Cuba and the US: a historic rapprochement

Pragmatism and the generational turnover spark a breakthrough in Washington-Havana relations.

Foes for fifty years, the two nations have agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations. In simultaneous TV appearances in Washington and Havana, Barack Obamaand his counterpart Raul Castroannounce the historical turn. The speech of Fidel Castro’sbrotherto the Cuban people lasted just 4 minutes. Obama was more prodigal, and pointed almost immediately to the reason thatled him to taper towards thewipeoutofone of the last relics of the Cold War, the US embargo against communist Cuba. Pragmatism and the force of the generational turnover seem to have been here at the core of the motivations of this epochal rapprochement.

“Neither the American nor the Cuban people are well served by a rigid policythat is rooted in events that took place before most of us were born,” stated the US President yesterday. “I do not believewe can keep doing the same thing for over five decades and expect a different result. Moreover, it does not serve American interests nor the Cuban people to try to push Cuba towards collapse,”was his pragmatic conclusion.

The negotiations between Obama and Raúl Castro stretched over five years,hosted for the most part by Canada, after a first unprecedented meeting in South Africa. However, the final push came a few months agofrom the South American Pope. In a personal appeal issued to Obama,Pope Frances urged him former toaddressCuban interest in the release of three Cuban agents that had been jailed in the US for 15 years. Frances also urged Castro to resolve the case of Alan Gross, who stayed in prison inCuba for five years after attempting to install an Internet connection for the Jewish community there.

As Obama and Castro were approaching the microphones, Gross was landing inWashington, and one of the most important agents that the US ever had in Cuba was already safely on US shores. In return, the United States released thethree Cuban agents. Havana, as a gesture of good will, released also 53 presos politicos.

The prisoner swap marked the beginning of a process towards normalized diplomatic relations, but also of a soft powerone,which bears great potential for the United States. The 11 million Cubans import goods for over $ 11 billion, shy of twicetheir exports. And Cuba’s needs span from infrastructure to it, to food, to investments.

There is another circumstance hat is barely mentioned outside Cuba. After the collapse of the Iron Curtain left Cuba missing its great Soviet supplier, in recent yearsChinacame forward stealthilyto make up for the void. As the French-Cuban writer Eduardo Manet put it talking to a France24journalist, were the embargo to continue, “In five years Cuba would belong to the Chinese.” “China is buying the Island” and would likeHavana to become a Caribbean Shanghai. Ergo, time was running short.

Tourist travel remains banned, but the new policy is easing travel by licensed Americans aswell as caps on cash and on the allowance of goods, alcohol and cigars they can carry back. They will be able to use American credit cardson the Island. Entrepreneurs will be allowed to open accounts in Cuba, and to export to Cuba funds for humanitarian purposes or business with no limits.The aim is to support the nascent private sector in Cuba. American companies are now allowedto export IT, telecom and other technologies.The cap on annual remittances was removed.

Secretary of State John Kerry, whosaid,”I will be the first Secretary of State to arrive in Havana after the ’50s”, will review Cuba’sdesignation as a state sponsor of terror.The U.S. will soon reopen an embassy inHavana. But here is where the difficulties arise. The White House does not have the power to lift the embargo, nor to even allocate funds to build an embassy.

The power to act on the embargo is with Congress. By mid-January,Republicans will have taken over both chambers of Congress.The Grand Ole Party deeply believe that Obama was a bad negotiator, and just got what the Castro regime was willing to give away. A few representatives who contributed to yesterday’s diplomat success are an exception.

Obama knows that he will unlikely win the support of Cuban exiles who lived through the 1959revolution that the time has come to turn the page with the former Che Guevara and Fidel Castro regime. In his speech, he praised the “enormous contributions” to America by theCuban-American community, and said herespects “their passion.”

Nonetheless, by recallingthat he was born in 1961, “just over two years afterFidel Castro took power in Cuba,” he also stated clearly that he is addressing the “new generations of Cubansthat increasingly question a policy that wants to keep Cuba isolated in an interconnected world.” After all, election year 2016 is not that far anymore, and the younger Latinos have hitherto supported him.

Obama’s breakthrough Cuban policy could benefit from another fault running among conservatives. Not only young Cuban-American entrepreneurs would profit enormouslyfrom a liftof the embargo. Shares ofcompanies with interests in Cuba shot through the roof yesterday on Wall Street, showing that the opportunities that a virtually immature market just over 90 miles far from US shores can offer are already under the radar of investors, and ofRepublican investors as well.

Winning the battle in Congress will provea difficult task.Sen. Marco Rubio, Republican for Florida, and a likely presidential candidate, said bluntlythat the economic lift provided by Obama would grant that the Castro regime “becomes a permanent fixture in Cuba for generations to come.”

That is fair enough for Rubio, but many, like Obama yesterday, will make the point that thirty years ago, 22 years after Republican President Dwight Eisenhower had proclaimed an embargo on trade with Cuba, another GOP president, Richard Nixon,setanother historic milestone in the normalization of Sino-US relations. Nobody will dare deny the benefits that have accrued to American interests, despite the serious human rights violations that persist in the Asian country. Nixon’s journey to Beijing entered history books. Everything suggests that December 17 will become one of President Obama’s pages.

From a regional geopolitical point of view, Cuba was the last missing piece in a successful”normalization of relations” with almost all Latin American countries, albeit to the Spanish language seemingly encouraging an anti-colonialist rhetoric anything but dormant south of Rio Grande. “Let us leave behind the legacy of colonialism and Communism,” pled yesterday Barack Obama, who wants Castro to join the Inter-Americas summit in April. After all, he reckoned, “todos somos americanos”.