Reach out to Cuba

Obama
should seize the chance to normalize relations with Havana

By
William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh                   Read Spanish Version

From
the Los Angeles Times

Not
since Richard Nixon went to China has an intractable foreign policy
issue been so ripe for resolution as U.S. relations with Cuba are
today.

As with China, bilateral hostility has persisted long
after the causes of the initial break have ceased to hold sway, held
in place by seemingly implacable domestic opposition to normalizing
relations and the policy inertia of official Washington. When Nixon
broke the stalemate by announcing his impending trip in 1972, the
pro-Taiwan "China lobby" proved to be a paper tiger, and
the foreign policy establishment heaved a great sigh of relief that
such a manifestly irrational, ineffective and anachronistic policy
had finally been put to rest.

U.S. policy toward Cuba today,
like policy toward China in 1972, is overdue for change. Relations
broke down 50 years ago because Washington was unwilling to
countenance a Latin American client state escaping the orbit of U.S.
hegemony, and because Fidel Castro was determined to do just that.
The Soviet Union’s willingness to provide Cuba an essential safety
net brought Cold War confrontation to the Western Hemisphere,
escalating the U.S.-Cuba skirmish to potential Armageddon.

These
original insults to U.S. interests have long since faded. The end of
the Cold War ended Havana’s pretensions to world power and its threat
to U.S. strategic interests. Cuban troops came home from Africa and
no longer train aspiring Latin American guerrillas. Castro, who
relished tweaking the noses of U.S. presidents and built both his
domestic support and international prestige on defying them, has,
since his illness, retired to the role of pundit. His more pragmatic
younger brother, Raul, abstains from the anti-American rhetoric that
made Fidel famous, and on several occasions has offered
dialogue.

Long before Nixon went to China, the rest of the
world community had acknowledged that China was governed from
Beijing, not Taiwan. U.S. allies in Latin America and Europe, which
followed Washington’s lead half a century ago by breaking ties with
Cuba, today have normal economic and diplomatic relations with the
island. Last October, the United Nations General Assembly voted for
the 17th time in as many years to condemn the U.S. embargo by a vote
of 185 to 3. In December, 33 Latin American and Caribbean nations in
the Rio Group granted Cuba full membership and called for an end to
the U.S. embargo. A policy adopted half a century ago to isolate Cuba
today isolates only the U.S.

Several of Barack Obama’s
predecessors in the White House considered normalizing relations, but
something always went awry. John F. Kennedy hoped to win Cuba back
from the Soviet camp by exploiting Castro’s anger at Moscow for
negotiating an end to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis without
consulting him. Kennedy’s diplomacy began through private envoys and
was on the verge of graduating to talks between U.S. and Cuban
officials at the United Nations when Kennedy was killed.

During
Gerald Ford’s administration, Henry Kissinger set his sights on
detente with Havana. The efficacy of isolating Cuba had already begun
to break down as allies in Latin America and Europe, one by one,
restored normal ties with the island. Using journalist Frank
Mankiewicz as a courier, Kissinger sent Castro a letter proposing
talks to normalize relations, and Castro agreed. Over the next 18
months, U.S. and Cuban diplomats met secretly half a dozen times, in
venues as varied as the grungy cafeteria at the LaGuardia airport
terminal and the swanky Pierre Hotel in New York. Before the dialogue
could gain traction, however, it was interrupted by Cuba’s decision
to send 30,000 combat troops to halt South Africa’s intervention in
Angola.

Jimmy Carter, like President-elect Obama, believed in
the value of engaging adversaries. Within weeks of assuming office,
Carter ordered the government to resume negotiations with Havana. "I
have concluded that we should attempt to achieve normalization of our
relations with Cuba," he declared in a presidential directive in
March 1977. In quick succession, U.S. and Cuban negotiators signed
agreements on fishing and maritime boundaries and posted diplomats in
each other’s capitals for the first time since relations were severed
in 1961.

But when Cuba expanded its role in Africa by sending
troops to defend Ethiopia’s leftist government from invasion by
neighboring Somalia, Carter decided to condition normalization on
Cuba’s withdrawal. After that, he backed away from normalization,
even though a secret dialogue with Cuba continued during the
remainder of his presidency.

By the time Bill Clinton took the
oath of office, the Cold War was over and the Soviet Union dissolved.
As Washington normalized relations with other former enemies, from
Russia to Vietnam, the time seemed right to end the Cold War in the
Caribbean too. But Clinton confronted a new obstacle — the wealthy,
well-organized and politically astute lobby of Cuban Americans in
southern Florida. Although Clinton officials generally favored better
relations with Havana, the president recoiled at the political price.
Nevertheless, in a secret agreement brokered by Mexican President
Carlos Salinas in 1994, during a crisis of dangerous attempted raft
crossings to Florida by Cubans trying to leave the island, Clinton
promised Castro a dialogue to move toward normalization. Talks
produced a new migration agreement in 1995 but faltered in February
1996, when Cuban MIG fighters shot down two civil aircraft that had
violated Cuban airspace, killing the four Cuban American pilots.

As
Obama enters the White House, he enjoys many of the same propitious
conditions that moved Kennedy, Ford, Carter and Clinton toward better
relations with Havana. Kennedy sought to take advantage of the Cuban
leadership’s disenchantment with Moscow, which made it more open to
U.S. blandishments; Obama faces new Cuban leaders who covet the
economic benefits from travel, trade and investment that better
relations would bring.

Ford and Kissinger realized that the
U.S. policy of hostility toward Cuba was hurting U.S. relations
abroad more than it was hurting Castro; Obama faces allies in Latin
America and Europe that are virtually unanimous in their opposition
to current U.S. policy.

Carter believed implicitly that
engagement with Havana would prove more productive than isolation;
Obama echoed those sentiments during the campaign.

Clinton
hoped to gradually improve relations but was stymied by Cuban
American opposition; Obama faces a less monolithic Cuban American
community that has expressed growing support for engagement. A
November poll of Cuban Americans in southern Florida found for the
first time that a majority (55%) favors lifting the embargo. Obama’s
relative success among Cuban American voters (he won 35% of them in
Florida, compared with just 25% for John Kerry in 2004) demonstrated
that a Democrat could take a moderate stance on Cuba policy and still
make inroads with this solidly Republican constituency.

This
month marks not only the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution but
also the anniversary of the formal break in U.S.-Cuban relations on
Jan. 3, 1961. For perhaps the first time in the last half a century,
both the policy logic and political realities of U.S.-Cuban relations
are aligned to allow President Obama to cut the Gordian knot that has
bedeviled so many of his predecessors. During the campaign, Obama
pledged to meet with Raul Castro as part of a new policy of
engagement. Summits require careful preparation, of course, but Obama
should keep his pledge sooner rather than later.

For all
Nixon’s faults, his trip to China is remembered as a courageous,
farsighted initiative that opened a new era in Sino-American
relations. A trip to Cuba by President Obama would be no less
historic.

William
M. LeoGrande is dean of the School of Public Affairs at American
University; Peter Kornbluh directs the Cuba Documentation Project at
the National Security Archive. They are coauthors of a forthcoming
book, "Talking with Fidel: The Untold History of Dialogue
between the United States and Cuba."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-leogrande12-2009jan12,0,2601970.story