Edited by Dawn Gable. 

The political battle over the designation of Jonathan Farrar as US ambassador to Nicaragua is a test of whether the Obama Administration lacks any genuine conviction about its foreign policy. Farrar is a professional diplomat with an impeccable thirty years diplomatic career who served a recent term as the Chief of the US Interest Section in Cuba. As a result he became the perfect target of Cuban American hardliners for one, and only one, reason: he implemented Obama’s policy in Havana. Unfortunately for Farrar, the president’s policy is anathema to two Cuban-American Senators: Robert Menendez and Marco Rubio.

The Interests Sections in Havana and Washington are not formal embassies or consulates. Diplomats' movements are restricted and their access to government officials and citizens in both countries is limited. When these entities were created in 1977, under the Carter and Fidel Castro Administrations (Yes, there is a new administration in Havana), they were part of a process of détente and their final purpose was to facilitate negotiations between the two governments and pave the way to a better understanding between the people of Cuba and the United States. This is the source of their legitimacy. They exist with the consent of both governments.

Senators Rubio and Menendez want to set a terrible precedent for the US Foreign Service: they are attacking the professional career of a US diplomat not because he made any political, moral or policy mistake but because he dared to implement a policy towards Cuba different from the Cuban-American hardliners’ agenda. It doesn’t matter whether the American officials in Havana were following the agenda of the chief diplomat, elected by the American people; Rubio and Menendez are going to hurt Jonathan Farrar because they can. In the zealotry of the two Cuban-American Senators, any US diplomat going to Havana should know that following a president who disagrees with the Cuban-American right will destroy his career. It is the same anti-State Department McCarthyism, all over again.

Mr. Rubio’s attack on Farrar is a disservice to the constitutional advise and consent function (Appointments Clause) of the US Senate. The Obama Administration did not violate any legal precept by developing negotiations with the Cuban government. Farrar’s dialogue with Cuban authorities is nothing new. It has been part of the policy of all previous administrations, democrat and republican. The views of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about Farrar’s professional career could not be more positive. If Senator Rubio disagrees with the Administration’s policy towards Cuba, if he wants, as he said, a more aggressive and adversarial policy than the current one, he has the right to express his disagreement and try to elect a new president, but to punish a foreign service official for following the policy developed at Foggy Bottom is unjust and immoral.

In the absence of all the other members of the Senate Hemispheric Affairs Subcommittee, Rubio and Menendez played a shameful game of bipartisan piñata pummeling the always grounded diplomat with baseless accusations andparochial Cuban American right-wing bullying. With Menendez’ complicity, Rubio’s allegations against Farrar went unchallenged and without any presentation of the facts. The Senators referred to texts found in documents released by wiki leaks, in which US diplomats candidly reported their assessment of the situation on the island including the old-line dissidents' lack of appeal.. The damage inflicted on US diplomacy by the Senators’ endorsement of wikileaks as a valid information source did not restrain Rubio or Menendez. The wikileaks material was instrumental for their political vendetta.

The hearing was representative of Menendez and Rubio’s out of date vision of Cuban civil society and democracy promotion. They are not interested in American relations with the Cuban youth, intellectuals, English teachers, or journalists, that is, with Cuban civil society in the broader sense. According to the two Cuban-American Senators’ tunnel vision, civil society does not even include all dissidents, but only those who support an “aggressive” and “adversarial” policy toward Cuba.

The Administration and the Democratic Senators of the Foreign Relations Committee didn’t do their homework. Rubio’s accusations can be rejected by just looking at the website of the US Interests Section in Havana. It is full of pictures of Farrar with the Ladies in White, a group of relatives of the recently released prisoners of the 2003 Black Spring crackdown, and other civil society actors. Shouldn’t those happy Cuban faces in the photos with Farrar be asked how serious Rubio’s allegations are? Advice and consent are not only a Senators’ right, but a responsibility. The hearing on Farrar’s nomination for Ambassador to Managua didn’t include any debate. Neither did it include input from any of his subordinates or superiors in Havana or previous posts, some of those jobs directly related to the promotion of human rights and democracy abroad.  

Mr. Rubio’s litmus test against Farrar is harmful to US diplomacy. Let’s supposed that a few dissidents do claim that Farrar didn’t give them the attention that they believe they deserved. So what? Will the opinion of one or two dissidents - be the new standard by which to judge the professional efficiency of a US diplomat or how a chief of mission distributes the labor of his diplomats? Under Rubio's new criteria that subordinates a Foreign Service official to the judgment of one or two nationals of another country, is it possible for the United States to have a rational policy that serves US national interests and values not only towards the Cuban government but also towards its opponents?

But Mr. Rubio does not regard the US Interests Section in Havana as a diplomatic post, but rather he views it in an entirely subversive light. His “adversarial and aggressive” model of a US Interests Section chief seems to be James Cason, who served a term in Havana during the Bush Administration. For the Cuban opposition, Cason’s tenure in Havana was a disaster, a classic example of the US unsuccessful fifty-year sleepwalk through Cuban affairs.

In 2002, before Cason arrived in Cuba, the opposition was growing. A moderate initiative called the Varela Project had collected, for the first time, more than twenty thousand signatures. As soon as he arrived in Havana, Cason engaged in a game of selecting favorites among the dissidents. He looked for those opponents to the Castro regime who identified with the Helms-Burton agenda and who were ready to organize actions against the Cuban government in tandem with US diplomats. Soon he found his man, Manuel David Orrio, who helped him to organize a series of seminars and training workshops to demonstrate how close the U.S Interests section in Havana was working with the radical exiles in supporting and guiding the opposition agenda.

In March 2003, the Cuban government arrested seventy five dissidents, accusing them of collaborating with Washington in trying to create a political crisis on the island.  Orrio, Cason’s man in Havana, appeared in several of the trials-- but not as detainee. He was agent “David”, working for Cuban State Security, and he denounced the US policy of subversion. Cason got so warm with the Cuban dissidents that he burned them.

Rubio’s McCarthysm against Farrar’s appointment to Managua is also imprudent. Farrar’s appointment to Managua is in line with US policy towards Latin America since 2006. During the last two years of the George W. Bush Administration, Washington adopted a bipartisan policy towards the leftist turn in the region. Washington expressed condemnation towards any deviations from democratic standards but settled on avoiding provocations and unnecessary antagonism that could transform internal conflicts into a battle between nationalism and the United States.

Mr. Rubio seemed to agree with this policy when, in a recent hearing of the Subcommittee on Narcotics and Democracy in the Western Hemisphere, he affirmed that the task of US policy is to address issues in ways that encourage leftists to behave more like Lula and less like Hugo Chavez. Does the Republican Senator from Florida believe that such a sophisticated policy is possible by “cubanizing” US diplomacy in the hemisphere or by demanding that US diplomats satisfy the ego of every dissident or opposition leader?

The American people voted for president Obama because he promised not to be paralyzed by the ideological battles of the past and to instead bring a pragmatic post-Cold War vision to the White House. But pragmatism does not equate to a lack of a basic moral reference point. Farrar should not go down without a fight. In spite of his calm behavior and diplomatic demeanor, he has become a litmus test of the Administration's will to defend its foreign policy and to not leave an honest professional diplomat at the mercy of political bickering and revenge. The Senate owes Mr. Farrar a serious new appointment hearing and an up or down vote.