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U.S.- Cuba Relations: Latin America
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Raul Castro Presents Plans for Cuba's Future (Post, July 27) A Wave of Uncertainty: U.S.-Cuban Migration Policy (, July 31) Related Discussions: Two Cuban Rafters AEI Scholar Mark Falcoff. (article 3) A Wave of Uncertainty: U.S.-Cuban Migration Policy (, July 31) Related Discussions: Post Reporter Miguel Roig-Franzia, 1 p.m Tuesday ET Two Cuban Rafters, Noon Wednesday ET (article 2) MIAMI Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is leaping into the long-running Cuba debate by calling for the U.S. to ease restrictions for Cuban-Americans who want to visit the island or send money home. (article 1) Obama feels that the Bush administration has made a humanitarian and a strategic blunder spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in an e-mail. (article 1) While the U.S. embargo has limited who can travel to the communist island and what can be sent there since the early 1960s, restrictions added by the Bush administration in 2004 made visiting and shipping gifts to Cuba more difficult. (article 1) Most Cubans in the U.S. can only visit the island once every three years and can only send quarterly remittances of up to $300 per household to immediate family members. (article 1) This only partly explains why President Fidel Castro has outmaneuvered, outfoxed and outlasted every American president for almost half a century.
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The New America Foundation’s 21st Century US-Cuba Policy Initiative seeks to reassess the fundamental realities of U.S.-Cuba relations today. This effort seeks to benchmark the relative success and failure of America’s many decades long policy to achieve regime change in Cuba through the isolation of Fidel Castro’s government and the Cuban people from substantial cultural, political and economic interaction with the U.S. The primary goal of this initiative is to achieve a new consensus of national stakeholders in an evolved U.S.-Cuba strategy rooted in 21st century realities rather than those national security features that dominated during the Cold War. Mr. Clemons is planning to soon launch The Havana Note, a blog on the topic.
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BRIAN LATELL, senior research associate at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies, can discuss contemporary Cuba, U.S.-Cuba relations, transition issues, and Raul Castro. Latell is under an exclusive contract for television interviews with NBC TV in English.
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U.S.-Cuban relations are virtually nonexistent. There is a U.S. mission in Havana, Cuba's capital, but it has minimal communication with the Cuban government. Since 1961, the official U.S. policy towards Cuba has been two-pronged: economic embargo and diplomatic isolation. The Bush administration has strongly enforced the embargo and strengthened travel restrictions. Americans with immediate family may visit once every three years for a maximum of two weeks, while the total amount of family remittances an authorized traveler may carry to Cuba is $300, reduced from $3,000 in 2004.
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JAIME SUCHLICKI, director of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS) and editor of the Cuban Affairs Journal, can discuss contemporary Cuba, U.S.-Cuba relations, transition issues and Cuban Jews. Suchlicki is under an exclusive contract for Spanish-language television interviews with Univision.
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Opening the door to more U.S.-Cuba interactions would seriously stifle Hugo Chavez's ambitions and maneuvering room in Latin America. Hillary Clinton is smart enough to know this -- and she may lose more votes than she gains by pandering to a cabal that has kept U.S.-Cuba ties frozen in a 1960s cocoon.
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