A failed policy against Cuba

HAVANA – With plenty of hype, the Donald Trump administration this week announced the partial application of Title III of the Helms-Burton Act passed in 1996 to regulate sanctions against Cuba. I would bet many people have no idea what it consists of. Trying to explain it in all its complexity would require a very long story, for now it is enough to say that it authorizes people of Cuban origin, who have obtained American citizenship, to claim in U.S. courts properties that were confiscated during the first years of the Revolution, as well as threatening to sanction foreign entities that do business in Cuba ignoring these claims.

The arbitrariness of this case consists in the fact that U.S. courts have no authority over any of these actors. Another factor is the foreign properties, North American or of other countries, that enjoy a different treatment, and whose nationalization is a legitimate object of negotiations between the states. Cuba resolved these disputes with all the complainant countries, except the United States. During the Obama administration negotiations were started that formally have not been concluded.

Applying Title III means recognizing retroactive rights to people who were not U.S. citizens at the time their property was intervened, which establishes a legal precedent of incalculable consequences for U.S. legislation, as well as a disregard for Cuba’s sovereign right, or of any country for that matter, to act within its borders. Also, the not-so-unusual unilateral prerogative of the United States to prosecute third parties based on its extraterritorial laws.

That Title III was not applied by any previous administration to date was precisely because it constitutes a flagrant violation of international law and many governments reacted against it, to the point of taking the case to the World Trade Organization. Also because it implies a tremendous problem for U.S. courts, which will be flooded with strange cases, for which they do not have the practical capacity to legislate with real knowledge of the cause, or force the fulfillment of the sanction, if it were to be taken.

So why has the Trump administration taken this step?

Because they are accustomed to acting arrogantly, and with little respect for international laws and relations with other countries, including their allies. Although it is important to note that in order to avoid conflicts with allies at a time when they need them to sustain the offensive against Venezuela, they’ve applied a limited variant where only Cuban companies previously included in “restricted lists” can be the objects of a complaint because of their connection with the Cuban armed forces or security institutions.

Another reason is that Trump is only interested in the upcoming 2020 elections and seeks to reinforce the vote of the Cuban-American right in Florida, a sector that is stimulated by the administration’s anti Cuba policy.

More importantly, this policy reflects the rebirth of the most reactionary of the neoconservative current in the United States that many considered dead after the failures of the beginning of the century, but which now occupies key positions in the design and implementation of U.S. foreign policy. In the case of Cuba, it is striking that not only are schemes being repeated, but they’ve managed to recycle the same faces of many of the protagonists from 20 years ago.

But times have changed. This is not like after the Cold War and the implosion of the Soviet Union when most assumed that the Cuban Revolution would not survive. At that time the U.S. thought it had a blank check to impose its will and policies on the rest of the world.

In fact, when one considers the inability of the Trump administration to impose its new provisions, some analysts believe that they are more symbolic than practical and are nothing more than a new demagogic exercise by Donald Trump to sell his tough guy image against socialism.

But this underestimates the importance of the U.S. economic blockade against Cuba and its impact on the national reality. What is now being applied against Venezuela, in the hope of overthrowing the government of Nicolás Maduro, has been applied against Cuba for 60 years and has impeded the full economic development of the Island-nation. It is no small thing to announce new U.S. sanctions thereby driving away potential investors or trade partners involved in the Cuban market.

The new measures also complicate negotiations regarding the economic claims of both parties, a very important aspect in the process of normalization in the relations between the two countries in the future.

The problem for the United States is that, as Barack Obama said, this policy has failed in its purpose to overthrow the Cuban government and has cost it credibility in the international arena. But Trump cares little about these consequences. It is why he is willing to mortgage the country in favor of his vanity.