organisations to challenge Cuba; and ensure that the present system is not continued after the death of President Castro. The document also sets out in considerable detail the ways in which the US should implement this strategy and by extension the ways in which US companies might eventually control virtually every key aspect of the Cuban economy.
Cuba is no more a paradise than many other countries. It is a Communist society and as such is very different in organisation and control, but not in culture from the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean. Despite this it is nowhere near as monolithic as many outside imagine. Its views are nuanced and frequently led by nationalism. There is strong internal debate albeit within a single Party and it is flexible on everything but the key matters of political principle on which it will not compromise. It has provided extensive social rights for its people and can speak on many international issues with a moral authority that is lacking in much of the developed world. This is why so many developing nations continue to respect its government.
However, its record on some internal issues including dissent remains questionable. The arrest and trial of dissidents over the last year have caused rifts with many nations including the EU. On May 13 Europe again censured Cuba for human rights abuses relating to then trial and detention of human rights activists and journalists ‘arrested while peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression, opinion, association and assembly’, principles that the EU said it strongly defends.
For its part Cuba argues that some of these dissidents were being paid by the US to ferment dissent with the objective of provoking turmoil. Cuban officials suggest the US intent was to bring about a refugee crisis, a situation that would result in a US naval blockade. The resulting heightened military profile that Cuba would have then had to adopt would they believe have led to a subsequent US military response, retaliation and the possibility of war. For this reason they suggest the present Cuban policy on dissidents is driven by strategic concerns, national security and the dangers of instability around the time of a US Presidential election.
In the past few days, the new US policy began to be implemented. In what appears to be an attempt to weaken growing Caribbean interest in trade and investment with Cuba while sending a warning to Jamaica over other issues, Washington notified the Jamaican resorts group SuperClubs that it intended enforcing the US Helms Burton legislation in respect of their tourism investments in Cuba. The decision suggests that the US Administration may be choosing to send a chill though nations such as those in the Caribbean with the possible objective, as with Europe of eventually striking deals that will lead to a more critical political stance on Cuba.
Such a policy is alienating to nations that should be friends. Moreover, such threats or promises of deals will not affect China that has now deepened its relationship with Cuba to levels close to those once enjoyed with the former Soviet Union. Russia too has begun to look at a closer relationship with Havana.
The present United States Administration seems driven by a fundamentalist belief that if it policies and culture are right for its own people they are by extension appropriate for adoption by everyone else in the world.
Despite what it now being proposed for Cuba a moment will come when generations younger than those who changed its history will be able to choose their own leaders and the ways in which they want to move forward. Until then the best way to ensure stability is to increase contact and dialogue through business, tourism and culture.
David Jessop is the Director of the Caribbean Council and can be contacted at david.jessop@caribbean-coucnil.org May 28th, 2004
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