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Time Again To Reach To Cuba

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By WILLIAM M. LEOGRANDE and PETER KORNBLUH

Special to the Los Angeles Times

Published: January 15, 2009

Not since President Richard Nixon went to China has an intractable foreign-policy issue been so ripe for resolution as current U.S. relations with Cuba are today.

As with China, bilateral hostility has persisted long after the causes of the initial break have ceased to hold sway, held in place by seemingly implacable domestic opposition to normalizing relations and the policy inertia of official Washington.

When Nixon broke the stalemate by announcing his trip in 1972, the pro-Taiwan "China lobby" proved to be a paper tiger, and the foreign-policy establishment heaved a sigh of relief that such an irrational, ineffective and anachronistic policy had finally been put to rest.

U.S. policy toward Cuba today, like policy toward China in 1972, is overdue for change. Relations broke down 50 years ago because Washington was unwilling to countenance a Latin American client state escaping the orbit of U.S. hegemony, and because Fidel Castro was determined to do just that. The Soviet Union's willingness to provide Cuba a safety net brought Cold War confrontation to the Western Hemisphere, escalating the U.S.-Cuba skirmish to potential Armageddon.

Last October, the United Nations General Assembly voted for the 17th time in as many years to condemn the U.S. embargo by a vote of 185-3. In December, 33 Latin American and Caribbean nations in the Rio Group granted Cuba full membership and called for an end to the U.S. embargo. A policy adopted a half-century ago to isolate Cuba today isolates only the U.S.

Several of President-elect Barack Obama's predecessors in the White House considered normalizing relations, but something always went awry.

By the time President Bill Clinton took office, the Cold War was over and the Soviet Union dissolved. As Washington normalized relations with other former enemies, from Russia to Vietnam, the time seemed right to end the Cold War in the Caribbean too. But Clinton confronted a new obstacle - the wealthy, well-organized and politically astute lobby of Cuban-Americans in southern Florida.

As Obama enters the White House, he enjoys many of the same propitious conditions that moved John Kennedy, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Clinton toward better relations with Havana.

Carter believed implicitly that engagement with Havana would prove more productive than isolation; Obama echoed those sentiments during the campaign.

Clinton hoped to gradually improve relations but was stymied by Cuban-American opposition; Obama faces a less monolithic Cuban-American community that has expressed growing support for engagement. A November poll of Cuban-Americans in South Florida found for the first time that a majority (55 percent) favors lifting the embargo.

Obama's relative success among Cuban-American voters (35 percent in Florida, compared with 25 percent for Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., in 2004) demonstrated that a Democrat could take a moderate stance on Cuba and still make inroads with this solidly Republican constituency.

January marks not only the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution but also the anniversary of the formal break in U.S.-Cuban relations on Jan. 3, 1961. For perhaps the first time in the last half-century, both the policy logic and political realities of U.S.-Cuban relations are aligned to allow Obama to cut the Gordian knot that has bedeviled so many of his predecessors.

During the campaign, Obama pledged to meet with Raul Castro as part of a new policy of engagement. Summits require careful preparation, of course, but Obama should keep his pledge sooner rather than later.

For all Nixon's faults, his trip to China is remembered as a courageous, farsighted initiative that opened a new era in Sino-American relations. A trip to Cuba by Obama would be no less historic.

William LeoGrande is dean of the School of Public Affairs at American University. Peter Kornbluh directs the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive.

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