Castro could help Obama to end Cuba embargo

Apr 05, 2009 Features / Columnists, Ronald Sanders

By Sir Ronald Sanders

Cuba’s President Raul Castro could help US President Barack Obama to end the 49-year old trade embargo that the US has imposed on Cuba and to normalise relations between the two countries. To do so, he will have to implement measures to address human rights issues in Cuba particularly the release of persons detained for their political views or actions.

Reforming its approach to human rights would be difficult for Raul Castro’s government and the required political will, as well as the dangers, should not be underestimated. But the problem should not be insurmountable. While in the past, the Cuban government has been able to argue that political dissidents in Cuba were being organised and supported by US government agencies to overthrow the government, such arguments are now a thing of the past. They are as anachronistic as any arguments by anti-Castro groups in the US that Cuba’s communism is a threat to the US or that Cuba is a terrorist state.
These latter claims have long been debunked by the US military who do not regard present-day Cuba as a threat to US security. Similarly, it should be pretty clear to the Cuban government that the US today poses no security threat to Cuba.

Other governments in Latin America and the Caribbean recognise political dissent as an essential ingredient in their democracies. Opposing political views and action to further such views have kept many Latin American and Caribbean countries from remaining or becoming authoritarian States.
During last year’s campaign for the US Presidency, Obama said he would “grant Cuban Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send remittances”, but that he would maintain the embargo as a whole until “a post-Fidel [Castro] government begins opening Cuba to democratic change”.

Over the last few weeks he tried to make good on his pledge by including these measures in the 2009 spending bill. Basically, the bill cut-off funding for the enforcement of restrictions on family travel and remittances.
It did not pass easily. The US Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, had to assure two hard-line Senators, Florida Democratic Bill Nelson and New Jersey Democratic Bob Menendez, that the government would interpret the new law so strictly that it will be ineffective.

What this indicates is that the U.S.-Cuba relations look set to remain a domestic issue rather than a foreign policy concern despite a universal mood to end the anachronistic US embargo against Cuba that has included prohibiting Americans from visiting Cuba and restricting business that US companies and their subsidiaries in other countries could do there. Apart from the US, Israel and Palau, every other country voted against the embargo or abstained when a vote on the issue was taken last October at the United Nations.
But, battle lines are beginning to be drawn in the US between the die-hard, anti-Castro groups and those who regard the embargo as a failed effort and who want access to the Cuban market for US goods and services. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators and interest groups is backing a bill that seeks to end all travel restrictions to the island.

The ‘Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act’ was introduced by Senators Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, and Michael Enzi, a Republican from Wyoming. They were joined by 20 co-sponsors, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Human Rights Watch. A similar measure has been introduced in the House of Representatives.
What is clearly driving the sponsors of the Bill is recognition of the economic opportunities that Americans have lost and are continuing to lose in Cuba.

Despite the embargo, the value of US agricultural sales to Cuba in 2008 under a humanitarian sales provision was $710 million, a 61% increase over 2007. The US International Trade Commission estimates that US agricultural sales would double if the embargo is dropped.
An economy in deep recession, such as the US, can hardly afford to ignore the opportunity that open sales to the Cuban market presents for creating employment and earning revenues. Thirty-eight States of the US have long since recognised the value of the Cuban market and they have used the loophole of humanitarian assistance in the embargo to sign agreements with Cuba.

A large number of US businesses – many of them the symbols of capitalism – have an estimated 5,000 products trademarked in Cuba waiting for the embargo to be lifted. Among them are products such as Nike, Visa, Starbucks and that most American of all American symbols – McDonalds.
US businesses have been champing at the bit to get into Cuba for some time, especially as they had to sit-by while Canadian and European companies – and now Brazilian, Chinese and Indian ones – grab the opportunities created by the departure of Russia after the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Oil companies are reportedly also concerned that Cuba’s state-run oil concern has signed joint operating agreements with companies from several countries (including Russia) to explore waters that Cuban scientists claim could contain reserves of up to 20 billion barrels of oil.
The introduction of the Bills in the US Congress is hardly likely to have started without a quiet nod and wink from Obama’s staff who would be well aware that the embargo has not worked and another initiative needs to be pursued. However, no one should expect these bills to survive in anything like their original state – the anti-Castro groups remain strong.

I place little store in a March 30th letter written to President Obama by Senator Richard G. Lugar, the ranking Republican on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which he called on Obama to appoint a special envoy to initiate direct talks with the Cuban government on a limited range of subjects such as migration and drug interdiction, and in which he stressed “reform of our approach towards Cuba is a means to an end: the advancement of US security and foreign policy interests in the Western Hemisphere”. A Special Envoy with a wider mandate to normalise relations with Cuba is what is needed.
The appointment of an Envoy with such a mandate would be widely supported and could make many things possible. Raul Castro could strengthen Obama’s hand by showing willingness to address the human rights issues that do require attention and are an obstacle to progress.

(The writer is a consultant and former Caribbean diplomat)
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