AQ Online Hard Talk: U.S. Policy Toward Cuba

Tomas Bilbao and Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat debate the following question: Should some elements of U.S. policy still be changed irrespective of what the Cuban government does in the short term?

YES. Response by Bilbao:

U.S. Foreign Policy Should Not be Controlled by the Cuban Government

After 50 years, the all-or-nothing approach of U.S. policy toward Cuba has undoubtedly yielded nothing. Defenders of maintaining this status quo have suggested that any changes in U.S. policy would represent “concessions” to the communist regime. They have argued that the U.S. should continue to demand that Cuba be a modern-day, western-style democracy before the U.S. consider any changes to its own policy. In doing so, defenders of this failed policy have contributed to Cuba’s isolation, helped delay processes of change on the island and effectively placed control of U.S policy toward Cuba in the hands of Cuban leaders.

Supporters of the status quo who dismiss recent positive developments inside Cuba as “insignificant” shows that these individuals don’t understand the nature of transitions or the plight of the Cuban people. History has proven that transitions are micro-processes that, far from occurring overnight, take place as a series of incremental steps toward democratic reform. The goal of U.S. policy should be to encourage each of those steps.

By responding positively and immediately to positive steps in Cuba, the U.S. can help embolden reformers within the Cuban government, making change on the island easier and more likely. The critics of positive developments inside Cuba fail to recognize that what may appear to be small reforms when viewed from Washington or Miami may represent important changes for Cubans on the island. Evidence of this is how cell phone liberalization has helped empower Cuba’s blogger community and civil society.

It is time that policymakers place U.S. national interests and those of the Cuban people ahead of political considerations and the obsession for some of focusing solely on hurting the Cuban regime. A more effective U.S. policy toward Cuba would prioritize interests, focus on helping the Cuban people and actively work to encourage reformers within the regime.

Read the full text at www.AmericasQuarterly.org.

Tomas Bilbao is executive director of the Cuba Study Group.

NO. Response by Gutierrez-Boronat:

Concessions to the Cubans would Embolden the Regim

We shouldn't make unilateral concessions to the Castro regime because it will cost lives. Fundamentally fragile, totalitarian dictatorships interpret all policy actions through the narrow lens of regime survival. That means they unfailingly construe unilateral concessions as weakness. That is a very dangerous message to send to Raúl and Fidel Castro in the zero-sum game they play with their own people.

Simply put: to retain power, the Castros must deny Cubans the very freedoms they overwhelmingly want. Therefore, if a morally and economically bankrupt, violence-prone, half-century old dictatorship is led to believe that it can kill without any significant response, it will unhesitatingly do so.

Take a recent example: the July 2010 deal between Cuba and the Roman Catholic Church, brokered by the government of Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to free 52 dissidents. Such unilateral coddling along with the support received from a coterie of left-wing Latin American leaders and the decision by the Organization of American States to rescind Cuba’s expulsion made the Castros think that they could once again get away with murder. (And any careful review of how the regime proceeded to methodically break the health of imprisoned civil rights activist Orlando Zapata Tamayo leaves no doubt that it was murder with the mistaken belief that killing a defiant black laborer would stymie the resistance of his fellow activists while passing unnoticed by the international community.)

Why did the regime then sit down with Cardinal Jaime Ortega and then deport some political prisoners? Because as the Cardinal himself has recognized, the spike in internal civic defiance and the international condemnation caused by Zapata's murder threatened the fragile status quo in which the regime survives.

Read the full text at www.AmericasQuarterly.org.

Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat teaches Political Theory at Florida International University and is the National Secretary of the Cuban Democratic Directorate.