As the anniversary of President Obama\u2019s Dec. 17 historic breakthrough on relations with Cuba approaches, Joe Biden\u2019s incoming administration has the opportunity to revive the successful d\u00e9tente that, as vice president, Biden endorsed and supported. As president, however, Biden will face fierce political pressure to demand quid pro quos from Cuba\u2019s leaders in return for lifting the punitive sanctions that Trump imposed over the last four years in his obsessive quest to sabotage his predecessor\u2019s signature foreign policy achievement.<\/p>\n
But the reciprocity approach is a recipe for failure \u2014 as the opponents of normalizing relations with Cuba know perfectly well. As Biden and his foreign policy team confront the political crosswinds that any positive change in U.S. policy toward Cuba inevitably brings, it is important to recall how President Obama successfully opened what he called \u201ca new chapter\u201d in U.S.-Cuba relations that advanced U.S. interests as well as those of the Cuban people.<\/p>\n
Obama\u2019s policy of \u201cpositive engagement\u201d was in place just two years before the Trump administration began to dismantle it. \u201cI am canceling the last administration\u2019s completely one-sided deal with Cuba,\u201d Trump announced in June 2017, claiming, falsely, that the U.S. had gotten nothing in return for normalizing relations.<\/p>\n
Over the last several years, his administration has indeed cancelled or reversed virtually every major component of Obama\u2019s policy. Obama used executive authority to expand freedom of travel to Cuba; Trump has made travel almost impossible by canceling people-to-people licenses, cultural exchanges, and commercial air service, and by prohibiting U.S. residents from staying in Cuban hotels. Obama uncapped family remittances; Trump has re-capped them and made it almost impossible for Cuban-Americans to transfer funds to their relatives on the island. Obama gave U.S. companies licenses to operate in Cuba; Trump rescinded them. Obama restored full diplomatic relations and fully staffed the embassy and consulate in Havana; Trump reduced the embassy to a skeletal staff and closed the consulate.<\/p>\n
Moreover, the diplomatic civility Obama adopted in dealing with the Cuban government has been replaced by the same imperial-minded bullying that defined six decades of futile U.S. efforts to overthrow the Cuban revolution. Trump has repeatedly demanded that Cuba change its system of governance and abandon its support for the embattled Maduro regime in Venezuela, or face escalating economic sanctions designed to starve it into submission. Cuba\u2019s leaders have rejected this attempt at diplomatic extortion just like they rejected Jimmy Carter\u2019s demand that they get out of Africa, Ronald Reagan\u2019s demand that they get out of Central America, and George W. Bush\u2019s demand that they remake Cuba in the image of the United States.<\/p>\n
Yet opponents of better relations with Cuba, such as Sen. Marco Rubio, are already urging Biden to \u201cfollow in the footsteps of President Trump\u201d rather than \u201creturn to the failed Obama administration policy of rewarding Ra\u00fal Castro and Miguel D\u00edaz-Canel \u2026 for decades of repressive behavior.\u201d Republicans will undoubtedly demand that Biden make ending Cuba\u2019s ties to Venezuela a pre-condition for any shift away from Trump\u2019s punitive policies. Biden may be tempted to give himself some political cover by adopting an incremental approach to engagement, calling for Cuba to release political prisoners and liberalize its regime in return for restoring a full policy of engagement. That would be a mistake.<\/p>\n
As we document in our book, \u201cBack Channel to Cuba,\u201d the history of negotiations between Washington and Havana demonstrates that Cuba\u2019s leaders resolutely oppose preconditions for negotiating better relations and summarily reject demands for concessions involving their internal affairs or foreign policy \u2014 even when U.S. officials put ending the onerous economic embargo on the negotiating table. Biden\u2019s predecessors tried the quid pro quo approach with Cuba \u2014 repeatedly \u2014 and failed every time.<\/p>\n
In secret talks with the Cubans in 1975, Henry Kissinger proposed a \u201cpackage deal\u201d of discrete, reciprocal steps that would lead to full normalization of relations. But when Fidel Castro sent Cuban troops to aid the anti-colonial struggle in Angola and Ronald Reagan blasted Kissinger and President Gerald Ford for being soft on Cuba, Kissinger broke off the talks.<\/p>\n
Jimmy Carter also tried an incremental approach. Soon after his inauguration, he issued a secret presidential directive to negotiate the normalization of relations \u201cthrough reciprocal and sequential steps.\u201d But a series of secret negotiating sessions between U.S. and Cuban officials, including Castro himself, stalled on Carter\u2019s demand that Cuba withdraw its troops from Africa before the Washington would lift the embargo. \u201cPerhaps it is idealistic of me,\u201d Castro told U.S. negotiators, \u201cbut I never accepted the universal prerogatives of the United States\u201d to dictate how smaller countries conduct their foreign policy.<\/p>\n
Bill Clinton defined his quid pro quo strategy as \u201ccalibrated response.\u201d Washington would respond proportionally to incremental positive gestures by Cuba. But congressional enemies of better relations mobilized to undercut Clinton\u2019s ability to act, and the administration\u2019s gradualism was overtaken by destabilizing events such as the balsero immigration crisis in 1994 and the shoot-down of the Brothers to the Rescue planes in early 1996.<\/p>\n
President Obama understood the lessons of this history. But he also believed that by making a long-term investment in engagement rather than demanding immediate returns, his administration could advance a multitude of U.S. interests and create an environment that would encourage positive change in Cuba. His decision to take unilateral, sweeping steps to normalize diplomatic relations and open the door to economic and cultural interaction proved critical to the success of his Cuba policy initiative, short-lived as it was.<\/p>\n
Cuba-U.S. relations: A five-year chronology of the \u201cthaw\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n