August 2, 1999

by Daniel W. Fisk
Washington Times, Friday, July 30, 1999, p. A19

The visit to Havana of a high-level delegation from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce deserves support, not condemnation, for the message it delivered on change in Cuba.

Make no mistake -- the Chamber has not changed its views on U.S. policy. It opposes the embargo -- and that position is music to Castro's ears. The Chamber and many of its members believe they are losing the "Cuban market" to European, Canadian, and Latin investors who do not care if the "Cuba" with which they do business is little more than one man, one party, one ideology, and one opinion. These investors have shown that they care little if repression and the equality of misery are the everyday reality for the average Cuban.

The United States has said that we will be different. The Chamber, however, has wanted to have a place at the business table with Castro. Its focus has been more in promoting U.S. policy changes than in promoting human rights and freedom in Cuba. Its mantra has been "change U.S. policy" -- that is, until this visit. After two years of denunciations of U.S. policy, it is heartening to hear the senior Chamber representative clearly state, in Cuba, that organization's fundamental disapproval of "the political, economic, and human rights policies of the Cuban government."

Chamber President Thomas Donohue's principal message while in Cuba was not a call for a change in U.S. policy, but a call for a change in Cuba, for that society to move "to the right side of history and [to] embrace private enterprise." The Chamber's message was that of freedom.

That message deserves support. It cannot have pleased Mr. Castro to hear Mr. Donohue proclaim that "the future of the Cuban economy depends on the creation of a vibrant private sector." Implicit in that statement is that the future of Cuba depends on the emergence of a free society, which cannot exist and prosper in a centrally-controlled Cuba.

Mr. Castro must be challenged, and those Cubans who seek their identity separate from the state must be supported. The Chamber can play a role in this -- but its message of freedom and free enterprise must be followed with deeds. The Chamber needs to develop an aggressive and transparent strategy to support the nascent autonomous Cuban sectors and to challenge the regime to allow them to engage in truly free enterprise. Further, it would be heartening for Mr. Donohue to give a speech to his own membership outlining the downside of trading with the likes of Fidel Castro. Cuba, as Mr. Donohue himself acknowledged, is no China or Vietnam. The Chamber's membership should hear this message.

There are those who condemned the visit, any visit, as legitimizing the regime. They rightfully asked, how can anyone sit across from Mr. Castro and not confer respectability on his regime -- especially when that "anyone" is the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce? Symbols are important, especially in the relationship between the Castro regime and the United States. Mr. Castro portrayed the visit as further evidence of the embargo's end. In effect, here is America's number one capitalist coming to recognize the legitimacy of the Cuban revolution.

The critics of Mr. Donohue's trip have a strong point: What matters in Cuba is politics, namely Mr. Castro's. Economic decisions are subservient to the needs of the state, not the needs of the Cuban people or the realities of today's international economic environment. Manipulations of the Cuban economic structure, be it farmers' cooperatives or allowing for self-employment, are meant to save the regime from its own internal contradictions.

In allowing for some degree of autonomy, however, the regime has opened possibilities for the emergence of an economic and political culture no longer dependent on the Cuban state. To the extent the Chamber's agenda is to support these sectors, it has cast its lot with Cuba's democrats -- the ones to move Cuba to the "right side of history."

This visit, if truly reflective of a new attitude within the Chamber, now gives that organization an opportunity to show that its bottom line is the freedom of the Cuban people, not the desire to profit from their exploitation. Those of us who support current U.S. policy should support the Chamber in such an endeavor; it will earn two cheers when it backs up its words with actions.

*Daniel W. Fisk, a former senior staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee involved in Cuba policy, is in the Department of Political Science at Arizona State University.

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