by Simon
•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind
who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published
every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at
frontporchguardian@gmail.com.
Bahamians enjoy front row seats to an unfolding story in which two longstanding rivals are about to turn an outdated cold war into at least a lukewarm relationship.
Just about every step in the thawing of relations between the U.S. and Cuba will be met with the sky-is-falling panic by true believers across both the Florida Straits and the so called left-right divide.
As a point of reference these straits serve as a maritime border and as potentially common ground for three neighbours: The Bahamas, Cuba and the U.S.A. Of course, “straits” can also refer to an array of difficulties.
A constellation of events will shape the pace of the rapprochement between our geographically closest neighbours. How these events are taken advantage of, missed or disregarded will determine the substance of the evolving relationship.
Some of the events on the ground will prove to be irreversible, while others are temporary. The manner in which the irreversible meets the temporary is not inevitable. It also depends on the flow and ebb of other unforeseen events. But for now a rough outline of future relations between Cuba and the U.S. is emerging.
An ailing 83-year-old Fidel Castro could die at any time. His death will have an enormous psychological effect in many capitals and quarters, and will encourage a re-examination of Cuba’s internal life and external relations.
SAME YEAR
His retirement in February as Cuba’s leader after almost 50 years has already accelerated such reconsideration. Dr. Castro retired as president the same year Barack Obama won the American presidency.
Every U.S. President since Dwight Eisenhower witnessed the Cuban Revolution, including Bill Clinton who was 13 years old when Castro overthrew Batista in 1959. Obama, born in 1961, did not. And he was just a one-year-old during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Obama is the first U.S. president in half a century who has no personal memory of the early dramatic events in US/Cuban relations, and he is also the first U.S. president who Castro did not “welcome” into office as a fellow world leader. Just as Obama has little of the angst of the tumultuous 1960s, he also has little of the angst that has often shackled U.S. foreign policy towards Cuba.
With a fresher perspective than many of his predecessors, President Obama faces a post-Fidel Castro Cuba that is evolving and Raul Castro as his brother’s successor similarly faces a changing America.
LIBERALIZATION
The current Castro in the presidency is already pursuing a variety of new domestic initiatives, including a greater opening to the religious community, more economic liberalization and the graduated promotion of a younger generation of leaders.
His foreign policy direction is being analyzed for what it may suggest for new possibilities in Cuba’s relationship with the world community. Raul Castro’s room for manoeuvre on this front is being boosted by the once again warming relations between his country and the European Union.
The discovery of potentially significant oil and natural gas fields by Cuba should also help to lubricate and strengthen ties with a world community desperate for energy resources.
The current global financial meltdown has upended many fixed economic positions and promises to transform a variety of political relationships as more developed nations look to as many emerging markets as possible, including Cuba.
But those who expect a radical change in US policy towards Cuba are probably in for a surprise. Preoccupied by various transnational threats -- the Middle East, Southeast Asia and other priorities -- Cuba is not likely a high priority for Obama.
He is also a pragmatist who treads carefully and will be surrounded by other pragmatists such as Secretary of State-Designate Hillary Clinton and proposed National Security Advisor General James Jones.
Those whom Mr. Obama appoints as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, and in other policy-making positions will have a significant role in revamping American-Cuban relations.
Not only is Obama not an ideologue, he is also not George Bush. Almost by default, he will be open to a more balanced and less contentious relationship with Cuba. In so doing President Obama will also enjoy more political and intellectual room to manoeuvre than his predecessor.
ISOLATED
The views of most Cuban-Americans towards the island-nation are softening and the hardliners are becoming more isolated. This is confirmed by recent polling numbers which mirror presidential poll results and Cuban-American voting patterns in November.
In recognition of these changing attitudes Mr. Obama played deft politics and has already suggested significant changes by indicating that his administration would “…empower our best ambassadors of freedom by allowing unlimited Cuban-American family travel and remittances to the island.”
In February when Fidel Castro was officially stepping down as President, Obama suggested that the U.S. should meet with Castro’s successor without preconditions.
The President-elect’s thinking over the more controversial issue of ending America’s trade embargo has, shall we say, evolved. Prior to running for office he supported ending the embargo.
In a panel discussion at Southern Illinois University on January 20, 2004, exactly four years before his inauguration next month, Senator Obama said the embargo was a failure and had hurt innocent people.
During the campaign presidential candidate Obama changed his position. His campaign website notes: “…if a post-Fidel government takes significant steps toward democracy, beginning with freeing all political prisoners, the U.S. is prepared to take steps to normalize relations and ease the embargo that has governed relations between our countries for the last five decades.”
It is the gap between what may be his seemingly long-held thoughts and internal goals regarding Cuba and his more recent public statements that will determine how a 47-year-old president pursues easing an embargo that has been in place since he was approximately six months old.
However, by recolouring the electoral map Mr. Obama has altered the role Florida’s Cuban-Americans may now play in his own political calculus. Not only did he win Florida, with significant Cuban support, he has also shown that he can be re-elected without winning Florida. Many presidents lacked such a free hand.
COMFORTABLE
The 44th President may also be helped with his thinking and goal-setting by comfortable majorities in a Democratic-controlled Congress more open to a reappraisal of relations with the Caribbean’s most populous country.
These progressives and moderates will be joined by a growing number of Democratic and Republic free-market conservatives such as Senator Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, who believes that ending the embargo and easing travel restrictions would be the best way to bring about dramatic change in Cuba.
President Obama might also promote an opening to Cuba to pursue both domestic and international political considerations, particularly with progressives.
He can reach out to American progressives by improving relations with Cuba and may bolster relations with progressive Latin American governments, as well as reduce the influence of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, by cultivating better ties with a state that bridges both the Caribbean and Latin America.
Those proponents of change who have champagne chilling should not be popping any corks just yet. There is many a slip between a cup and a lip or in this case between a champagne glass and those lips presumptuously celebrating a potential transformation between these adversaries of half a century.
The hard left in Cuba and the hard right in the U.S. and elsewhere will resist many confidence-building measures and more vigorous diplomatic engagement. Even 60 percent of something is usually not good enough for ideologues.
But the times are changing. One sign of that change is our own Prime Minister, whose criticism of Cuba’s human rights record has been married to a pragmatism which supports engagement, including the lifting of the U.S. trade embargo.
A recent editorial in The Nassau Guardian suggested that Mr. Ingraham may have the personal credentials and standing to serve as a bridge between America and Cuba. Not only does The Bahamas have a front row seat to potentially historic changes, we may also play a role in these momentous events.
The US Embargo should be lifted, but the Castro brothers should pay for their humnan rights abuses.
For some reason "ideologues" sorry, "progressives" like US President Elect Obama wish to ignore them.
Of course if human right abuses are levied by "progressives" sorry "ideologues" on the right, it is important to pursue those dastardly people?
Posted by: Rick | January 01, 2009 at 08:31 PM