Cuba

Poland's Foreign Minister Radoslaw "Radek" Sikorski, husband of Washington Post editorial writer (and Polish cuisine expert) Anne Applebaum, is a compelling, brilliant, eclectic political intellectual who I admire a great deal. In part, I admire Sikorski because while tenacious and committed to his own analysis and views, he maintains an open mind; he listens; and while tenacious, he debates his intellectual opponents without going into the gutter. And he is occasionally unpredictable in all the right ways...

Former Reagan Administration Secretary of Treasury and Secretary of State George Shultz thinks that the US embargo against Cuba should "simply be lifted." In a letter issued by Secretary Shultz to David Dreyer and the Center for Democracy in the Americas, Shultz writes (pdf available here):

I have long felt and have said publicly on a number of occasions that, with the cold war behind us, we should simply remove the embargo on Cuba. I'm glad to hear that you are making headway on a bill that would repeal the travel ban for all Americans. This is a step in the right direction. I am glad to be on record, and you may quote me as supporting this effort.

Shultz echoes sentiments offered by former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft who has stated that the US-Cuba embargo makes no sense in foreign policy terms.

Pope Benedict XVI and President Obama meet at the Vatican (White House Photo) In a well-publicized visit to the island of Cuba, a delegation from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops this week called on Havana and Washington to "listen to our better angels" and work to end the embargo that has caused decades of unnecessary suffering on the people of both nations. That's good advice...

The monthly food ration for a Cuban adult. Photo credit Javier Galeano/AP.

One of the most hopeful signs that both the U.S. policy of regime change and the Cuban policy of total resistance is melting was the joint military exercise at the Northeast gate of Guantanamo earlier this month. It is just really hard to maintain that the other side is all that bad if our armed forces are training to save each others' lives rather than kill each other.

Imagine that happening in North Korea or Iran.

The recently turned-off ticker sign at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.

I want to share a little nugget of my analysis that helps to get past the zero-sum conditionality question that my colleagues John McCauliffe and Phil Peters have recently posted on.

I think we can describe the current U.S. policy as having the following attributes:

1. Rhetorical Caution
2. Regulatory Inertia
3. Operational License...

After nearly ten years of discretion, the existence of U.S.-Cuba joint military and civilian first responder exercises has broken to the surface in a very visible way. And that is news...

A National Hurricane Center photo montage showing the path of Hurricane Ike, 2008. My latest article, called "Cuba, Nothwithstanding" is now available online and in the stores, thanks to the good people at the Washington Monthly. Here's the teaser: President Obama doesn't necessarily need Congress's support to lift the trade embargo on Cuba. Under the right conditions, he could lift it unilaterally, if he were so inclined. And those conditions are dictated by, of all things, the weather. Click here to read the full article.

President Eisenhower and Cuban President Batista meet in Panama. 

One of the most difficult communications challenges for President Obama will be overcoming America's history of ideological hypocrisy. In his speech in Cairo, Mr. Obama started down this path, recognizing that our own history in the Middle East, such as the invasion of Iraq and the coup against the popularly-elected Iranian government of Mossadegh, was less than stellar. Indeed, whenever the United States has intervened on behalf of democracy and everyday human rights, our efforts have generally made things worse. Iraq, Grenada and Vietnam come readily to mind. The premature elections in Palestine and the failed 50-year old embargo on Cuba are also examples. Democracy is an organic and indigenous political condition and cannot be imposed by intervention or isolation...

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States officially refused to hear the case known as the "Cuban Five." That puts an important ball back in the administration's court.

The Cuban Five are five men convicted in federal court of unregistered foreign agents. To grossly oversimplify, the men were indeed agents of the Cuban government but they were not spying on the U.S. Government. Rather, they were trying to infiltrate the various right-wing paramilitary groups--and the groups supporting them--that are operating outside U.S. law in South Florida and seeking to destabilize Havana. What brought the case to the Supreme Court however, was not the question of whether the Five were spies. Rather, the case went to the highest court in the land because instead of getting the standard 6 year prison sentence they got 25 years and the Five were not granted a change of venue. They were tried in Miami, where it is arguably impossible for accused Cuban agents to get a fair hearing. It was, plain and simple a miscarriage of justice...

My colleague Patrick Doherty decided to push back on the comments made by Cuba's Ambassador in Geneva today that Human Rights Watch was somehow a tool of the U.S. government.

Doherty made the case that Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other groups concerned with improving the human condition in Cuba actually oppose the United States embargo of Cuba and are as such bedfellows along with a growing coalition of US State governors, travel and agricultural groups -- as well as serious foreign policy strategists -- who think that this embargo significantly undermines American interests. I am glad that HRW and these other NGOs see the perversity of the US embargo and how it has damaged the human rights of Cuban citizens.

Human Rights Watch also made clear that its funding is one hundred percent private.

All that said, there is a tendency on all sides of the US-Cuba debate to fall into a circular, never ending debate about what place the human rights question should have in our debate to end the Embargo. That is not my lens...