It is a tragedy that, just 90 miles from our shores, there exists a society where such freedom and opportunity are kept out of reach by a government that clings to discredited ideology and authoritarian control. A democratic opening in Cuba is, and should be, the foremost objective of our policy. We need a clear strategy to achieve it -- one that takes some limited steps now to spread the message of freedom on the island, but preserves our ability to bargain on behalf of democracy with a post-Fidel government.So what does that mean in terms of actual policy?
The primary means we have of encouraging positive change in Cuba today is to help the Cuban people become less dependent on the Castro regime in fundamental ways. U.S. policy must be built around empowering the Cuban people, who ultimately hold the destiny of Cuba in their hands. The United States has a critical interest in seeing Cuba join the roster of stable and economically vibrant democracies in the Western Hemisphere. Such a development would bring us important security and economic benefits, and it would allow for new cooperation on migration, counter-narcotics and other issues.
Cuban-American connections to family in Cuba are not only a basic right in humanitarian terms, but also our best tool for helping to foster the beginnings of grass-roots democracy on the island. Accordingly, I will grant Cuban Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send remittances to the island.Here's the policy points I see from this op-ed:
But as we reach out in some ways now, it makes strategic sense to hold on to important inducements we can use in dealing with a post-Fidel government, for it is an unfortunate fact that his departure by no means guarantees the arrival of freedom on the island.
Accordingly, I will use aggressive and principled diplomacy to send an important message: If a post-Fidel government begins opening Cuba to democratic change, the United States (the president working with Congress) is prepared to take steps to normalize relations and ease the embargo that has governed relations between our countries for the last five decades. That message coming from my administration in bilateral talks would be the best means of promoting Cuban freedom. To refuse to do so would substitute posturing for serious policy -- and we have seen too much of that in other areas over the past six years.
1. There is an ultimate goal of encouraging democracy and freedom in Cuba.
2. Unrestricted travel by Cubans visiting their families.
3. Ability to send remittances to families.
4. Bilateral talks between the US and Cuban governments.
5. No immediate change in the embargo, but a likely, gradual easing for a post-Fidel government that moves in the direction of democracy.
6. Obama uses "post-Fidel" instead of "post-Castro". I believe that's intentional and rather significant. While I believe Obama recognizes that Raul is not the solution to Cuba's problems, he is giving Raul space to receive some credit if he works on reforms.
28 comments:
Cuba is our neighbor. It's time and overtime to normalize relations with it. Obama's making an issue of this can help bring about public discussion of our relations with the island. Cuba's the only place on earth where people from the U.S. have to ask permission from the federal government to visit. We can travel to Vietnam, to China, even to Iran and North Korea with out asking permission.
If your mother was your last surviving relative, and she died in Cuba, you'd not be allowed to attend her funeral if she lived and died in Cuba.
My father and his parents lived in Cuba before coming to the United States where he met my mother.
Since retiring from my career as a child protective services social worker, I have been traveling to Cuba as a researcher and journalist. For seven years I've operated A free Yahoo news group which has put out over seventy thousand items from, about or related to Cuba. There's also a searchable database which anyone can access without subscribing.
Thanks for your comments. I really hope we can see some change in U.S. policy toward Cuba.
Walter Lippmann
Los Angeles, California
While I believe Obama recognizes that Raul is not the solution to Cuba's problems, he is giving Raul space to receive some credit if he works on reforms.
A little lesson in basic sovereignty. It's not for U.S. political elites to decide who is the "solution to Cuba's problems."
OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza's reaction to the idea of a U.S. transition coordinator for Cuba summed it up best. "But there is no transition," he said, "and it isn't your country."
I never said it was our country. I agree with Obama:
A democratic opening in Cuba is, and should be, the foremost objective of our policy.... U.S. policy must be built around empowering the Cuban people, who ultimately hold the destiny of Cuba in their hands.
Here's another lesson for Boz (and Obama) about sovereignty, this one from Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim: "Democracy is not imposed. It is born from dialogue."
At least Justin admits that Cuba is not a democracy.
I'm all for dialogue. I support discussions between the US and Cuban governments. I also support the right for the Cuban opposition to speak freely without fear of prison or oppression. I have no disagreement in saying dialogue is important to building democracy.
Boz, you (like most) say you support the US Government "empowering the Cuban people." How exactly should we do that? Should we continue to give millions to US based hardline groups, who blow most of it? Should we give more to disloyal Cubans who are able to quit their jobss, live well, all by bashing the Cuban government? Should we continue sponsoring ominous Plans for Transformation, which detail how we plan to Americanize every one of their institutions once we get our way? Must we continue flying special military planes to broadcast illegal propoganda that reaches very few? What about banning all things made in Cuba, including people who do not see it our way? That surely empowers Cubans...
Meanwhile in the promised land of US Democratic politics, only Richardson and Kucinich came out today backing Obama's very modest proposal to roll back a particularly immoral Bush decree. But no one took the opportunity to trump Obama's move by offering to also drop the idiotic agricultural restrictions, let alone lifting the ban on our basic right to travel to a facinating island 90 miles from our shores. I am sure the Cubans (even "dissidents") thank the US for their empowerment every day.
I really need to read what I write BEFORE I post. I meant to say that only Kucinich and Richardson have previously come out to the left of Obama's position on Cuba. My surprise was that no one took the opportunity today to trump Obama at his own game. It could have been easy to one-up him and share some of the limelight, in what appears to be a politically brillliant - and safe move (ending both the travel and remittance restrictions is popular even in Florida). Pledging to end the restrictions on agricultural sales to Cuba might even gain some red state votes.
I'm all for dialogue. I support discussions between the US and Cuban governments. I also support the right for the Cuban opposition to speak freely without fear of prison or oppression. I have no disagreement in saying dialogue is important to building democracy.
Ah, but predictably, you leave out the "democracy is not imposed" part of Amorim's wisdom.
So you oppose freedom of speech, without fear of prison or oppression for the Cuban people, because that would be "imposing democracy", Justin?
You saw that Obama just got an endorsement from castro's foreign minister? Unfortunately, that's because Obama's naive ideas are exactly what the castro brothers want. They're what will entrench them in power forever.
Obama naively believes that back and forth travel from Americans will spread ideas of freedom. But that hasn't happened with all the Eurotourism and Canadian tourism, let alone the kind of fawning Sandalista revolutionary tourism that radical leftists practice.
Nor has trade itself done anything for Cuba's freedom - the US is Cuba's number one food supplier and all that's done is entrench the Castro brothers who control every enterprise on the island. They control nickel, hotels, convention centers, shipping companies, and pretty much everything else. That's why Forbes puts their fortune at $1 billion.
That hasn't helped Cubans any either.
All that more trade and tourism with Cuba will do is entrench the Castro regime further and make the tiny Castroite nomenklatura even wealthier.
Obama's claim that 'Cuban Spring' prior to the 2003 crackdown was the result of Miami Cuban travel is fallacious. The 'Cuban Spring' was the result of Castro running out of money after he defaulted on Cuba's debt and lost his Soviet subsidies. When the big dumb fool from Caracas, now-dictator Hugo Chavez, started bailing him out again with oil, the Castro brothers grew strong again and immediately cracked the whip on Cuba's oppressed people, arresting 75 dissidents to send a message.
That's what fresh money does for the Castroite regime, it doesn't make it more open to freedom, it makes it more oppressive. Unlike, say, China, which really does allow private enterprises.
That's why the Cuban foreign minister was so pleased to give the naive one a big campaign plug.
Cuba's Foreign Minister can't vote in U.S. elections. Cuban exile rightists want to punish their own who want to visit their family members who still live in Cuba, by denying them their natural right to visit their family and to send financial aid to them.
Why are they so afraid the people from the United States will go to Cuba? I go regularly and can see it's a country with many, many problems. But it's trying to address its problems. Cuba isn't afraid of U.S. visitors seeing all the flaws. You'd have to be blind not to see them.
But it seems some people want to keep the people of the U.S. blind, by preventing them from seeing Cuba for themselves.
Thanks again for having this discussion. While I wouldn't agree with all of Obama's motivations for the proposal, putting Cuba policy on the table for public discussion is a good thing.
Walter Lippmann
Los Angeles, California
So, if there is no freedom of expression in Cuba, I am sure someone can name at least one or two people in a Cuban jail cell solely for their words? That means no one who has taken dollars from US Govt funded or violent anti-Cuba Miami groups. There may be a few unfairly imprisoned, like in America, but nothing like the depictions.
If there is no free expression in Cuba, why does it say so expressly in the Constitution? If there is no free speech, why are there only (max) 250 "prisoners of conscience"? (I don't accept anything near this figure but one would think there'd be more dissenters in this commie hellhole, no)? If there is no freedom of expression, how does one explain this (pretty good) openly oppositional magazine called Concensus being around since 04? How does one explain the protests that occur just about every week in Miramar by Las Damas? What about the fact that very critical documentaries win Government awards? Or the uproar by the writers/artists union that resulted in the Government reversing itself on a dime earlier this year. What about the arts scene, the devastating articles in Juvendud Rebelde, the call by Raul to "debate fearlessly"...
Look I know that when the Government owns just about all of the outlets, that dampens government criticism a bit. Cuba certainly does not have the diversity of voices in the media we do. But who's media is serving its role best - informing citizens on issues of importance? Honestly, Fidel never shut down a media outlet or censored a journalist. Name me one... But my point is really that Cuba is wholly misrepresented in a hemisphere where journalists are routinely shot, corrupt or at the service of money.
So you oppose freedom of speech, without fear of prison or oppression for the Cuban people, because that would be "imposing democracy", Justin?
No, what I oppose --like Brazil's foreign minister-- is the idea that democracy can be imposed. An imposed democracy is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron. For democracy to exist, the rules of the game cannot be adulterated by a self-interested intervening power; they must be autonomously established by the people themselves, not imposed from outside.
In many ways, the United States is not democratic. It certainly has no right to be imposing its institutions --which are invariably rigged in the favor of the rich-- on other countries.
The only thing worse than imposing democracy at gunpoint is imposing dictatorship at gunpoint. Welcome to Castro's Cuba.
Nobody in this thread was calling for democracy to be imposed.
Nobody in this thread was calling for democracy to be imposed.
Boz, let's be serious. Your whole reason for being is to try to impose U.S. elites' conception of "democracy" on the developing world. The only necessary caveat is that you try to do it in ways that are more subtle than, say, bombing the hell out of a country.
Thus saith the paid whore for the dictator of Venezuela.
It's interesting, Frank, that you're incapable of refuting what I've said.
Ah, yes, when all else fails, call him a "paid whore." That's really rich, Franky boy.
It's funny Justin that you oppose Frank's comment about your being a "paid whore" but you had no problem in the comment above wrongly defining my "whole reason for being." You used the same tactic Frank did rather than making any legitimate arguments.
Justin -
Given that absolutely no one here takes you seriously, I don't feel any obsessive need to "refute" what you post.
Given that absolutely no one here takes you seriously, I don't feel any obsessive need to "refute" what you post.
Uh, let's be serious, Frank. You have neither the intelligence nor the facts to refute much of anything I post.
You used the same tactic Frank did rather than making any legitimate arguments.
Boz, what I said is that you --as a member of the Washington establishment-- do seek to impose American elites' definition of "democracy" on the developing world. That's a perfectly legitimate argument.
You claim to define my position based on calling me a member of the "Washington establishment" rather than the arguments I actually make. It's the same as someone claiming to define your position on issues by calling you a "whore" for the Venezuelan government based on your work for them.
Notice, Boz, that you won't actually debate the point that you seek to impose American elites' definition of "democracy" on the developing world. That says all we need to know.
Throughout this whole discussion, Frank has actually acknowledged that both he and you seek to impose American elites' definition of "democracy" on the developing world. At least Frank tries to be honest on occasion. You, on the other hand, are on a constant quest to divert the discussion away from the obvious implications of your work.
Notice, Boz, that you won't actually debate the point that you seek to impose American elites' definition of "democracy" on the developing world.
I don't seek to impose democracy. I don't think I've ever said that I seek to impose democracy.
Once again, you have no point.
I don't seek to impose democracy. I don't think I've ever said that I seek to impose democracy.
Firstly, I didn't say you seek to "impose democracy." What I said is that you seek to impose American elites' definition of "democracy." Two very different things.
Moreover, it doesn't matter what you say you seek to do. What matters is what you do in practice.
The point is actually very clear. If you didn't seek to impose American elites' definition of "democracy," you wouldn't support operations like the U.S. Office of Transition Initiatives, which provides millions upon millions to opposition groups in Venezuela but refuses to divulge the identity of recipients or the full nature of the work that those groups carry out with the funds.
Notice, of course, that if another country's government were to do the same in the United States, it would be completely illegal and forbidden. But never mind that. The Washington Establishment wouldn't be the Washington Establishment if double standards weren't front and center in its playbook.
Ok, I don't seek to impose democracy or impose American elites' definition of "democracy."
I don't work with OTI, but for the record, many of their programs are non-political including day care centers, youth groups, healthcare clinics and environmental initiatives. The programs in Venezuela that are political in nature are offered to both government coalition and opposition parties.
I will admit that OTI and IRI have been misused during the Bush administration (in Haiti in particular), but the vast majority of their work is benign and doing good in many parts of the world. It's a sad legacy of the Bush administration that some organizations that really do good most of the time have been tarnished by a few politically motivated bad actions.
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