Returning Guantanamo Bay to full Cuban sovereignty and control is a win for the United States: Aside from the boon to America’s credibility with the Cuban people and throughout Latin America, these first steps would probe the Cuban government’s apparent disposition to use the base as a point of contact with the United States — and gauge the regime’s willingness to move the ball forward even more.

There’s not a real military need for the base, either. It used to be a coaling station when the United States took it during the Spanish-American war. Indeed, when I visited Guantanamo Bay in 2005 and asked what the other purposes of the base were, my spirited public affairs guide replied, “Whores.” But even the whoring dried up — I’m not naive enough to believe it stopped — after the Cuban Revolution, and a 50 year wait to be tricking is a really poor national security argument. One mitigating argument I can think of against giving the base back: it temporarily housed thousands of Haitian refugees in the 1990s, but no one was particularly happy about that arrangement. So on balance, the arguments against giving Guantanamo Bay back to the Cubans are

a) We might need it as a legal netherworld for the indefinite detention of war-on-terror detainees

b) We can’t look weak in front of the Soviet-backed Fidel Castro

c) It’s a really beautiful place, especially for getting rip-roaring drunk on rum-based cocktails while the Carribean spray comes in off the cliffs at sunset.

Really only argument c) applies anymore, and there are lots of nice places to get loaded.

This sort of rhetoric is always fun but it’s worth pointing out how irrelevant Diaz-Balart’s position has become. He’s represented the heavily Cuban parts of Miami since 1992, and in 2008 he watched President Obama win 49 percent of the vote there while carrying the state of Florida. The president really has nothing to fear from remaking American policy with Cuba, and the Castro-obsessed south Florida members of Congress know this, so expect more anger coming from there.

[M]ore needs to be done. We should also immediately eliminate the roadblocks that the Bush Administration put in place to make it harder for farmers to sell food to Cuba.

I also believe the embargo should be ended. When a policy has failed for nearly 50 years, it is time to change the policy. The best way to undermine the Castro regime and promote freedom for the Cuban people is through engagement by way of trade and travel, just as we do with China, Vietnam, and other communist countries.

The changes announced by the White House today lift the travel ban primarily for Americans with family members remaining in Cuba. By contrast, Dorgan’s proposal would lift the ban for all U.S. citizens and legal residents.

Congress should promptly extend to all Americans the right to travel to Cuba, Human Rights Watch said. At the same time, the Obama administration should work with allies in Europe and Latin America to forge a targeted, multilateral approach toward addressing human rights violations by the Cuban government.

“If President Obama is serious about promoting change in Cuba, this executive order must be part of a larger shift away from the US’s unilateral approach toward the Cuban government,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Only by working with its allies in Latin American and Europe will the US be able to chip away at Castro’s repressive machinery.”

After the jump, the administration’s fact sheet about its new Cuba policy.

Today, the Obama administration announced a series of changes in U.S. policy to reach out to the Cuban people in support of their desire to freely determine their country’s future. In taking these steps to help bridge the gap among divided Cuban families and promote the freer flow of information and humanitarian items to the Cuban people, President Obama is working to fulfill the goals he identified both during his presidential campaign and since taking office.

All who embrace core democratic values long for a Cuba that respects basic human, political and economic rights of all its citizens. President Obama believes these measures will help make that goal a reality.

Cuban American connections to family in Cuba are not only a basic right in humanitarian terms, but also our best tool for helping to foster the beginnings of grassroots democracy on the island. There are no better ambassadors for freedom than Cuban Americans. Accordingly, President Obama will direct the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Commerce to support the Cuban people’s desire for freedom and self-determination by lifting all restrictions on family visits and remittances as well as taking steps that will facilitate greater contact between separated family members in the United States and Cuba and increase the flow of information and humanitarian resources directly to the Cuban people. The President is also calling on the Cuban government to reduce the charges it levies on cash remittances sent to the island so family members can be assured they are receiving the support sent to them.

Specifically, the President has directed the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Commerce to take the needed steps to:

· Lift all restrictions on transactions related to the travel of family members to Cuba.

· Remove restrictions on remittances to family members in Cuba.

· Authorize U.S. telecommunications network providers to enter into agreements to establish fiber-optic cable and satellite telecommunications facilities linking the United States and Cuba.

· License U.S. telecommunications service providers to enter into roaming service agreements with Cuba’s telecommunications service providers.

· License U.S. satellite radio and satellite television service providers to engage in transactions necessary to provide services to customers in Cuba.

· License persons subject to U.S. jurisdiction to activate and pay U.S. and third-country service providers for telecommunications, satellite radio and satellite television services provided to individuals in Cuba.

· Authorize the donation of certain consumer telecommunication devices without a license.

· Add certain humanitarian items to the list of items eligible for export through licensing exceptions.

REACHING OUT TO THE CUBAN PEOPLE

Supporting the Cuban people’s desire to freely determine their future and that of their country is in the national interest of the United States. The Obama administration is taking steps to promote greater contact between separated family members in the United States and Cuba and increase the flow of remittances and information to the Cuban people.

Lift All Restrictions on Family Visits to Cuba

We will lift all restrictions on family visits to Cuba by authorizing such transactions by a general license, which will strengthen contacts and promote American good will. We will ensure the positive reach of this effort by:

· Defining family members who may be visited to be persons within three degrees of family relationship (e.g., second cousins) and to allow individuals who share a common dwelling as a family with an authorized traveler to accompany them;

· Removing limitations on the frequency of visits;

· Removing limitations on the duration of a visit;

· Authorizing expenditure amounts that are the same as non-family travel; and

· Removing the 44-pound limitation on accompanied baggage.

Remove Restrictions on Remittances

We will remove restrictions on remittances to a person’s family member in Cuba to increase Cubans’ access to resources to help create opportunities for them by:

· Authorizing remittances to individuals within three degrees of family relationship (e.g., second cousins) provided that no remittances shall be authorized to currently prohibited members of the Government of Cuba or currently prohibited members of the Cuban Communist Party;

· Removing limits on frequency of remittances;

· Removing limits on the amount of remittances;

· Authorizing travelers to carry up to $3,000 in remittances; and

· Establishing general license for banks and other depository institutions to forward remittances.

Authorize Greater Telecommunications Links with Cuba

We will authorize greater telecommunications links with Cuba to advance people-to-people interaction at no cost to the U.S. government. This will increase the means through which Cubans on the island can communicate with each other and with persons outside of Cuba.

· Authorize U.S. telecommunications network providers to enter into agreements to establish fiber-optic cable and satellite telecommunications facilities linking the United States and Cuba.

· License U.S. telecommunications service providers to enter into and operate under roaming service agreements with Cuba’s telecommunications service providers.

· License U.S. satellite radio and satellite television service providers to engage in transactions necessary to provide services to customers in Cuba.

· License persons subject to U.S. jurisdiction to activate and pay U.S. and third-country service providers for telecommunications, satellite radio and satellite television services provided to individuals in Cuba, except certain senior Communist Party and Cuban government officials.

· Authorize, consistent with national security concerns, the export or re-export to Cuba of donated personal communications devices such as mobile phone systems, computers and software, and satellite receivers through a license exception.

Revise Gift Parcel Regulations

We will expand the scope of humanitarian donations eligible for export through license exceptions by:

· Restoring clothing, personal hygiene items, seeds, veterinary medicines and supplies, fishing equipment and supplies, and soap-making equipment to the list of items eligible to be included in gift parcel donations;

· Restoring items normally exchanged as gifts by individuals in “usual and reasonable” quantities to the list of items eligible to be included in gift parcel donations;

· Expanding the scope of eligible gift parcel donors to include any individual;

· Expanding the scope of eligible gift parcel donees to include individuals other than Cuban Communist Party officials or Cuban government officials already prohibited from receiving gift parcels, or charitable, educational or religious organizations not administered or controlled by the Cuban government; and

· Increasing the value limit on non-food items to $800.

The Post also reports that Obama will “relax the rules governing what items can be sent to the island,” which presumably means eliminating the cap on remittances that Cuban-Americans can send to their families in Cuba.

Under the limits imposed by President George W. Bush in 2004, Cuban-Americans can visit Cuba just once every three years, and they are limited to sending no more than $300 annually to their families there.

Obama’s move makes good on promises he made during his campaign for the presidency, when he told a Miami audience that he would “grant Cuban Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send remittances to the island.” However, in the same speech, he also pledged to maintain the trade embargo on Cuba.

The latter promise ran counter to statements he made during his 2004 Senate campaign, when he said he would fight to lift the embargo that had “utterly failed in the effort to overthrow Castro” and normalize relations with the island nation.

Still, his actions today mark the most significant liberalization in America’s Cuba policy in decades, largely made possible by his 2008 election victory in Florida. In 2000 and 2004, Bush carried Florida by narrow margins, due to strong support from Cuban-Americans as a result of his hard-line Cuba policy. But last year, Obama won the state with only 35 percent of the Cuban-American vote. No longer beholden to Miami Cuban-Americans for his election, the president now has a freer hand to reform the country’s Cuba policy.

Today we witness the first evidence of that.

Well, if his Sunday column in the Cuban state newspaper, Granma, is any indication, his heart is still beating — and his brain is producing some deeply strange thoughts.

The piece is titled “Rahm Emanuel,” and it begins as follows:

What a strange surname! It appears Spanish, easy to pronounce, but it’s not. Never in my life have I heard or read about any student or compatriot with that name, among tens of thousands.

Where does it come from? I wondered. Over and over, the name came to mind of the brilliant German thinker, Immanuel Kant, who together with Aristotle and Plato, formed a trio of philosophers that have most influenced human thinking. Doubtless he was not very far, as I discovered later, from the philosophy of the man closest to the current president of the United States, Barack Obama.

Read the rest of his scrambled musings here.

Via TNR.

As the world ushers in the new year, Cuba will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power and sparked an intense political conflict with the United States that has far outlived the Cold War.

President-elect Barack Obama had not yet been born when Castro drove the military dictator Gen. Fulgencio Batista from the island on January 1, 1959. Now, half a century and ten U.S. presidents later, Obama appears likely to lead the first major liberalization of America’s draconian Cuba policy in decades.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

In his U.S. Senate and presidential campaigns, Obama pledged to reverse some of the harsh sanctions on Cuba, imposed over the past fifty years and intensified under President Bush, that have cut off nearly all interaction between the two countries. But while he is likely to open the channels of communication and travel, particularly for Cuban-Americans, it is doubtful that he will make significant reforms to the trade restrictions under the longstanding embargo.

A number of factors free Obama’s hand to make the sorts of changes that have eluded his predecessors. The end of the 49-year reign of Fidel Castro, who in February officially ceded power to his brother Raúl, inspired hope that Cuba would begin to democratize, and very modest reforms have indeed been initiated. But the most significant precondition for improved U.S.-Cuban relations, Latin American policy experts say, has taken place not in Cuba, but here in the United States, with the November presidential election. Where past presidents have been beholden to Cuban-American voters in Florida, Obama proved he could win an election without the previously critical voting bloc.

“U.S. Cuba policy has not been a foreign policy,” explained Shannon O’Neil, the Douglas Dillon Fellow for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “It’s been a domestic policy, based on the Cuban vote in Florida.” In 2000 and 2004, George W. Bush relied on the Cuban vote to carry Florida by narrow margins. Without the Sunshine State, he would not have won either election.

In 2008, however, the equation changed, as Obama won while carrying just 35 percent of the Cuban-American vote in Florida. “The Cubans voted overwhelmingly against Obama,” said Daniel Erikson, director of Caribbean programs at the Inter-American Dialogue and author of The Cuba Wars. “So what the November election shows is that he did not need the Cuban vote to win Florida, and he did not need the Florida vote to win the presidential election.”

Released from the pressures of the Cuban-American constituency, which has generally taken a hard line against Castro’s Cuba and opposed efforts to ease sanctions on the island nation, Obama has some latitude to pursue reform of the country’s Cuba policy. However, it is unclear how this opportunity will translate into reform.

Campaigning in Illinois for the U.S. Senate in 2004, Obama said in a speech that he wanted “to end the embargo with Cuba” that had “utterly failed in the effort to overthrow Castro.” In the same campaign, he pushed for the “normalization of relations with Cuba” to “help the oppressed and poverty-stricken Cuban people while setting the stage for a more democratic government once Castro inevitably leaves the scene.” (Instead of an embassy that would allow for full diplomacy, each of the two countries has an “interests section” in the other’s capital with little more than nominal authority.)

But his message during his presidential campaign was substantially different. In August 2007, he told a Miami audience that he would not “take off the embargo,” but would preserve it as “an important inducement for change.” However, he did promise to “grant Cuban Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send remittances to the island.”

Currently, under the stringent limits imposed by President Bush in 2004, Cuban-Americans can visit Cuba just once every three years, and they are limited to sending no more than $300 annually to their families there.

Obama’s apparent plan to lift these restrictions would have broad support. According to a poll released on Dec. 3 by Florida International University, 66 percent of Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade County — usually among the most vocal opponents of reduced sanctions — want to end the travel limits, and 65 percent hope to see the restriction on remittances lifted.

Still, there will be some resistance if Obama eases the limits on travel and remittances. “There’s a small but influential group of anti-Castro hard-liners in both Cuba and Miami who will fight tooth and nail to prevent these kinds of changes,” said Erikson.

Ray Walser, the Senior Policy Analyst for Latin America at the conservative Heritage Foundation, expressed concern over Obama’s plans. “You’re giving something away to a totalitarian regime without asking for anything in return,” he said. However, he acknowledged that he was probably on the losing end of this battle. “The likelihood is that there will be unilateral concessions from the Obama administration.”

In fact, the changes to the travel restrictions could extend beyond Cuban-Americans. “There is pretty broad support for lifting the travel ban for all Americans,” said Erikson. O’Neil agreed that we might “see the travel restrictions eased, if not lifted, for non-Cubans.”

What is unlikely to change in the near future is the embargo. Instituted by President Kennedy as a security measure — but not before he had an aide buy him 1,200 of his favorite Cuban cigars — the embargo was codified and expanded by the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 and the Helms-Burton Act of 1996. These laws prevent the president from lifting the embargo without congressional approval or from normalizing relations with Cuba while a Castro is still in power.

“Before the passage of Helms-Burton, it was largely a question of presidential discretion,” said Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a liberal think tank. “But Clinton made that concession to the Cuban hardliners.”

Every major presidential candidate since 1992 has supported the trade sanctions against Cuba, according to Erikson. And Obama is no exception. Like other leading politicians, he has described the embargo in terms of leverage, arguing that it should not be lifted until Cuba makes significant democratic reforms.

Walser endorses this notion of reciprocity. “The essence is some willingness on the part of the Cuban regime to change some of its fundamentals,” he said. But because the chances for change are remote, he said that lifting the embargo while Raúl Castro is still in power is going to be difficult.

The idea that the embargo creates leverage has drawn criticism from a number of camps, encompassing both liberals and free trade advocates. “Many people, including Obama, have described the embargo as leverage, but I think that’s a conceptually confused notion,” said Erikson. “What the embargo represents is an absence of leverage.” A free exchange of goods and ideas, embargo critics argue, would much more effectively enable compromise and reform.

While the embargo’s repeal does not appear imminent, O’Neil says it could receive a boost from the agricultural lobby. Farmers would like to gain a new market in Cuba, where they could sell their produce more widely if sanctions were removed.

“Obama doesn’t owe anything to Cuban-Americans,” she said, since they did not contribute to his electoral victory. “On the other hand, Obama does owe quite a lot to the folks in Iowa for his win.” Obama’s upset victory over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus proved that he could win in rural, majority-white areas and laid the foundation for his eventual nomination.

Kal Wagenheim, editor and publisher of the business website Caribbean Update, agrees that the prospect of new buyers in Cuba is enticing to American growers and manufacturers. “The American business community is dying to get in there,” he said. “There is a strong consensus in the business community — and they’re certainly not communist — to normalize relations with Cuba.”

The embargo has also lost considerable support among the general populace, particularly Cuban-Americans. This year, for the first time, a majority (55 percent) of Miami-Dade Cuban-Americans favor lifting the embargo, according to the Florida International University poll. Just a year ago, that number was 42 percent.

The power to make that change, however, lies with Congress, and a strong and growing contingent of Cuban-American senators and House members continues to oppose any easing of sanctions. Cuban-American lobbying groups in Miami such as the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC have raised substantial funds for candidates who share their hard line on Cuba. The result is a Democratic Party that remains split on Cuba, even as a small number of Republicans, including Obama’s new transportation secretary Ray LaHood, have pushed for reform.

So how will the next 50 years of the United States’ relationship with its neighbor across the Florida Straits differ from the half century that is now drawing to a close? According to Erikson, it’s too early to tell.

“The last 50 years of U.S.-Cuban relations have not only been negative for the two countries, but they’ve almost been uniquely bad for bilateral relations between any two counties anywhere in the world,” he said. “So it seems like the future should be much better than the present. But if history has taught us anything about U.S.-Cuban relations, as much as people would like them to get better, they can always get worse.”

Between the economic crisis and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Cuba may not be Obama’s most pressing priority. But as the island crosses this historical milestone, he has an opportunity to apply his mantra of change to an area where it has long been lacking.