opinion

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Heck, No sense of reality about Venezuela
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Munini, Recovering electromagnetic space from the plutocrats
Reporters Without Borders, Defend freedom of the press against Chávez
Smith, Correa should think twice before prosecuting for insults
Wayne, Looking at Cuba without the distorted Miami lenses
Jackson, What to Do about Cuba?

Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Europe's declining influence in Latin America

Silié, Following the European Union's example

Leis, Ten factors in quality education

Sirias, Deadly poison from China

What to do about Cuba?

by Eric Jackson

For starters, those who are not Cuban and especially people who make US policy with respect to Cuba or might do so after the next elections have to acquire more than the customary humility and admit that as a matter of law, international custom and ordinary decency, Cuba's fate is something for the Cuban people to decide. Certainly such a thought is far beyond the Bush administration's limited comprehension, but the influence that the Miami exiles had on the Clinton administration ought to tell us that the Democrats don't necessarily have different or better ideas about this.

Meanwhile Fidel has stepped aside on a temporary basis, leaving the running of the government to his brother Raúl but giving the appearance that a more permanent and far-reaching transition plan to the post-Castro years has been made and is quietly being implemented. Meanwhile the communist government in Havana, which the Washington politicians were unable to topple in the hardest of times after the Soviet collapse, is the beneficiary of an economic upturn on the island. Meanwhile there's reason to believe that there's substantial popular discontent with the government, but no reason to believe that Cuba is in a revolutionary or pre-revolutionary situation.

So if you are not Cuban but believe in freedom and democracy in places that don't have enough of it and that despite Cuba's right to self-determination Washington does have a legitimate interest in encouraging a more open and pluralistic Cuba, what kind of US policies should one advocate?

(It's a different question with respect to Panamanian policies about Cuba, which I will get to at the end of this column.)

Without in any way interfering in Cuban affairs, the United States government can do several things that remove irritants to binational relations and thus make it easier for the current or a future Cuban government to sit down with the Americans and talk about a wide range of things. It so happens that most of these things, quite apart from their effects on Cuba, are good for the United States. Washington ought to do these things:

·        Abandon Guantanamo. Around the world it has become a symbol of little boys getting the waterboard torture, US military lawyers and chaplains who show the least bit of humanity being outrageously persecuted by Pentatgon hardliners and the Bush administration's defiance of US and international law. The continued US occupation of Guantanamo also a legally untenable offense against Cuban sovereignty. The US forces should just leave without any negotiations and without any ceremony more pompous than some minor US official handing a set of keys to a minor Cuban functionary.

·        Ditch all the hypocrisy about terrorism. Luis Posada Carriles is a bloodthirsty guy whose bombs have killed innocent civilians and notwithstanding all the hero worship he gets from Miami Republicans he should be thrown out of the United States. The best thing would be to convene an international tribunal to put him on trial for a series of crimes that have crossed international boundaries, and the simplest thing would be to recognize Venezuela's justified claim that he's a prison escapee who should be sent back to pay his debt to society. And what to do about the five Cubans now doing US prison time for spying on Miami exile groups among whom the likes of Posada Carriles and his accomplices move? They should be sent to Cuba with a tacit recognition on all sides that the United States is not going to renounce its right to enforce anti-espionage laws but also understands that these men were defending their country from a very real terrorist threat and that mitigates any crime they may have committed. If the United States can negotiate freedom for some of Cuba's political prisoners in return, that's gravy.

·        Stop feeding the right-wing Cuban exile movement. Shut down Radio and TV Marti. Cut all direct and indirect government subsidies for the Cuban American National Foundation and its dependencies. Eliminate funding for ludicrous plans about how the Americans are going to "reform" post-Castro Cuba's health care and education systems. Most of all, reject any and all advice about US policy toward Latin America that directly or indirectly comes from people who see the whole region and its problems through a lens that distorts everthing into some function of a wide ranging Cuban communist plot.

·        Lift the travel and trade restrictions. Not only don't fine the Yankees for scouting Cuban players, but encourage them to play some spring training games in Havana.

Once those unilateral steps are taken, the United States should send the Cubans a note expressing a desire to sit down and talk about a number of issues of mutual interest, to entertain any requests of peculiar concern to Cuba and state some similarly one-sided American concerns.

Always understood should be that the United States has closer relations with democracies than with non-democracies and that human rights concerns do matter to both the American people and their government, but this understanding should be just that, and not a taunt.

Both countries have injustices that the other could point out, and maybe the best of all things would be an agreement by which each would release their own political prisoners, whom each of course brand as mere common criminals. A deal that releases both the likes of Leonard Peltier and all the Black Panthers who have been locked up in US prisons for decades and empties Cuban jails of dissidents, rebels and reporters would be an advance for both countries.

And Panama? If the United States comes to its senses about Cuba, then this country's role as a diplomatic intermediary would be diminished. The Colon Free Zone might also lose a bit of business as Cuba would have more places to shop.

With a rapprochement between Washington and Havana Panama would be in a position to simultaneousl;y be a better friend and a more outspoken a critic of Cuba. That's because US-Cuban relations are so abnormal that what pass for "normal" relations between all other countries in the hemisphere and Cuba get distorted out of their ordinary shapes when this particular bilateral anomaly has to be taken into account. A "normalization" between the United States and Cuba would thus have effects that reach far beyond those two countries. In foreign affairs --- as in so many other spheres of our national life --- Panama's long-term goal should be normal relationships rather than special niches that feed off of aberrant situations.

Bernal, Freedom of expression again
Heck, No sense of reality about Venezuela
Committee to Protect Journalists, Chávez attacks freedom of the press
Munini, Recovering electromagnetic space from the plutocrats
Reporters Without Borders, Defend freedom of the press against Chávez
Smith, Correa should think twice before prosecuting for insults
Wayne, Looking at Cuba without the distorted Miami lenses
Jackson, What to Do about Cuba?

Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Europe's declining influence in Latin America

Silié, Following the European Union's example

Leis, Ten factors in quality education

Sirias, Deadly poison from China