×
Via Steve Clemons, the Council on Foreign Relations has released a new report on US policy towards Latin America. One highlight is a proposal to completely retool Cuba policy:
- Permit freer travel to and facilitate trade with Cuba. The White House should repeal the 2004 restrictions placed on Cuban-American family travel and remittances.
- Reinstate and liberalize the thirteen categories of licensed people-to-people "purposeful travel" for other Americans, instituted by the Clinton administration in preparation for the 1998 Papal Visit to Havana.
- Hold talks on issues of mutual concern to both parties, such as migration, human smuggling, drug trafficking, public health, the future of the Guantanamo naval base, and on environmentally sustainable resource management, especially as Cuba, with a number of foreign oil companies, begins deep water exploration for potentially significant reserves.
- Work more effectively with partners in the western hemisphere and in Europe to press Cuba on its human rights record and for more democratic reform.
- Mindful of the last one hundred years of U.S.-Cuba relations, assure Cubans on the island that the United States will pursue a respectful arm's-length relationship with a democratic Cuba.
- Repeal the 1996 Helms-Burton law, which removed most of the executive branch's authority to eliminate economic sanctions. While moving to repeal the law, the U.S. Congress should pass legislative measures, as it has with agricultural sales, designed to liberalize trade with and travel to Cuba, while supporting opportunities to strengthen democratic institutions there.
Hrm. We could do all of that, but wouldn't it be better to just keep the embargo in place and hope the Castro regime falls? It's only been 47 years and nine Presidents; clearly it's way too soon to try to evaluate the success of the policy...
--Robert Farley