When the Royal Ballet performed in Havana during the summer, the program was so popular big screen TVs had to be installed outside the theater.

When Juanes organized a 5 1/2 hour public concert, 10% of the country's population turned out.

The New York Philharmonic was about to get its history making turn with Cuba's culturally sophisticated audience when it ran into the diminishing ghost of George Bush.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) approved a license for the musicians and their technical team, an important symbolic opening it is unlikely Bush would have approved. But it told the Philharmonic that donors and Board members were not allowed to accompany them. As a result, the concerts had to be put on hold. The Philharmonic was to cover the expense of staging performances with assistance from its donor community who reasonably enough wanted to be part of an historic occasion.

OFAC said they were "tourists", a false characterization, but a distinction that mattered under regulations promulgated by George Bush in 2004--at the same time that he limited family reunions to once every three years. Did OFAC have the discretion to interpret even the Bush regulations more liberally? Certainly! The underlying law permits such travel and the support group was an inherent part of making the event happen.

Had the Obama Administration opened the door for non-tourist travel to all Americans, rather than only to Cuban Americans, there would not have been a problem. For example 300 Americans attended a jazz festival with a license under Clinton regulations.

Who was responsible for a decision that made the US look dumb all over the world? The President was ill served by members of his administration responding to intense pressure from the Cuban American old guard.

Denis McDonough of the National Security Council may have laid the groundwork, according to The Hill newspaper. Language enabling non-tourist travel had been predicted in the Washington Post, but was missing from the April announcement after McDonough met with Sen. Bob Menendez (D, NJ). Had McDonough stood up for the President's principled commitment to exchange and dialogue, or had the regulations that were finally issued a couple of weeks ago restored non-tourist categories, the Philharmonic would soon be on its way to Havana after an Asia tour that included Vietnam.

Even without the regulatory change, OFAC may have been leaning toward granting the license. Or else how explain this account from F. G. Aruca, the founder of Marazul Tours?

In our radio program from Miami yesterday, co-host Edmundo Garcia made very clear that a very good source that he could not name called him after the program Thursday and told him that the reason behind OFAC's decision to deny those licenses was what Edmundo correctly described as political blackmail from Sen. Robert (Bob) Menendez of New Jersey.

This Cuban-American senator was shocked by the success of Juanes' concert in Havana, and did not want any more of this. The Administration, the source said, is holding back (hopefully temporarily), until after the health reform legislation is approved.

I can only add that I know that the source is a very good source indeed. So, I am convinced that Bob Menendez was the trigger behind this decision, and even more importantly, is using the future of access to health services by the American people as the hostage in this political blackmail scheme.

If Menendez made such a threat, I am surprised it was taken seriously. On most issues, other than Cuba, he is a progressive Democrat. He could hardly afford to oppose the President on his signature issue of health care. The reaction would have been anger from his constituents in New Jersey and from national Democrats whom Menendez must solicit for contributions as head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. (They were already alienated by Menendez extreme actions at the time of the debate over the supplemental appropriations bill, as the Post reported.)

President Obama's eloquent speech at the UN contains strong language that if applied to Cuba would mean implementation of already vetted regulations to allow educational, cultural, humanitarian, religious and sports exchanges:

"the time has come to realize that the old habits, the old arguments, are irrelevant to the challenges faced by our people…They build up walls between us and the future that our people seek, and the time has come for those walls to come down."

"Should there be a true desire to move towards change...President Obama could allow American citizens, by means of a license, to travel to Cuba, the only country in the world they are not allowed to visit."

The Philharmonic in Havana can be a triumph artistically, culturally and diplomatically but the President very quickly has to choose who matters, Miami hard liners represented by Senator Menendez or the two-thirds of Americans who want travel restrictions to end.

John McAuliff
Fund for Reconciliation and Development

Live-stream alert: Governor Bill Richardson will speak about his trip to Cuba at the New Democratic Network in Washington on Friday, October 9th. Watch it on line at 12:15 p.m. at http://ndn.org/livecast. Richardson called strongly for the President to open up non-tourist travel and supports Congress ending all restrictions.

Senator Byron Dorgan, D-ND

The Cuban American National Foundation had projected a more moderate tone in the last several years. Its most extreme members split with the organization and formed their own group. CANF was not invited to Bush Administration events and it entered into a mutually beneficial relationship with the Obama campaign. Obama delivered his only pre-election policy speech on Cuba in Miami under CANF auspices.

Hard line Washington lobbying and big time political contributions became the province of the further right US-Cuba Democracy PAC.

CANF, unlike the PAC, supported family travel, although it may have preferred the Clinton version of once yearly limits. Its president, Pepe Hernandez, told me when we were on the same panel at a Brookings Institution conference that he also favored non-tourist travel. He was part of a Brookings working group that called for it.

I expected to see Mauricio Claver-Carone of the PAC fulminate against the Philharmonic on his Capitol Hill Cubans blog, but was surprised to read CANF expound a similar line.

CANF DECRIES NEW YORK PHILLARMONIC (sic) ATTEMPT TO DISGUISE TOURIST TRAVEL TO CUBA AS ‘CULTURAL EXCHANGE’ FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: OCTOBER 2, 2009

Today, the New York Philharmonic announced that it had been denied a visa (sic) by the U.S. Treasury Department to engage in travel to Cuba as part of a program of cultural exchange. Their statement is at best misleading. Under current restrictions, the New York Philharmonic may have been granted a license to perform as was done recently in the case of pop singer Juanes, however, the group applied for licenses for 150 individuals who are ‘friends’ and ‘donors’ of the Philharmonic and had promised to donate $10,000 in exchange for a trip to Cuba—a blatant attempt to disguise tourist travel.

The Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) supports cultural exchange between the United States in Cuba because we believe them to be mutually beneficial to the people of both nations and in particular because they provide the Cuban people with exposure to the outside world, its varied cultures, music, and arts. At the same time, we are adamantly opposed to tourist travel to Cuba because it provides no benefit to the Cuban people while providing critical hard currency to a regime which uses those resources to continue repressing its own people.

Beyond the nasty innuendo about the motives of one of the most highly regarded cultural institutions in the US, CANF aligned with OFAC in mischaracterizing what was at issue. The people who were to accompany the Philharmonic are either on its board of directors or voting members of its not-for-profit Society which was founded in the early 19th century. They had a pre-existing relationship to the orchestra and were not coming out of the blue to use it for a very expensive holiday jaunt to Cuba. Without the involvement of patrons, symphony orchestras could not survive and certainly the Cuba program could not happen. (Who else is going to cover the considerable costs?)

I have not seen their four day schedule, but it will surely include substantial interaction with the sophisticated classical music world of Cuba. In addition to the two concerts and associated ceremonies, they are likely to visit conservatories and schools, meet with Cuban musicians and culture officials, see museums, and attend performances by the ballet and Latin music groups. They are not heading for the beach or golf course in Varadero. In other words they will engage in the kind of serious multi-dimensional cultural exchange that was widely practiced under OFAC licenses issued until 2004 when George Bush paid back his friends in Miami.

Forget the spin advanced in 2004 and now about educational and cultural exchange covering for tourism and the hard currency contribution made to Cuba's economy and government by non-tourist visitors, at peak only 85,000 in 2003. No documentation has ever been offered of serious misuse of educational and cultural licenses (unlike fraudulent religious licenses employed by thousands of never sanctioned Cuban Americans). The dollars such groups bring are hardly noticed among the expenditures of 2.4 million tourists annually.

Travel itself was the target. Opinion leaders, trend setters and average Americans with a serious interest in Cuba bring back eye-witness accounts of an imperfect but friendly society and convey to Cubans that the US is not a hostile monolith. They break down ideology based narratives and psychological attitudes on both sides essential to maintaining the status quo.

Byron Dorgan said it with eloquence on the floor of the Senate:

My colleagues in this Chamber talk a lot about freedom. What about the freedom of the American people to travel? Why is it we have decided to punish the Cuban regime by restricting Americans' freedoms?

I come back to the basic proposition. That is, one of the great music groups in the world, the New York Philharmonic, which has played in North Korea, in Russia, and is about to play in Vietnam, is told: Here are the circumstances and conditions in which you can play in Cuba. By the way, they are onerous. The New York Philharmonic found those circumstances and conditions unacceptable and I understand why.

I am writing to the Office of Assets Control to see if we could not get them to think straight a bit. It makes no sense at all to decide that this kind of exchange is unworthy. Does anybody really think that having the New York Philharmonic play beautiful music in the city of Havana, in the country of Cuba, is in any way going to threaten anybody? Wouldn't it perhaps do at least what it did for those who were able to experience that wonderful music in North Korea?

Is the White House only listening to CANF? Let them know how dumb they look implementing Bush policies rather than their own by clicking here. Urge the President to immediately direct OFAC to allow the Philharmonic concerts, and to then enable general licenses for all non-tourist travel.

Another section of Senator Dorgan's speech should give pause to those who hope for rapid action by Congress and don't seem to care about what the White House does in the interim about non-tourist travel:

we ought to pass the Dorgan-Enzi bill that strikes the travel restrictions with respect to Cuba. We have not yet found a way to get it to the floor. When we do, I guarantee we will have sufficient votes on the floor of the Senate to offer the American people the freedom they should have had in the last 50 or 60 years, and that is freedom to travel. In this case that freedom has been taken from them and it is outrageous.

John McAuliff
Fund for Reconciliation and Development

Not to forget ...
Governor Bill Richardson will speak about his trip to Cuba at the New Democratic Network in Washington on Friday, October 9th. Watch it on line at 12:15 p.m. at http://ndn.org/livecast. Richardson called strongly for the President to open up non-tourist travel and supports Congress ending all restrictions.

I have long felt and have said publicly on a number of occasions that, with the cold war behind us, we should simply remove the embargo on Cuba. I'm glad to hear that you are making headway on a bill that would repeal the travel ban for all Americans. This is a step in the right direction. I am glad to be on record, and you may quote me as supporting this effort.

I think our policy of sanctions against Cuba is ridiculous. During the cold war it made sense because it was a Russian base. They used it for flying spying missions, and so on, but that's over. And all we do by our sanctions is allow Castro, and now maybe his brother, to blame the problems of Cuba on us. And at the same time I think particularly now that there's some transitioning of some kind probably coming about, we're much more likely to get a constructive outcome if there's a lot of interaction. And to try to prevent interaction under these circumstances, I don't think is sensible. -- former Secretary of State George Shultz interviewed by Charlie Rose, 4/24/08

-- Steve Clemons

photo: http://expatbrazil.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/airlines-pan-am.jpg

Over the weekend, one of the FBI's longest-sought fugitives, Louis Armando Peña Soltren, who, along with two others, hijacked a Pan Am flight enroute to Barbados in 1968, surrendered himself to U.S. custody. Peña had spent the last four decades in Cuba, one of dozens of fugitives from U.S. justice who fled to Cuba decades ago and was allowed to remain.

Most likely, Peña was just tired, and was willing to trade time in jail for a much-needed visit with his family (which he apparently negotiated with the FBI). But, the time may be coming when longtime U.S. fugitives are no longer welcome in Cuba. As DeWayne Wickham writes in USA Today, U.S. fugitives in Cuba today have a lot to fear from the apparent thaw in U.S.-Cuban relations.

It may come as a surprise to many Americans that there are some 70 (or so it's reported) fugitives from U.S. justice living in Cuba today. Most of them came to Cuba in the 1960's and 1970's by hijacking planes and rerouting them to Havana.

Fidel Castro was fond of accepting U.S. fugitives whose crimes he considered of a political nature (Charles Hill, Wickham's subject, was a member of New Afrika, a black separatist group). Among the more notorious fugitives accepted by Fidel Castro is a former member of the Black Panther Party, Joanne Chesimard (who changed her name to Assata Shakur) who is still wanted for the murder of a New Jersey State Trooper.

The United States and Cuba don't have full diplomatic relations but they do still have a bilateral extradition treaty. It just hasn't been used in decades. In the last decade or so, Cuba has been asking to cooperate with the United States on anti-terrorism and drug interdiction. To prove it, Cuban officials have sent several recently arrived fugitives back to the United States (such as Jesse Bell in 2002, wanted on drug charges). It doesn't take an official extradition request to secure return of fugitives. It just takes political will.

So, maybe Louis Armando Peña was just so desperate to see his family that he was finally ready to face the music. But he might have also seen - or been shown - the writing on the wall. Charles Hill told DeWayne Wickham he feels sure the Cuban government that took him in won't abandon him. But then again, "If it happens, it happens," he says with resignation. He and other fugitives arrived during the Cold War must know a thaw could change their situation.

It's not inconceivable that the Cuban government could begin informing dozens of U.S. fugitives that the time has come for them to turn themselves in, like Peña just did. And, at the same time, the FBI would surely bend over backward to offer time with family or shorter sentence requests, just to finally close these cases. Neither country may want to expose it if it is happening, but law enforcement is actually one of the ripest areas for bilateral dialogue and cooperation (See page 11 of this report for more on that).

I don’t read The Washington Post any longer because, on a good day, it’s a third-rate newspaper. But sometimes I do read Post articles to which friends refer me.

One such article was an op-ed from some time ago - April 6, 2009 - by Marc A. Thiessen entitled "The Embargo After the Castros". This article typifies the opposition to improving relations with Cuba. It reads like the plaintive cry of a man who, because he can't conjure up any defense against the wave of history that is about to topple him, seeks to have a deus ex machina pluck him from the wave's path at the final moment.

But such gods as Jesse Helms, Thiessen's boss in the long-ago, are dead and though their ghosts may prowl the earth, dei ex machina they aren’t. Besides, Helms and his gang did more damage in their time to U.S. foreign policy than anyone since Senators Joseph McCarthy and William Jenner and their infamous red scare during the early days of the Cold War. But democracy is self-correcting and, largely, the amelioration has set in—particularly with the election to the presidency of Barack Obama.

But back to Cuba.

In his op-ed, Mr. Thiessen cites a meeting he and Roger Noriega had with Ricardo Alarcón in 1998. Mr. Thiessen revels in what apparently was his and Mr. Noriega's personal epiphany that Mr. Alarcón was no different from any of the leaders in the U.S. Congress. That is to say, he was possessed of personal ambition and he let that ambition at times cloud his perspective of the Cuban peoples' genuine interests.

With respect to Mr. Thiessen’s specific epiphany, Alarcón allegedly provided brilliant insights about the questionable staying power of one Raúl Castro, now at least the titular head of the Cuban leadership. From this seminal meeting, Thiessen concludes: "Raúl Castro's position as Fidel's successor is by no means assured." BFO for Marc and Roger.

Blinding flash of the obvious (BFO) because no almost 80 year-old man's position is assured for long. In fact, it is one of the few verities about the Cuban leadership: Raúl and Fidel will pass from the scene - and sooner, not later. Death happens.

If Raúl (or perhaps Fidel even) dies before the U.S. has begun to change its policies toward Cuba - principally to demonstrate that it is the Cuban people who should handle the transition and not the U.S. or any other outside force - we will have missed a golden opportunity to impact the transition that will then occur. Moreover, and more seriously, we will have missed the chance to affect major and positive change in our relations with the rest of our hemisphere, from Buenos Aires to Ottawa.

But Mr. Thiessen's true stroke of Helms-like genius comes when he attacks those who want to see the embargo on Cuba lifted and relations between the U.S. and the island normalized. Mr. Thiessen writes: "Set aside questions about the embargo's efficacy. Like it or not, it is our only leverage, aside from our military, to affect the transition in Cuba." In one fell swoop, Mr. Thiessen reveals the emptiness of his thinking.

Set aside questions about the embargo's efficacy? Hamlet may as well set aside questions about his father's murder. The embargo is an utter failure at great cost to the people of Cuba and to the people of America.

This is what the present movement to change policy is all about. From this clearly demonstrated fact does the effort to restore sanity to U.S. Cuba policy draw its strength. One cannot set aside questions about the embargo's efficacy because the embargo is U.S. policy. The embargo is an abject failure; ergo, U.S. policy is an abject failure. Normally, this is incentive to change. “Normally” apparently doesn’t hold water for Mr. Thiessen.

Couched in Mr. Thiessen's illogic is another absurdity as well: "aside from our military", he writes. Can we imagine any person so foolish as to contemplate the "no options are off the table" version of diplomacy vis a vis Cuba? Using the Armed Forces of the United States against a country whose chief foreign policy today is sending doctors and medical technicians to the world's ghettos?

And there are dozens of ways to affect Cuba's transition; in fact, one could argue that there are millions of ways. Because every American citizen traveling to Cuba is a way to affect Cuba's transition. There is no better emissary for democracy than a free citizen.

Moreover, simply recognizing that it will be up to the Cuban people ultimately to decide what type of government they desire following the departure of the Castros from the scene, will generate a new momentum for change. Imagine, if you will, a hemisphere where the U.S. is respected and admired again rather than disparaged and reviled, where leaders such as Brazil's Lula and Argentina's Kirchner can look forward to working with Washington on real challenges such as trade, climate change, illicit drugs, growing crime and human trafficking, environmental protection, finding and developing new energy sources, managing diminishing water resources, HIV/AIDS, and the many other problems we all increasingly confront.

As President Obama said this year in Turkey: "This much is certain: no one nation can confront [such] challenges alone, and all nations have a stake in overcoming them. That is why we must listen to one another, and seek common ground. That is why we must build on our mutual interests, and rise above our differences. We are stronger when we act together. That is the message that I have carried with me throughout this trip to Europe. That will be the approach of the United States of America going forward."

Jesse Helms, eat your heart out. Your demonic dreams for American global hegemony are being defeated by what you most loathed - the growing understanding that if we don't hang together in this world we are most surely going to hang alone.

-- Lawrence Wilkerson

Frank Calzon, the Executive Director of the Center for a Free Cuba (a DC think thank funded by US AID) writes in today's Miami Herald:

Is it possible that our charismatic President Obama -- though now a Nobel Laureate -- has adopted Henry Kissinger's realpolitick model for conducting foreign policy? A model cloaked in pragmatism but devoid of passion for freedom and human rights?

Calzon argues that in several instances, the President has abandoned the cause of human rights, in order to appease authoritarian governments. Take the President's decision to "avoid offending Russia" and dump a $4.5 billion ballistic missile shield planned for Poland and the Czech Republic. Supporters of Obama's decision will argue that these missile interceptors have not been proven effective (far from it) and would thus be a waste of taxpayer dollars. But Calzon suggests that the $4.5 billion program would have made Poland and the Czech Republic feel less "vulnerable."

Agree or not, Calzon raises an interesting and debatable question about this President's foreign policy and how to understand its principles and methods. But he strains credulity applying his logic to the case of Cuba, mainly because there's no 'there' there.

Calzon complains that Cuban dissidents weren't invited to a reception at the US Interests Section in Havana last month - though he fails to mention that they had a private reception with the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State during her visit to Havana. He also notes that representatives of a Cuban human rights prize winner (who was not allowed to leave Cuba to accept the prize) were not received by the White House. Did Mr. Calzon complain when no one in President Bush's White House would receive Hector Palacios when he came to Washington last year? Palacios, a prominent Cuban dissident, was one of 75 rounded up and imprisoned in April 2003, and lucky (not exactly) to be out of prison due to his failing health. But then, Palacios has been known to differ with U.S. policy on Cuba from time to time.

Calzon goes on:

At State there are some who believe the promotion of democracy by American diplomats is a mistake and a subterfuge.

It's a statement meant to evoke outrage at the abandonment of the cause of human rights. But who's really abandoned the cause of human rights in Cuba? How does Mr. Calzon answer the protestations of Cuban dissidents, like Oswaldo Paya, Elizardo Sanchez or Miriam Leiva, who urge the United States not to meddle in affairs only the Cuban people can settle, and not to give the Cuban government reason to brand them "agents" in the pay of Uncle Sam?

And what does Mr. Calzon say about human rights defenders like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Freedom House, who all separately came out for greater engagement of Cuba - through either the lifting the U.S. travel ban or lifting the entire embargo - in the last year. I doubt they did so because they no longer believe in the promotion of human rights.

The human rights groups endorsed engagement because they recognize that after 50 years, the United States - despite hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer-funded grants to organizations like Mr. Calzon's - has failed to actually promote multiparty democracy in Cuba.

Perhaps the issue is not whether the United States would abandon the cause of democracy and human rights in Cuba, it's whether we might finally abandon Mr. Calzon's approach to promoting them. Mr. Calzon's op-ed didn't mention that Congress has cut back U.S. government spending - which was quadrupled under the previous administration - on groups like his, not because Congress no longer supports human rights, but because the USAID Cuba program has been largely ineffective, and has suffered from waste, fraud and abuse.

Mr. Calzon's real concern may be that global human rights groups, along with Cuban dissidents like Oscar "Chepe" Espinoza, will actually convince the U.S. government that it can do more to improve the lives of the Cuban people today by simply promoting the freedom of Americans to travel to Cuba and engage the Cuban people directly. And, conveniently, that policy wouldn't cost the American taxpayer a dime.

"I am disappointed that the Cuban government refuses to let Yoani Sanchez travel to New York to receive a Maria Moors Cabot citation," Nicholas Lemann, dean of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, said in a statement.

"The Cuban government ought to value Ms. Sanchez's work as a sign that young Cubans are ready to take Cuba into a better future­ one that will have the free press the Cuban people deserve," he said.

To be honest I am not a regular reader or big fan of Yoani Sanchez. She combines both realistic and exaggerated observations with dissident politics attuned to the preconceptions and prejudices of an audience far from her country's reality. Generally I find the critical voices published on The Havana Times blog more interesting and more authentic.

Nevertheless, Cuba's denial of an exit visa ("White Card") for Ms. Sanchez to come to the US was wrong in principle, and dumb. It ranks with OFAC's denial of the American version of an exit visa, a travel license, to the voting members of the not-for-profit NY Philharmonic Society. (See my previous posts about the Philharmonic here and here.)

Cuba loses more from building up Yoani's virtual platform as an international symbol than it gains from depriving her of a physical platform at the Columbia awards ceremony. The US tarnishes the President's vision recognized by the Nobel Peace Prize committee by letting bureaucratic pettiness trump reaching across psychological borders with a preeminent cultural institution.

A well connected Cuban American friend told me a few days ago that Senator Bob Menendez and CANF were not the reason for the Philharmonic license denial. He said the Administration felt such a license would have set a precedent and taken the pace of change out of their hands.

I'm not sure whether I am more disturbed by an image of the White House opportunistically buckling to Cuban American hard liners in New Jersey and Florida, or putting slow moving diplomatic gamesmanship above principle.

Bottom line, both governments should stop sacrificing freedom of travel for political reasons. President Obama can set the example, and end his subordinates' token counting, by embracing the New York Philharmonic concerts in Havana and enabling all non-tourist travel without further unconscionable delay.

Let the White House know how you feel here.

John McAuliff
Fund for Reconciliation and Development

Havana's Malecon at Sunset (photo from Daily Mail Travel Mail)

The Miami Herald has a long story predicting success for the travel bill in the House but problems in the Senate. It also suggests opposition from the White House. Who does reporter Juan Tamayo talk to? What is his own position?

The full story can be read here with emphasis added.

A key section:

But backers of the changes say the bills have not moved forward through the congressional maze so far because of the lack of active support from the Obama administration and the Democratic leadership in both chambers.

``The Obama people are showing timidity. They are sitting on their hands,'' said a Senate aide whose Democratic boss favors lifting all travel restrictions. He asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the issue.

Administration officials say lifting all travel restrictions would be too drastic and perhaps chaotic, and the the president prefers a more measured warming of relations. They stop short of saying whether Obama would sign or veto the bill if passed by Congress.*

The Secretary of State testified to Congress that the President will not veto legislation to end the embargo. Does it make sense that the President would veto the partial lifting represented by ending travel limits? Tamayo may also be grasping at straws in whom he chooses to quote about prospects for passage by the Senate.

If the Administration does actually fear that it will lose control over the diplomatic process when travel legislation is adopted, the President can get out ahead by finally enabling general licenses for non-tourist travel. At best, full travel is half a year away and some valuable people-to-people bridge building could take place in the meantime from which the White House will receive credit and can gain advantage.

John McAuliff
Fund for Reconciliation and Development

Links

Governor Bill Richardson's insightful talk at New Democratic Network where he calls for both Administration and Congressional action and reciprocity by Cuba can be seen here.

White House Office of Public Engagement here

With all that has been written about the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act, it was interesting to see the Miami Herald's editorial page take on the issue. Unfortunately, it was a colossal whiff. The basic message: yes, we've argued for years that we want more people-to-people contacts with Cuba, since that will be good for democracy. But we don't really want it just now, when our hotel rooms are empty because of the recession.

And we're trying to export free market ideas to Cuba?

On October 28th the UN General Assembly will hold its annual debate on the unilateral U.S. embargo of Cuba. Unless something surprising happens before then, it is expected that the Obama Administration will be as isolated as its predecessors, i.e. we will take a deserved drubbing along the lines of last year's 185 to 3 vote. This will be the 18th time since 1992.

Ironically 50% of our support will come from Israel. Israeli citizens are free to vacation in Cuba, to invest in major property development projects, and to manage the country's largest citrus plantation.

We might at least generate some abstentions if the President before then used his authority to enable unlimited non-tourist travel and announced his readiness to sign legislation to end all restrictions.

By taking this step, he will also avoid further embarrassment of continuing to deny a travel license to the New York Philharmonic. In addition he will offer a more principled example for how Cuba should handle exit visas for Yoani Sanchez and other dissidents.

American travel licenses = Cuban exit visas!

It's hard to fathom what is holding back the White House.

According to the latest Bendixen poll, 59% of Cuban Americans believe all Americans should be free to travel to Cuba. Only 29% oppose, and 12% don't know.

The Miami Herald reported

(Bendixen) Executive Vice President Fernand Amandi said he was surprised by the magnitude of the swing in just seven years -- from 46 percent in favor in 2002 to 59 percent in the Sept. 24-26 survey. Only 29 percent were opposed in the new survey, compared to 47 percent in 2002.

John McAuliff
Fund for Reconciliation and Development

*************

Links

Practical problems in normalizing telecommunications are documented by Nick Miroff and analyzed by Tony Martinez.

Photo credit: EFE

Earlier this week the Cuban government released a dissident political activist from jail, and granted permission for two others to leave the country. Nelson Aguiar, who had served 6 of his 13 year prison sentence, is still adjusting to the shock: "They never said they were going to free me. When they told me to collect my things, I thought I was moving to another prison."

The news came as Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos was concluding a visit to Havana, during which he met for three hours with President Raul Castro. This is the second time Cuba has released dissidents coincident to visits by Spanish diplomats, who have an ongoing bilateral dialogue with the Cuban government on human rights (Cuba released 7 dissidents at the request of the Spanish government in February 2008). Spanish-Cuban ties had soured under the previous Spanish government, which took a hard line toward Havana. But Prime Minister Zapatero has made re-engaging with the island a priority, and hopes to bring the rest of the European Union along during Spain's turn at the EU Presidency beginning in January 2010.

One can not know exactly what calculus went into these decisions by the Cuban government, nor can we know if they might be replicable should the United States hope to develop real influence with the Cuban government on sensitive issues like human rights. All we know is that confrontation didn't work.

Throughout his two terms in office, President George W. Bush quadrupled resources to help Cuban dissidents organize, and to U.S. and Eastern European groups working to publicize their causes, including freedom of movement, assembly, press and multiparty democratic elections. Then-U.S. diplomatic mission chief, James Cason, went so far as to host seminars in his home for dissidents (among the attendees - Cuban double agent David Manuel Orrio). But President Bush's big push backfired when 75 dissidents were rounded up and jailed in the spring of 2003, all convicted of being agents in the pay of a hostile foreign government. (Aguiar was one of those 75.) The most developed network of activists, in support of the Varela Project to amend and reform the Cuban constitution, was dismantled, with many of its key organizers in jail. And who got the blame? We did.

If President Obama is serious about seeking a new beginning with Cuba, one hopes his administration is seeking the advice of allies like Spain, who have repeatedly demonstrated they can influence the Cuban government in ways the United States never has in 50 years.

It isn't quick or easy, but, quite often, diplomacy works.

On October 28th, the United Nations General Assembly is expected to vote on a resolution condemning the United States embargo against Cuba.

If past is prologue, it will pass resoundingly. The General Assembly has adopted similar measures in each of the last seventeen years; in 2008, by a margin of 185-3. But that was a condemnation of an embargo enforced, energetically and unapologetically, by the administration of George W. Bush. The vote this year takes place for the first time on President Obama's watch, and so has special significance.

The Secretary-General has prepared a public report that catalogues what UN members and UN organizations say about the embargo.

This document is a powerful reminder that the U.S. embargo is viewed internationally with great seriousness and in ways that are deeply damaging to U.S. interests and our image overseas.

Lest anyone think this policy is only provocative to nations in the non-aligned world, its opponents include Australia, Brazil, China, Colombia, Egypt, the European Union, India, Japan, Mexico, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Russia.

They are plain-spoken in their opposition. Australia reminds us it votes "consistently" against the embargo. Brazil says it is the "Cuban people who suffer the most from the blockade." China says the embargo "serves no purpose other than to keep tensions high between two neighboring countries and inflict tremendous hardship and suffering on the people of Cuba, especially women and children." Egypt and India condemn the extra-territorial reach of our sanctions, which Japan says run "counter to the provisions of international law." Mexico calls these measures coercive. Russia "rejects" the embargo. Nations across the planet have enacted laws making it illegal for their companies to comply.

Our policy is especially controversial in our own hemisphere, where the U.S. alone is without diplomatic relations with Cuba, and where forum after forum -- including the Rio Group, the Ibero-American Summit, the Heads of State of Latin America and the Caribbean, and CARICOM -- has rejected the embargo and called for its repeal.

Beyond our diplomatic interests, the report forces us to move beyond the stale, political debate in which the embargo is most often framed (where every problem on the island is blamed on either Cuba's system or U.S. policy) and to confront the significant injuries this policy inflicts on ordinary Cubans.

It reminds us:

• The embargo stops Cuba from obtaining diagnostic equipment or replacement parts for equipment used in the detection of breast, colon, and prostate cancer.
• The embargo stops Cuba from obtaining patented materials that are needed for pediatric cardiac surgery and the diagnosis of pediatric illnesses.
• The embargo prevents Cuba from purchasing antiretroviral drugs for the treatment of HIV-AIDS from U.S. sources of the medication.
• The embargo stops Cuba from obtaining needed supplies for the diagnosis of Downs' Syndrome.
• Under the embargo, Cuba cannot buy construction materials from the nearby U.S. market to assist in its hurricane recovery.
• While food sales are legal, regulatory impediments drive up the costs of commodities that Cuba wants to buy from U.S. suppliers, and forces them in many cases to turn to other more expensive and distant sources of nutrition for their people.
• Because our market is closed to their goods, Cuba cannot sell products like coffee, honey, tobacco, live lobsters and other items that would provide jobs and opportunities for average Cubans.

This list, abbreviated for space, is actually much longer, more vivid and troubling, as the report documents case after case of how our embargo affects daily life in Cuba. And for what reason? Because it will someday force the Cuban government to dismantle its system? As a bargaining chip? These arguments have proven false and futile over the decades and what the UN has been trying to tell us since 1992 is that they should be abandoned along with a policy that has so outlived its usefulness.

And yet, it is now the Obama administration supporting and enforcing the embargo -- still following Bush-era rules that thwart U.S. agriculture sales; still levying stiff penalties for violations of the regulations; still stopping prominent Cubans from visiting the United States; still refusing to use its executive authority to allow American artists, the faith community, academics, and other proponents of engagement and exchange to visit Cuba as representatives of our country and its ideals.

To his credit, President Obama has taken some useful steps to change U.S. policy toward Cuba. He repealed the cruel Bush administration rules on family travel that divided Cuban families. He joined efforts by the OAS to lift Cuba's suspension from that organization. He has opened a direct channel of negotiations with Cuba's government on matters that include migration, resuming direct mail service, and relaxing the restrictions that Cuban and U.S. diplomats face in doing their jobs in each of our nation's capitals.

This is a start, but more -- much more -- needs to be done. Not because the UN says so, but because our country needs to embrace the world not as we found it in 1959 -- or in 2008 -- but as it exists today.

President Obama can do this. Our times demand that he do so.

-- Sarah Stephens

The fight over America's Cuba policy is heating up. Last week New Jersey's Star Ledger ran a clear-eyed editorial on U.S. Cuba policy that recognizes what most Americans -- even those that don't follow Cuba particularly closely -- already intuit: Cuba's day as a threat to us is long over. We can best support democracy in Cuba, the editors say, by allowing all Americans to travel there. Our interests are best served when we look forward.

At first blush it would seem to be remarkable that the Star Ledger -- the hometown paper of New Jersey's ostensibly staunch, pro-embargo community -- would come out so strongly in favor of policy reform on Cuba. But it emerged this week that in fact most Cuban-Americans strongly support the freedom of all Americans to visit Cuba.

And this in turn explains why pro-embargo Cuban-American donors are ratcheting up their support to the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee; Al Kamen reported in the Washington Post that Cuban-American support to the DSCC has increased six fold in the last three years. At a time when the DSCC haul is dramatically lower than it was before the 2008 elections, this help is going to be very much appreciated. It would be a great shame if such contributions lead to a platform on Cuba that is dramatically at odds with the rest of the Cuban-American community, and the country.

Because the truth is that the Cuban-American community is already looking forward, as a recent essay by Sergio Pino described movingly. Writing about the reverberations, still ringing audibly in Miami, of Juanes' Havana event, Pino noted:

That Sunday, our Cuban brethren had a rare opportunity to have a good time and to hear a message of peace and reconciliation... Juanes opened the door to change; it is time to rethink our strategy. With three Cuban-American members of Congress, and one in the Senate, and many well-meaning Cuban-American leaders of hundreds of different political organizations in exile, it is time for one of them to come forward and unite us behind a new and more effective approach that focuses on the Cuban people first.

The U.N. vote that no one looks forward to looms tomorrow. It will once again underscore the David versus Goliath dimensions of our backward-looking embargo. Wouldn't it be nice if this were the last one? Wouldn't it be nice if we could experience an irony that wasn't bitter: the United States makes a commitment to democracy in Cuba that doesn't entail crushing a gasping regime with the blunt instrument of our sanctions, but by honoring the will of the community that has suffered most in this conflict.

Photo credit: Rex Features, available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jul/15/jonathan-powell-world-leaders

According to diplomatic sources, President Obama asked Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero (whom he met with two weeks ago) to have his Foreign Minister convey a message to Cuban authorities during his trip last week to Havana.

"We're taking steps, but if they don't take steps too, it's going to be very hard for us to continue," the President said. He went on to say that while the U.S. government understands that things in Cuba won't change "overnight", he hopes that in several years, looking back, it would be clear that the changes started during this time.

The Cuban government didn't exactly swoon in response. Cuba's ambassador to Spain, Alejandro Gonzalez Galiano, firmly declined mediation by a third party and declared that Cuba prefers direct negotiations with the United States.

The President's message (and its leaking) was as odd as was its delivery (if President Obama wanted to deliver a message to Cuba, his own State Department diplomat, Bisa Williams, who was in Cuba just last month, would have made an appropriate vessel, no?) I find it very hard to believe that there is anything standing in this President's way if he wants to move forward on Cuba. On the contrary - following a policy of reciprocity is the surest way to stop forward movement and give up control of our own country's policy.

President Obama hit on one indisputable truth: change in Cuba won't come overnight. But the President is misled - presumably by his staff, since we know that in 2004 Mr. Obama opposed the entire embargo - in thinking that the Cuban government is consumed with how to come down from the ledge with the United States. The Cuban government has given no reason to think that it its internal affairs are up for negotiation, no matter how gentle or cleverly plotted over a five year time line they may be.

If anything, Raul Castro is focused on proving to the Cuban people that now began a series of economic reforms that, while painful and slow now, looking back several years from now, made work - as the popular Cuban pop duo Buena Fe so aptly put it - worth it. This is no small task. The Cuban economy has fallen on very hard times, and Raul Castro is not likely to count on the hypothetical lifting of U.S. trade sanctions as the panacea to Cuba's problems. This in turn, limits our coercive influence.

Cuba wants engagement with the United States, but we shouldn't lull ourselves into thinking that merely switching from hard to soft tones is an effective or new policy.

Now is the time to rethink of our very goals and expectations with respect to Cuba. Neither the United States' embargo, nor European persuasion has brought fundamental change to Cuba. Only Cubans can shape such changes over time. Until we realize this fact, our messages will continue to fall on deaf ears.

Well, the inevitable vote is now upon us. The world has condemned the U.S. embargo of Cuba 187-3 with two abstentions. That's the 18th year in a row if I have my math correct.

This dramatic 180 in global opinion of President Obama's foreign policy did not have to happen. President Obama could have extended the open hand and spirit of engagement that won him the Nobel prize, but with Cuba he is playing from someone else's sheet of music. Despite the cosmetic and incremental changes to U.S. policy that mostly effect Cuban-Americans, Mr. Obama's biggest move so far has been to make the embargo his own, something he did decisively in early September, when he reauthorized the Trading With the Enemy Act provisions that provide part of the legal basis for the embargo. Indeed, that decision completely overshadows the stop-start low-level negotiations on mail service and migration that all his political appointees seem to be allergic to.

But Cuba policy is about more than Cuba in the eyes of our friends and competitors. Our indiscriminate and overbearing embargo is a symbol that for all the talk of change--from the end of the Cold War to the tragic events of 9/11 to the still reverberating echoes of "Yes, we can," the simple reality is that America is saying to the world that on an issue that symbolizes the last breath of American paternalism and the narrow politics of spiteful domestic interest groups the answer remains, "no, we won't."

President Obama’s pledges of multi-lateralism and respect for the views of other nations suffered a major setback on Wednesday at the United Nations. Amazingly, he did even worse than President Bush when votes for a resolution to condemn the unilateral US embargo of Cuba increased from 185 to 187 in favor, 3 opposed.

Continued accommodation to the dwindling special interest minority of Senator Bob Menendez and other hard line Cuban Americans is undermining the international credibility of the President.

Most Americans, including government officials, may not pay much attention. However, this annual General Assembly debate signals that no US foreign policy is as universally disliked as our trade war against Cuba.

The margin of the US defeat reflects the first dramatic failure of the Obama Administration to live up to its promise to improve US standing in the world.

The tragedy is that the White House could have easily influenced the vote by making straightforward reforms on travel consistent with its own values and goals and the opinion of two-thirds of Americans.

Ironically, had they done so, the New York Philharmonic would have been able to provide a counterpoint to the UN vote, performing a magnificent concert in Havana at the end of this week. (See a regretful post from Havana on progressoweekly.com.)

The President also could have addressed humanitarian concern about the embargo by licensing sale and donation of construction, medical and agricultural equipment and supplies in response to last year’s triple hurricane devastation.

US hypocrisy in defense of the embargo is equaled by Israel’s hypocrisy in voting with us. Its own citizens, unlike Americans, are free to vacation, invest and work in Cuba.

Dr. Susan Rice, the US representative to the UN, appeared to miss the point entirely when she opened her UN speech in a Ronald Reagan tone:

Here we go again. I suppose old habits die hard.

The hostile language we have just heard from the Foreign Minister of Cuba seems straight out of the Cold War era and is not conducive to constructive progress.

Reasons for hope may be found in a post-vote interview with Associated Press by Cuba's Foreign Minister:

Rodriguez told AP he was "a little bit surprised" by the vehemence of Rice's initial comments, saying he knew and respected her and held her in high esteem.

"She is an articulate person, a decent and well-meaning person, like president Obama," he said. "And we respect both of them for that."

He added that Cuba recognizes there may be opportunities for talks with the Obama administration that were not possible with the administration of former President George W. Bush.

If anything, the president seems to have limited his options by locking himself in to a policy of mutual reciprocity that lets Havana determine the pace of progress in unfreezing 50 years of icy relations. On more than one occasion, the president has reiterated his view that, in return for letting Cuban-American families travel and send remittances to their loved ones on the island, the Castro regime must take the next step toward better relations. He reportedly asked his Spanish counterpart, Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero, to tell President Raul Castro to get moving on democratic reforms. According to an unnamed U.S. official quoted in El Pais, Obama said, "We're taking steps, but if they don't take steps too, it's going to be very hard for us to continue." Of course, the fact that financial donations from pro-embargo Cuban Americans to the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, which happens to be led by pro-embargo Cuban-American Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), have jumped six-fold since 2006 also may have something to do with this approach. It at least seems to reaffirm another old cliché: money talks. full text

John McAuliff
Fund for Reconciliation and Development

Links

To hear the entire embargo debate, go here and look for 28 October, 27th plenary meeting.

Illustrations of the humanitarian and developmental cost of the embargo in the 117 page annual report by the Secretary General of the United Nations here

Rep. Jim McGovern and Steve Clemmons suggested the US should have abstained, as posted on thewashingtonnote.com

My further pre-vote thoughts here

State Department spokesman on the vote during daily briefing

Photo credit: Seth Wenig, Associated Press

As I read the remarks of Ambassador Susan Rice, the U.S. Representative to the United Nations, in that body’s debate on the U.S. embargo on Cuba – which Rice called “stale” and stuck in the Cold War – I found myself repeatedly nodding, “I guess she’s got a point there.”

For instance, Ambassador Rice protested the hyperbolic use of the term “genocide” to describe the embargo; callous and harmful as the policy may be, it hardly qualifies as “the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.” She also noted the U.S. sovereign right to conduct its own bilateral foreign and economic policies, and urged members to consider that the U.S. views its position as a defense of the “basic norms embodied in the Inter-American Democratic Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

Rice asked the General Assembly to consider the Obama administration’s changes to the embargo, such as lifting restrictions on humanitarian donations, family visits and telecommunications services.

Mr. President, it is equally important to note that the United States has demonstrated that we are prepared to engage the Government of Cuba on issues that affect the security and well-being of both our peoples.

True: the Obama administration recently restarted migation talks (called off by the Bush administration), which represent the top security concern between our two countries.

Ambassador Rice also argued that the Cuban government must take some responsibility for its own policies that have contributed to economic pains there. And, quite rightly, Rice pointed out that there are many steps the Cuban government could take that might (and that is the operative word, isn’t it?) convince the United States to ease its embargo.

She did the very best she could - but not without a fair number of painful ironies and
misleading statements.