Cuba: The End of an Era

On January 20, 2001, Fidel Castro will confront the tenth U.S. president to assume power during his 42-year reign. More significantly, Castro is poised to outlive the U.S. embargo against his regime. If current trends continue in the U.S. body politic, the new U.S. president will preside over the dismantling of efforts to isolate the Cuban dictator.

As the last nondemocratic nation in the Western Hemisphere with the world's longest reigning strongman, as the nation subject to the most comprehensive restrictions on intercourse with the United States, as the last Soviet dependency to have withstood that empire's demise, and as a nation that still appeals to many in the world as a grand social experiment, Cuba is unique in its relationship to, and involvement in, U.S. foreign policy. As the new president takes office, that relationship is at a crossroads, with U.S. policy open to debate more than at any time since the advent of the Castro regime, due primarily to the ascendancy of opponents of the embargo. The mobilization of the U.S. business and agricultural communities, the emergence of active Vatican interest in the island and new opportunities for the Cuban church to participate in Cuban civil society, the recent drift in the presence of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) due to the death of a dynamic leader, the fracturing of the Helms-Burton coalition in the U.S. Congress, and the Castro regime's persistent international campaign to attract foreign investment and portray itself as the victim of a "U.S. blockade" are significant factors undermining the political consensus in the U.S. Congress on the embargo.

A broader questioning of the utility of sanctions as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy and the evolution of a political consensus on the merits of "engagement" with the People's Republic of China, Vietnam, and North Korea have expedited the reconsideration of U.S. policy toward Cuba. Also at play are modifications of U.S. policies toward Libya, of the international sanctions regime on Iraq, and of U.S. rhetoric toward Iran. Given this international context, opponents of the Cuba embargo (and, indeed, of embargoes and sanctions generally) are making headway with the question, "Why not policy changes toward Cuba?"

Because of Cuba's unique place in domestic U.S. politics, the U.S. Congress has been the main driver in U.S.-Cuba policy for the past decade. This was as true for efforts to strengthen the U.S. embargo as it is for recent initiatives to remove it. The new U.S. president must understand that policy toward Cuba runs through Capitol Hill as much as, if not more than, through the Oval Office.

The Rise and Decline of the Embargo

U.S. policy toward the Castro regime was initially a reaction to Cuba's confiscation of U.S properties and turn to the Soviet Union in the 1961-1962 period. Concerns about Cuba's internationalist agenda, especially support of "revolution" in Latin America and Africa, and the repressive policies toward its own citizens also motivated U.S. efforts to isolate the Cuban government. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and its European proxies, many concluded that the same fate would soon befall Castro. Cuba, however, was low on the list of Bush administration priorities given the preoccupation with the fall of the Soviet Union and events in Central America. The Clinton administration was perceived either not to have a Cuba policy or to have a secret plan to normalize U.S. relations with the island.

With the executive branch effectively leaving a policy vacuum, Congress reasserted itself. First, during the Bush administration, a Democrat-controlled Congress, out of a sense of frustration with presidential inattention, approved the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 (CDA) over Bush's initial objections. The CDA established a two-track policy to reach out to the Cuban people while strengthening the economic...