The United States' Rapprochement with Cuba: Reasons, Reactions And

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The United States' Rapprochement with Cuba: Reasons, Reactions And THE UNITED STATES’ RAPPROCHEMENT WITH CUBA: REASONS, REACTIONS AND REPERCUSSIONS TThehe UUnitednited SStatestates 117X237X23 CCS6S6 ook.inddk.indd 3 006/09/20176/09/2017 112:12:162:12:16 pp.. mm.. THE UNITED STATES’ RAPPROCHEMENT WITH CUBA: Reasons, Reactions and Repercussions Judith Radtke TThehe UUnitednited SStatestates 117X237X23 CCS6S6 ook.inddk.indd 5 006/09/20176/09/2017 112:12:172:12:17 pp.. mm.. First edition: 2017 D.R. © Judith Radtke © Plaza y Valdés S. A. de C. V. Alfonso Herrera Núm. 130, casa 11 Colonia San Rafael, C.P. 06470 México, D. F. (México) Teléfono: (52) 5550972070 e-mail: [email protected] www.plazayvaldes.com Plaza y Valdés Editores Calle Murcia, 2. Colonia de los Ángeles Pozuelo de Alarcón 28223, Madrid, España Teléfono: 91 81 263 15 [email protected] www.plazayvaldes.es Editorial Coordination: Natalia Arriaga Garduño Cover and interior design: Cliente & Medio S.A de C.V Typographic formation: José Luis Castelán Aguilar ISBN: 978-607-977-721-0 “The published texts are exclusively responsibility of the autor and do not necessarily represent the thinking or opinion of the editors” Impreso en México / Printed in Mexico The work of editing of the present work, was realized in the edition workshop of Plaza and Valdes, located in the Reclusorio Preventivo Varonil Norte, in Mexico City, thanks to the facilities provided by all the authorities of the Penitentiary System, in to the Executive Directorate of Prison Work. The United States 17X23 CS6 ok.indd 6 06/09/2017 12:12:17 p. m. Table of Contents Foreword . 9 CHAPTER 1. Introduction . 11 CHAPTER 2. Legal Framework and Evolution of the Embargo . 15 CHAPTER 3. The Obama Administration . 25 3.1. President Obama’s Stance Toward Cuba. 25 3.2. Timeline of Steps Taken by the Obama Administration since December 17, 2014 . 27 CHAPTER 4. Obama’s Reasons and Motivation to Reestablish Relations with Cuba . 35 4.1. Raúl Castro . 35 4.2. U.S. Relations with Latin America . 38 4.3. Human and Budgetary Embargo-Related Waste of Resources . 42 4.4. Business Opportunities . 46 4.5. Cuban Immigration . 50 4.5.1. History of Cuban Migration to the U.S. 50 4.5.2. Current Migration Trends . 54 4.6. Cuban American Infl uence . 58 4.7. Elections and Political Legacy . 65 CHAPTER 5. Reactions to Obama’s Approach . 71 5.1. Reactions by the Cuban Government . 71 5.2. Reactions in the United States . 78 The United States 17X23 CS6 ok.indd 7 06/09/2017 12:12:18 p. m. 5.2.1. U.S. Congress . 79 5.2.2. U.S. Business Community . 82 CHAPTER 6. Conclusion . 87 CHAPTER 7. Afterword . 91 Notes . 95 Works Cited . 97 TThehe UUnitednited SStatestates 117X237X23 CCS6S6 ook.inddk.indd 8 006/09/20176/09/2017 112:12:182:12:18 pp.. mm.. Foreword t is a great pleasure to present this fi rst publication within the framework of Young Perspectives, a publication series of the newly founded “Konrad IAdenauer Center for International Relations and Security Studies” (KACIRSS). Young Perspectives gives outstanding young academics from all around the world the opportunity to publish their thesis on a current international topic. Above all, Young Perspectives enables academics at the early stages of their career to share their ideas and observations with a broad audience. In this fi rst edition “The United States’ Rapprochement with Cuba: Reasons, Reactions, and Repercussions,” Judith Radtke, with whom I had the pleasure of working with in Mexico, analyzes the changes in US-Cuban relations from the perspective of both countries. This development offi cially began with the joint declaration of then US President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro on December 17th 2014 to reestablish diplomatic relations. Surprisingly for such a highly political issue, the preceding 18-month long secret negotiations remained secret until the declaration. Until the end of Obama´s presidency, the rapprochement between the United States and Cuba progressed steadily. On several occasions, the United States eased sanctions and reduced restrictions on trade and travel with Cuba, leading companies such as Google and Airbnb to invest in the island. The political ties between the two nations also developed, as Obama and Castro met at the OAS Summit in April 2015 and the UNGA Summit the following September. The rapprochement reached its height in early 2016, when Obama fi nally visited Cuba, becoming the fi rst American president to do so since 1928. In his last days in offi ce in January 2017, Obama also repealed the controversial “wet foot, dry foot” immigration policy, which had given Cubans unique rights to residency in the United States. 9 TThehe UUnitednited SStatestates 117X237X23 CCS6S6 ook.inddk.indd 9 006/09/20176/09/2017 112:12:182:12:18 pp.. mm.. Trump´s presidency calls into question the rapprochement with Cuba, as he took a much more critical stand towards the Cuban government during his campaign to Cuban-American voters and further condemned Fidel Castro upon his death in November 2016. Regardless, Ms. Radtke aptly observes that the most signifi cant thorn in US-Cuba relations, the economic embargo, remains. Now a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers introduced legislation to lift the embargo through the “Freedom to Export to Cuba Act of 2017”. The legislation´s success depends upon whether the business interest in Cuba can excel against the wishes of hardline politicians, who believe that a tougher stance is necessary to bring democracy to Cuba. Yet it seems unlikely that Cuba will democratize in the near future. The state´s apparatus of repression continues to run smoothly and it seems unlikely that the regime will allow for further democratization and fair political participation in the run-up to the change of power in 2018, when Raúl Castro intends to retire. While the US‘ calculations that an economic opening of Cuba will lead to democratization might not materialize in the near future, if the United States lifts the economic embargo, the regime will no longer be able to blame the country´s misery on the the US. “The United States´ Rapprochement with Cuba: Reason, Reactions, and Repercussions” gives readers useful insights into the reasons and motivations behind the Obama Administration´s and President Raúl Castro´s decision to reestablish relations as well as the immediate domestic and international reactions to it. Understanding the dynamics of rapprochement between Obama and Castro is essential to understanding the future developments in US-Cuba relations, which is why Ms. Radtke´s study remains a valuable read deserving of our attention. Prof. Dr. Stefan Jost Director of the country program Mexico and KACIRSS Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Mexico, July 2017 10 TThehe UUnitednited SStatestates 117X237X23 CCS6S6 ook.inddk.indd 1100 006/09/20176/09/2017 112:12:182:12:18 pp.. mm.. CHAPTER 1 Introduction ince 1999, the American news magazine Time has published an annual list of the 100 most infl uential people in the American world, called the “Time S100.” While it might not come as a surprise that the 2015-list included the incumbent president of the United States, Barack Obama, for the tenth time, the name of one person on the list most defi nitely came as a surprise to many readers: Raúl Castro, president of the Caribbean island nation Cuba. For the fi rst time, the leaders of these two countries made it on the “Time 100”-list together. This mirrors the policy changes and developments in the relation between the United States and Cuba during the preceding months, emphasizes their historic nature, and is indicative of the high expectations by the American media and public for these changes to “steer […] conversation in new directions” (Gibbs 4). Such interest in Cuba by the general U.S.-American public has been rare, although the island nation has occupied an important place on the United States’ foreign policy agenda for more than a century. The beginning of the tumultuous history of relations between the U.S. and Cuba dates back to the time when the United States, an emerging empire, tried to acquire Cuba from Spain. In 1897, they off ered 300 million U.S. dollars in exchange for the island, but Spain rejected. The U.S. decided to deploy forces to Cuba to support the island in its war of independence against Spain. On February 15, 1898, one of the U.S. Navy vessels deployed to Cuba, the USS Maine, exploded in Havana Harbor, killing 260 Americans. Although the reason and culprit for the explosion were never determined, the incident unleashed the Spanish-American War. Spain was defeated, and the United States appointed a Cuban administrator. Eventually, in 1902 the U.S. government granted Cuba independence, but under conditions stipulated in the so-called Platt Amendment. Among those were the establishment of a U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay and the right to intervene in Cuba at any 11 TThehe UUnitednited SStatestates 117X237X23 CCS6S6 ook.inddk.indd 1111 006/09/20176/09/2017 112:12:182:12:18 pp.. mm.. time. For the next two decades, the United States exercised this right repeatedly, intervening militarily in Cuban aff airs whenever they felt that U.S. interests were threatened. By the 1930s, a new reformist government under Gerardo Machado threatened to set an end to this U.S.-American dominance. Consequently, the U.S. convinced a young military man, General Fulgencio Batista, to overthrow the government in a U.S.-aided plot in 1934. Batista succeeded and assumed power himself, but his rule turned into a dictatorship, catalyzing civil unrest and a guerilla resistance movement led by a young revolutionary named Fidel Castro.
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