Eleven months ago we were full of hope as a new President took office. Indeed we have seen progress.

Cuban Americans can now refresh their family ties whenever and as often as they wish.

Cuban musicians, artists and intellectuals are coming to the US again. Licensing has opened a bit for American performers, scientists and sports teams to visit. (New York Times story here.)

The bottom line, however, is disappointing. We have lost a year in which a wide range of educational, cultural, humanitarian and religious exchange could have taken place without any political restriction or bureaucratic hindrance.

Personal and organizational relationships would have been renewed or created that foster trust and are building blocks for new attitudes and policies in both countries.

Photo credit: http://boardingarea.com/blogs/flyingwithfish/files/2009/08/jfk_tsa_021.jpg

Responding to the attempted bombing of a U.S. airliner on Christmas day, the Transportation Security Administration has issued new regulations for travelers bound for the United States who either hold a passport issued by, or who are departing from or transiting through, a country on the State Department's state sponsors of terrorism list - which includes Cuba. (In addition, the new security measures will apply travelers from 10 other countries of "concern".)

I've put in an inquiry to the Department of Homeland Security's public affairs office to learn a bit more about what these regulations will mean for U.S. citizens and permanent residents who travel to Cuba for work or to visit family. Until I get my answers, I can only guess how these regulations will be implemented. But I think it is pretty safe to say that these regulations could spark a debate in Miami and Washington about whether it's time to remove Cuba from the terrorism list.

In 2001, there were 7 countries on the State Department's list: Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. Today there are just 4: Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria. After reading the State Department's 2009 'rap sheet' on each of these countries, you might wonder which of these countries is not like the other? Here's what it looked like in 2006, in 2000, and in 1993.

While the Obama Administration may not be ready to normalize relations with Cuba just yet, you have to wonder whether it makes sense to keep Cuba on the terrorism list in an age when fewer states sponsor terrorism but many more tolerate or fail to stop the groups and individuals who plot against the United States in some of the most lawless corners of the world.

Normally I say my piece and I let it go. But sometimes, the point bears repeating, especially when it deals with serious national security questions. It also bears repeating when Eugene Robinson takes it up on the op-ed page in today's Washington Post.

Under new rules prompted by the failed Christmas Day terrorist attack, airline passengers coming to the United States from 14 nations will undergo extra screening: Afghanistan, Algeria, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. For our first quiz of the new decade, which country doesn't fit with the others?

Photo credit: http://static.ibnlive.com/pix/sitepix/12_2009/pj-crowley-headlycase-313.jpg

I must admit that State Department spokesman PJ Crowley sure caught me off guard with his rather huffy response to this this reporter's question on Cuba yesterday:

QUESTION: Is Cuba on the list just because it’s on the state sponsor list, or is there some of these additional concerns also?

MR. CROWLEY: Cuba is a designated state sponsor of terrorism, and we think it’s a well-earned designation given their longstanding support for radical groups in the region – the FLN, FARC, et cetera.

Mr. Crowley surely meant to refer to the ELN, and not the FLN (different continent, different decade, h/t to my colleague Geoff Thale for pointing that out to friends yesterday), one of two leftist rebel groups in Colombia. The FARC and the ELN certainly received support from Cuba in past decades, but the question today is whether they receive any material support from Cuba today, or are allowed to use the territory of Cuba to plot against the Colombian government? I'm not privvy to the current intelligence our government has, so all I have to go on is what the State Department had to say about Cuba sponsoring terrorism back in April 2009:

Since 2008, the Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) must license any effort by owners of US-certified claims against Cuba to sell them to heirs or foreign buyers. So, we have to wait and see what OFAC says about the Clarinbridge overture. This could represent a real breakthrough on one of the core justifications for our comprehensive sanctions against Cuba. Perhaps more importantly, the effort would mean that a large group of claimants -- perhaps as much as 85 percent -- would be able to settle their claims and walk away.

Alexis de Toqueville

There are two models that America -- our nation, not necessarily the government -- can use to support the development of civil society in other countries.

One is through sharing the knowledge we have come by honestly through decade after decade of participation by vibrant institutions emerging from a pluralistic, open society defined by laws and practices that protect their rights. That can be a messy process, because it depends on the organic generation of goals and objectives by an often chaotic, diverse collection of organizations that each have their quirky and singular identities. There's a certain Tocquevillian beauty in that.

The other way is to iron out the whole process; to make it neater (or so the thinking goes). You hire a professional.

Photo credit: Rodrigo Arangua/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Not surprisingly, in the wake of new TSA regulations requiring extra security checks on U.S.-bound passengers departing 14 countries deemed to be of concern (or in the case of Cuba, Sudan, Syria and Iran, to be state sponsors of terrorism), Cuba is formally protesting its continuing inclusion on the U.S. State Department's list of states it considers to be sponsoring terrorism.

The Cuban statement called the U.S. inclusion of Cuba an "unjust, arbitrary and politically motivated designation that contradicts the exemplary conduct of our country in confronting terrorism." I've already spent a good deal of time in the last week evaluating the arguments for why Cuba is on the terrorism list. (My main beef with keeping Cuba on the list is that it diverts precious security resources away from the real threats we face today.)

But there's one more issue that's been stuck in my craw ever since former President Bush announced that any country that harbors a terrorist is siding with the terrorists. The fact is, for more than two decades, we've laid out the welcome mat for two of the hemisphere's most notorious terrorists, Cuban exiles Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch Avila. Both are in the United States today: one of whom, Posada, we refuse to extradite to Cuba or Venezuela (where we fear he could be tortured - no, I'm not kidding), and the other one, Bosch, now walks the streets of Miami a free man. True story. Don't believe me? Read on.

Photo credit: Anya Landau French (photo taken from the balcony of La Guarida)

As I went out hunting for something Cuba to write about besides terrorists, terrorism and terrorist lists this week, I found myself browsing the excellent blog El Yuma, published by Ted Henken, a sociology professor at Baruch College. Henken can always be counted on to take you on a virtual trip to Cuba with one of his posts, with details so rich and human you really feel transported to the island. And so after reading and enjoying several posts there, I came to one, belatedly, that made my heart sink: Requiem for La Guarida. I'd heard that this popular private restaurant had closed, but was steadfastly refusing to admit the impossible - and the irreplaceable.

There is a greater than 80% chance that if you've been to Havana in the last decade, you've been to la Guarida. When your taxi pulled up on that pot-holed, dark and often smelly street in front of the ramshackle tenement building, where several large men loiter out front, you probably wondered if you were at the right place. But then you got out of the car, and those men - who were part of La Guarida's neighborhood operation - helpfully pointed you through the door, toward the grandiose and crumbling stairs - and on the second landing you stopped to marvel: you're deeper in Cuba already than you ever realized you could be. You took a few photos, a dog trotted into the open area, and uninterested in you, laid down to nap.

The devastation in Haiti is heartbreaking, and our thoughts and prayers are with the Haitians. The State Department's website alerts us to an innovative way of helping: by texting "HAITI" on your mobile device to "90999" you can donate $10 to the Red Cross, charged to your cell phone bill.

ReliefWeb

Steve Clemons posted a thoughtful piece on CNN today on how Cuba's use of "soft power" could help the massive international relief effort underway in the Caribbean.

We've talked about smart power before in the context of the efforts of the United States and Britain to win hearts and minds, and it makes sense to distinguish between those countries' massive military power and the other ways they make friends and influence people. In the case of Cuba, of course, a country that essentially has zero offensive military power, soft power is pretty much all they have. And they use it abundantly.

While the US-Cuba relationship is not moving along as well as optimists hoped a year ago, today there was some sports news that might foreshadow better days. I'm not talking about Aroldis Chapman (though the Reds seem pretty happy).

No, I'm referring to the more pedestrian, bureaucratic advance represented by a letter sent from Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Julissa Reynoso and Coordinator of Cuban Affairs Ricardo Zuniga to Puerto Rico's governor, Luis G. Fortuno, and to the organizing committee of the Central American and Caribbean Games, clarifying that the United States would not seek to impede a Cuban delegation's participation in the Games, to be hosted by Puerto Rico. The letter and a subsequent meeting encouraged the Cubans to apply well in advance for visas to ensure a smooth process.

This is the way it's supposed to work -- no big news. But the comparison between the forward-looking stance of this administration to the posturing of the previous one in the run up to the 2006 World Baseball Classic, when Major League Baseball had to appeal in order to get the Department of the Treasury to reverse its ban on Cuba's participation, is a huge change, and points to real hope. The fact that politics is not as central a party to this process means that we'll see other advances, other gestures. And that's how the few good things that have happened in the relationship have come to pass.

By Sarah Stephens, Center for Democracy in the Americas

After a sub-par performance in Latin America during 2009, the Obama administration has truly risen to this occasion with its forceful response to the humanitarian crisis in Haiti. President Obama has ordered his agencies to put this disaster on the top of their agendas, and has already committed $100 million in U.S. assistance. But the President, wisely, has cautioned it will take some long days before the full measure of U.S. relief can arrive in Haiti and show results.

These efforts will move faster because of an agreement with Cuba's government made public today that the United States can operate relief flights destined for Haiti over Cuban airspace.

There are a number of oddities about the explanation of the activities in Cuba of Alan Gross, the American detained by Cuba.

Some were explored in the newsletter of the Cuban American Alliance Education Fund and can be read here.

The anomaly that struck me is reflected in the New York Times on January 12.

"Mr. Gross has visited Cuba several times, delivering computer and satellite equipment to three Jewish community groups, according to people with knowledge of his work.

In December, they said, he was on a follow-up trip for Development Alternatives Inc., a contractor working with the United States Agency for International Development. The people who know about his work, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment on the matter, said Mr. Gross was sent to research how the groups were making use of the equipment he had previously distributed to them."

However, a highly regarded international NGO called ORT is credited with the excellent and substantial computer program assisting the Jewish community in Cuba. I find no reference to him in any of ORT's releases about its program.

Unless ORT was receiving funds from DAI / USAID, which seems unlikely, the story given out about Mr. Gross's activities merits further investigation.

Was he adding on to or hiding behind well established credible work or is this a cover story meant to confuse the debate over foreign assistance to dissidents? If his actual project was as innocent as described, did Cuban authorities overreact because of its lineage, i.e. its "regime change" funding source?

Photo from: http://www.havanatimes.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/haiti-cuba-florida-map.jpg

First there was a honeymoon. Then it got called off. And now, brought together over the tragedy in Haiti, the U.S. and Cuba have at least found something productive they can do together. Phil Peters posted coverage of not only of Cuban doctors already on the ground in Haiti, but also of an agreement reached for Cuba to grant standing authority to U.S. medevac overflights, eliminating what would otherwise be a 90-minute detour around the island back to Miami. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had this to say:

Well, we very much appreciate the Cubans opening their air space for medical evacuation and emergency flights, and we would welcome any other actions that the Cuban Government could take in furtherance of the international rescue and recovery mission in Haiti.

With the Secretary's invitation out there, it makes you wonder whether Cuba has put forward any proposals (or if the U.S. has) for how the United States can help Cuba help Haiti. Cuba has tremendous human resources, but it does not have much equipment, supplies or transport resources at its disposal. It would sure be encouraging to see politics put aside, no matter with whom we have to cooperate to help meet the overwhelming need in Haiti right now.

Seeing this type of cooperation go forward doesn't surprise me much. This Administration has repeatedly encouraged (and received) - in ways we read about and in others we don't - common sense cooperation with Cuba.

U.S. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Adolfo Franco, then-USAID Assistant Administrator awarding a $1 million grant to the University of Miami's Cuba Transition Project (photo at: http://www.usaid.gov/locations/latin_america_caribbean/images/check5s.jpg)

Thanks to Tracey Eaton for reporting on this interesting comment from Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Cuban american ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, after she met with our Havana U.S. Mission Chief Jonathan Farrar while he was in Washington this week:

My discussions with Mr. Farrar confirmed reports that repression on the island has only increased over the past few months, making it clear that U.S. overtures to the regime remain unanswered. The U.S. must stand firm: democratic change in Cuba must come first, before any further efforts to change or weaken U.S.-Cuba policy. We must redouble our efforts to precipitate a transition to democratic rule in Cuba so that the Cuban people and our nation can feel safe and secure without the looming threat posed by the Cuban tyranny.

There is so much to comment on here that I hardly know where to begin first. I'll put aside the notion that we should keep doing the same thing because we haven't yet achieved any results (which, incidentally, fits Einstein's definition of insanity to a tee). And I'll also pass over the invitation to query what overtures we've really made to Cuba (that weren't more fittingly overtures to the Congresswoman's own constituents), or, what possible threat emanating from Cuba could be of greater concern to her than the threat posed by, say, radicalized Yemenis with explosives in their undergarments?

Instead, I'm curious about Ros-Lehtinen's belief that the U.S. government should "redouble" our efforts at - let's call a spade a spade - regime change in Havana, though she doesn't elaborate on how. Perhaps that is because our chief method of precipitating regime change, $40 million dollars in USAID programming in Cuba, is so fatally flawed. Nothing demonstrates that failure more than the unfortunate case of Alan P. Gross, an American contractor who was arrested in Cuba last month.

Photo credit: http://blogs.worldbank.org/files/governance/image/blog%20board.jpg

This afternoon, I intended to just post a link to the excellent translation by Ted Henken of "The Making of Generation Y," told by Yoani Sanchez. It's a fascinating look back into the building of Sanchez's famous blog, Generacion Y, over the last several years. You can find his translation here and the original version in Spanish at Penultimos Dias. It's long, but it's worth the read.

Maybe it was reading about creating blogs that kept me surfing. So, while at El Yuma (Henken's blog) I learned about a recent conference in New York on IT and Social Media in Cuba. I found it interesting, as did Henken, who participated in the conference, that the organizers made this point at the beginning and the end of the summit:

Let us be clear from the start, our aim in convening this Cuba IT & Social Media Summit is not to subvert the Cuban regime; it is to empower the Cuban people.

I'm sure there are people out there who think it's not worth doing if it doesn't subvert the Cuban government. But I am glad to see that the conference organizers understand that when it comes to Cuba we all have a choice to make: focus on the government (and what you want it to be or not be) or focus on the people, and how our actions can impact them for good or for ill.

And as I surfed some more, I came across this amusing lead into the serious topic of cooperation on the Haiti relief effort, on The Cuban Triangle, where the author usually just posts the news:

"

After years of delay, AFP reports that work will at last begin on a restoration of Ernest Hemingway's Cuban home, Finca Vigia.

The Finca Vigia Foundation began the effort in 2002, winning supporters from across the political spectrum. But they also attracted the kinds of opposition one would expect to an effort that would knit together Cubans and Americans on a shared labor of love.

Source: Associated Press

On Friday, the Washington Post published an editorial on U.S. policy and the case of Alan Gross, an American subcontractor for USAID's democracy program in Cuba, who was arrested in Cuba in early December 2009. The editorial concludes that the U.S. Congress should (continue to) withhold the right of all Americans to travel to Cuba until Mr. Gross is released.

Only in U.S. Cuba policy can we talk about holding back millions of generous Americans from an island and then pay a clandestine handful to ‘reach out’ to the people instead.

News that the whole of USAID's efforts in Cuba may be suspended indefinitely appears in today's Miami Herald. One longtime ex-grantee laments that the arrest by Cuban Authorities of Alan Gross, USAID subcontractor, may mean "the whole pro-democracy program is going to be dead."

With or without the arrest of Mr. Gross, this program's days were numbered, and not only because of the 2004 GAO critique. The Secretary of State had promised a thorough review of Cuba policy when she appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for her confirmation hearing. That review has not seen the light of day yet, delayed by staffing gaps. Yet even in the absence of Clinton's promise, it doesn't make sense that the Cuba program, so at odds with the way USAID works in the rest of the world, would blithely continue as it always had once the Obama Administration staffed up.

It is unfortunate for everyone that the review took so long, but it is particularly unfortunate for Mr. Gross. The only satisfactory outcome is that Cuba releases him, perhaps on humanitarian grounds.

It is jarring that the people quoted in the article don't say anything more about him. They are more concerned that the money keep flowing, because -- as one grantee argues, "the civil society movement in Cuba is giving clear signals it is awake."

Photo credit: Reuters

In his State of the Union address tonight, the President told Congress that the U.S. cannot afford to hang back while our competitors beat us to new markets. He called for America to double its exports, and expand every market opportunity we can. I thought to myself, really? Because the International Trade Commission concluded last year that we could expand U.S. farm exports to one country ninety miles away by half a billion dollars. That could nearly double our food exports to Cuba (which in 2004 was our 25th largest buyer) over the slumping 2009 numbers.

My jaw dropped to hear President Obama spend a good two minutes on the themes you hardly heard in 2009: trade, the Doha round, and keeping our "key" partners South Korea, Panama and Colombia - all of which signed Free Trade Agreements with the Bush Administration and to which so many Democrats have become increasingly allergic. If the President really was signaling he's willing to twist some Democratic arms on a trade agenda Republicans have been pushing for, I'll be shocked if a natural farm export market like Cuba doesn't end up on it.

Cuba has announced that the delayed meeting with the US on immigration issues will take place in Havana next month. The discredited Cuban Adjustment Act is on the table.

Bruno Rodriguez said negotiators will meet Feb. 19 in Havana and Cuba wants Washington's help in combating people smuggling, often carried out by gangs with souped-up speed boats that ferry Cubans out of the country. While some head for Florida, most arrive on the Caribbean coast of Mexico or Central America and make their way north to the U.S., where they usually are allowed to stay….

Under U.S. law, Cubans captured at sea are usually deported while those who reach American soil can apply for residency — making Mexico an attractive route. Cuba has long denounced Washington's so-called "wet-foot, dry-foot" policy as encouraging illegal immigration.

This should be a no-brainer as both pro and anti-reform groups in the US want to end a policy which elevates Cubans above illegal immigrants from Haiti, Central America and China.

A Pennsylvania farm

But compared to the other challenges the President faces on his export growth goal, Cuba may not be such a heavy lift after all.