Previous posts in this blog detail the attention that think tanks, Congress and other policy-makers and opinion-shapers have given to Cuba in the past several weeks, despite the current economic and financial crisis, continuing conflict in Iraq and the large number of other challenges facing the Obama administration. Most recently, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee released a report calling for several changes in policy toward the island, the House of Representatives approved a bill loosening travel and other restrictions regarding Cuba, and Brookings Institution in Washington, DC published a report recommending, among other things, that Cuba be removed from the US list of terrorist countries.

Another interested party has added his comment to the lot: Dennis C. Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, presented this week the Annual Threat Assessment to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which included an examination of Cuba. His argument, essentially, is that the main potential threat to the United States from Cuba would be unsustainable levels of migration, but that even in the global economic downturn, Raul Castro’s regime will be able to prevent a mass exodus. Migration, then, will remain at current levels (approximately 14,000 illegally across Mexican and Canadian borders and landing on the Florida coastline; 20,000 legally through the US Embassy’s visa system). Venezuela is given much more attention and concern in the report, as are Colombia and Bolivia.

The general trend, it seems, is toward recognizing the error (made for years) of calling Cuba a threat. Yet to be seen what will come beyond the plethora of reports and rhetorical acknowledgments of the error.

The Cuban Catholic Church has announced its support of US dialogue with Cuba, secondary, of course, to national dialogue in favor of change on the island. New leadership in each country—Raul Castro in Cuba and Barack Obama in the United States—will not alone erase a painful and conflictual history of relations between the two nations, the Church says. But opening up lines of communication could lead to positive advances.

Even if it does not become a priority for the United States, the Church argues that Cuba cannot be ignored because of its proximity to the United States, and its involvement there and internationally. The published piece reads: “… no debe ser ignorada: demasiado cercana; demasiado activa; demasiado influyente a nivel internacional y aún dentro del mismo Estados Unidos.”

Still, whether the Washington warms to relations with Havana or not, the Church holds that change will come from a national dialogue; change on the island will come from Cubans themselves.

Read more here.

The U.S.-Cuba relationship is openly characterized by distrust, contradictions and mutual recriminations, but the wounds are deep and the important issues are more complicated than simple judgments based on limited knowledge of current events. The Cuban-American community had reasons, and still has reasons, for supporting the embargo, despite its apparent failure. The Cuban regime had and has its own motivations for calling the United States imperialist and domineering, and for engaging in seemingly paranoid counter-tactics.

In light of this, a history lesson is in order. Perhaps the best quick and descriptive timeline to this end is in this December 2008 BBC story.

The most recent event on the timeline should be of particular interest in terms of current U.S. concerns, which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claims are human rights-based:

18 December 2008: Raul Castro says he is ready to consider releasing some political prisoners as a “gesture” with the US. But he calls for the US to free the Cuban Five - five men who were convicted in Miami in 2001 of spying.

The Havana Journal provides a helpful outline of the bills related to the Cuba embargo that are currently sitting in Congress, awaiting judgment. H.R. 188 and H.R. 874 are described in more detail in a previous post, but new to readers might be the Baseball Diplomacy Act and the Pursuit of International Education Act of 2009, both worth a look.

A bill that will ease travel restrictions for Cuban-Americans traveling to the island was passed by the House on Wednesday and moved into the Senate, where it could face greater opposition. Read about it in English here.

Even as Cuba continues to move toward greater political and diplomatic openness during Raul’s presidency, the Communist regime’s arbitrary detentions and other human rights abuses remain a serious issue—one for which the island regularly receives criticism from the international community. Cuban officials publicly declare to have a clear conscience and deny accusations of abuse, carefully classifying all jailed dissidents as “mercenaries” of the U.S. government in order to maintain that they do not hold any “political prisoners.” But the fact remains that over 200 individuals, including 23 journalists, are held in Cuban detention centers for their political views. On top of this, there were more than 1,000 arbitrary arrests of suspected dissidents during the course of 2008. Meanwhile:

• The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)—the two UN human rights conventions which Cuba signed in 2008 after Raúl officially took over as President—have still not been ratified. 
• Freedom House again gave Cuba the worst possible scores on its “Freedom in the World” survey for 2008: a seven out of seven for political rights, seven out of seven for civil rights, and a “not free” designation for its actual status (from the choices “free,” “partly free,” and “not free”).  
• Reporters Without Borders (RSF) released a statement on Cuba today criticizing the regime’s continued detention of scores of dissidents and noting “with regret” that “political opening still ignores imprisoned journalists.”

Yet an important opportunity has presented itself. After years of refusing visits by representatives of the UN Human Rights Commission, claiming that the group was manipulated by the United States, Havana agreed to review by the newer UN Human Rights Council. All 192 UN member states must periodically undergo scrutiny of their human rights records by this same process of review. Cuba’s session was held on February 5, 2009 and resulted in a number of prescriptions from the Commission, including:

… to accede to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC); to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; to ratify the International Convention on economic, social and cultural rights… to give importance to human rights training for government officials at all levels… to establish a recurrent system of review of its prisons by the United Nations or other relevant international observers; to ensure the right to equality before the courts and tribunals, and to a fair trial; and to ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture… to lift restrictions on rights on the freedom of expression and show greater tolerance for Cubans to express opposing views peacefully; to release all remaining political prisoners and to reintegrate them into the community; to guarantee that independent journalists, human rights defenders and political dissidents had the possibility to exercise their basic freedoms without the risk of harassment, intimidation or persecution; and to refrain to using such laws such as dangerousness, enemy propaganda and contempt for authority to restrict the rights of freedom of expression and association.

… and more. No representative from the United States participated in the review, and a U.S. State Department spokesperson explained that the country was not yet certain it would support the Council.

The UN Human Rights Council’s report provides little basis for making a decision, as it stops short of any clear conclusions about the state of human rights (read the current draft here). This is its ultimate weakness, as each critique is presented as mere suggestion from one or a few actors within the Council. Its addendum that each conclusion/recommendation “should not be construed as endorsed by the Working Group as a whole” effectively removes from the UN its own declarative power and therefore its ability to affect change. It becomes impossible to judge the balance of the report, a point aptly illustrated by international headlines as varied as “UN Human Rights Council slams Cuba at its Universal Periodic Review” and “Cuba Passes UN Review with Flying Colors.”

There are a few things that are clear here, however. First, dissidents in Cuba are often arbitrarily detained or jailed and mistreated, and many are under lengthy sentences for up to 15-25 years. This is documented by several institutions and must not be ignored by the international community. The UN Human Rights Council has the responsibility, as the only organization with real reviewing power of the Cuban regime’s abuses, to condemn repressive techniques employed by the government and press for changes.

Second, certain actions taken by the United States could remove Cuba’s excuses for the continued detention of dissidents. Currently, Havana blames US policies that seek to strangle and/or overthrow the regime for the need to detain or jail certain individuals: as “mercenaries,” these individuals could be dangerous. By seeking to slowly engage Cuba through multilateral institutions and demonstrate a change in its policies toward the island, the United States could remove the credibility of Havana’s claims entirely, and perhaps clear a path for the UN to pressure for reform in Cuba. 

Senator Dick Lugar (R-Indiana) sent one of his senior Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff members to Cuba from January 11-14, 2009, charged with the task of evaluating U.S. policy toward the island. His staff’s interviews with government officials, foreign diplomats, members of the clergy, international media, Cuban entrepreneurs and Cuban citizens were distilled into a report released Monday with the suggestive title, “Changing Cuba Policy—In the United States National Interest.”

Lugar opens the report himself by presenting a simple, reasonable argument for changing policy. The stated goal of the embargo when it was enacted 47 years ago was to bring “democracy to the Cuban people,” he says, and it has failed to accomplish that objective. Thus, while criticism of the Castro regime is justified, U.S. policy toward Cuba has been ineffective and should change in order to achieve U.S. interests.

The staff member who designed the report itself, Carl Meacham, proposes five modest changes to current policy: the resumption of bilateral talks on migration and drug interdiction; mutual investments in alternative energy; increased legal agricultural trade; opening medical trade; and using bipartisan, multilateral and international efforts to engage the island.

Migration, drug trafficking, energy and trade are concerns of both countries—concerns that each party would better tackle with the cooperation of the other—and Meacham demonstrates this clearly with evidence from his fact-finding trip. He, Senate staff and Senator Lugar do not endorse the lifting of the embargo, but do look forward to cooperating with the European Union, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Inter-American Development Bank in order to pursue “sequenced engagement” whose effect would be “to the benefit of the security and prosperity of the United States.” As complex as the policy-making process is in the United States, this report is likely to receive more attention in Congress than many previous attempts to relay a similar message to decision-makers, as it is from a highly respected Senator and an important Committee.

Both Granma and El Nuevo Herald (but oddly, not yet Venezuela’s El Universal newspaper) have revealed that Hugo Chávez arrived last night in Havana on an “unexpected” visit. The agenda for his visit has not been announced, but he is accompanied by Venezuela’s Secretary of Oil and Energy—the President of Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA), the state oil company—and the Vice President of PDVSA, which may be an indication of his intended subject for discussion.

Chavez is the sixth Latin American president to visit Cuba in 2009, a list that includes Martín Torrijos of Panama, Álvaro Colom of Guatemala, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Cristina Kirchner of Argentina, and Michele Bachelet of Chile. Fidel met with only two of these (Kirchner and Bachelet), but will likely receive his close friend Hugo, even on this surprise visit.

Critics of the embargo have never been hard to find, but high-level dialogue in the United States has typically been cautious. Recently, however, outright denunciations and demands for the end of the embargo have become more common, and have been embellished with attitude. Tampa port commissioner Carl Lindell publicly called the embargo “insane,” and plans to promote Tampa as a gateway for trade between the United States and Havana. Currently, he points out, legal trade between the two countries includes certain food and agricultural products, none of which is moved through Tampa. Clearly, there is room for profit in a sensible arrangement (location, location, location). Still, the Port Authority Board has opted to wait for a better sign from the Obama administration of its intentions regarding legal travel and the embargo before sending an expedition to Havana for initial discussions.

Colonel Glenn A. Crowther of the Strategic Studies Institute released an op-ed a few days ago with a similar tone. “It is time to kiss the embargo goodbye,” he writes, “Maintaining it makes us look petty and vindictive to the rest of the world.” His further critique is serious, and important to consider: “the embargo,” he says, “provides an excuse for the regime’s tyranny.”

Read about Lindell’s statement in the St. Petersburg Times. Crowther’s op-ed is on the SSI site, here.

One of the many regulations contained within the U.S. Helms-Burton Act of 1996 is a ban preventing Cuba’s use of a fiber-optic underwater cable that connects Miami and Cancun and runs only 32 kilometers from Havana. The ban thus severely limits Internet exchanges by users on the island because instead of the high-capacity cable, Cuba must use low-capacity satellite linkages. But an agreement signed by Cuba and Venezuela on January 24, 2007 began a process to circumvent the U.S. blockade: Telecom Venezuela and Cuban Telecommunication Signals Transport Company (Transbit) agreed to work together as one entity, the Gran Caribe Telecommunications Company, to lay two pairs of fiber-optic cables from Vargas in Venezuela to Santiago in Cuba. The use of these cables could increase the island’s international communications capacity by 1,000-3,000 times.

Meanwhile, Cuba’s 13th International Technology Fair (Informatica 2009) took place last week in Havana. Wilfredo Morales, President of Gran Caribe, took the opportunity to reaffirm his project’s capacity (and intention) to undermine the U.S. telecommunications embargo of Cuba.

Este proyecto es ya una realidad, rompe con el bloqueo en esta área y permitirá a Cuba estar en mejores condiciones para continuar su desarrollo y utilización masiva de las nuevas tecnologías.

The project is already a reality, and it will break the embargo and allow Cuba the capability to continue its development and massive utilization of new technologies.

Morales hopes that the project will be completed in early 2010, and that the cables will be operative by the second half of that year. Expensive as the project is, it will effectively render the U.S. telecommunications embargo useless, providing further evidence that attempting to isolate one country in an interconnected world is a fool’s enterprise.

Read more about the project here.

Cuba Petroleos (Cupet), the island’s state-run oil company, has just announced that it will begin drilling 24 new wells in 2009 in an effort to expand Cuba’s crude oil and gas production. Cupet’s production currently satisfies only 47% of Cuban demand, leaving a production-consumption gap that has traditionally been covered by imports from Venezuela (although Cuba is seeking close relationships with other oil-rich countries, as well; see the discussion in last week’s post).

But Cuba is effectively demonstrating that it has the capacity to reduce its dependence on foreign oil. In fact, Cupet pegs Cuba’s potential oil reserves—on land and in its Gulf waters—at over 20 billion barrels. If this is accurate, it would make Cuban reserves twice that of Mexico.

French, Chinese, Brazilian, Vietnamese, Spanish, Norwegian, Indian and Malaysian companies are already at work under drilling contracts with Cupet. Moreover, Cuba has passed laws that encourage this foreign investment, and that do not exclude U.S. companies.

Cupet plans to finish 16 of the new wells during the course of this year, and many U.S. companies are looking longingly southward. Will oil be the straw that breaks the embargo’s back?