Obama’s imprint on Cuba policy: Historic. More than rum & cigars. More left to do.
“Click Bait” and U.S.-Cuba relations met at the intersection of Rum and Cigars.
Chances are, if you read even one story about President Obama’s latest – and some say his last – Cuba policy announcement, the headline referred to “Cigars” or “Cigars and Rum.”
Even the august New York Times was unable to resist: “Obama, Cementing New Ties With Cuba, Lifts Limits on Cigars and Rum.”
Fair enough. But, let the word go forth – to paraphrase President Kennedy – that the torch being passed in this new generation of Cuba policy is about more than lighting that box of Montecristo cigars you want that BFF of yours to bring home from Havana.
The White House issued something called a Presidential Policy Directive (PPD-43) devoted to “United States-Cuba Normalization.”
[Click here to read “Treasury and Commerce announce further amendments to Cuba sanctions regulations”.]
At its core, the directive breaks, clearly and comprehensively, from the Cold War mold of U.S. policy toward Cuba, by setting forth, as the New York Times described it, “a new United States policy to lift the Cold War trade embargo and end a half-century of clandestine plotting against Cuba’s government.”
Going forward, it envisions other changes in U.S. policy – from ending the embargo to integrating Cuba completely in U.S. and global commerce. In doing so, it affirms the idea that both economies and both societies will benefit from normalized relations with one another.
Since President Obama revealed his diplomatic breakthrough with Cuba on December 17, 2014, we have written here about working to make his policy reforms irreversible.
The directive he issued today is a historic step in that direction.
Across a dozen pages, it lays out the U.S. vision for normalization and how it fits with U.S. security interests, the goals for the new policy, and the actions required to implement the reforms the president has made. It spells out the roles and responsibilities for 16 federal departments and offices to achieve his goals. The directive offers a sharp reminder that until the embargo is lifted by Congress, normalization will not be complete.
In the context of U.S. politics, the directive sends a message to supporters and opponents of the Cuba opening – don’t reverse it, don’t stop it, do more. In this sense, it fixes our eyes – and the president’s successors – on the future.
Paradoxically, we cannot estimate the directive’s full value going forward, or evaluate its greatest vulnerability, without considering past presidential directives still hold a grip on U.S. policy.
Between 1982 and 1988, President Reagan issued more than a half-dozen National Security Decision Directives with policies as comprehensive as those articulated in President Obama’s directive issued today. Each of them – published publicly, but many with secret annexes – reflected his view of Cuba as a security threat to the U.S. that could only be combatted by measures aimed at overthrowing Cuba’s government.
Reagan’s directives ordered the departments of State and Defense, the CIA and the National Security Council to take actions that included speeding measures to tighten economic sanctions on Cuba; implementing plans to “raise the sense of threat to Cuba,” blacklisting ships calling at Cuban ports, curtailing tourism, and other efforts to “improve” the effectiveness and enforcement of the embargo; designing war plans for use against Cuba including an air/sea blockade; limiting family travel by Cuban Americans and imposing limits on financial support to their families, curbing scientific travel; cracking down on Cuba’s so-called abuse of humanitarian exceptions to the embargo; and providing support to Radio/TV Martí.
Within his executive authority, President Obama has tried to change everything that is wrong with imposing sanctions, dividing families, spreading fear, driving Cubans into poverty, and undermining Cuba by subversion, with what is right about diplomacy, empathy, exchange, respect, and a commitment to a common purpose.
In this respect, the directive sends a message to Cubans that U.S. policy will now support, not seek to undermine, their role in designing their own future.
It also offers reassurance to Cuban skeptics of U.S. intentions, at the highest levels, who devoted their lives to stopping what earlier directives had in mind for their government.
“As if to underscore a stark shift from decades of United States policy toward Cuba, which were marked by spying and suspicion,” the New York Times reported, “the document specifically requires that American-led “democracy programs” – which the Castro government has denounced as secret efforts to destabilize the country – be “transparent.”
In the words of Susan Rice, the President’s National Security Advisor, “The United States used to have secret plans for Cuba. Now our policy is out in the open – and online – for everyone to read. What you see is what you get.”
This alone merits a call to break out the cigars and rum.
But, the unfinished work of the Obama administration – ending an embargo with its crushing weight on Cuba’s economy, removing restrictions on U.S. travel to the island, even silencing the propaganda still broadcast by Radio/TV Martí – must be completed before the promise of normalization is fully redeemed.
(From Cuba Central)
