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Obama's Holiday Surprise for Cuba
by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700
Copyright
December 17 2014
All Rights Reserved.
Recognizing the
treacherous path on Capitol Hill to get anything done when the Senate goes
Republican Jan. 1, President Barack Obama surprised both parties announcing an
easing of trade relations with Cuban.
U.S. officials broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba when U.S.-backed
dictator Fulgencio Batista was overthrown
Jan. 1, 1959 by Fidel Castro and his band of communist revolutionaries
led by Argentine Che Guevara.
Castro came to power at the height of the Cold War with many U.S.
politicians—and especially Cuban exiles—paranoid, rightfully, about Russian
infiltration into the Western Hemisphere.
Just like today’s revolution in Ukraine, it wasn’t clear all the forces
at play, drawing the same reaction in Moscow to Kiev as Washington had to Havana
in 1959. Anti-communist frenzies
led by Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-Wis.), drove Cuba into Russia’s hands.
Obama’s move to relax relations with Cuba after a prisoner swap that won
the release of imprisoned U.S. citizen Alan Gross caused gyrations in the
Cuban-exile community. “I would
love for there to be normal relations with Cuba, but for that to happen, Cuba
has to be normal, and it’s not. It
is a brutal dictatorship,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl.), reciting the same old
platitudes that have kept a U.S. embargo in place since 1959. Had Castro not aligned himself with Moscow and spewed such egregious communist rhetoric,
the embargo would have ended years ago.
Most historians see the U.S. embargo as driving Havana into the Kremlin’s
orbit. Desperate for cash and a
reliable trading partner, Cuban exploited Moscow—and the Cold War—to get what it
needed in the way of goods, services and resources. If the U.S. followed Rubio’s logic,
it would have to break off diplomatic ties with China.
Instead of admitting that resuming trade relations was in Cuba and the
U.S. interests, Rubio continues the Cold War rhetoric that has become all to
familiar on Capitol Hill. “Now
dictatorships know that if they take an American, they may be able to get
unilateral policy concessions,” said Rubio, outraged by Obama’s move to finally
resume trade relations. Whatever
Obama discussed with Cuban President Raul Castro at Nelson Madela’s funeral in
South Africa’s Eastern Cape Dec. 15, 2013, it was apparently enough to open
doors a year later. Calling
restoring relations “terrible for the Cuban people,” Rubio doesn’t see how the
55-year-old embargo harms ordinary Cubans and drives the Havana into the
Kremlin’s hands. When you look at
today’s move to normalize relations, it undermines Russian President Vladimir
Putin’s effort to intrude in the Western Hemisphere.
Cuba’s South Florida-based exile
community still harbors grudges for evictions and property losses in the early
1960s. No one can dispute Castro’s
brutal repression and paranoia, leading to one of Latin America’s most
totalitarian regimes. “Five years
from now, Cuba will be a dictatorship—but a more profitable one,” said Rubio not
seeing that opening up trade relations is the first step on a long journey back
to free market reforms—and all that goes with that. Calling Obama the “worst negotiator,” Rubio can’t admit that Obama’s done what no other
president has done in 55 years.
Blinded by his own anti-Castro bias, Rubio can’t see it’s a brilliant
geopolitical move designed further isolate Putin’s Stalinist state. “He’ll give up everything in
exchange for nothing,” insisted Rubio, not seeing the geopolitical linkage,
enabling the U.S. to neutralize Moscow’s influence in the Caribbean.
Without much to celebrate, Obama made much fanfare over his announcement
to resume trade relations with Cuba.
“Today America chooses to cut loose the shackles of the past, so as to
reach for a better future of the Cuban people, for the American people, for our
entire hemisphere and for the world,” Obama said, relaxing some travel and trade
restrictions. Ending the full
embargo must be backed by an act of Congress.
“I look forward to engaging Congress in an honest and serious debate
about lifting the embargo,” said Obama, not spelling out the geopolitical
importance of undermining Cuba’s trade with Moscow. Unlike his brother Fidel, Raul,
lacks the same ideological fervor and would welcome bilateral trade with the
U.S. Rubio’s attitude of changing
the Cuban state is precisely why Castro resisted normalizing relations with the
U.S., no matter what the costs to ordinary Cubans.
Obama’s move sets up a lively debate in Congress, walking a fine
political line—like executive action on immigration reform—about old school
thinking vs. the new reality of geopolitical linkage. If Obama can sell his move with Cuba
as a way of leveraging back U.S. control in the Western Hemisphere, then
skeptical Republicans and Democrats might come around. Calling Obama’s move “another in a
long line of mindless concessions to a dictatorship that brutalizes its people
and schemes with our enemies,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) played
politics as usual. Rubio, Boehner
and others in the anti-Castro camp haven’t acknowledged the benefits of a
geopolitical paradigm shift. When
you take politics out, engaging Cuba is a perfect way to further alienate Putin,
whose bullying tactics has nearly led to another Cuban Missile Crisis-like
crisis in Ukraine.
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