The best ambassadors for democracy in Cuba are American tourists, American businesses and American cultural representatives. The Cuban people may have been isolated from the world for 50 years, but they are smart and pragmatic. The United States should reach out to them, not only in their interest, but also in our own.
St. Louis Post Dispatch editorial
Happy 2009! The future begins today.
There are short and long term questions about what we know so far of President-elect Obama's policy on Cuba.
Short term the question is whether or not he has the vision and determination to use his authority to immediately end all restrictions on non-tourist travel.
Longer term the question is whether he can overcome a century long culture of big country chauvinism and regional hegemonism and engage Cuba with the kind of mutual acceptance of political differences and values that was essential for negotiation of normalization with Vietnam and China.
Will he honor his own commitment to domestic civil liberties, the views of two-thirds of Americans, and strongly expressed Western Hemisphere opinion, or buckle to cold war ideology and a fading minority of hard line special interest exiles with deep pockets for PAC contributions, apparently now counting on Senator Bob Menendez?
Is Obama pragmatic enough to see that gestures are not a one way street? If the US wants Cuba to release prisoners we value, will we release prisoners they value? (see earlier post below)
A positive step in the short term, opening up non-tourist travel, offers hope for the longer term as mutual understanding and respect depend on reestablishing and creating personal relationships. These ties will come from rapidly enabled trips by world affairs councils, religious bodies, museums, professional associations, business groups, students, alumni, elderhostel, people to people organizations, musicians, sports teams, etc. and allowing similar Cubans to visit counterparts here.
Even if we quickly ramp up to the peak level of 84,500 non-tourist US visitors in 2003, the number is a drop in the bucket economically in a sea of this year's record of 2.3 million tourists. But the psychological confidence building impact from mainstream encounters in both countries will be far more powerful than only Cuban American renewal. (This was the reason that the Bush administration throttled even Clinton's bureaucratically hobbled channel for non-tourist travel four years ago.)
Folks in the Obama inner circle and transition team need to start paying attention to what so many people are saying (see yesterday's Los Angeles Times editorial and a dozen statements from business, NGOs, religious bodies, educators, foreign policy specialists, etc.
They need to hear directly and forcefully that no decision is a bad decision.
[For a compilation of my New Year thoughts on the seven choices facing the new administration, go here.]
--John McAuliff
www.ffrd.org
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