Diplomacy derailed
By the Center for Democracy in the Americas / Videos by Tracey Eaton
For over a half-century, U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba has been in single-minded pursuit of one goal: ending the Castro government, and replacing Cuba’s system with one based on the political principles and free market preferences of the United States.
With Alan Gross, the USAID subcontractor, soon to mark the start of his fifth year in prison, following his arrest and conviction “for acts against the integrity of the [Cuban] state,” the Center for Democracy in the Americas is releasing a short, two-part video documentary by Tracey Eaton. Mr. Eaton is an independent journalist, and his film sheds light on the origins, failures, and future of the United States’ policy toward Cuba’s government.
In Part 1, “Diplomacy Derailed,” the regime change story is told by a cross-section of Cubans interviewed on the island; by a Bay of Pigs veteran and a Cuban dissident, both living in Miami; and by U.S. policy experts including Rep. Jan Schakowsky (IL-9), a senior member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
As Professor Bill LeoGrande of American University explains, repeated efforts to topple Cuba’s government at several key moments in history – by the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations at the height of the Cold War; by the Reagan administration after the fall of the Communist Bloc; amidst Fidel Castro’s illness under the administration of George W. Bush –all have met with failure. Yet, the programs continue to operate.
While it’s clear that the policy hasn’t worked, Cubans who spoke to Tracey Eaton on camera – an academic, two artists, and an opposition activist – explain why attacks on Cuba’s sovereignty and nationalism are doomed, arguing that they rally Cubans to their government’s side.
Perhaps most striking are the words of Reinaldo Escobar–blogger, independent journalist, and the husband of blogger Yoani Sánchez – who says:
“The United States has made huge mistakes in its policy toward Cuba. The so-called blockade or embargo, the so-called Helms-Burton Act, all have a typically interventionist nature, of a very strong pressure. The main mistake that the United States has committed regarding Cuba is to stubbornly refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the government of Cuba. That’s everything.”
With the Cold War over, and changes in Cuba’s economy, society, and leadership under way, we need a new approach to replace the historic U.S. stance of imposing a new system on Cuba. As Sarah Stephens, of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, and retired Ambassador Sally Shelton-Colby, strongly suggest it is time to try a different approach – engagement – that is in the interests of Cuban people and the national interest of the United States.
Failure Compounded
In Part 2, “Failure Compounded,” the documentary turns from Cuba’s successful resistance to attacks on its sovereignty to the unique constraints on USAID’s democracy promotion programs which Cuba outlawed in 1999.
Outside of Cuba, USAID openly conducts its programs with the consent of host governments. Because its activities, funded under the Helms-Burton law, have regime change as their goal, operating openly is not an option in Cuba. Consequently, development workers paid by non-government organizations or private corporations, who secretly bring extremely sensitive high-technology communications equipment into the country, must operate “in a semi-clandestine way,” as analyst Phil Peters explains. Efforts by Alan Gross to set up satellite Internet nodes and Wi-Fi hotspots, first at Cuban synagogues [though he planned to later target other populations] were detected by Cuban state security, and this landed him in prison.
As Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archive observes:
“The question for the United States is (a) how to do it legitimately and (b) how to do it effectively. And the Cuban case has proved – year after year after year – that we are not doing this legitimately and we’re not doing it effectively. It’s been one of the great boondoggles; over $200 million spent on these programs as mandated by Congress; in which very little has been accomplished on the ground and, arguably, relations have been poisoned by the continuing effort to basically take a program that is supposed to be above-board and overt and transform it into a surreptitious, semi-covert operation, with people who are really not trained, supervised, and backed to undertake these kinds of operations.”
While USAID actively promotes government transparency abroad – and has even spent $25 million to support research on transparency by academics in the U.S. – Eaton shows that the agency withholds and redacts documents. The agency releases little information about the $15-20 million it spends per year on Cuba to the press or to the public, obscuring what it is doing in Cuba even as it fails to deliver the results its regime change program is meant to achieve.
Sarah Stephens offers a concluding comment on the way forward:
“We may not like their form of government, we may not like the Castro family, but we just have to get over it and we have to engage with them for our own self-interest as well as that of the Cuban people.”
These videos show the need for meaningful transparency and accountability in U.S. foreign policy, and the importance of replacing Cold War strategies and semi-covert operations with a solid and open commitment to engagement with Cuba and its people.
