Obama’s Cuban Two-Step

23 December 2014

President Obama has launched a new approach to Cuba based not only on the failure of the United States economic embargo to bring down the Castro regime but on a larger vision of more constructive US relations with Latin America. Obama’s re-engagement with Cuba won immediate support from governments all across the Latin American political spectrum. “Fantastic,” said President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil when she heard the news, remarking that the change provided new opportunities for greater cooperation in inter-American relations. It remains to be seen, however, whether this will lead to solid support in the region for a transition in Cuba from a one-party dictatorship to a genuine democracy with political freedoms and guarantees for human rights. Dissidents in Cuba, who live under constant police repression, may have a long wait before the relaxation of US-Cuban relations produces any political liberalization.

When the rapprochement, negotiated secretly over 18 months, was announced last week simultaneously in Washington and Havana, there were distinct differences in emphasis on what to expect from the deal. Obama, speaking from the White House, said the United States expected an opening in Cuban society “that will spur change among the people of Cuba, and that is our main objective.” President Raúl Castro of Cuba, wearing a military uniform, told Cuba’s rubber-stamp National Assembly that the deal involved “no changes” in how Cuba is governed under the communist regime created by his ailing brother, Fidel, who aligned Cuba with the Soviet Union in 1962. That new alignment is what led to the suspension of Cuba’s membership in the Organization of American States as well as the break in diplomatic relations with the United States and the economic embargo. In the succeeding 50 years, exclusion from its major natural market to the north shrank Cuba’s economy, but subsidies kept it going, including cheap oil for sugar from the Soviet Union when Cuba was sending troops to fight in Angola as allies of the Soviet military. More recently, Cuba has been getting billions of dollars in oil transfusions from Venezuela’s leftist Bolivarian government under a deal arranged through the late President Hugo Chávez, a disciple of Fidel who installed Cuban advisers in Venezuela’s repressive security system.

So, what can be expected by way of “changes” in the Cuban system if—and it’s a big if, given reluctance among lawmakers in Washington—the US economic embargo is lifted? The timing of Cuba’s interest in the restoration of US commercial and financial relations may be the Castro regime’s reaction to the economic crisis produced in Venezuela by the severe contraction of oil prices. Venezuela’s economy depends on oil exports for 95 percent of its imports and foreign payments and no longer has a surplus to support Cuba and other partners in the Caribbean. This penury was amply discussed with Cuba during a meeting this month of ALBA, the organization of nine Latin American countries created by Fidel and Chávez in 2004 to serve as a counterpoise to the Organization of American States and the US in Latin America. Without Venezuelan petrodollars, ALBA is politically bankrupt and Cuba needs to find some new sources of financing through foreign trade and tourism. With adequate hotel services, Cuba can increase its tourist attractions, and the relaxation of the US embargo would possibly provide a larger flow of US tourists seeking the sunshine of the Caribbean island. But only a major increase in investments in Cuba’s agricultural and mining potential will expand the Cuban economy to meet the needs of the country’s 11 million people. President Castro and some of his younger economic advisers have been introducing timid economic changes in the rigid socialist structure imposed during Cuba’s alignment with the Soviet bloc, which proved incapable of developing the Cuban economy. Is Obama’s opening toward Cuba going to be the key to providing foreign capital and enterprise that can make Cuba prosperous? If so, under what political conditions on the island?

These questions will become more answerable during the coming months, in which the Obama administration will be seeking to bring the Cuban leadership into working agreements that will produce the “changes” Obama says he wants. Next April, the Summit of the Americas, a conclave held every two years by the chiefs of state of the Americas, will be meeting in Panama and Obama and Raúl Castro both say they will be present. The two already chat on the phone and may be developing a positive personal relationship. By the time of the summit, they may have something meaningful to announce on what Cuba is going to be like in an era of “change.”

From the standpoint of Cuba’s dissidents, there is a clear expectation of what needs to “change” in Cuban society. Yoani Sánchez, the famous blogger who manages to keep her messages from Cuba coming out of Havana, has this to say on Obama’s hopes for “change”: Four things will be necessary to move Cuba toward a free democratic society. In addition to release of all political prisoners in Cuba, which fluctuate around 100 currently, and ratification by Cuba of United Nations human rights agreements, Sánchez said the Cuban regime would have to accept “civic structures that have the right to maintain and express critical opinions,” in other words political freedom.