U.S. sanctions on Cuba under growing attack

Published Monday, December 28, 1998, in the Miami Herald

U.S. sanctions on Cuba under growing attack

By JUAN O. TAMAYO
Herald Staff Writer

Congressional conservatives and liberals favor it. So do leading American newspapers, a growing number of business people, academics and intellectuals, and Pope John Paul II.

Even Henry Kissinger, the closest thing America has to a foreign-policy deity, favors it -- a top-to-bottom reassessment of U.S. sanctions on Cuba, including the trade and travel embargoes.

Forty years after President Fidel Castro seized power, U.S. sanctions designed to impel his communist regime toward change are under one of the strongest assaults ever marshaled by foreign-policy and public-opinion leaders.

Labels such as ``obsolete, ``counterproductive and ``bankrupt have come to dominate the public debate, while defenders of the sanctions appear to be dwindling and increasingly resigned to some adjustments in policy.

Some analysts are predicting a nibbling around the edges of U.S. policy, perhaps an easing of restrictions on travel, and on sales of food and medicine. A few see a long-shot possibility that the 37-year-old embargo will be lifted.

``When something so dry and brittle is hit by a sudden puff of fresh air, it's quite possible there could be substantial changes, said Luigi Einaudi, former U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States.

Yet skeptics predict that nothing significant will happen, and not only because of U.S. political and legal hurdles. Castro, they say, has a history of torpedoing U.S. attempts to improve relations, thereby keeping Washington as a menace and justifying domestic repression.

Kissinger's own effort at rapprochement with Havana ended when Cuba sent troops to Angola in 1975. President Carter's efforts ended with the Mariel crisis in 1980. And Clinton's turned sour when Cuban MiGs shot down two Brothers to the Rescue planes over the Florida Straits in 1996.

``The principal obstacle to improved U.S. policies toward Cuba is not the Cuban-American lobby or its supporters in Congress, but Castro himself, said Richard Nuccio, former Clinton White House advisor on Cuba.

``If you think, like I do, that the Cuban government actually prefers that the embargo stay in place, at least under certain conditions, then it may be that the Cuban government will do something that will have the consequence of polarizing the issue in the United States, Nuccio added.

Turning a Godfather movie phrase on its head, Nuccio added: ``There is no offer we can make that they can't refuse.

A case for change

Few supporters of easing sanctions share Nuccio's concern. Instead, they argue that it's time for change because Castro stopped being a threat to U.S. security when the Cold War ended, and because decades of sanctions have failed to nudge him toward reforms.

``Nothing approaching full democracy will take place until Castro leaves the scene, but at least we can encourage the right conditions for positive change, said Wayne Smith, once the top U.S. diplomat in Havana and now a determined critic of U.S. sanctions.

Supporters of the embargo insist it's working. ``The best evidence of that is the vast amount of work that Cuba has put into lobbying for its removal, especially after the Soviet Union's collapse,'' said Cuban-born Otto Reich, former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela and a strong critic of the Castro government.

March of events

But several developments in recent months show the increasingly vocal opposition to the U.S. sanctions against Cuba:

Kissinger headed a group of about 20 senators and other foreign-policy mavens who proposed that Clinton appoint a bipartisan panel to review U.S. policy on Cuba. Supporters and critics alike say ``review is a euphemism for change.

The Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan research and policy organization, named a 22-member task force in October to reassess U.S. relations with Havana. Its report is expected in mid-January. Among the panel members: former Assistant Secretaries of State Bernard Aronson and William D. Rogers, and one Cuban American, New York investment lawyer Mario Baeza.

U.S. lawmakers proposed bills this year in the House and Senate to ease restrictions on sales of food and medicine to Cuba. The bills did not pass, but they are expected to be resubmitted when Congress convenes in January.

Two respected foreign-policy think tanks, the Atlantic Council and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, published reports critical of U.S. policies on Cuba in August and September.

Americans for Humanitarian Trade With Cuba, a coalition of business people, former U.S. officials and church leaders, was organized under the auspices of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to push for lifting regulations on the sale of food and medicine to Cuba. It includes conservatives like former Bush administration trade representative Carla Hills and former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker.

The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and many other leading U.S. newspapers have published editorials calling for an end or a significant softening of the U.S. embargo.

USA Engage, made up of 650 U.S. corporations, was formed last year to lobby against Washington's growing use of economic sanctions against other countries -- not just Cuba but also Libya, Iraq, Iran and Myanmar (the former Burma).

Pope John Paul II and several American cardinals have harshly criticized the embargo, arguing that it hurts the Cuban people more than the Cuban government.

The European Union, Canada and many Latin American and Caribbean governments called for an end to the embargo and its replacement with policies of ``engagement that might slowly nudge Cuba toward change.

Turnaround on embargo

Such an onslaught on the embargo would have been almost unthinkable only 33 months ago, when Congress passed the Helms-Burton Act in an enraged response to the downing of the Brothers to the Rescue planes by the Cuban air force.

Until then, the Clinton administration had been trying to follow a two-track policy of sanctions linked to possible Cuban reforms and support for people-to-people contacts that might promote change on the island.

In a 1995 nod to rising U.S. anti-immigration sentiment, Clinton adopted a change in policy long sought by Cuba -- returning most Cuban rafters to the island instead of welcoming all as victims of communist oppression.

The Helms-Burton Act remains a potential obstacle to easing U.S. policies on Cuba because, aside from threatening some foreign firms that invest in Cuba, it wrote into law all the sanctions that had previously been enforced by executive decrees or regulations.

White House legal experts have concluded, however, that Helms-Burton would not prevent Clinton from significantly altering those regulations, Nuccio said. Congressional hard-liners will undoubtedly disagree if he ever tries it.

Other obstacles

But there are bigger stumbling blocks to policy changes on Cuba.

Key White House officials pushing for the Kissinger proposal are doing so only quietly and not very forcefully, and not just because the Monica Lewinsky scandal has sapped Clinton's strength, Washington sources said.

``This is not a bold president, Wayne Smith said.

And while the ease-the-sanctions advocates are dominating the public side of the debate, the hard facts are stacked against them.

``The politics are just not there, said one top Clinton administration official who handles Cuba issues.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Miami Republican, has taken to referring to the Kissinger proposal as ``the Gore Commission in a clear shot across the bow of Vice President Al Gore and his presidential ambitions in 2000.

Florida vote in mind

Florida, governed by Republican Jeb Bush, will play a key role in that election, and not many candidates are considered likely to risk angering the state's Cuban-American vote.

The political strength of the Cuban American National Foundation has been undermined somewhat by the death of founder Jorge Mas Canosa and its ensuing rift with Ros-Lehtinen and two other Cuban Americans in Congress, several Washington political observers said.

But its remaining strength could well be enough to block any significant easing of U.S. sanctions on Cuba, especially given the many other hurdles in its path.

A Florida International University poll last year showed that about 72 percent of Cuban Americans in Miami still supported the embargo. A CNN poll earlier this year showed that 48 percent of all Americans favored the embargo and 45 percent opposed it.

So there is little political capital to be gained by going against it.

``Cuba has always been a `third rail' of U.S. policy. Touch it and you die, said Nuccio, now writing a book on Cuba-U.S. relations.

Diplomatic leverage

Supporters of tight sanctions say they should be kept as chips for bargaining with Cuba. Lifting them unilaterally, they add, would only legitimize and strengthen Castro, and they argue that the policy of engagement backed by Canada and other nations has failed as badly as the U.S. embargo when it comes to persuading Castro to modify his repressive policies.

U.S. sanctions made Cuba an expensive outpost of the Soviet empire and helped drive Moscow into collapse, said Frank Calzon, Cuban-born director of the Washington-based Center for a Free Cuba.

``I am not opposed to lifting the embargo, but it should be the end goal of a process of significant Cuban steps toward democracy, not the beginning, Calzon said.

And although any number of foreign-policy experts can agree that the embargo has achieved little in terms of nudging Castro toward reforms, few see any promising alternatives.

Clinton's policy, ``while hardly the mode of clarity either advocates or detractors would wish, nonetheless is a serviceable approach, said Cuba historian and Rutgers University Professor Irving Louis Horowitz.

It is a dilemma with no end in sight.

``The dynamics between us and Cuba is becoming embarrassing because it looks dated, it looks sterile, and yet no one can find a way around it, Einaudi said. ``We have paralysis of policy on both sides.