With regard to Latin America, the U.S.military is on the right track and the rest of the government is far behind.

In the current issue of the U.S. Naval Institute’s superb magazine, Proceedings, Commander Pat Paterson, U.S. Navy, writes in an article entitled "Our Waning Influence in the South" that “We urgently need a new foreign policy to reestablish goodwill and trust in Latin America."

Commander Paterson continues:

Decades of foreign-policy hypocrisy and economic double standards have resulted in a pervasive resistance to and suspicion of U.S. involvement in Latin America. The animosity manifests itself in ways that are direct threats to our national security: U.S. diplomats have been expelled, narcotics trafficking has reached record heights, and our military is being ousted from strategically important bases in the region. The United States is losing access and influence in Latin American and Caribbean nations like never before. Unless we act quickly, we may be unable to regain our standing in this vital area.

Those of us at The New America Foundation, and elsewhere that an advocacy for sanity in U.S. foreign policy reigns, have been saying for over a year now that U.S. policy toward Latin America is a failure. What we have not said, very often anyway, is that the only instrument of American power that is truly pursuing any policy at all there is the American armed forces.

Having wars to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, an unwinnable drug “war” in its third decade, and looking at declining budgets for as far as it can see, the U.S. military's growing weariness at carrying all of America’s diplomatic burden in Latin America is very understandable. Today, as Commander Paterson reveals, those armed forces are tiring of the task and telling the rest of us that if someone doesn't come soon to assist them, we might as well write off Latin America. Some pundits would say, so what? What is Latin America worth anyway?

Such people had best wake up. One of the most skilled leaders in the world at the moment is Brazil's Luiz Ignácio Lula da Silva. In fact, when he and former President George Bush were together, the world could see one of its very best leaders alongside one of its very worst—a spectacle all but America seemed to grasp for its irony. America, of course, never blinked (demonstrating perhaps even more poignantly our blindness to what's happening in our own backyard). Lula is taking Brazil to new heights upon which it will discover a new stability, a new economic prowess, and followers aplenty.

Not missing many points at all in his very comprehensive appraisal of America's policy failure in the South, Commander Paterson rails at the U.S. embargo on Cuba: "The trade embargo on Cuba has become representative of U.S. economic and diplomatic bullying, the type of foreign-policy tool that has proved counter-productive to our interests."

And in his overall assessment and recommendation, the Commander makes me proud to have been a long-serving member of our military because, like Nixon to China, he brings realism par excellence to U.S. foreign policy formulation when he writes: "For now, U.S. policy [in Latin America] should be humble, not arrogant; modest, not boastful; multilateral, not unilateral; compassionate, not belligerent; honest, not hypocritical. Unlike our past behavior in Latin America, now is the time to speak quietly and put down our big stick."

The very first act in that regard should be normalization of relations with Cuba, 90 miles off our coast. That single act would open the door wide to reshaping U.S. relations with everyone else in our hemisphere, from Toronto to Buenos Aires.

As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt once declared, a truly good neighbor is what we should aspire to be—a neighbor whose lived example of democracy, freedom, respect for human rights, and belief in open markets should be more than enough to convince others of that example's power to make a better world.

-- Lawrence Wilkerson

It's time to welcome a new ally to the effort to shift U.S.-Cuba Policy.

OpenCuba.org launched today, it's an initiative spearheaded by the CEO of Orbitz, Barney Harford who, after a recent meeting in the White House, made opening travel to Cuba his personal mission. OpenCuba.org seeks to use the web to build visible support for the lifting of the travel ban that bars all Americans from traveling to Cuba. Go check it out: OpenCuba.org

To punctuate today's launch, Orbitz and Ipsos released a poll on American attitudes towards changing our Cuba policy. Once again, the polling tells the story that the American people are ready for a change: 72 percent of Americans believe that a policy that allows all Americans to travel to Cuba would "have a positive impact on the day-to-day lives of the Cuban people" while 67 percent of Americans would take the next step and support the a shift in policy to make it happen.

That puts the American people and Orbitz standing shoulder to shoulder with world's protectors of human rights: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House have all called for an end to the failed policy of the last 50 years--for the simple reason that our policy of embargo, isolation and regime change have had no positive effect on the human rights situation in Cuba.

It's a natural alliance, really. Open societies are ones that allow their people to travel and allow other people to visit. We cannot force the Cuban government to let their people travel freely, but we can get out of the way of the best ambassadors of America -- all Americans -- whether Irish American, African-American, or Cuban-American.

Perhaps the best message to come from the Orbitz/Ipsos poll is simply that. The American people understand that the United States needs to walk the talk: we claim to represent freedom and yet on Cuba travel, we are restraining the rights of Americans based on ethnic background. That's un-American and, I believe, unconstitutional.

Welcome aboard, Orbitz. Enjoy your trip.

President Bush at the White House, "Cuban Independence Day" 2008
photo Charles Dharapak / AP

The Bush Administration made much of "Cuban Independence Day", May 20th. It often used the anniversary as a platform to launch rhetorical volleys and harsh policies directed against Havana, Cuban Americans, and any normal relationship between our peoples.

It is a date that means one thing to the 10% of Cubans who've migrated to the US and just the opposite to the 90% for whom the island is home. To most Cubans the revolution that took power in 1959 was a rejection of the compromised political and economic sovereignty forced on them by the US in 1902, regardless of how they feel about their country's economy and government today.

How should the Obama Administration balance shoring up its ethnic support in Florida with reaching out to the people of Cuba and their leaders? Can it avoid choosing which version of history to endorse? Should it depoliticize the anniversary by ignoring it, or by using it for a counter-intuitive initiative that rises above old divisions?

A logical step is to employ the date and any related event to announce that the President will finish the job of non-tourist travel, reaching beyond Cuban Americans to enable unlimited visits for educational, religious, cultural, humanitarian and other people to people purposes. According to a May 5 story in The Hill newspaper, the only reason why many Americans can't go to Cuba legally now is Senator Robert Menendez' apparent ability to still intimidate a conflicted administration.

Some Cuba policy watchers suspected that Menendez may have had a behind-the-scenes impact on Obama's decision not to also allow U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba for cultural, academic and humanitarian purposes. This would have marked a return to the policies in effect at the end of the Clinton administration.

Menendez spoke to Denis McDonough, director of strategic communications at the National Security Council, shortly before Obama announced his Cuba order. McDonough advises the president on Cuba policy.

A contact in Havana who is often critical of government policy has written an essay on what May 20th means to most Cubans which can be read here

For a longer analysis, read one of the excellent histories of Cuba by Lou Perez of the University of North Carolina, his indispensable "Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution" and most recently "Cuba in the American Imagination". Lou has also written a compelling op ed for McClatchey about the challenge facing the Administration to go far enough to make a difference which can be seen here.

This just in from the Hon. Todd Tiahrt (pronounced TEE-hart) (R-KS). Tiahrt is offering legislation to "restore the sanctions on Cuba."

To paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumors of the embargo's lifting have been greatly exaggerated. The embargo is 99% intact--and still a very real thorn in our foreign policy. Indeed, President Obama's actions so far have been exactly what the hardline Cuban-American community wanted--indeed, what President Obama promised while speaking to the Cuban American National Foundation one year ago this week.

Alas, it seems as though Congressman Tiahrt is playing the role of cat's paw to Senator Menendez and the reactionary, pro-Batista camp from Miami.

Sorry Kansas, apparently agricultural exports are less important to your representative than continuing a failed policy as a political favor.

Logo for the 39th OAS General Assembly (web page)

WASHINGTON (AP) ­ Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says Cuba won't be allowed to rejoin the Organization of American States until it makes political reforms, releases political prisoners and respects human rights.

Clinton said Wednesday that the grouping of Western Hemisphere nations requires its members to adhere to democratic standards that the communist government of Cuba does not yet meet. She made the comments to lawmakers ahead of the organization's annual meeting.

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I’ve been very vocal in saying that we must repeal Resolution VI of 1962. It’s an old resolution, it’s not valid anymore, and it doesn’t condemn Cuba for not being democratic. It condemns it for being a member of the Sino-Soviet axis and says that this axis is aggressive against the United States. But it doesn’t exist anymore. The Sino-Soviet axis disappeared about four or five years after Cuba’s suspension. The Soviet Union disappeared almost 20 years ago and the Chinese are even friends with the United States today, so it’s really crazy. It is a piece of the Cold War that was left in a corner and we must get rid of it.
--José Miguel Insulza, Secretary-General of the Organization of American States (OAS)

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During the General Assembly, some may advocate to allow Cuba to participate in the OAS, without having made any progress on the fundamental tenants of democracy and human rights...as the chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees foreign assistance, I would expect the U.S. Congress to ask, "Should we continue to pay 60 percent of the budget of an institution that just discarded democratic principles as a fundamental part of its Charter?
--Sen. Robert Menendez

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Governments can change but the instruments they used to turn us into a colony are still the same...The OAS was the instrument for those crimes...Cuba respects the opinions of the governments of sister nations in Latin America and the Caribbean who think in a different manner, but it doesn’t wish to be part of that institution.
--Fidel Castro, Reflections, May 10

An oft-repeated refrain at the Summit of the Americas was that Cuba should no longer be excluded from the Organization of American States. The issue will come to a head when the General Assembly of the OAS meets June 2-3 in Honduras. If Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela and others insist on a vote, US isolation in the Hemisphere could be embarrassingly illustrated.

Secretary Clinton is ill advised legally and politically. This is another instance of the US listening without hearing, when conventional inside-the-beltway wisdom imposes the dead hand of the past over real US interests. As the Secretary acknowledged at a town hall meeting for Foreign Affairs Day at the State Department May 1st:

we’re facing an almost united front against the United States regarding Cuba. Every country, even those with whom we are closest, is just saying you’ve got to change, you can’t keep doing what you’re doing.

Had Cuba been suspended from the OAS because of its lack of multi-party democracy, other members then and subsequently would have faced the same fate. The goal of the Inter-American Democratic Charter was to discourage military coups by excluding a regime that overthrew an elected government, i.e. moved the democratic process backward in its country.

Article 19...an unconstitutional interruption of the democratic order or an unconstitutional alteration of the constitutional regime that seriously impairs the democratic order in a member state, constitutes, while it persists, an insurmountable obstacle to its government’s participation in sessions of the General Assembly, the Meeting of Consultation, the Councils of the Organization, the specialized conferences, the commissions, working groups, and other bodies of the Organization. (full text)

While the Charter is unambiguous that "member states are responsible for organizing, conducting, and ensuring free and fair electoral processes", an accompanying OAS explanatory document demonstrates that the means of dealing with elections that are "divisive" or "controversial" are missions and dialogue not suspension. Cuba's unorthodox form of democracy can be challenged the next time it holds elections, but is not grounds for exclusion.

Is there any contemporaneous documentation that sustains a view that adoption of the Charter in 2001 was seen as an obstacle to Cuba's return unless it changed the form of its existing sovereign government?

Moreover, the Charter is not written to be retroactive. It is not reasonable to apply criteria for membership ex post facto to a country suspended only because of intense political and economic pressure by a disproportionately powerful member for no longer applicable reasons.

A specialist involved in OAS preparatory discussions wrote me that, "It is immensely complicated, and it is not clear how it will come out." Thus it is especially unfortunate if the US takes a hard line ideological stance responsive to special interests and tries once more to impose its will on the Hemisphere, reminiscent of 1962.

My analogy from Indochina is that the US originally opposed Vietnam joining ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations), but the independent action by the region to incorporate it and Laos and Cambodia helped Clinton to normalize. Ironically, the US in the Bush era urged still communist Vietnam to take a leading role in ASEAN according to a high level friend from the Foreign Ministry.

When Hillary Clinton, Bob Menendez and Fidel Castro agree that Cuba should not reenter the OAS, it suggests this is just the kind of decisive timely move by the region that is needed to break the logjam of inertia and distrust. By proving itself independent of US domestic agendas, the OAS will strengthen itself--and not only in Cuban eyes.

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Two opinions more expert than my own from Professors William LeoGrande and Philip Brenner of American University, in response to questions I posed, can be read here

The best way to bury a story in Washington is to announce it late on a Friday before a holiday weekend.

And that is just what the Obama administration did last week when it announced that the U.S. requested, in a letter delivered to the Cuban Interests Section Friday afternoon, the Cuban government join in restarting migration talks.

That we should be talking about migration and many other security issues is a no-brainer. I worked with a number of leading retired senior military officers to send a letter to President Obama urging him to do just that.

What is strange is that we are announcing it in bury mode. One would think that, as my colleagues Peter Kornbluh and Bill Leogrande have documented, secret talks are as available to the Obama administration as they were to almost every past president over the last fifty years and if talks were politically sensitive, that would be the way to conduct them.

Or, one would simply embrace them fully and announce our intention to do so in the context of a regular State Department briefing. We argue here at New America that the strategic thing to do is to capture the hemispheric goodwill and the global symbol of real change that ending the embargo would generate.

That leaves two other explanations that are plausible. One is that the WH communication's team had this at the end of their to-do list before the holiday weekend and they got it out just before heading to the beach. The other is that the WH does not want a lot of attention paid to the talks, is not putting a lot of investment in them, but feels that secrecy would not be sustainable and would ultimately come back to bite them.

What does the announcement itself mean? Well, it means a real, official channel of talks may be starting. Obviously, it is going to be primarily aimed at migration--the boring but important questions of how many visas should be issued to Cubans wanting to emigrate, what to do with Cubans on the high-seas, and whether or not the U.S. will change our wet-foot/dry-foot policy.

It is of course, a strong signal that the Obama administration is willing to make unilateral changes to the policy that has failed to change the Cuban government's human rights record or its political system for more than 50 years. Conditioning our policy on Cuban performance is a recipe for another 50 years of bad human rights conditions.

But it is a slow second step. If two points are determining a straight line, it will be a while before our policy starts making sense for American interests. If it turns out that the Obama administration is willing to let talks go geometric, however, then we could be in for a much more productive ride.

Here's hoping for the latter.

Senator Robert Menendez, photo by Mike Derer -- Associated Press

The Washington Post today recognized the mess the Administration is getting itself into by overincrementalizing change with Cuba and trying to placate bitter-end exile politics in Congress:

The U.S. government is fighting an effort to allow Cuba to return to the Organization of American States after a 47-year suspension. But the resistance is putting it at odds with much of Latin America as the Obama administration is trying to improve relations in the hemisphere.

The OAS council appointed a task force to evaluate the U.S. proposal and two others that could more directly lead to reinstatement of Cuba, suspended from the OAS in 1962

Reuters cites the text of the US resolution

"Some of the circumstances since Cuba's suspension from full participation in the Organization of American States may have changed," the U.S. resolution said, noting a "frank and open dialogue" was a hallmark of multilateral relations….

The U.S. resolution instructs the OAS council "to initiate a dialogue with the present government of Cuba regarding its eventual reintegration into the inter-American system consistent with the principles of sovereignty, independence, non-intervention, democracy."

Hector Morales, the U.S. representative to the group, said Cuba's re-entry into the OAS required a deliberate and well-considered process. "It must and will depend more on what Cuba is prepared to do than on what concessions we as an organization are prepared to make," Morales said.

A Cuban journalist, Jorge Gómez Barata, writing for theprogressoweekly.com challenges US self-righteousness by citing the actual text of the OAS Charter (its legal constitution, not the more recent and inconclusive Democratic Charter of the Americas).

"ARTICLE 3(e): Every State has the right to choose, without external interference, its political, economic, and social system and to organize itself in the way best suited to it ..."

"ARTICLE 19: No State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State. The foregoing principle prohibits not only armed force but also any other form of interference or attempted threat against the personality of the State or against its political, economic, and cultural elements."

"ARTICLE 20: No State may use or encourage the use of coercive measures of an economic or political character in order to force the sovereign will of another State and obtain from it advantages of any kind."

In general the tone of the article is quite different than Fidel Castro’s Reflection (quoted two blog entries back). While Gómez says that Cuba will not take its seat, his words suggest greater openness might be in play.

We are curious to see what happens when ... Hillary Clinton sees all hands rise in favor of repairing a historical injustice and the United States is left all alone. Cuba will not return to the OAS, but Latin America will win a great battle and create a precedent. From then on, nothing will be the same.

Based on the text of the OAS Charter, the US itself and our unilateral travel and trade embargo might find rigorous implementation problematic.

--John McAuliff

With the Organization of American States diplomatic maneuvering around the exclusion of Cuba hitting the Washington Post today, it seems like a good time to cut through all the inside baseball and get right to the real important message:

Latin America has made Cuba its cause celebre, and the analogy is to Palestine.

In other words, if the United States wants to do business with the region and to lead the region, it is time for the Obama administration to deliver change they can believe in and the threshold is set high: ending the embargo on Cuba.

The Palestine analogy is early, but we have three very good data points on which to base it. First, in December 2008 at a meeting of the Rio Group of Latin American heads of state, one of the only issues the summit was able to agree on was that the incoming Obama administration needs to end its embargo of the Cuba.

Second, in Trinidad at the Summit of the Americas, while Cuba was not on the formal agenda, Cuba was the major topic of conversation both at the summit and in the media. As my colleauge Phil Peters points out, Trinidad was really a Cuba summit.

The third data point is this diplomatic full court press in the run up to the Honduras Ministerial of the Organization of American States, in which multiple sub-groupings of states have submitted a variety of proposals for repealing the act which expelled Cuba from the organization in 1962.

All three point to one clear message: the price of a new relationship with Latin America is ending the dysfunctional legacy of our old ones, in particular, the indiscriminate and disproportionate economic embargo the United States maintains on Cuba. That's pretty close to the formula that the Arab world has used for at least two decades with Palestine: don't think we are going to help you move your regional agenda forward until you help us out on getting a Palestinian peace deal done.

The test, of course, will be whether the individual nations of the Hemisphere decide to subordinate their bi-lateral relationships with the United States to this agenda. Again, my sense is that this will look like the Palestinian issue in the Arab world: relationships will remain multi-dimensional but in the aggregate, to the extent the Cuba issue remains an open sore, U.S. interests in the region will suffer from excessive friction and, in some cases, outright resistance.

We need to be clear, however, that this sentiment is not something led by Hugo Chavez, though he and his Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America group of nations are certainly enjoying this drama and stand to benefit from any outcome that further isolates the United States from the other countries of the Hemisphere. Rather, this is something larger, hemispheric, about righting the relationship between the United States and our near abroad and in so doing, closing the chapter on coercive American intervention in Latin America for good.

But one must be realistic and ask whether this diplomatic theater will even register on Mr. Obama's radar screen. Given his plate of global issues, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, the financial crisis and climate change and his incremental, issue-by-issue approach to them, right now the answer is probably not. It has registered on the Secretary of State's radar but that is not good enough to get a resolution. Mrs. Clinton can only manage a bad hand without a strategic decision from her boss. And if this sore is left to fester for too long, when the Obama administration does turn to Latin America it may find out that we have no OAS, we have no trust, and that China, Europe and other powers have left little space for the U.S. to pursue even our shared interests.