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POLITICS-CUBA: U.S. Awaits Its Own Transition to Review Policy
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Feb 19, 2008 (IPS) - Despite Tuesday’s historic announcement by President Fidel Castro that he is
retiring from public office, U.S. citizens must await the departure of their own
sitting president 11 months from now before Washington’s nearly 50-year
hostility toward the Caribbean island is likely to be reviewed. Even then, change
is not guaranteed.
That was the consensus of all Cuba analysts here who rated the chances of
any conciliatory gesture by the U.S. toward any new Cuban leader - and
particularly one headed by Castro’s brother Raul - while George W. Bush
remains in office as virtually nil.
"This event offers a superb opening to refurbishing U.S. policy and our
relations with Latin America, [But] I don’t see this administration taking
advantage of that," said Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to
former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Indeed, Bush - whose Cuba policy has been dominated by efforts to tighten
Washington’s 46-year-old trade embargo against Havana - told reporters in
Kigali, Rwanda, that Castro’s departure "should be the beginning of a
democratic transition" and demanded that Cuba now hold "free and fair"
elections for a new government.
"And I mean free and I mean fair - not these kind of staged elections that
the Castro brothers try to foist off as true democracy," he stressed,
demanding, as well, that political prisoners be freed as a first step in any
transition.
While Bush did not address his administration’s readiness to ease the
embargo against Cuba in exchange for reforms by the new regime, Deputy
Secretary of State John Negroponte told reporters he couldn’t "imagine that
happening anytime soon." State Department spokesman Tom Casey described
Raul Castro as "Fidel Lite" and a "continuation of the Castro dictatorship…."
"I really think we have to wait to see after Jan. 20 [when Bush’s successor will
be inaugurated] whether a new president thinks there’s a tremendous
opportunity here to do something new," said Sarah Stephens, director of the
Centre for Democracy in the Americas, who has long advocated engagement
with Havana.
Reaction to Castro’s announcement by the leading presidential candidates
from both major parties, however, was not particularly encouraging in that
regard - although statements by Democratic Senators Hillary Clinton and
Barack Obama were significantly more forthcoming than the Republican
frontrunner.
Republican Sen. John McCain largely echoed the administration. "…[F]reedom
for the Cuban people is not yet at hand, and the Castro brothers clearly
intend to maintain their grip on power," he said in a statement issued by his
campaign headquarters. His statement - like Bush’s - failed to address
whether Washington should be prepared to ease the embargo or engage the
new regime in recognition of any reforms.
"We must press the Cuban regime to release all political prisoners
unconditionally, to legalise all political parties, labour unions and free media,
and to schedule internationally monitored elections," the statement said.
On the Democratic side, Sen. Hillary Clinton, also called on the new
government to release political prisoners and implement democratic reforms
but stressed that it was up to Havana to make the first moves.
"The new leadership in Cuba will face a stark choice: continue with the failed
policies of the past that have stifled democratic freedoms and stunted
economic growth or take a historic step to bring Cuba into the community of
democratic nations," she said. "I would say to the new leadership, the people
of the United States are ready to meet you if you move forward towards the
path of democracy, with real, substantial reforms."
She also stressed that she would engage "our partners in Latin America and
Europe who have a strong stake in seeing a peaceful transition to democracy
in Cuba, and who want very much for the United States to play a constructive
role to that end."
In a much shorter statement, Obama echoed Clinton’s demands for the
release of all "prisoners of conscience" and noted that Castro’s stepping down
"is an essential first step, but it is sadly insufficient in bringing freedom to
Cuba."
However, Obama was the only one of the three candidates to explicitly
address the embargo, noting, "If the Cuban leadership begins opening Cuba
to meaningful democratic change, the United States must be prepared to
begin taking steps to normalise relations and to ease the embargo of the last
five decades," he said.
Indeed, of the three candidates recently rated according to their public
positions on half a dozen facets of Cuba policy by the pro-engagement Latin
American Working Group (LAWG) here, Obama gained the highest grade - a
‘B’, compared to Clinton’s ‘D’ and McCain’s ‘F’.
While, like the other two candidates, Obama has voted to oppose lifting the
embargo and a ban on private U.S. citizens travelling to Cuba without
Washington’s approval, he has also taken significantly more-liberal positions
on the question of permitting Cuban-Americans to visit their relatives there
or send them money.
The candidates are particularly leery of alienating the well-organised anti-
Castro Cuban-American community in south Florida - a key swing state in
next November’s presidential elections - which played a decisive role in
throwing the 2000 election to Bush.
"You can expect any Democratic candidate to tack more to the centre, if not
eve more to the right, to avoid the repeat of the catastrophe in Florida in the
2000 elections," said Peter Kornbluh, a Cuba expert at the National Security
Archive.
Indeed, prominent Cuban-American lawmakers were quick after Tuesday’s
announcement to insist that, despite Castro’s announcement, any change of
policy made no sense at all. "For now, nothing has changed in totalitarian
Cuba," said Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart.
His colleague, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who also serves as the ranking
Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House of
Representatives, echoed that line.
"It matters nothing at all whether Fidel, Raul, or any other thug is named head
of anything in Cuba," Ros-Lehtinen said, adding that Washington should take
advantage of Castro’s presumed loss of sovereign immunity by filing murder
charges against him for the death of two members of a militant anti-Castro
group in the downing of their plane off Cuba.
In a campaign appearance just last week, McCain appeared on the same stage
as both lawmakers.
Most independent Cuba experts contend that Fidel’s formal departure will
make a difference in Havana.
His resignation "is a signal that there will be more space for others," said Julia
Sweig, a Cuba specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations who predicted
that Raul is likely to promote reforms in agriculture and small business in
ways designed to reduce the role of the state in the economy - a process
that, during Castro’s illness, he had already initiated.
Raul’s stewardship has also seen the recent release of four prominent
political prisoners, as well as a number of members - for reasons of health -
- of the so-called Group of 75 dissidents rounded up in 2003.
To many Cuba specialists, Washington should use Castro’s resignation as an
opportunity to reach out to the new regime, if for no other reason, according
to Sweig, than it "would get an enormous boost globally and in Latin America
especially."
"Raul Castro has said now three times that he’s interested in talking with the
United States unconditionally to try to resolve all outstanding issues between
the two countries," noted William LeoGrande, a veteran Cuba specialist at
American University and dean of its School of Government. "The Cuban
leadership is in the process of considering some sign of economic changes,
and it would make sense for the United States to be able to influence that in a
positive way. You can’t have any influence if you don’t have any contact."
(END)
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