I do not believe we can keep doing the same thing for over five decades and expect a different result. Moreover, it does not serve America’s interests, or the Cuban people, to try to push Cuba toward collapse.
Barack Obama, December 17, 2014
As we have repeated, we must learn the art of coexisting, in a civilized manner, with our differences.
Ten years ago, the then-presidents of Cuba and the United States surprised the whole world. Simultaneously and solemnly, they announced the agreement to reestablish diplomatic relations and to work for the progressive improvement of ties between the two countries. Thus, the last chapter of the Cold War in the American continent seemed to be definitively closed.
Given the enormous disparity between the United States and Cuba in terms of their respective national powers, this momentous event (we will refer to it as D-17, as it is commonly known) was only possible because of a fundamental change in the policy of hostility and economic warfare against Cuba that until then had remained firmly rooted in the complex U.S. political, military and “national security” system, as a response to the revolutionary process in the Caribbean nation that began in January 1959.
With the benefit of hindsight, the symbolic and anticipatory signals of that shift could be traced back to 2008, when Obama was a presidential candidate, when in a speech in Miami at an event organized by the Cuban American National Foundation, he announced: “it is time to pursue direct diplomacy, with friend and foe alike, without preconditions. There will be careful preparation. We will set a clear agenda. And as President, I would be willing to lead that diplomacy at a time and place of my choosing, but only when we have an opportunity to advance the interests of the United States, and to advance the cause of freedom for the Cuban people”.
During the Memorial Service for Nelson Mandela, the unexpected and much-talked-about handshake between Obama and Raúl Castro in December 2013 renewed expectations that something was afoot. But it was not until the following year, after the conclusion of midterm elections, that the “miracle”1 happened. And the fact that it occurred as a result of a complex negotiation process based on secret diplomacy, with the mediation of Pope Francis and the Canadian government, and involving the exchange of prisoners accused of espionage in both countries, gave D-17 an unusual touch of suspense and emotion, worthy of a novel by Yulian Semyonov or John Le Carré.
It is not my intention to make a nostalgic account of the development and results of the post-D-17 process up to its well-known reversal during the Trump administration. Here I am only interested in underlining, in a succinct manner and without pretending in any way to be exhaustive, the aspects that, in my opinion, turned out to be the most transcendental:
- For the first time in history, a US president took a clear position in favor of lifting the economic blockade against Cuba, unconditionally. In this endeavor, he went so far as to take the unprecedented decision of ordering the US mission to the United Nations to abstain from voting on the General Assembly resolution on the issue.
- For the first time in history, a US president solemnly declared that the United States was not pursuing “regime change”2 in Cuba, thus implicitly recognizing the Caribbean country’s system of government as a legitimate political reality, whose future should only be determined by the Cuban people.
- Although the Obama administration was unable (because it was not legally able) to lift the economic blockade, the broad and intense implementation of executive measures to ease or eliminate some restrictions, contributed to oxygenating the Cuban economy and thus facilitating the daily life of ordinary people.
- On April 14, 2015, in an act of justice, President Obama decided to exclude Cuba from the list of State Sponsors of International Terrorism, thus eliminating the main barrier to the Caribbean nation’s access to international financial circuits (on January 12, 2021, the Trump administration restored this unjustified and politically motivated designation, which has been maintained by the Biden administration).
- The process of improving bilateral relations led to a systematic and respectful dialogue between officials from both countries and the signing of 22 cooperation agreements in the most diverse sectors. Cuba received a large number of US authorities from the federal and state levels, including the historic visit of President Obama himself, accompanied by his family.
- The visits of US officials to Cuba had a contagious effect on top-level officials in other countries, particularly in Western Europe. In addition, the new positive climate fostered by the change in US policy favored the holding of other events and processes that significantly strengthened the international position of the Caribbean nation, such as the historic meeting in Havana between Pope Francis and the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, and the 70% reduction of the Cuban debt with the Paris Club, which had reached some 11.1 billion dollars, of which only 2.6 billion would be paid over 18 years.
It is necessary to emphasize that with the D-17 agreements neither the United States government nor the Cuban government renounced their permanent strategic objectives concerning each other. In the case of the United States, this objective consists essentially of recovering the Caribbean nation as part of its hegemonic dominance at the global and hemispheric levels (thus removing it from the eventual growing influence of competing or rival great powers, such as China and Russia). In the case of the Cuban government, its existential goal is to preserve its national sovereignty and the political system established after 1959.
These are essentially incompatible objectives, but the D-17 agreements sought to channel the handling of this conflict in a civilized and dialogic manner, with intensive use of “soft” and “smart” powers (in both senses of the relationship), thereby significantly reducing the probability of hypothetical scenarios of confrontation between the two countries, including military violence. As I have pointed out in a previous comment and reaffirm here, within the permissible limits of the US political system, there is no better scenario for Cuba and its people than the policy undertaken by the Obama administration since D-17.
In this article, I have deliberately avoided the term “normalization” of relations, so usual in the analyses of the D-17 process, which has a legal-diplomatic nature and not a political one. What is normal in international politics is that the more powerful nations try to control and impose their will on the weaker nations. For their part, the weaker nations will try to counteract such a pretension by increasing their own national power, whenever possible, or by establishing alliances with other great powers.
A recent academic research carried out by Ellis Mallett and Nicholas Kitchen, from the University of Surrey in England, has provided interesting elements on the reasons that led the Obama administration to decide to change its policy towards Cuba. It is a question that, at the time, many scholars tried to answer3. Mallett and Kitchen’s work, with analytical depth and rigor, serves to validate assessments previously made by several Cuban specialists and significantly enriches the knowledge about this process, based on highly relevant information sources, including interviews with some of its direct protagonists.
In a summarized and simplified manner, it can be stated that the decision to change US policy towards Cuba was determined by the evaluation of a combination of factors related to the changing correlation of forces at the global level, with the increase in competition and rivalry among the great powers; the intensification of challenges to US hegemony over Latin America and the Caribbean (and, as part of that, to the policy of hostility, diplomatic isolation and economic blockade against Cuba); and the perception that economic reforms in Cuba, in a more favorable global and regional environment, would be conducive to the survival of the Caribbean nation’s ruling class and political system.
As for the Cuba factor, although the real scope of the process of “updating the economic model” was always viewed with reservations from the US side, the Obama administration understood that it offered opportunities for its policy towards Cuba and that “constructive engagement” was the only effective way to avoid greater influence from major powers such as China and Russia.
Ten years later, the analysis of this set of interrelated factors, located at different levels, is particularly relevant when considering the possibility and degree of probability that a policy towards Cuba similar to that of D-17 could be adopted in the future. The research by Mallett and Kitchen above-mentioned, published in 2023, concludes, metaphorically, that “the Obama’s thaw may be on the ice for now, but the warming of US-Cuba relations is just a matter of time”.
In 2024, considering the November 5 electoral results, it is difficult to share such an optimistic forecast.
While the competitive pressures facing the United States globally have intensified, no major power now seems willing to assume the role of Cuba’s security guarantor and economic benefactor, at least in a manner comparable to that assumed by the Soviet Union since 1960.
On the other hand, the regional political situation, although it cannot be considered negative in general, has evolved in an unfavorable direction for Cuba. In 2014, even right-wing governments defied US policy towards the Caribbean nation. In those circumstances, a collective Latin American and Caribbean boycott of the Summits of the Americas process seemed imminent, as a protest against Cuba’s exclusion. That could only be avoided with the D-17 announcements, and a few months later a delegation led by Raúl Castro participated in the VII Summit of the Americas held in Panama. In 2022, although with certain difficulties and skirmishes, the Biden administration was able to host the ninth edition of the event, in the city of Los Angeles, with the exclusion of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
In the Cuban domestic sphere, the spirit of economic reform seems to have been replaced by that of backwardness and counter-reform. On the other hand, the need for a profound political reform, in a democratizing, patriotic, anti-imperialist, and ideologically inclusive direction, seems to be totally off the agenda of the Cuban ruling class.
It does not require much insight to understand that the events of July 11, 2021, the precariousness and successive failures of the National Electric Power System, together with the widespread and significant deterioration shown by the most relevant economic and social indicators for the daily existence of Cubans, must have strengthened the vision, from the US side, that the collapse of the Cuban political system will occur sooner rather than later. I suspect that this assumption was one of the foundations of the immobility of the Biden administration’s policy towards Cuba.
It should be noted that the D-17 process has not been completely reversed. It is likely that some of the 22 agreements signed remain in force, at least from a technical point of view. Diplomatic relations have formally remained at the embassy level, although they were close to being closed and they have not been of much use during the ill-fated period of the Trump-Biden policy of “maximum pressure” against Cuba.
On the other hand, in recent years there has been a notable growth in trade and financial relations between the private economic sectors of both societies. This process, which strategically could contribute to undermining the policy of hostility and economic war against Cuba, is at risk of slowing down or stopping as a result of self-restrictive measures recently taken by the Cuban authorities, which objectively complement and play into the hands of the policies designed by the United States to plunge the Cuban people into despair and hopelessness.
Despite everything, they say that hope is the last thing to be lost. The D-17 process demonstrated that a different relationship between Cuba and the United States is perfectly possible and viable, and achieved a great deal in a very short time, to the benefit of the peoples of both nations. I want and try to think that it is still alive, just dozing, or waiting for better times to be reborn.
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Notes:
1 As a Granma article recalled five years later, many Cubans attributed a miraculous character to 17D, due to the coincidence of the announcements with the national festivities for the day of Saint Lazarus.
2 “We will not pursue regime change in Cuba. We will continue to make clear that the United States cannot impose a different model on Cuba because the future of Cuba is up to the Cuban people”. Presidential Policy Directive — United States-Cuba Normalization, October 14, 2016. This presidential directive was an effort to turn the Obama administration’s new policy into a permanent state policy, an intention thwarted with the advent of the Trump administration.
3 My own explanation can be seen here: “Why Did US Policy Towards Cuba Change? A View from Havana”. Truthout, February 2, 2015.
