Obama's troubling Cuba legacy

Obama's troubling Cuba legacy
By Everett Ellis Briggs

Now that diplomatic relations have been formally restored between the
United States and Cuba, what does this portend for U.S. and Cuban
interests, or prospects for change on the island?

The U.S. long has advocated for a return to democracy, an end to human
rights abuses, and the promotion of "civil society" in Cuba. It had
until now maintained ties to dissidents and human rights advocates on
the island, encouraging them to stand up to the regime. These are people
who daily risk their lives in the quest for freedom.

Normalized relations with Cuba by congressional law were supposed to be
linked to a return to democracy in Cuba. The Obama administration
ignored this when it announced the start of negotiations to restore
formal ties.

At the very least, those negotiations might have included a settlement
of claims by private Americans for restitution of the billions they lost
when the communists seized their property without compensation,
agreement by Cuba to adhere to internationally-agreed norms of
diplomatic behavior; and on the U.S. side, and end to the restrictions
on tourist travel to and investments in Cuba.

In the aftermath of the raising of each country's flag in the other's
capital, none of this is even on the horizon.

Signs of change for the worst by both countries, however, have become
increasingly apparent. On the U.S. side, at a news conference at the
State Department heralding the opening of the Cuban embassy in
Washington, D.C., pro-democracy Cuban-American media representatives
were banned by State employees from participating, on the grounds they
might upset the Cuban foreign minister. At the ceremony in Havana,
leaders of the Cuban dissident movements were barred from attending not
by the regime, but by the U.S., on the spurious grounds there was no
room for them in the large plaza in front of our office building.

Since these events took place, prominent Cubans involved in the campaign
for political and human rights have reported that the State Department
and our embassy in Havana have ceased contacts with them, apparently out
of concern for official Cuban sensitivity.

The public position of the Cuban government doesn't augur well for
normalizing relations. Cuban President Raúl Castro at the UN last month
again called for the lifting of the (non-existent) U.S. "blockade," and
asked for billions in reparations for the economic damage the "blockade"
allegedly has caused the regime. He also demanded the return of
Guantánamo Bay to Cuban sovereignty, and in an aside that made no sense
at all, declared that Puerto Ricans must be allowed to hold a plebiscite
to vote for independence.

How ironic! Cubans are denied any voice in their future while the U.S.
is told to grant the Puerto Ricans a right they already enjoy —
regularly expressed as a strong preference for retaining the Commonwealth.

And so after months of secret negotiations, what we have, beside turning
our back on dissidents and human rights activists, is a formal
recognition by the United States of the legitimacy of the Castro regime,
a campaign by the administration to void or circumvent the few remaining
restrictions on doing business with the Cuban regime, and a conscious
stimulation of one-way tourism in the illusion that this somehow will
lead to an improvement in the social, economic, political, and human
rights situation on the island.

An illusion because just last month alone, there were more than 800
political arrests in Cuba, continuing the sharp increase in repression
of dissidents by the regime since last December's joint announcement
about normalizing relations. To appease the Castros, the U.S. took Cuba
off the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism (despite
evidence of ongoing support for terrorist movements in Latin America),
and softened criticism of Cuba's appalling human rights record in
State's annual worldwide human rights report.

Most Americans probably aren't aware that there has been, and still is,
no reciprocity in privileges and immunities we grant their diplomats,
but they deny ours. The U.S. respects the inviolability of Cuban
diplomatic pouches but allows the Cuban regime not only to inspect our
pouches but to dictate what our mission can import. The same goes for
household and personal effects shipments of our personnel.
Unaccountably, the State Department has allowed this to go on for years,
without protest.

One has to wonder how American taxpayers might feel to learn that for
years the U.S. has been paying the Cuban government millions of dollars
in salaries for the 300 local employees (including an unknown number of
spies) picked by the regime to work inside our diplomatic facility.

The U.S. in effect is violating its own law (the embargo) that prohibits
Americans' doing business with a regime that skims off most of the
salaries it collects for the employees it chooses to work for
foreigners. Example: a few years back, the official salary the U.S. paid
the regime for the top man in the Havana mission's motor pool was $500 a
month. What the driver got from the regime in pesos was the equivalent
of $12. This system still is in effect.

The promised infusion of new American money, now that some of the
restrictions are being sidestepped by the administration, all but
ensures that the regime will survive, when only a year ago, it was
financially on the ropes. Already, Raúl's son, Alejandro Castro, is
being groomed as Raúl's successor. Alejandro, the unnamed officer
visible in most photographs of Castro with foreign dignitaries — most
recently at his meeting with President Obama in New York — is a colonel
in the Cuban army, the current head of intelligence.

Cuba, like North Korea, is a family enterprise, not likely to disappear
soon.

What has the U.S. gotten from the reestablishment of relations? Nothing.

No. That is not quite right. We got an invitation for our president to
visit Havana. He sees this as an important part of his legacy.

Which explains everything.

Everett Ellis Briggs of Norfolk is a former ambassador to Panama,
Honduras and Portugal.

Source: Obama's troubling Cuba legacy Republican American -
http://www.rep-am.com/articles/2015/10/12/commentary/913418.txt