President Obama wisely began trying to improve the United States’ extremely sour relations with Latin America this week. He slightly eased the counterproductive embargo on Cuba, and in a visit to Mexico, he vowed to help confront the drug cartels. He also promised leaders at a regional summit a “new day” of practical cooperation in place of former President George W. Bush’s ideologically constricted policies.
This column has periodically railed on about the dysfunctional relationship between the U.S. and Cuba. Actually, "dysfunctional" is too euphemistic. Make that stupid. Notably, the counterproductive, 47-year-old, economic embargo that only made sense during the height of the Cold War, when Cuba became a Soviet satellite.
For the past four decades, we have been conducting something pretty close to a scientific experiment on one of the most important practical questions the world has ever faced. This question has dominated American politics, off and on, for almost a century. We have conducted this experiment at no small cost and have ruthlessly ignored the results. The question is: What is the best way for free nations to defeat totalitarian regimes in general and communism in particular?
President Obama's decision this week to ease some parts of the embargo against Cuba is being hailed as a first step toward altering a U.S. policy that has prevailed for a half-century without unseating Fidel Castro. We don't object, though it'd be nice if Mr. Obama also began speaking up against the Castro dictatorship.
The ascendancy of Raúl Castro to Cuba's presidency has fueled expectations of reform in the 50-year-old dictatorship. Next week, President Barack Obama will be pressed on the issue at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad-Tobago. It is a good time to acknowledge that neither the U.S. embargo nor engagement by the rest of the world have helped Cubans attain their rights
In just a few days, President Obama will make his Latin American debut, participating in a 34-nation hemispheric Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. It promises to be a propitious opportunity for the new administration to highlight its emerging new policy toward Latin America and the Caribbean.
It's been a big week for U.S.-Cuba relations: Fidel Castro rose from his deathbed to meet with a delegation of U.S. lawmakers. Miami's Cuban American National Foundation, usually described as a hard-line exile group, called for expanded relations with the Communists in Havana. On Monday, President Obama made good on a promise to ease travel restrictions and to allow Cuban Americans to send more money to relatives on the island.
The Congressional Black Caucus delegation that visited Havana last week was naive not to notice -- or disingenuous not to acknowledge -- that Cuba is hardly the paradise of racial harmony and equality it pretends to be. Still, that's no reason for the United States to continue the illogical, ineffective, hard-line policies that have produced an unbroken 47-year record of failure.
The ascendancy of Raúl Castro to Cuba's presidency has fueled expectations of reform in the 50-year-old dictatorship. Next week, President Barack Obama will be pressed on the issue at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad-Tobago.
Whenever a Democratic president takes office, hopes arise for a more rational approach to our relationship with Cuba, object of an embargo that has lasted for nearly half a century without improving the behavior of that country's authoritarian leaders.
The Obama Administration is reviewing U.S. Cuba policy: What to do about Cuba? What has failed? What's our national interest? Is Havana prepared to discuss any of the changes for which most Americans and Cubans yearn?
The unilateral US embargo of Cuba has not supported democracy there; it has created a useful piece of propaganda used against us. It has not isolated Cuba's government from the rest of the world; it has isolated the United States from Latin America. Though it has undeniably strained the Cuban economy, the strain is disproportionately harder on the Cuban people than the government. Persuasive arguments have been made painting the embargo as alternately a useful diplomatic tool, or a failed Cold War relic. What is clear is that the embargo policy has unquestionably failed us domestically.
CONGRESSIONAL Black Caucus Democrats went to Cuba to see what they wanted to see. Not since The New York Times reporter Walter Duranty traipsed around Stalin's Russia, filing cheery travelogues whitewashing Communist-engineered famine, has America witnessed such disgraceful propaganda tourism.
I must admit, after 15 years of providing humanitarian aid to Cuba and going hat in hand to Washington, D.C. to apply for annual Department of the Treasury and bi-annual Department of Commerce licenses to "Trade With The Enemy" by sending free medical supplies to pediatric hospitals, I am feeling almost optimistic that things may be approaching denouement.
CUBA'S President Raul Castro could help US President Barack Obama to end the 49-year-old trade embargo that the US has imposed on Cuba and to normalise relations between the two countries. To do so, he will have to implement measures to address human rights issues in Cuba, particularly the release of persons detained for their political views or actions.
The White House announced this weekend that President Obama would soon lift restrictions on family travel and remittances to Cuba. A bipartisan group of 20 senators has gone further, introducing legislation to repeal the nearly half-century-old ban on travel to Cuba -- a first step toward lifting the U.S. embargo on the communist island. Before proceeding, lawmakers ought to consider the words of Ricardo Alarcón -- a top official in the Castro regime and longtime leader of Cuba's National Assembly of People's Power.
I think it's time to realize that we need to move Cuba out of the domestic political box back into the geostrategic context where it belongs.
Half a dozen members of the Congressional Black Caucus spent hours huddling with Fidel and Raúl Castro in Havana this week as part of a swelling campaign to normalize relations with Cuba. "It is time to open dialogue and discussion," Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) told a news conference in Washington after their return. "Cubans do want dialogue. They do want talks." Funny, then, that in five days on the island the Congress members found no time for dialogue with Afro-Cuban dissident Jorge Luis García Pérez
The new look in American foreign policy is expected to reach the Western Hemisphere next week. It can't come too soon. Indeed, even before President Barack Obama formally takes the first step toward expanding U.S. relations with Cuba, an unusual coalition of business groups and members of Congress from both parties is pressing him to do even more and more quickly.
What can Cuba do to help Barack Obama?” An offer by Fidel Castro, as reported by US congressmen after their two-hour visit to the former revolutionary leader, shows how quickly the island would change if given the chance.
Otto Reich, a former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela and a veteran diplomat who served in three Republican administrations, argues that, instead of appeasing Cuba's dictatorship, the United States should use its enormous economic clout to get major concessions from the Castro regime.
While rejecting an invitation sent by three Nobel Peace Prize laureates — including Nelson Mandela — to the Dalai Lama, a man who has struggled to bring a measure of freedom to his Tibetan people since Communist China completed its occupation in 1959, South Africa's African National Congress (ANC) government has granted its highest honour to an accused mass murderer, Fidel Castro.
Students of closed societies understand that the absence of evidence can be a useful predictor of an important new trend. The need to notice what is inexplicably missing is one of the core principles of propaganda analysis as it was practiced first by Kremlinologists and Sinologists, and for many years now by Cubanologists.
For those who don't already know, Burlington now has a direct connection to Cuba. No, not an Internet or phone connection; you didn't think it'd be that easy for Cubans, did you? Truth be told, Raul “Mini-Me” Castro has relented and allowed his subjects to use cell phones, and there's been some talk of easing up on Web restrictions – some of the harshest in the world – but for the most part, the island is still silent as a tomb. Nothing, or no one, gets out.
The Obama administration took a small step toward reappraising U.S.-Cuba policy this month. Americans should hope a much larger one is announced next month.
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