Republican Party platform on Cuba returns to the Cold War days
Last week in Cleveland, State Senator Eric Brakey of Maine tried to make some changes to his party’s foreign policy platform. Leigh Ann Caldwell of NBC News says Brakey thought the Cuba plank was isolationist.
That seemed odd, since Donald Trump’s position on President Obama’s opening with Cuba – it’s “fine, but I think we should make a much better deal” – seemed reasonably pro-engagement, and normally a national party platform tracks the positions of the party’s nominee.
Not this year, apparently. Although as of this writing, the platform hasn’t been made public, an early draft did make it into our hands. It turns out brave Senator Brakey didn’t make any headway. The language in this document is a lot closer to the Platt Amendment than to the Donald’s negotiating position.
Although the platform is still subject to change, this is apparently what the party intends to say about how it would run U.S. policy toward Cuba after President Obama leaves office:
“We want to welcome the people of Cuba back into our hemispheric family – after their corrupt rulers are forced from power and brought to account for their crimes against humanity. We stand with the Women in White [sic] and all the victims of the loathsome regime that clings to power in Havana. We do not say this lightly: They have been betrayed by those who are currently in control of U.S. foreign policy. The current Administration’s ‘opening to Cuba’ was a shameful accommodation to the demands of its tyrants. It will only strengthen their military dictatorship.
“We call on the Congress to uphold current U.S. law which sets conditions for the lifting of sanctions on the island: legalization of political parties, an independent media and free and fair internationally-supervised elections. We call for a dedicated platform for the transmission of Radio and TV Martí and for the promotion of internet access and circumvention technology as tools to strength(en) Cuba’s pro-democracy movement. We support the work of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba and affirm the principles of the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, recognizing the rights of Cubans fleeing Communism.”
This is your father’s foreign policy, like traveling in time with Peabody and Sherman in the “way back machine.” The Cuba plank endorses President Johnson’s immigration policy, recommits to President Reagan’s listener-free Radio and TV Martí, asserts the primacy of Helms-Burton, breathes life into the Bush-era regime-change commission, and seeks the promotion of “circumvention technology,” which sounds suspiciously like what got Alan Gross in all sorts of trouble ending with a lengthy stay in prison.
Strangely, the platform says nothing about the rights of Cuban Americans to visit their families in Cuba without restrictions; nothing about the people-to-people travel rights of every other American; nothing about Starwood Hotel, Airbnb, or the wireless carriers who allow U.S. travelers roam with their cellphones in Cuba; nothing about the good people working to protect our nation’s interests in the U.S. Embassy in Havana. Could a platform this backward-looking mean to leave those accomplishments in place? We’re left to guess not.
Either way, this amounts to a return to the status quo ante, to the Cold War days when our two governments didn’t speak, when Latin America was utterly united against the U.S. position, and when Cubans were burdened by a climate of fear and hostility they do not want to see again.
(From Cuba Central)
