This post marks the launch of a new blog as part of the TWN network, The Havana Note, which is now up and running -- but will be tweaked now and then as we gear up with more content and writers.

The Havana Note won't be fancy -- at least not on the front end of it's life -- but it will become a new resource for those interested in yet another dimension of US foreign policy as well as evolving political realities in Cuba.

The Havana Note will be a cluster blog of a number of writers, thinkers and policy practitioners designed to focus on various corners of the cultural, political, military and economic dimensions of the US-Cuba arena.

In my view, US-Cuba relations need a make-over and have been cocooned for too long in a Cold War-fashioned anachronistic straight-jacket that has been detrimental to American interests.

The fact that the Soviet Union, which once threatened American security by attempting to deploy mid-range nuclear missles aimed at the U.S. from Cuba, has disappeared and is no longer a patron of the Cuban political system and economy did not even scratch the durability of a wrong-headed US-Cuba embargo. The fact that Castro's regime now no longer exports arms and revolution but exports doctors -- and trains health care professionals who help serve the poor and sick from around Latin America -- ought to give us some ground to begin reconsidering a relationship that helps rather than punishes average Cubans.

An interesting fact about the current Treasury Department OFAC license restrictions for those academics, researchers and journalists who travel to Cuba is a requirement to disseminate information and perspectives learned while there. I visited Havana earlier this year, and I and others with a journalistic interest in the contours of US-Cuba relations will be conveying much of our thinking and findings here.

More soon -- and welcome to The Havana Note.

-- Steve Clemons

At the first Democratic presidential primary debates, Bill Richardson was asked about what he'd do with regards to Cuba, and he proceeded to spend much of his time answering not that question but rather an earlier question about how each of the potential presidents would react in case of another terrorist act.

Like the other candidates, Richardson said he'd quickly go after the bad guys. Retribution, Strength. All that. In the end, Richardson stated quickly that he'd promote an incremental engagement strategy with Cuba.

But the issue of US-Cuba relations has now moved from being a low tier novelty issue in the campaign to a major issue through a series of statements recently released by candidates.

The first of these was a major comment on US-Cuba relations released by Senator Chris Dodd on The Washington Note.

The second is a full op-ed by Barack Obama that appeared in Tuesday's Miami Herald-Tribune in addition to the news that Obama will be appearing in Little Havana in Miami this coming Saturday.

Senator Hillary Clinton then said that she differed from Obama and would continue the Bush administration's hard-line, Cold War-era fashioned policy towards the Castro regime and the Cuban people. In a remarkable statement, Hillary Clinton essentially stated that she would continue to support the ridiculously tight travel restrictions on Cuban-Americans who now can only travel to Cuba once every three years. In other words, Clinton supports a policy in which people have to choose between attending their mother's funeral, or their father's.

Obama sees travel, particularly of family members as a human right. Clinton sees withholding such a privilege as a right of state.

To be fair, Hillary Clinton didn't always see it this way. She has flip-flopped, as she voted with Obama in 2005 (and others) to unsuccessfully east travel restrictions in humanitarian-related family travel.

Tom Bevan reports that Hillary Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee stated:

She [Senator Clinton] supports the embargo and our current policy toward Cuba, and until it is clear what type of political winds may come with a new government -- if there is a new government -- we cannot talk about changes to U.S. policy.

This is simply not mature-minded foreign policy thinking. I've written previously that one of the measures that should be applied to all of the candidates is how they would deal with not the easy questions in our national security portfolio -- but the tough ones.

Cuba is the easiest of the tough ones to solve. First of all, the Cold War is over. Cubans don't see a Soviet-led bloc as their primary patron anymore, but see Venezuela and China, which has grown through capitalism, as their closest economic allies today. Castro is no longer exporting arms and revolution -- but rather is exporting doctors.

And Hillary Clinton is stating that she is comfortable continuing a many-decades long, failed strategy to transform Cuba. And she thinks we "cannot talk about changes to U.S. policy" until the government changes?! That's ridiculous -- particularly given her own trips to China, a Communist nation of 1.1 billion people -- and her advocacy of normalization with Vietnam and her support of incremental steps forward with North Korea.

Obama has still not made the statement that easing the travel ban is American interests -- or making sure that American firms and NGOs are involved in the practical side of oil drilling in Cuba which has a reported 9 billion barrels of oil that the Chinese are eager to get to -- if not for economic reasons, then surely for environmental.

Obama has not made that statement that Republican Congressman Jeff Flake has made that restricting travel is not something a democracy does, but rather what the Soviet or Chinese communist governments did. And legislation that permits travel in family cases, in my view, is essentially unconstitutional because it discriminates against other Americans.

Chris Dodd's view are very clearly the mid-to-long-term future that we should be shooting for in the US-Cuba relationship.

Barack Obama has moved the Cuba issue into the headlines -- and found another issue to solidly differentiate himself from Hillary Clinton -- but his views while an important and large step represent the near future in US-Cuba relations.

Hillary Clinton, who for fundraising reasons and because of her gamble that the anti-Castro types in Miami are less diverse in their views than polls convey they are, is staying rooted in the "past" in US-Cuba relations.

Clinton is wrong on Cuba. The consequences of not initiating now the kind of relationship America should have with Cuba in post-Fidel circumstances are enormous -- not only in the US-Cuba arena but in the broader context of Latin America.

Opening the door to more US-Cuba interactions would seriously stifle Hugo Chavez's ambitions and maneuvering room in Latin America. Hillary Clinton is smart enough to know this -- and she may lose more votes than she gains by pandering to a cabal that has kept US-Cuba ties frozen in a 1960s cocoon.

-- Steve Clemons

There is a strong wind that all of a sudden seems to be moving US-Cuba relations in new directions.

Presidential candidates like Hillary Clinton are going to have to decide whether they are going to spend political capital to keep US-Cuba relations in grooves carved out over five decades and defended by Bush -- or whether they are going to be part of charting a new, more constructive course.

The Los Angeles Times today ran an editorial that pulls no punches in highlighting the failures of a five-decade old American strategy that has yielded nothing for American interests. The editorial juxtaposes Clinton and Obama -- who are on conflicting pages when it comes to loosening the tight noose that Bush has strangled Cuban-American families with when it comes to family travel.

But impressively, the Times calls for full, unrestricted travel, which is my own position as well as that of Senator Chris Dodd, whose statement on US-Cuba relations still sets the gold standard.

Here is a segment of the Los Angeles Times editorial, "Obama's Right on Cuba":

. . .after the U.S. has tried for nearly 50 years to force a regime change in Cuba by way of economic embargo with no success whatsoever, Obama is one of the few presidential contenders who dares to suggest that it's time to try something different.

Some might consider Obama's move courageous given the political power of Florida's Cuban American community, which helped put George W. Bush in the White House in 2000 and has cheered his efforts to tighten sanctions on Cuba. But the minority of Cuban immigrants who vote Democratic is deeply divided on the travel ban and would like to be able to send more money to relatives at home, so Obama may not be staking out such a bold position after all.

Regardless of the political implications, Obama is clearly right -- the only problem is, his proposal doesn't go far enough. The travel ban should be lifted for everybody, not just Cuban immigrants. It is the height of irony that Americans can freely travel to countries such as Venezuela and Iran, which represent genuine threats to our security and economic interests, but not to Cuba, whose government is a threat only to its own people.

The ban has done nothing to weaken Castro, but it does keep U.S. tourist dollars out of the hands of Cubans, who might be less inclined to heed their regime's anti-U.S. propaganda if Americans were helping to raise their standard of living.

The U.S. shouldn't lift all economic sanctions on Cuba until the island's regime makes progress on democracy and human rights, but policies such as the travel ban and limits on remittances are simply counterproductive. Score one for Obama.

I'd say that Obama has scored a "big one." I hope Hillary Clinton modifies her position because a foreign policy that promotes Cold War era thinking is not what this nation needs to get its national security posture back in to some kind of acceptable shape.

-- Steve Clemons

When I was Chief of Staff to the Secretary of State in 2004, I was exposed to some criticism within the Bush administration when I was quoted in GQ Magazine as saying that U.S. Cuba policy was the stupidest policy on earth. I deserved the criticism because my immediate boss, Colin Powell, had approved that policy. Not only that, he was co-chairman of the Committee set up to monitor implementation of it. Now I realize that I deserve far stronger criticism for not resigning my position in disgust over such policy. Let me tell you one of the most powerful reasons I feel that way.

There is a film by Lisandro Perez-Rey called "Those I Left Behind" (see www.Gatomedia.com). The film documents the lives of several Cuban-American families against the backdrop of the Bush administration's tightened rules on travel to Cuba. It is devastating in its condemnation of those rules. In the film, you see and hear from people whose lives are in turmoil because of these inane rules. You don’t need to understand how damaging the rules are to helping democracy come to Cuba. You don’t need to understand how dangerous the rules are with respect to U.S. national security. You don’t need to appreciate that Cuba is the only country in the world which U.S. citizens are prohibited to visit—a violation of their constitutional rights. And you don't need to comprehend how much business America is losing because of the policies behind those rules—policies that have failed abjectly now for some 46 years. All you need to do is witness the devastation in the lives of these families to know that the rules must be changed and as swiftly as possible.

Central to the film is the testimony of an American citizen—an American soldier who has served in Iraq—who now finds it difficult if not impossible to visit his sons in Cuba. Sergeant Carlos Lazo, now somewhat famous for his advocacy for change, is shown talking to his two sons, Carlos Manuel and Carlos Raphael, who are in Cuba, via one of his many television appearances as he works for change. A resident of Seattle and a member of the Washington National Guard, Sergeant Lazo served as a combat medic in Iraq. Watching the scenes in the film of his sons in Cuba and the Sergeant in the United States, is wrenching. Particularly when Lazo talks of wanting to visit his sons prior to his departure for a year in Iraq—a year where he easily could have been wounded or killed—and then not being able to do so, you get the message he is trying to convey with a directness that is heartbreaking.

But Sergeant Lazo's story is not the only one the film documents. You see Maximo Gonzalez as he watches videos of his family in Cuba—videos made during better times when visits were less restricted. You also note that Maximo dies of lung cancer and is never able to see his family again.

You hear from Arlene Garcia, a resident of Arlington, Virginia. You see touching scenes of Arlene with her niece, whom she had to smuggle out of Cuba through Mexico to be with. You listen to Arlene, with tears about to flow, describe her sister in Cuba and how she longs to see her.

You hear from Marlene Arzola and see scenes of her and her son, Liam, visiting their family in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba—again in better times. Later, you see scenes of Liam on South Beach in Miami, grown several years older and wondering, along with his mother, if he will ever see his grandmother in Cuba again.

You find yourself on the verge of tears as you watch these heart-rending scenes of these tortured families. Then, if you’re like me, your tears turn to anger when you contemplate that it is not Castro doing this, it is us.

Sergeant Lazo casts this realization in its starkest terms when he relates how, in Iraq, he told his Platoon Sergeant about not being able to visit his two sons in Cuba. The Platoon Sergeant said of course he should not expect to visit his sons in a communist country. Communists, he said, are bad and don’t allow visits. Lazo had to disabuse him of who was "not allowing the visits". His sergeant was stunned.

Lazo goes on to relate more of the reality behind these policies when he says how sad it is that U.S. Cuba policy has been "manipulated and kidnapped by a small minority in Florida." Lazo says: "The policies aren't made in Washington, DC. They're made in Miami." And they're made by the older but wealthier Cuban-Americans who by and large have no family members in Cuba.

Lazo goes on to say that "This administration [the Bush administration] preaches about family values…yet I can't visit my family in Cuba."

Of course, by going to Canada or Mexico, Sergeant Lazo could do just that—illegally. But as a good American, he refuses to do that.

What a situation! A man who has served his country in a deadly war zone, who honors its laws, who loves his sons in Cuba, cannot visit them when he wants to do so. And the culprit is not the communist country where they live, not Fidel Castro, but his own country.

Watch the film if you can. It's a devastating condemnation of U.S. policy—and not from the filmmaker but from the mouths of average Cuban-Americans who love their families.

-- Lawrence Wilkerson

(For more information on these issues, visit the website for the Cuban-American Commission for Family Rights at www.cubanfamilyrights.org. The website is a bit dated but there is valuable information there. "Dated" because, at my last visit, February 2007 was the most recent date and I could find no information about the recent stunning defeat in the House of Representative Rangel, et al, with regard to easing the Cuba travel restrictions. )

Since Fidel Castro handed power to his brother Raul, a frequent observation is that the country is in stasis, waiting for the other shoe to drop. This may be true to a large extent, and it is certainly how I characterized the situation after seeing the situation in Cuba earlier this year. At the same time, a look back at the period since Raul Castro was handed control provides some sense that the younger Castro is beginning to put his own stamp on Cuba’s affairs.

The most recent indication of change is the coverage of a gradual release of dissidents from Cuban jails, which has been reported on by Howard LaFranchi of the Christian Science Monitor, among others. The Havana-based Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation has indicated that the number of dissidents in Cuba that are imprisoned declined by 20 percent since 2006. This doesn’t excuse the fact that nearly 250 others remain in prison, but, as LaFranchi reports, the decline “is leading some Cuba experts to conclude that some kind of new day is dawning on the Caribbean communist island.”

Earlier this summer, at the July 26 speech commemorating the Cuban revolution, Raul Castro hinted at his desire for economic reform. He alluded to the importance of foreign investment and vague “structural and conceptual changes [that] will have to be introduced.” [Raul has a history in favor of economic reform, and was the one who convinced his brother to implement economic reforms in the mid-90s. Michael Voss of the BBC takes a look at one of the few reforms that has survived.]

He has sent other signals on openness, suggesting back in December 2006 that Cubans should “ ‘fearlessly’ engage in public debate and analysis.” As Anita Snow of AP writes:

"The first principle in constructing any armed forces is the sole command," said the younger Castro, who became Cuba's provisional leader five months ago when Fidel Castro stepped aside after emergency intestinal surgery. "But that doesn't mean that we cannot discuss. That way we reach decisions, and I'm talking about big decisions."

Finally, amid recycled rhetoric about American imperialism and bravado, Raul called for dialogue with the United States in both his July 2007 and December 2006 speeches. While such moves are not unprecedented, they are additional short steps away from his older brother, who did and does not speak of dialogue with the United States with any regularity.

All of the above are minor signals, to be sure, and stand alongside a host of practices that continue to deny information and basic freedoms to the Cuban people – like the decision earlier this year to expel a number of journalists who wrote stories unfavorable to the regime. But the calls for dialogue and economic reform and the gradual release of dissidents are developments worth watching.

This is particularly so because minor signals are all we are likely to see for the foreseeable future. Raul Castro isn’t likely to specify any reform program, at least not while his older brother is still alive and apparently opining on U.S. presidential elections. The world should not expect Raul to spell out the second coming of Perestroika or Glasnost anytime soon, even if it turns out that those are the policies he is slowly pursuing.

Still, as the days tick by, the world continues to see glimmers of what a post-Fidel Cuba might look like. Let’s hope that, for the sake of the Cuban people, positive trends in Cuba accelerate and that the United States starts thinking in earnest about sending our own signals that a new relationship is possible.

-- Jake Colvin

(Cuban doctors attend to an injured Pakistani refugee after the 2006 earthquake.)

With Steve Clemons and others, I recently visited Cuba (March 2007). One of the areas of Cuban activity on which we focused was what has been described as one of the world's best systems for delivering healthcare to impoverished people—in Cuba, in Venezuela and elsewhere in South and Central America, and increasingly in sub-Saharan Africa. We visited Cuba's medical "contingency brigade", for example, and talked with doctors and other healthcare personnel about the brigade's recent, highly successful tenure in Pakistan following the devastating earthquakes there in 2006. The passion in the doctors' eyes as they related their experiences in delivering basic healthcare in isolated, freezing regions of Pakistan was truly heartwarming. Some of the human interest stories the doctors related brought laughter to us all and served to demonstrate conclusively how deeply these medical personnel had been touched by their almost year-long experience in Pakistan. They were proud to announce that as a result of the good relations thus created, Cuba was asked to open its first-ever embassy in Islamabad. Talk about effective public diplomacy!

We also visited the Finlay Institute: Center for Research-Development and Production of Human Vaccines—incidentally, one of the places that the jacobin Undersecretary of State for International Security Affairs, John Bolton, alleged in 2002 was manufacturing biological weapons. We didn't find any such activity (and we did discover that at best the Institute has a rudimentary Bio-Level III capability and no Bio-Level IV capability—the latter needed if one is to engage in sophisticated biological agent research and development). After the visit, we assumed that Bolton's insights were right up there with the CIA's in 2002-2003 with respect to Saddam Hussein's mobile biological weapons labs. It's safe to say we considered the assessment by the former commander of the U.S. Southern Command, Marine General Charles Wilhelm, as more definitive: "During my three year tenure, from September 1997 until September 2000 at Southern Command, I didn't receive a single report or a single piece of evidence that would have led me to the conclusion that Cuba was in fact developing, producing or weaponizing biological or chemical agents."

In March of this year, what we did find at the Finlay Institute, for example, was information about its having developed a serogroup B meningococcal vaccine (VA-MENGOC-BC), one that had virtually eliminated that deadly disease among the children of Cuba. Moreover, we discovered that there was a significant incidence of the disease among children in the western U.S., but that due to the embargo on Cuba our doctors and health officials had been unable to avail themselves of this new and very effective (more than 80%) vaccine.

One of the most dramatic moments for us occurred when we visited one of Cuba's hospitals in Havana and plowed through a waiting room of people from all over the world—poor people who had come largely to have eye surgery of some sort, many to have cataracts removed so their blindness or near-blindness would be eliminated. Speaking to some of them was, again, heartwarming. They all said that they were there because of Cuba's outreach. Again, what public diplomacy!

I had reason to compare starkly what I had seen in March in Cuba with what I experienced up close and personal in the U.S. in June, July and August. My 91-year-old Dad and my 87-year-old Mom were caught in the clutches of the U.S. healthcare system. During this time, Medicare was raped, pillaged, and plundered to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars until I intervened, stopped the vicious cycle of short-term hospitalization followed by therapy and rehabilitation (both mostly on the taxpayers' dollars), completely colluded in by all medical personnel, and said "Enough!" and moved my parents to a full care and assisted living facility nearby. Not only did the financial outlay stabilize and become the burden mostly of my parents rather than the U.S. taxpayer (my parents are relatively affluent), but their health improved as well.

My rough calculations informed me that, with trips each time through the emergency room at the local hospital, a five-day hospital stay, and a 21-day stay at the nearby therapy and rehabilitation center—all mostly on Medicare—my parents likely used up close to a quarter of a million dollars of taxpayer money. My conclusion: the U.S. healthcare system is so broken that "broken" is not sufficiently descriptive. (And let me add that as a veteran and a retired military officer, I have not used the TriCare Health system since leaving the U.S. Army 10 years ago; I fear the results too much. When I need a doctor—not often, thank God, so far—I go to a nearby civilian-run clinic and pay cash for or charge whatever expense I encounter. It's in and out, like going to Wal-Mart for a loaf of bread and some eggs.)

We could learn much and benefit from how the Cubans deliver healthcare, particularly applicable to our rural areas and our inner cities where impoverished people predominate. And in the process, the contact would benefit Cubans. They would be able to study what is strong and robust about the U.S. healthcare system—the high technology components, for example—and at the same time learn that freedom and democracy are pretty good items too. But we won't do so—not until we change our Cuba policy, "the stupidest policy on earth."

-- Lawrence Wilkerson