Wanted -- A New Cuba Policy
Wanted -- A New Cuba Policy
Posted April 26, 2012 | 2:53 PM
Rajan Menon
America's Cuba policy has three distinctive aspects. First, though Bill Clinton and Barack Obama changed it at the margins, it has been remarkably consistent, regardless of who occupies the White House. Second, it has lasted for half a century despite the utter failure to achieve its declared purpose: producing fundamental political change in Cuba. Third, our closest allies, Canada, the European Union (EU), and Japan have rejected its premises and practices.
The governments of South and Central America don't support Washington's approach, either. Thus at April's Summit of the America's in Cartagena Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil -- regional heavyweights friendly toward the United States -- criticized Cuba's exclusion. This was unsurprising: at the 2009 meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS), from which body Cuba was expelled in 1962 and has been kept out principally because of Washington's insistence, a vote to initiate Cuba's readmission carried the day, showing that the resistance to ostracizing Cuba is not limited to leftist governments in Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
Obama's sole defender in Cartagena was Canada's conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. Yet Canada has never followed Washington's Cuba policy. The U.S. broke diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1961 (though in 1977 each country established an "Interest Section" in Switzerland's embassy in the other), but Canada never did and now has substantial economic transactions with Cuba. It is currently Cuba's third largest trade partner after Venezuela and China. Canadian companies have big investments in Cuban mining, hotels and tourism. Tourists from Canada exceed those from any other country; some 1 million visited Cuba last year.
The European Union's "Common Position" on Cuba, adopted in 1996, does emphasize the importance of improving human rights, but it rests on the assumption that this goal is best achieved through engagement, not isolation. The EU's trade with Cuba now exceeds Venezuela's, and Europe accounts for about half of all foreign investment in Cuba and roughly the same proportion of tourists.
More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rajan-menon/wanteda-new-cuba-policy_b_1450392.html
