U.S.-Cuba 21st Century Policy Initiative

Last week, President Barack Obama delivered his first address before the United Nations General Assembly. "Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world's problems alone," he insisted. "We have sought in word and deed a new era of engagement with the world."

Yet, there remains one obvious exception to this new era of engagement with the world: our continuing embargo of Cuba.

For half a century, the United States has pursued a policy of isolating Cuba in the vain hope that doing so would lead to the downfall of the island's Communist regime. Today that policy is one of the last great historical anachronisms of the Cold War, outliving the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, despite the fact that it has never accomplished what it was supposed to do. Political realists such as Henry Kissinger have argued for years that the policy undercuts U.S. diplomatic efforts on a host… more

With his national security team in place, President-elect Barack Obama's foreign policy principals will be immediately struck by how many complex and expensive challenges they will face. Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine and Russia, will all require enormous energy, all the tools in our foreign policy toolbox, and will all take years to resolve, if they can be resolved. None of these crises will allow President Obama to signal swiftly to the world the kind of changes he proposes in American foreign policy. In contrast,

If you live in Galveston, Texas, Hurricane Ike will be remembered for its destruction. But history may remember the ninth named storm of the 2008 season for swinging the 2008 presidential campaign.

That's because Ike devastated a little island off Florida named Cuba. In fact, Cuba sustained damage from four hurricanes: Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike. Gustav hit the Western end of Cuba as a Category 4 storm. Ike entered the east of Cuba as a strong Category 3 then shredded the full length of the island for three days.… more

The U.S. base at Guantanamo has been called many things. The "gulag of our time" (Amnesty International General Secretary Irene Khan, May 2005). "The key strategic intelligence platform in the war on terror" (Charles Stimson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, January 2007). The "legal equivalent of outer space" (unnamed Administration official). The right place for "the worst of a very bad lot" (Vice President Dick Cheney, January 2002) and… more