Reactions to Trump's new policy on Cuba

[Miguel M]

Reactions to Trump’s policy on Cuba

President Trump’s symbolic act of reclaiming Cuba policy on behalf of his die-hard anti-Castro fans proves yet again that U.S. policy towards Cuba is determined almost exclusively by domestic politics in swing state Florida. Surrounded by Senator Marco Rubio and other luminaries of the pro-embargo Cuban exile establishment, Trump extolled their sacrifices on behalf of a free Cuba in a Miami pep rally that was pure retail politics.

He did so, however, not by trying to paint Cuba as a national security threat to the United States, as others have done in the past. Instead he went full throttle for the fundamental bargain Congress adopted when it codified the embargo in 1996: abandon communism and give your people their inalienable political and civil rights to choose who governs them, then we will lift the embargo.

The United States treats no other government in the world this way. What makes Cuba different from countries such as North Korea, Saudi Arabia, or Iran, where systemic human rights violations prevail? These states all pose major security challenges to the United States in a way that Cuba has not since the wave of democracy spread across Latin America in the 1980s and the Soviet Union collapsed. Yet these repressive states do not face the comprehensive decades-long blanket of sanctions that Cuba has endured since 1962. And Trump (and Secretary of State Tillerson) has made clear he has no real interest in defending human rights. In some sense, Cuba policy is caught in a time warp between the old ways of ostracizing a state Washington dislikes by unilaterally punishing its entire population, and newer tactics such as targeted multilateral sanctions that have yielded some progress in places like Myanmar and Iran.

What really makes Cuba exceptional is that it faces an organized, well-financed political machine of angry exiles in vote-rich Florida that extracts certain demands from political leaders for its votes. Though majorities of Cuban-Americans, in addition to both Republicans and Democrats, support President Obama’s reopening of diplomatic relations with Havana, Trump’s conviction that he won Florida thanks to his deal with Rubio and the hardliners is driving Cuba policy for everyone. No other faction so exclusively focused on one foreign country has such concentrated political influence on foreign policy, except perhaps for pro-Israel voters who, nonetheless, are more electorally dispersed. The majority who want to support the Cuban people through principled engagement and dialogue don’t seem to count.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2017/06/20/brookings-experts-react-to-trumps-policy-on-cuba

[sinkingfeeling]

1. That story is from June 2017.

[Miguel M]

3. Yep. It's even worse policy now.

Allowing Title III of Helms-Burton to go into effect so Cuban expats can use American courts to sue Cuba for their claims to homes and business long ago abandoned is an egregious abuse of US courts, and, abrogates the Geneva convention on jurisdiction.

[sinkingfeeling]

5. don't get me wrong. I have put pressure on my GOP governor and Sen. Boozman to lift the embargo

completely. They both agree it is hurting the US. the Arkansas rice and chicken farmers want to ship to Cuba.

[Miguel M]

6. Interesting isn't it. There's bipartisan support for ending Cuba sanctions.

Just as there is bipartisan support for it. It all depends on who is buying campaign interests.

[Judi Lynn]

2. From Brookings, yet, too! It's good they chose to point out the coercion at the heart of things.

Very sad, sadistic, cruel game.

Thank you for posting this.

[Miguel M]

4. Yep. Thats what I thought also.

But, as you well know, US/Cuba relations and the abuse heaped upon the Cuban people are a bipartisan matter.

[Judi Lynn]

7. Yes, it was a disappointment find out about that.

It comes down to weakness, and fear of having to fend off the vicious attacks from fascist right-wingers, who, as they have discovered, can end their careers in politics, just as Lincoln Diaz-Balart destroyed Rep. David Skaggs, of Colorado, when he gave him the choice of giving up trying to get TV Marti removed, or lose "everything he found near and dear" to him instead. Lincoln went about using US taxpayers' money to take out ads in Colorado papers attacking Skaggs, initiated a professional
political assassination on him and it worked immediately. Took him right out. Those guys have had all the dirtiest GOP congressmen backing them from the first, since anti-leftist hate mongering was so big for so long during the cold war, and forward with the deeply stupid part of the population.

Politicians are generally still afraid to challenge the dirtballs, and, just as importantly, they are so glad to ride that same gravy-train that comes with supporting the fat cats who have made big money from the US government with anti-Cuba projects, pork barrel bills, campaign contributions, etc.

Oh, it's so stupid, and corrupt. In time, they are all going to lose. It's all going to vanish as these things DO break up with time, and the reactionaries lose their power through the generations. I've heard it takes three generations to outgrow really vicious ideology.

From the way it sounds, looks as if that's going on in South Florida, too!

[Miguel M]

8. It is going on in S Florida.

The new gen of Cuban expats and American born so called Cuban-Americans are voting more liberal. I know many who were Bernie supporters in a big way.
The Versailles crowd, CANF, Saavedra and their ilk, are a shell of what they used to be. That's why Otto Reich has moved on to Venezuelan interference. More gains to be made in S Florida politics with the new Venezuelan exiles. DWS is fully on-board with her Doral constituents. Outta one side of her mouth are complaints of Russian interference in US politics, and, outta the other side she's loudly hailing for US interference in Venezuelan politics.