Below is a recent opinion piece on U.S. - Cuba relations which appeared on the editorial page of The Baltimore Sun last
Wednesday.
CUBA
By Morris Morley & Chris McGillion
With the mid-term U.S. congressional elections approaching, one of their casualties can already be identified: any
prospect that Washington's Cuba policy might be removed from its Cold War freezer and thawed to serve contemporary U.S.
national interests.
The explanation is the electoral clout of a narrow, if declining majority of Florida's Cuban-Americans, and their
insistence that political candidates accept their hard-line regarding Havana. Tied to this is the perceived political
dependence of both President George W. Bush and his brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, on Miami.
The president learned this fateful fact two years ago when Miami's votes narrowly edged him into office. Jeb Bush
meanwhile scurries to retain the esteem of Cuban-Americans for both himself and his brother, assuring leaders of the
exile community in February 2001 that he would press the new administration to maintain a hard-line on Castro. He met
this pledge by lobbying for the appointment of Cuban exile Otto Reich--a notorious anti-Communist ideologue and former
Reagan official--as Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs.
According to senior State Department sources, Jeb Bush remains the administration's main channel with the exile
community. The inter-connected fate of the Bush brothers has created a powerful new dynamic for U.S.-Cuba policy. Nobody
should be under any delusion that Washington's policy toward Cuba is anything but domestic politics writ large.
Publicly, U.S. officials defend Cuba policy in terms of Castro's unacceptable behavior, but privately, some concede that
what passes for policy is "absurd."
When it comes to Cuba, Washington's double standards aren't novel. By the early 1990s, Castro had met the key
preconditions for normalized bilateral relations: the withdrawal of troops from Africa; the termination of his military
ties with Moscow; and, the end of support for revolution in Latin America. But to appease the Cuban-American lobby,
George Bush Sr. dramatically shifted the goalposts by demanding reforms inside Cuba. This mischievous approach
persisted, ensuring that Cuba's modest market liberalization, its courting of foreign investors, and drastic downsizing
of its military (from 200,000 in 1994 to around 60,000 today), did not qualify for the 'calibrated response' that
President Clinton maintained would greet such reforms.
When State Department officials were queried about Cuba's being excluded from the détente policies that the U.S. was
pursuing elsewhere toward the socialist bloc, their routine response was, "it's a matter of domestic politics."
President Bush's logic is the same. In May 2001, he expanded U.S. preconditions for removing sanctions, insisting that
Castro must first free political prisoners and hold democratic elections. For the past 12 months, Bush has exploited
America's post-September 11 trauma to blunt calls for improving relations.
The White House has rebuffed Cuban overtures to assist U.S. drug interdiction efforts, most recently fabricating charges
that Cuba was obstructing the drug war. It earlier spurned Havana's offer to facilitate the U.S. detention of Al-Qaeda
prisoners at Guantánamo, and sheepishly stood behind invented claims that Cuba had exported biological weapons to "axis
of evil" nations.
In a key policy speech before a cheering Miami audience, President Bush poured cold water on private U.S. financing of
Cuban agricultural purchases, announced an expansion of propaganda broadcasts to the island, and reaffirmed his
intentions to find ways to support anti-Castro forces in Cuba.
In late July, State Department officials lobbied vigorously - but unsuccessfully - against a House vote to lift the Cuba
travel ban. Meanwhile, efforts by Bush officials to implicate Cuba in the "terrorist war," have not flagged. One of the
most recent attempts has been to designate the island (again devoid of evidence) a "comfort station" for terrorists from
around the world.
Since the end of the Cold War, liberal comment on Cuba has allowed optimism to overwhelm sound analysis, interpreting
small changes at the margins of U.S.-Cuban relations--such as easing Cuba's ability to import U.S. food and
medicines--as harbingers of a major policy shift. Such analyses represent a fundamental misreading of the domestic
imperatives that drive Cuba policy. There will be no significant change until the disparate U.S. voices now calling for
a new direction--business groups, farmers, the church, humanitarian interest groups--organize themselves into a
sharpened constituency capable of challenging Miami's fading domination of the debate.
****************
Morris Morley Interviews
The famed Australian scholar on U.S.-Latin American relations, Morris Morley, the co-author of a new book on U.S.-Cuban
policy, “Unfinished Business: America and Cuba Since the End of the Cold War” [Cambridge University Press], and a senior
research fellow with the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, is currently in Washington, D.C. and available for interviews.
Morley has written and co-authored numerous books on U.S.-Latin American relations, including Imperial State and
Revolution: U.S. Policy Toward Cuba 1952-1987, and Washington, Somoza and the Sandinistas, 1968-1981.
Based on extensive interviews with Washington policymakers, the overarching thesis of this book is that U.S. policy
towards Cuba has continued to operate within an unqualified Cold War framework - that it has little to do with its
stated objectives of promoting reforms in Cuba and everything to do with dismantling the Castro regime.
Dr Morley can be reached at COHA's Washington office: (202) 216 9261 or coha@coha.org