U.S. policy towards Cuba

After over 50 years of hostility, occasional near-war, and economic embargo, U.S. policy towards Cuba is moving toward one of engagement. A number of factors are affecting this change, including the end of the Cold War, the retirement of Fidel Castro, and a realization that the embargo has not been effective in changing Cuban policy, although Cuba has become, for other reasons, less of a purveyor of revolution. President George W. Bush took initiatives beginning in 2002. With the illness and retirement of Fidel Castro, replaced by his brother Raul Castro, relations under Barack Obama appear to be thawing.

The previous hostility had come from the 1959 takeover, during the Eisenhower Administration, from the non-democratic rule of Fulgencio Batista, by the non-democratic, and then Communist, rule of Fidel Castro. Cuban emigres to the U.S., some of whom lost all their possessions, formed a small but powerful lobby, especially in Florida.

When the successor John F. Kennedy administration came into office, even more aggressive, primarily covert, destabilization operations began, under Central Intelligence Agency operational control. These included the emigre Bay of Pigs Invasion and Operation MONGOOSE, a series of assassination attempts against Fidel Castro. Soon, the island became a proxy for U.S.-Soviet confrontation, leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, perhaps the closest the world has come to nuclear war.

Historical

Operation MONGOOSE

Between August 1960, and April 1961, the CIA pursued a series of plots to poison or shoot Castro according to the assassination plots proposed by Colonel Sheffield Edwards, director of the CIA's Office of Security.

CIA established a main physical facility in Miami, Florida, as one of the bases for intelligence and covert actions against Cuba. The station itself had the cryptonym JMWAVE; operations using it had their own cryptonyms or code words, such as Operation MONGOOSE. The facility, under commercial cover of "Zenith Technical Enterprises", was located at the University of Miami, was considered too obvious and closed in 1968. Some of its functions moved to other locations in the Miami area, including the overt radio broadcast monitoring station of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service.

Operation Mongoose was re-approved to Edward Lansdale by U.S. President John F. Kennedy in November 1961. The CIA tried and failed several times to kill Fidel Castro. Various methods are discussed, such as hiding bombs in seashells.

The CIA supported a variety of anti-Castro agents such as Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, who are wanted in Venezuela for terrorism charges.

Bay of Pigs

The CIA-organized Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in 1961, failed, using plans that the Joint Chiefs of Staff advised against. Kennedy also required the invasion to be less visible, and reduced its air support.

George W. Bush Administration

On May 20, 2002, President Bush offered an Initiative for a New Cuba that called on the Cuban Government to conduct free and fair elections for the National Assembly, open its economy, allow independent trade unions, and end discriminatory practices against Cuban workers. He indicated that such actions would result in his taking pro-Cuba initiatives with Congress. Nevertheless, elections for the National Assembly were held in January 2003, with 609 government-approved candidates running for 609 seats. That was followed by the March crackdown on members of civil society.

In October 2003, he established a Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba to help the Cuban people achieve the goal of a rapid, peaceful transition to democracy that is strongly supportive of fundamental political and economic freedoms. Its July 2006 report outlines how the United States would be prepared to help a free Cuba improve infrastructure and the environment; consolidate the transition and help build democracy; meet the basic needs of the Cuban people in health, education, housing, and social services; and create the core institutions of a free economy. The recommendations focus on six interrelated tasks considered central to hastening change:

• empowering Cuban civil society
• breaking the Cuban Government's information blockade on the Cuban people
• denying resources to the regime
• illuminating the reality of Castro's Cuba to the rest of the world
• encouraging international diplomatic efforts to support Cuban civil society and challenge the Castro regime; *undermining the regime's "succession strategy."

The Commission also issued a "Compact with the Cuban People"

Obama Administration

In April 2009, President Barack Obama lifted travel restrictions to Cuba for U.S. citizens of Cuban descent, as well was their ability to send money to relatives. Travel restrictions for other American citizens remained in place. Political restrictions were mixed; Rep. Connie Mack (R-Florida) said Raúl Castro's "dictatorship is one of the most brutal in the world. The U.S. economic embargo must remain in place until tyranny gives way to freedom and democracy...[Obama] should not make any unilateral change in America's policy toward Cuba. Instead, Congress should vigorously debate these and other ideas before any substantive policy changes are implemented."

Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Florida, born in Cuba, responded "The announcement today is good news for Cuban families separated by the lack of freedom in Cuba," commenting in turn, the Cuban government should focus on improving its relationships with its citizens and the United States. "Lowering remittance charges and allowing travel for Cuban families wishing to see relatives abroad are two steps the Cuban regime could immediately take that would show change in Havana."

Obama responded, in November, to a Cuban opposition blogger, saying the United States expected reciprocal steps from Cuba if relations were to advance.In an interview posted on Yoani Sánchez's blog, he said the U.S. has engaged in areas such as migration and mail service, but that the administration was waiting for reciprocal Cuban actions, especially in freedom of speech. "Achieving a more normal relationship...will require action by the Cuban government," Mr. Obama wrote.

Renewal of embargo

While the final decision remains with Congress, in September, the President stated it was in the US national interest to extend the Trading With The Enemy Act, derived from the 1996 Helms-Burton Act that requires the embargo to stay until Cuba begins a transition to democracy.

Scientific cooperation

A delegation from the American Association for the Advancement of Science visited Cuba in November 2009, and will invite Cuban scientists to its February 2010 meeting. Peter Agre, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry and AAAS President, said "Nothing concrete so far, but much good will...[The Cubans] "are nothing other than warm-hearted about this. They would love to see things move forward...Cuba has been kind of a dead zone (for cooperation) because of the separation, but the opportunity to be here is something I'm looking forward to...It's something we would both benefit from." The most likely starting area for cooperation would be in medicine.

Recent Congressional

U.S. Representatives Bill Delahunt (D-Massachusetts and Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Utah) lead the Congressional Working Group on Cuba; Flake describes them as the "ideological bookends" of the Republican and Democratic parties, but the de facto leaders of the congressional opposition to U.S. sanctions on Cuba. Delahunt has also led efforts to reassess policies for democracy promotion in the region, including travel restrictions imposed on Americans who seek to travel to Cuba. He first became interested in Cuba on a trip there in 1988 as a Massachusetts district attorney, with a human rights group seeking release of political prisoners. Since then, he has met a number of times with Fidel Castro, but also with dissident leaders such as Oscar Espinosa Chepe, and he worked behind the scenes to try to secure their release from prison. He comments that if "human rights were the only guidepost for foreign policy, 'we would not be importing oil from Saudi Arabia.'"

In March 2009, a Senate was introduced to lift the 47-year-old travel ban to Cuba. "I think that we finally reached a new watermark here on this issue," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-North Dakota, a cosponsor. Another cosponsor, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Indiana, ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, another sponsor of the bill, issued a draft report in February that said it was time to reconsider the economic sanctions.