Shaking hands with 84-year-old Cuban President Raul Castro at the Revolutionary Palace, 53-year-old President Barack Obama beat back his critics and opened trade relations with Cuba since the formal embargo was signed into law Oct. 19, 1960 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower was compelled to act when Fidel Castro, Ernesto Che Guevara and his 26th of July movement of communist revolutionaries toppled U.S.-backed Cuban President Fulgencio Batista Jan. 1, 1959. Since toppling Batista, Castro endured assassination and counter-revolution attempts by the CIA, including President John F. Kennedy’s failed April 17, 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. Opening up Cuba was much like the Oct. 1, 1949 Maoist Revolution that drove U.S.-backed Chaing Kai-shek his Nationalist Party and 1.5 million followers from mainland China to the Island of Formosa [Taiwan].
Without spilling a drop of blood, Obama cemented trade relations with Cuba against vociferous opposition, especially GOP presidential candidates like part-Cuban Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). “On Sunday, President Barack Obama, a retinue of celebrities in tow, is expected to arrive in the Cuban capital to hang out with Raul Castro and his henchmen, all of whom will be breathlessly documented by the media mavens along for the ride,” Cruz wrote in Politico. Cruz often raises continued human rights abuses in Cuba as the excuse to stop trade relations. When former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger met secretly with China’s Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai in July and Oct. 1971, it paved the way for President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to Beijing Feb. 21, 1972, opening trade relations with China without preconditions.
If you listen to Cruz and former GOP candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl.), both highly critical of Obama’s visit to Havana, you’d think that Obama was doing something outrageous or unprecedented dealing with a repressive regime. U.S. presidents often try to keep the communication and trade lines open with sovereign states that don’t necessarily share U.S. values. “That freedom can come to Cuba and I pledge to work to make it so. But I cannot happen by enriching and empowering the dictatorship, while they export terrorism throughout Latin America,” Cruz wrote in Politico. Obama doesn’t have the authority to formally end the Cuban trade embargo. He’s made the overture to Cuba, not because Cuba’s resolved its human rights abuse but because the status quo hurts the U.S. and Cuba. Following in the tradition of Nixon, Obama’s part of opening up some closed doors.
If Kissinger and Nixon went to China lecturing Mao about U.S. values and China’s human rights abuses, doors would have stayed closed. Regardless of the over $500 billion trade deficit with China, expanded trade relations have helped both countries. While there’s little hope for comparable entrepreneurship in Cuba, there’s a possibility of helping the U.S. and Cuban economies. “Wow, President Obama just landed in Cuba, a big deal, and Raul Castro wasn’t even there to greet him,” said Trump. “He greeted the Pope and others. No respect,” commenting about the sad state of U.S.-foreign relations. Obama didn’t care whether Raul showed up on the tarmac, only that the two agreed to improve bilateral relations. With the GOP-led Congress giving little to Obama, it made perfect sense for him to cement his foreign policy legacy of opening doors with Cuba.
Getting video from Cuba showed a country frozen-in-time from the early 1960s when diplomatic ties were severed by the Eisenhower administration. Looking at those still maintained old U.S. cars from the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s shows the kind of isolation created by Castro’s dictatorship. Cruz and other politicians have every right to object to Cuba’s ongoing human rights abuses or, for that matter, past criminal acts against legitimate Cuban families and businesses. No one denies Cuba’s current state of affairs, certainly not Obama. When Kissinger and Nixon opened doors in China in 1972, they knew change would come slowly. China continues to have a horrific human rights track record, including its unthinkable June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre against pro-Democracy demonstrators. Watching Chinese tanks roll over protesters spoke volumes about China’s human rights record.
Obama made the best use of his lame duck status, getting little chance from Congress to get anything done, including approving a replacement for the late Associate Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia who died Feb. 13, 2016. Obama’s Cuban critics don’t have history on their side. Nixon paved the way building bridges in China even when it didn’t meet the U.S. standards for human rights. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Obama is “moving relations between our two countries into a new era .” “This is an approach that is long overdue. I continue to stand by his calls for Congress to full lift the failed embargo,” said Sanders, encouraging Congress to end the embargo. With only nine months left in office, Obama chose to follow the American tradition of opening doors. Whether or not democracy returns to Cuba is no reason not to try.
