American Strategy Program
 

U.S.-Cuba 21st Century Policy Initiative

The U.S.-Cuba 21st Century Policy Initiative seeks to take advantage of recent internal developments to redirect U.S.-Cuba policy and relations towards a more sensible, mutually beneficial direction and forge a new consensus of national stakeholders in an engagement strategy with Cuba rather than the decades old tried and failed strategy of isolating Cuba and its citizens.

The U.S.-Cuba playing field has one big dividing line down the middle making it nearly oxymoronic to talk about "U.S.-Cuba relations" -- except as a relationship defined mostly by two parties closely related historically, culturally, and geographically that nonetheless have Cold War-fashioned anachronistic rules of tense, standoffish engagement with each other.

The overall focus of the initiative will be to build policy and intellectual capital and a network of new policy stakeholders designed to push a “tipping point” in U.S.-Cuba policy beyond activities that mostly consolidate the part of the political and policy spectrum that already supports a more enlightened approach in US-Cuba relations. To facilitate this, the initiative will produce a series of private meetings, public events, conferences and collaborations as well as an online forum, The Havana Note, all designed to rewire this policy arena for change.

Articles

'Era of Engagement' Includes Cuba

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.

Cuba Notwithstanding

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

An Obama Policy for Cuba

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,

Cuba's October Surprise

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

Guantanamo: The Bigger Picture

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

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Events

U.S.-Cuba Policy

After an introduction by Patrick Doherty, the Deputy Director of the American Strategy Program and Director of the U.S.-Cuba 21st Century Policy Initiative at New America, Anne Louise Bardach discussed the her recently published book Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana, and Washington.  Bardach described how an article primarily focused on the Cubana Airlines attack and exiled Cuban militants, including Luis Posada Carriles, transformed into a three-part book covering Fidel Castro's long death, the Castro fascination, and

10/14/2009 - 12:15pm
10/14/2009 - 1:45pm

Is It Time to End the Cold War in Latin America?

04/14/2009 - 8:30am
04/14/2009 - 10:30am

What Would Nixon Do on U.S.-Cuba Relations?

Monday’s event brought together Dimitri Simes of the Nixon Center, Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson -- former chief of staff to General Colonel Powell -- and New America’s Flynt Leverett and Steve Clemons to discuss the future of Cuba policy. An MP3 audio recording can be downloaded below, while video is available at right. Dimitri Simes started the event lightly, speaking to Nixon’s love of Cuban cigars -- which he would enjoy quietly… more

07/28/2008 - 12:30pm
07/28/2008 - 2:00pm

The American Justice System's Cuba Blind Spot

Join the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program for a presentation by Leonard Weinglass, defense attorney for Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González, also known as the Cuban Five.

These five individuals were sent by the Cuban government to gather intelligence on extremist Cuban exile organizations such as the Cuban American National Foundation, Brothers to the Rescue, Commandos F4 and Alpha 66 -- some of which have been allegedly complicit in numerous terrorist acts on the… more

01/24/2008 - 12:15pm
01/24/2008 - 1:45pm

Imperatives for a New Cuba Policy

Polls indicate the great majority of Americans now see our 47-year old Cuba policy for the utter failure it is. Even the Cuban-American community, heretofore solidly behind the policy, is moving rapidly in the other direction. Polls taken in the congressional districts of Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Mario Diaz-Balart, two of the policy's most iron-clad advocates, show even the majority of their constituents to disagree -- 66% expressing disagreement in Lincoln Diaz-Balart's district and 69% in Mario Diaz-Balart's. Truly a… more

10/16/2007 - 8:30am
10/16/2007 - 3:00pm

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