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.

Reuters reported that the US has submitted a resolution for the OAS Assembly. It sounds like a holding action. However,

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

If stronger language emerges than the Administration’s, it will face a test of just how prepared it is to really listen to our neighbors rather than to bluster and extreme threats to cut off OAS funding from Sen. Menendez.

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.

Condescension and conditionality seem wired into US rhetoric about Cuba, even from the Obama Administration, and we will see next Tuesday how much longer OAS members will tolerate it.

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