The Supposed Policy Change: Will Trump Go Farther Than Obama?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Esteban Morales
From Cuba Inside Out
Translated by Robert Sandels
It doesn’t take much effort to realize that the “Trump Effect” is just that; an irrational attempt to change Obama’s Cuba policy.
We don’t even know if Trump is really working to change the Obama policy because what little we know does not tend in that direction.
Comparing the attitude of both presidents we note the following: Obama did not do much to make investment easier. Now Trump puts investment in the “prohibited” file in negotiating with the Cuban military. He hasn’t advanced trade, but neither did Obama. the American banking system does not allow the dollar to circulate there. And finally, Obama has not freed up the dollar either, which was one of his deceptions. With Thump, everything indicates that the dollar will not officially circulate in Cuba either.
Trump has not broken diplomatic relations with Cuba, which is the most important thing since the embassies are continuing to function. It also appears that he has not eliminated family remittances or the 12 migratory categories that Obama set up, although Trump has eliminated the “People to People” visa program. Nor has Trump eliminated commercial flights or cruise ships. All this suggests that Cuban tourism, which has been growing year after year, will go on as before.
So, really, what has Donald Trump eliminated? I think we would have known after hearing about the presidential directive Trump signed in great theatrical style, but no one read or heard anything about Cuba among the pronouncements in his speech.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, I think, as we say in Cuba, “I smell a rat.”

What is Trump trying to do? We don’t know because his main ideas about how to proceed are in the directive that he signed and that no one has seen except for the people who wrote it. This tells us that Trump has something to hide from those who listened to his speech in Miami and from everyone else on both sides of the Florida Straits. That’s why I say that the theatrics forces us to conclude “I smell a rat.” It’s a vulgar charade and we don’t know who will get the prize.
Another almost indeterminate issue is that we don’t know how long it would take for the measures to go into effect. It could turn out to be so complicated that we can’t be sure whether it is delayed three months or more.
I think we should go back to Obama to understand what may be happening now with regard to US Cuba policy. And to understand how Obama arrived at his policy it is necessary to analyze some background because Obama did not pluck his policy out of thin air.
When on December 17, 2014, Obama described the Cuba policy, which had been in force for more than 50 years, as a political failure that had isolated the United States, it was a statement that corresponded to the reality of an already old and shabby policy.
When we take the opportunity to analyze the scenario in which Cuba-US relations were unfolding during the mid-1970s it’s important to consider some issues:
Around the second half other 1970s, all the information in the United States that had to do with Cuba came exclusively from right-wing sources. News about Cuba was supplied by a group of counterrevolutionary outlets that issued false news and twisted information on anything that was said about Cuba. Those news outlets have always been backed by the US government. It was a ferocious campaign of disinformation about Cuba oriented and financed by that same government.
It was from this period that the process of mutual visits and the exchange of letters and people began among members of civil society in Cuban and the United States.
The first such visit to the United States by a Cuban academic delegation since the triumph of the revolution was at the LASA conference in 1977 and it opened the doors for an intense academic exchange.
LASA played a fundamental role in enlarging academic relations between Cuba and the United States facilitating visas and financing for those activities. No academic center or university ever blocked Cubans from interacting with them. On the contrary, the invitations rained upon Cuba. That exchange would contribute to a change in mutual perceptions of the two nations in confrontation. There was a need to comprehend the dynamics in both societies in order to find the path toward understanding.
Dozens of conferences, jointly produced books, discussion meetings and mutual academic visits served to construct a platform of rapprochement that had never existed before.
Academic exchanges started to intensify and served to accelerate the emergence of sectors within US society that were now seeing Cuba from a more grounded perspective from which they began to view the true interests of the United States in is policy toward Cuba.
A political sector began developing within the US government, mainly in Congress and the intelligence apparatus, where a more positive attitude toward drawing closer to Cuba was growing.
And in Cuba, political organizations and organizations linked to national security also began to see possible ties with the United States.
The second half of the 1970s coincided also with the start of United States studies within Cuban academia, which, until then, had only been reserved for the national security apparatus linked to state agencies that operated outside of Cuba, such as the Ministries of Foreign Trade, Foreign Relations, Foreign Investment, among others.
The fact that United States studies became part of the academy enlarged and energized in an extraordinary way political exchanges within that coverage. LASA served as a meeting place to discuss Cuba-US relations and where figures from the US and Cuban governments could meet.
Cubans began to benefit from that and other processes because the spokespersons on the US side and sometimes also from the Cuban government received specialized and informed information about Cuba without the usual distortions.
From the United States, solidarity efforts began to take shape, notably with the work of Pastors for Peace caravans to Cuba and other examples coming from an emerging left all serving to accelerate the opening towards Cuba.
The Elian Gonzalez crisis also served to accelerate the process by helping to change perceptions about Cuba through the tremendous political defeat suffered by the Miami rightists. When immigration authority in the administration of President Bill Clinton took action, the child was returned to Cuba.
As a result of this, and other events that we haven’t space to cover, Cuba’s image and that of its leaders began to change in the United States. Similarly, the attitude against the blockade and the failed Cuba policy gathered strength in all sectors of US society.

 

 

 

 

 

So, when Obama decided to give his December 17, 2014 speech, he could count on a political environment formed by several events in the previous years that served as a support for a change of policy, complemented, moreover, by18 months of negotiations between governments prior to the speech.
Therefore, Obama’s speech found immediate support in the United States and abroad and his popularity grew in contrast to the poorly understood measures that Trump has tried to implant. But above all, it grew due to the speech that served as context for Trump’s measures.
Consequently, people talk more about Trump’s speech than the measure he announced in which hardly anyone can find any substance that would allow a real change in Donald Trump’s Cuba policy.
Rather than continue with the old, decrepit policy, which was more than 50 years old, Obama began changes that would correspond more to the present time
Historical Antecedents
Clearly, that idea of changing Cuba policy was an old one. President J.F. Kennedy, it seems, intended to do it but it cost him his life. The same day that Fidel Castro talked with the French journalist Jan Daniel, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
Moving closed to Cuba then, if it was not with bad intentions, was too daring and too dangerous. The interests that defended the old policy were too strong and formed a coalition of political figures who aggressively blocked any possibility of real change in Cuba policy.
The proof that conditions for trying to change the policy were nonexistent was the assassination of President Kennedy. There could have been other reasons, but in the Cuba case, that assassination loomed as an extremely powerful force.
Other presidents after Kennedy made some attempts at changing Cuba policy including Jimmy Carter, who went the farthest in the latter part of the 1970s. He was the president who best understood the need to modify a policy that also affected Latin America and the Caribbean, and that was already in flagrant contradiction to the true interests of the United States.
But condition necessary for the changes still remained elusive and were overshadowed by the scant possibilities of changing the policy despite the will to do so within the Carter administration.
The possibility of an opening faded and the best explanation for why was the stance taken by ZbigniewBrzezinsk, who, holding out for certain concessions used all the political tools to frustrate what could have been a new policy toward Cuba and succeeding in frustrating it until the end of the 1970s.
In the end, the effort to negotiate crumbled and although some results already achieved remained in place, such as the Interest Sections in both capitals, the failure showed that it was impossible to form a coherent Cuba policy based on prejudices and long-distance perceptions.
For his part, Reagan, promoter of the negotiations for the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola, negotiated but always insisting on going no further.
Gerald Ford also achieved some changes within a favorable Latin American context that prevented his administration from frustrating the arrival in Cuba of automotive technology from Argentina.
Bush the elder supported the Torricelli Law, signed in 1992, which sharpened the ideological war against Cuba.
It was Bill Clinton, who, after Carter, advanced the most in making policy changes. The conditions for change were favorable since, following the aggressions against Cuba by Nixon, Reagan and the first Bush, it seemed that Clinton’s time in office was a period in which the United States could have made some conciliatory gestures.
Finally, when Obama defeated Hillary Clinton in 2008 a real process of changing the old policy began.
The context for change was generated at the close of that campaign with the Allan Gross case along with the campaign for the rescue of the Cuban Five Heroes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also, Obama now had taken over from George W. Bush, who had imposed a series of measures against Cuba. From his first months in Office, Obama began to eliminate them.
These actions gave us a clear indication that Obama proposed changes in the rules of the game then in effect. But in his final campaign speech, Obama had said that he would talk with Cuba but would not lift the blockade.
How was it possible that Obama could say he would maintain the blockade, a policy so rejected internationally and freighted with so many internal criticisms and discord? WhileObama, did everything possible during his presidency to lift the blockade, he also applied systematic and astronomically high fines against international banks including US banks, which clearly showed that for him the blockade would continue being an instrument of pressure controlling relations with Cuba.
Therefore, we soon see that Obama had a policy strategy against Cuba and that it was based on a history of having divided the blockade in two: the blockade as a stick to use against the Cuban government though softened as it applied to Cuban society. Obama proposed tightening the blockade as no other president had done until then. He became the president who had most intelligently used the carrot and the stick.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, toward the end of his administration, he abstained in the latest vote in the United Nations. So we can say that Obama permitted advances in Cuba policy although not going so far as to lift the blockade. He also left behind doubts that allow us to say that we advanced in relations with the United States but not enough to make those advances irrevocable and to reach a normalization of relations between the two countries. Thus, there are levers that Trump can use if he truly has the intention of reversing Obama’s Cuba policy.
For our part, we continue to doubt that Trump really wants to reverse Obama’s policy. Since Trump’s intentions were only expressed in that speech, we consider him already committed, but we do not know what he will ultimately do.
Since what Trump said seems more as payment to Marco Rubio for favors than an attempt to ruin negotiations that could mean better relations with Cuba. This is truly his dilemma.
For his part, Trump is facing the inconvenience of being immersed in an investigation in which Rubio, as a member of the Senate committee doing the investigation, must try to help Trump, which is surely what Trump is hoping for. Given the situation, ultimately what he is hoping for is that Rubio returns the favor.
But what has been gained or lost? If Trump is really a businessman, the answer is very simple. Someone with a bit of logic can clear this up. What is more important, the deals that could be made with Cuba or giving support to a political minority on the right that no longer has a future in Cuba policy?
Of course, we must not forget that Trump finds himself severely pressured by seriously dangerous circumstances that threaten his position as president including matters relative to connection with Russia during his presidential campaign.
These threats are increased by statements made by his son, the polemical substitution of the FBI director, the conflict of interests between his role as president and the money he has, his complex income tax returns, etc. There are also his low approval ratings brought about by multiple fights he has provoked with the press, the very dangerous and strategic unpopularity he suffers from allies and accusations that he is insane and incapable of carrying on as president of the United States.
Indeed, it is difficult to think of another president in the history of the United States who scarcely six months into his term has had to struggle with so many problems, and for many, this makes him a possible candidate for impeachment.
What is more, the measures Trump wants to take seem totally contradictory to the interests of the sectors in Cuba that he claims to defend.
And in practice, he would also affect the interests of many members of the Cuban community in the United States who send money to help their families in Cuba.
The “people to people” travel ban affects the private sector the most for such things as finding a guide or a restaurants and other services while in official state sponsored tours, in which the tourist move about only in groups. This is more expensive and limits personal contact, which the US tourist finds more agreeable.
Many collaborative projects in medicine and research, in which Cuba has a great potential and which benefit both countries, could suffer serious damage or become paralyzed after having created networks of common interest that have started to function.
In spite of the being prevented from using credit, Cuba received $221 million in 2016 from agricultural products for which there is a potential to respond to interests in several states in the US. (See Granma)
In reality, Trump’s measures hurt those whom he says he wants to benefit. This includes a number of private projects that would benefit many in both countries.
Although Trump said is his speech that the remittances would continue, they could be eliminated for Cubans in several categories; how many it is not now possible to determine with precision. William Leogrands of American University thinks that the number of Cubans affected could reach one million. That number could also be amplified by the number of people in the Cuban community disgusted with the policy.
A considerable number in Congress are among those with a negative attitude toward the Trump measures, as well as business leaders, personalities in all sectors of society, Democrats and also Republicans, who might become a real headache for Trump as he imposes those measures. Above all, there may be counter initiatives to block his measures and there are currently several bills that may complicate Trump’s relations with Congress.
As for 2018, a year of congressional elections, it will be impossible for Trump to maintain the congressional support that would allow him to carry out all that Congress must approve and it is no longer possible that members of Congress from the extreme Cuban-American right will have the power to help him.

Finally, it would be delusional for Trump to think that he can negotiate with a Cuba using pressure.
I think the conditions that he has set for negotiations are unacceptable to Cuba. Cuba has very intelligently left the door ajar in case Trump really wants to negotiate.
But one has to say that not even in the most difficult moments, with an aggressive administration and a strong extreme right, has Cuba been willing to negotiate with the United States by making concessions.
Cuba’s main strength when it has negotiated with the United States has been precisely a refusal to accept pressure or to make concessions of any kind. Recall that after more than 59 years the blockade and other pressures of all kinds, Obama had to accept Cuba’s conditions and to negotiate under equal terms, respecting Cuba’s sovereignty.
There is an incident recounted in the book De la confrontación a los intentos de normalización: la política de Estados Unidos hacia Cuba, where Brzezinski, then director of Carter’s National Security Council, while trying to pressure Cuba, sent word to Fidel that if Cuba wanted to have good relations with the United States it had to get out of Africa, end its support for revolutionary movements and break relations with the Soviet Union.
The late Robert Pastor, then national security advisor, had warned his boss in a memorandum reproduced in the book, that this would not be possible, that Cuba would refuse to accept. Nevertheless, Pastor and P. Tarnof were obliged to negotiate with Fidel under Brzezinski’s conditions.
The book’s authors, Elian Ramírez and Esteban Morales, describe an interview they conducted with Pastor in which Pastor says that the first thing Fidel said was that Cuba had never told the United States where it could and could not go, therefore, who was the United States to place controls on the sovereign foreign policy of Cuba? Pastor said “listening to Fidel arguing against the proposition we brought to him felt like a train was passing over us.”
Unfortunately, Fidel is no longer with us but surely in this matter a train will run over Trump is he attempts to pressure Cuba in any negotiation he tries to carry out.
Since we can be sure Trump will not succeed using pressure to negotiate with Cuba, the only thing left for him are the following alternatives:
-Try to negotiate by force, which could very well be the most dangerous outcome of his stupidity, ignorance and imperial deliriums.
-Play other cards (surely, he has several hidden) and try to lead Cuba toward a reasonable negotiation but that would have to be done in secret because I am sure some of those cards would affect his credibility in complying with deals made with the Cuban-American right.
-Negotiate on equal terms with Cuba, respecting our sovereignty and independence, accepting whatever the outcome might be.
But none of this is possible because he does not have got much time to do it. So, all his efforts to pressure Cuba will fall apart and perhaps we can then return to the policy that Obama designed. That might be the most realistic and acceptable approach for everyone.
Trump, could be little more than an annoying obstruction in the process of establishing the policy that Obama designed based on previous experiences and his own that allowed him, for the first time, to come to an understanding with Cuba without affecting the strategic interests of US policy Havana, and without attempting to drag Cuba once again into the sphere of US domination. For that, Cuba has always been ready to respond.

June 10, 2917