Photo: http://csis.org/files/cubaoutlook_audio.jpg

Contrary to what has been suggested on the Capitol Hill Cubans website, I couldn’t agree more with Senator Richard Lugar and Representative Howard Berman's recent assessment that "over the last five decades, it has become clear that isolation will not induce the Castro regime to take steps towards political liberalization." (Miami Herald, Lift the ban, let Americans visit Cuba).

Several excellent reports issued this spring by Senator Lugar, the Lexington Institute, Brookings and others, together with diplomats in Havana agree on this point: attempts to politically isolate Cuba and the economic embargo have not served US strategic interests. They have harmed ordinary people on the island. As dissidents argue, they have given the Cuban government a convenient scapegoat for all the hardships inflicted on their people by tight state control and lack of economic freedoms. Moreover, it is much easier to maintain political legitimacy whilst suppressing fundamental human rights and freedoms, if people on the island are made to feel that their country is under attack.

The Obama administration has already made a positive move in lifting the restrictions on travel and remittances for Cuban Americans. This has been widely welcomed on the island, especially amongst divided families. Members of Cuban civil society and dissidents on the island, with whom we are in regular contact, are hoping for more, most immediately Congress lifting of the broader ban on Americans traveling to Cuba.

The Royal Ballet performing in Cuba

British Council CEO Martin Davidson and Raoul Shah visited New America this week to talk about smart power. Such power, to paraphrase one of its theorists, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., accrues to a country as the sum of its "culture (when it is attractive to others), its values (when they are attractive and not undercut by inconsistent practices) and [its] policies (when they are seen as inclusive and legitimate)."

The New Yorker's Hendrick Hertzberg, at the time of President Obama's inauguration, heralded this idea as one that would "renew the venerable doctrine of liberal internationalism in a non-stupid way."

To scan the news, you would think the very idea of dialogue was defunct: what has the upstart administration accomplished for all its overtures and openness? To listen to Davidson, though, the idea still has legs. True engagement is harder than mere strategic communications. It is also a "slow burn." And progress (when and if it does come) is difficult to measure. But it is a necessary companion to the instruments of statecraft, and --argued Davidson and Shah-- the surest way to ensure that peace and development cross borders.

Photo credit: Alex Wong (Getty Images)

It's been a rough few months for President Obama. To say nothing of the domestic policy challenges he's faced, the President has also had setbanks in his foreign policy. From Israel/Palestine, Iran, North Korea, Honduras, and most especially now Afghanistan, he just can't score a win. And these days, friends and foes alike, at home and abroad, are wondering, what happened to the "change" he promised?

Rome wasn't built in a day, but by reading the blogs and watching the 24-hour news networks you'd think it should have been. It's quite a bit early to be writing this Administration's epitaph. As I recall, President Clinton's first year was abysmal enough to usher in a wave of Republicans into Congress with their "Contract with America" the very next year. Surely this team is learning the ropes, and learning from its missteps.

So what can this Administration do to finally get some foreign policy points on the board? The problem with most of our foreign policy challenges is that they either don't matter enough to us (remember that coup in Fiji, how that's working out?) or they matter too much to take real risks (think Israel, Iran, North Korea, China, Afghanistan) with conceivable rewards.

Next week offers Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a modest risk-taking, point-scoring opportunity on Cuba.

“In fact, when it comes to U.S. policy in Latin America — as events this week in Honduras suggest — it's often hard to tell if George W. Bush isn't still President…. Coup-happy forces in other Latin American countries can only feel emboldened”

Tim Padgett, Time Magazine

As an Obama volunteer in the New Hampshire primary, I had the good fortune to hear him speak at a rally in Keene. It was striking that the theme that absolutely electrified his diverse audience was his pledge to change the relationship of the US to the world.

We believed he would engage internationally in a very different way than had George Bush and by inference many of his predecessors. Because of his unusual heritage and experience, he would be the first post-cold war, post-interventionist President. .

Obama’s supporters obviously were not hearing everything he said, nor, as President, has Obama been hearing what the world is saying.

As deeply as it has disappointed many of his campaign stalwarts, we should have expected last week’s speech on Afghanistan given his frequent campaign contrasts between the good war there with the bad one in Iraq.

At the same time, we were justified in expecting better from his policy toward Latin America. Yet closest to home the White House is proving to be tone deaf, and unable to match its practice to high-minded rhetoric of mutual respect and non-imposition of US political values.

Photo credit: http://www.donkeydish.com/images/gallery/barack-obama-john-kerry.jpg

Two weeks before the House Foreign Affairs Committee heard arguments last month for lifting the U.S. travel ban on Cuba, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry was slated to headline a Cuba policy conference at Boston University. But he cancelled, due to Senate votes expected back in Washington.

For anyone who was left wondering where John Kerry stands on Cuba as a result, one need read no further than tomorrow's St. Petersburg Times. In a powerful op-ed, the Chairman announces his support for the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act. He writes:

First, at a minimum, the [Obama] administration should reinvigorate people-to-people relations. When announcing expanded family travel, the president said, "There are no better ambassadors for freedom than Cuban-Americans." True, but there are 299 million other Americans whose challenging minds, economic success, love for democracy and solid values make them proud ambassadors as well.

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America

Along with his Cuba op-ed in the St. Peterburg Times this week, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry published yesterday in the Congressional Record a longer, more historical, and more comprehensive look at where our policy on Cuba has been and where it ought to go. Phil Peters at the Cuban Triangle offers an excellent sum-up here (Peters was particularly struck by Kerry's "conservative" perspective on the utility of continuing bloated, mismanaged government-funded Cuba programs that haven't achieved their goals).

Chairman Kerry's excellent, thoughtful treatment is more than worth the read, if for no other reason than this: he essentially offers up the policy review Secretary Clinton promised the Senate Foreign Relations Committee 11 months ago but, apparently, no one produced.

Florida's Senator George LeMieux successfully defended Radio and Television Marti's $34 million budget from a major cut yesterday, and the newcomer was greatly relieved. "These programs," he said, "are essential to spreading the message of democracy."

Really? Radio and TV Marti? The programs that, according to the GAO, less than one percent of Cubans tune in to?

Photo credit: EFE

Yesterday was International Human Rights Day, and, as would be expected, human rights activists in Cuba organized several events mark the day, inviting press and foreign diplomats to observe and cover the demonstration. Three demonstrations were organized, in one case with as many as 50 activists, and in two other cases, carried out by perhaps less than a dozen. In all three cases, the activists were met and repudiated by protestors who yelled, booed and chanted at and over them.

At one of these demonstrations, one featuring no more than a handful of human rights activists and about 200 of their critics, the counter-demonstrators were seen pushing and hitting people, and CNN ran footage of people being shoved into cars. A foreign diplomat who was there to observe the demonstration was himself surrounded and harassed by the crowd.

As usual, I find myself wondering where U.S. policy fits into this picture.

"They are mercenaries," yelled one demonstrator who did not give his name. "They are paid by the United States of America, the same country that has a blockade on us, who threaten our children, who have killed more than 2,000 Cubans."

You might be tempted to just wave this off as propaganda and hyperbole. It is both of those things. But these are actually two very crucial points on which the failure of U.S. policy turns. The United States does dedicate millions of dollars a year to aiding and publicizing the work of Cuban dissidents, both on and off the island. And during the Bush Administration, as our policy fixated on regime change in Havana, or “hastening the transition,” that aid quadrupled. The more the United States focused on Cuba’s dissidents, the more Cuban authorities did too. Some dissidents, like Miriam Leivia, kept their distance as a result:

"obviously, we all hope in the not-too-distant future to be able to see a democratic Cuba, something that would be extraordinarily positive for our hemisphere"

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

One more opportunity lost. Unbidden, the only words the Secretary of State directed to US policy with Cuba during Friday's State Department briefing on Latin America simply dug us deeper into a dead end interventionist ditch. No one asked her or Assistant Secretary Valenzuela about the Administration's policy on non-tourist travel or on legislation restoring freedom to Americans; nor did either volunteer a comment. (James Early of the Smithsonian raised the topic in his dialogue with Assistant Secretary for Democracy and Global Affairs Maria Otero but got no response. See it here at 55 minutes in.)

The underlying contradiction of US policy exploded in the New York Times the next day when it was reported that since December 5 Cuba has detained the employee of a subcontractor using USAID funds to help opponents of the government. (Could there be a connection with the postponement of bilateral talks on migration that was announced on December 4?)

The US can and should aspire to improvements in other countries democracies and human rights, as others may comment upon our own money distorted political system, incarceration rate and absence of a fundamental human right to universal health care. However trying to impose values or intervene financially is wrong in principle, distorts internal democratic evolution, and often results in unforeseen blow backs to our own interests and to those whom we seek to help (by fostering illusions of their significance and safety).

For years Congress has been appropriating millions of dollars for the ostensible purpose of encouraging democracy and human rights in Cuba. In reality the money approved by a Republican controlled Congress was mostly pork, intended to benefit Cuban Americans in Miami who (surprise) supported Republican candidates with donations and votes. Much of the money went to the supremely irrelevant Radio and TV Marti. It also funded academic work by the Cuba Transition Project at the University of Miami and others that propagandize Americans against their country of origin. Grants were also made to Cuban American organizations which claimed to be sending assistance to a democratic opposition in Cuba.

Photo credit: Carly/Hoboken Now

On Friday afternoon, right before he voted to send the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2010 to President Obama’s desk, Senator Bob Menendez, a Cuban American from New Jersey, threatened to vote against it because of a provision that would facilitate U.S. food sales to Cuba:

. . . [T]he process by which these changes have been forced upon this body is so deeply offensive to me, and so deeply undemocratic, that I have no intention – no intention - of continuing to vote for omnibus appropriations bills if they are going to jam foreign policy changes down throats of members, in what some consider "must pass" bills.”

Senator Menendez wanted to be clear, so he reiterated the threat and put his colleagues "on notice" that (though he was about to vote in favor of this particular bill), in the future, if any of them add Cuba provisions, count him out.

What’s all the fuss about? I’ll just warn you now, it’s much ado about nothing.

As more details unfold about the detention of a US citizen in Cuba it becomes clear that the Obama Administration formula that "we've done our part, now it's Cuba's turn" is open to debate.

I'm assuming we can take the news reports at face value, and that the American in question was in fact arrested carrying out his duties for DAI under a project financed by USAID and the Department of State. If you are the Obama Department of State, you have to ask yourself if sprinkling a few cell phones and laptops around Cuba was really worth the effort -- not to mention the safety and well being of a civilian contractor who may not have had any idea what he was getting himself into. Yes, cell phone penetration in Cuba is the lowest in the western hemisphere. And yes, Cuba has harassed and imprisoned democracy advocates. To conclude that therefore the best course of action for USAID or the Department of State is to work on increasing the number of cell phones and laptops in Cuba is like adding two and two and getting five. It's like looking at Cuba but seeing Poland, circa 1981.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sami73/ / CC BY-SA 2.0>

We here at The Havana Note like to read the news and then give our take on it. But sometimes, we're just going to bring you the news....

Over the last two years, Raul Castro's government has instituted reforms in the agriculture sector to help cut Cuba's costly food import bill. When the reforms began, half of the island's arable land lay idle, while the state imported two-thirds of the country's food consumption. Reuters reports on the ways that reforms seem to be paying off, with some 70,000 members of agricultural cooperatives acquiring leases on vacant land parcels. Farmers are also receiving vouchers they can redeem in hard-currency stores for fencing, feed and equipment. But much remains to be done to maximize production and distribution, including improving transportation and storage, and addressing a lack of fertilizer and pesticide.

Less progress on another crucial front: housing. AP reports that Cuba has fallen far short of its already scaled back goal for new housing construction - reaching just 60% of its goal for 2009, or 20,000 housing units. Four years ago, Fidel Castro spotlighted the need for more housing, and set the target at 100,000 homes for the year. And that was before 100,000 homes were damaged or destroyed in the unlucky 2008 hurricane season, when four - count them - hurricanes plowed through the island.

On Wednesday, Cuban officials in Havana "meeting" via videoconference in Washington, DC with travel industry representatives estimated that the U.S. economy is losing $1.1 billion in business associated with travel to Cuba. Officials said U.S. airlines are losing $600 million in revenue, which travel and booking agents are losing $300 million annually, and other service industries, such as food and beverages, lose $200 million annually in sales they could be making if Congress lifts the U.S. ban on travel to Cuba. The Business week story is here.

So often the conversation about Cuba turns on our two governments, and leaves out the people in between. So, today, it was a real pleasure to think about people, and how music speaks to and through them.

The New America Foundation's U.S. Cuba Policy Initiative, together with the Center for Democracy in the Americas, hosted a conversation featuring songwriter and musician Carlos Varela, one of Cuba’s most celebrated nueva trovadors. This was Varela's first trip in the U.S. in more than a decade.

Pulitizer Prize-winning commentator and Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson and Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times senior writer Tim Golden joined Varela. In 2004, Robinson published Last Dance in Havana: The Final Days of Fidel Castro and the Start of the New Cuban Revolution. Golden covered Cuba during the mid-1990’s when about the only thing Cubans had left to consume (and weren’t importing from the Soviet Bloc) was music.

AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos

Over the weekend, Cuba's National Assembly met and approved two new Vice Presidents to the Cuban Council of State. Ramiro Valdes, Communications Minister, and Gladys Bejerano, Comptroller, moved into the two slots vacated by the death of Revolutionary leader Juan Almeida in September and the political demise of former economic guru Carlos Lage earlier this year. The promotions came as no surprise. (Though, Bejerano is the first woman to serve as a Vice President in the Cuban Council of State.)

The big news out of the Assembly session was the speech given by Raul Castro, which marked a rhetorical shift in Cuba's wait-and-see approach to dealing with the Obama Administration' policy toward the island nation.

Castro gave the first public government comment on the arrest of an American citizen who was distributing telecommunications equipment on the island as part of a USAID grant. Castro told the Assembly that "the United States won't quit trying to destroy the revolution and bring a change to our economic and social regime." The American contractor, he said, was "working to illegally distribute sophisticated methods of communication to members of the civil society which they hope to form against our people. Of the United States, he added, "They are giving new breath to open and undercover subversion against Cuba."

So does this mean the honeymoon is over?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/frank-wouters/ / CC BY 2.0>

News flash: The four candidates vying to become the junior U.S. senator from Florida - Charlie Crist, Kendrick Meek, Maurice Ferré, and Marco Rubio - all agree: Cuba: bad. U.S. policy: good. The Miami Herald reports that each candidate supports democracy for Cuba and takes a "tough line" on how to get it.

Could someone please enlighten me, how is this news?

The four candidates all professed their positions at a forum hosted by the U.S. Cuba Democracy PAC, which has donated more than $1 million dollars in campaign cash over the last five years to candidates who back its hard-line, pro-embargo approach to U.S. Cuba policy. (If you want to know more about campaign contributions and how it affects Congressional voting patterns, the watchdog group Public Campaign issued a detailed report here.)

Frankly, the only thing that could have made this event newsworthy would have been for any of the candidates to break away from the pack (or the PAC). But none of them did.

Only in Miami could a politician get away with literally putting the interests of another nation ahead of the interests of our own. Democrat and former Miami mayor Maurice Ferré: "The quest for an open, democratic and free Cuba has to guide all of the United States' actions with respect to Cuba."

Cuban American Republican Marco Rubio took it even farther, waging a war against the very interests of the state he would represent:

photo by Adrian Penn, from Photobucket

Those who believe Cuba likes to keep its northern neighbor at arms' length (or better) by taking provocative actions that short-circuit diplomatic initiatives must be feeling pretty smug about now. With the detention of a US citizen working on a USAID democracy program -- he was finally allowed a visit from US envoys three weeks after his arrest -- followed by aggressive attacks on President Obama's integrity and avowed interest in "a new beginning" with old adversaries by both Cuba's foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez and President Raul Castro, it certainly seems as though Cuba is content to cling to the old relationship.

But the news in the week before Christmas wasn't all bad; those who long for an improvement in the US-Cuba relationship got a few early gifts of hope.