Ready for Change in US-Cuba Relations

Over the past few weeks, there has been increasing optimism that for the first time in decades there might be significant change in US policy towards Cuba. In fact, all the key players (Cuba, Obama, Congress, the American people) are pushing for change.

Last week, Cuban president Raul Castro told the world:

We've told the North American government, in private and in public, that we are prepared, wherever they want, to discuss everything -- human rights, freedom of the press, political prisoners -- everything, everything, everything that they want to discuss.

Earlier this month President Obama lifted some of the travel and remittance restrictions imposed by the previous administration. During the Fifth Summit of the Americas last week, Obama responded to Cuban overtures, saying “the United States seeks a new beginning with Cuba,” and that he was willing to have his administration engage the Castro government on a wide array of issues.

As I mentioned in my previous blog entry on Cuba, a bipartisan group of senators recently predicted that Congress was ready to pass legislation to allow all Americans to travel to Cuba.

Cuban-American exiles, after decades of supporting the embargo and isolation from Cuba, are finally softening their stance (see graph above):

A poll released Monday by Bendixen & Associates has found that 67 percent of the [Cuban-American] community now supports the removal of all restrictions for travel to Cuba, an 18-point increase from three years ago, when the same question was asked.

Similarly, a recent CNN poll (of all Americans, not just Cuban-Americans) found:

Nearly two thirds think the United States should lift its ban on travel by U.S. citizens to Cuba. And seven in ten think it's time to re-establish diplomatic relations with that country.

"Republicans as well as Democrats favor re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "On the issue of lifting travel restrictions, Republicans are evenly divided, while Independents and Democrats support the change."

Of course, there are those who claim that we would be “appeasing” dictators and/or communists by engaging Cuba. Really? In the years since the embargo was launched, we have done business with dictators like Saddam Hussein and have courted the friendship of Saudis, whose money and sovereign soil gave sanctuary to most of the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. We also trade with communist governments such as China and Vietnam.

As Pulitzer-prize winning Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson astutely noted:

Those who argue for keeping in place the trade embargo and what remains of the travel restrictions -- and even predict that these measures, imposed at a time when the Cold War was getting chillier, will bring the Castro government to its knees any day now -- have been drinking too many mojitos. Claims that the United States would somehow surrender valuable "leverage" by lifting the sanctions are purest fantasy.

People, we have no leverage in Cuba. If we had any, we'd have managed to move the Cuban government an inch or two toward democratic reform in the past five decades.

What we should do is lift the embargo, which Obama hasn't meaningfully disturbed, and end the travel ban for everyone. That would put the onus on the Cubans to somehow keep hordes of American capitalists and tourists from infecting the island with dangerous, counterrevolutionary ideas. But we should take these steps with our eyes open, seeing Cuba as it is, not as we might want it to be.

Cuba is ready. The president and Congress are ready. Americans are ready. Let’s get moving! I can already taste that first mojito in Havana.