Foreword

Leslie H. Gelb

Independent Task Force Report
U.S.–Cuban Relations in the 21st Century

January 1999

Council on Foreign Relations

 

Forty years after Fidel Castro’s seizure of power, the United States and Cuba remain deeply estranged, and U.S. policy toward Cuba continues to excite debate pro and con here and abroad. Some observers expected rapid change in relations between the United States and Cuba at the end of the Cold War. Some thought that, deprived of support from the Soviet Union, the Castro regime would have to introduce sweeping economic and political changes to survive—and might well collapse as did so many communist regimes in 1989–90. Others expected that whatever happened in Cuba, U.S. policy toward the island would change once its relationship with Cuba was no longer a part of the great global contest with the Soviet Union.

Ten years after the end of the Cold War, however, the political situation in Cuba and U.S. policy toward Havana are only slightly changed. Despite a precipitous economic decline, Fidel Castro’s government remains committed to building state socialism. Cuba’s economic reforms—allowing dollars to circulate freely on the island, opening farmers’ markets to supplement the state distribution system, and permitting the very modest growth of self–employment—have not altered the basic structure of the Cuban economic system. Politically, Cuba is still a one–party state, and independent and well– respected human rights organizations regularly identify serious human rights abuses on the island.

U.S. policy toward Cuba has also remained remarkably unchanged in the aftermath of the Cold War. However, the rationale for U.S. policy toward the island has changed—from opposing Cuba’s efforts to support armed, pro–Soviet revolutionary groups in the region to opposing Cuba’s domestic record on human rights and lack of democracy—but the economic embargo first proclaimed by President Kennedy in 1962 remains the centerpiece of U.S. policy.

Because of what has changed and not changed, the time seems ripe for a fresh look at U.S. policy toward Cuba. With the United States less interested in containing communism than in promoting democracy, Cuba may still pose problems for policymakers, but they are not the same problems that the United States faced in the Cold War. After 40 years, the long era of Fidel Castro’s personal rule in Cuba is also drawing to a close. These considerations raise the question of whether the United States should begin to focus less on dealing with President Castro and think more about its long–term relationship with the Cuban people.

In this context, the Council on Foreign Relations, while not taking a position as an institution, sponsored a bipartisan Independent Task Force on U.S.–Cuban Relations in the 21st Century. Task Force members engaged in a comprehensive policy review, identifying U.S. interests with respect to Cuba now and in the future, evaluating current policy, and crafting a range of recommendations that can be implemented within the framework of current legislation.

The Task Force was chaired jointly by Bernard W. Aronson and William D. Rogers, both former assistant secretaries of state for inter–American affairs. Its distinguished members included widely respected scholars, legal analysts, businesspeople, and former government officials representing a broad range of views and backgrounds. A number of congressional and White House staff members participated in the Task Force meetings as observers. In addition to the members of the Task Force and the listed observers, the Task Force sought comments and advice from a wide variety of experts and interested persons, holding meetings in Atlanta, Houston, Miami, Chicago, and Los Angeles. A delegation was also sent to the Vatican, where members and staff met with Pope John Paul II and with senior Vatican officials to receive their comments on the draft report.

Meeting on three occasions in the fall of 1998, the Task Force decided to look for what it considered to be new and flexible policy approaches toward Cuba based on the new conditions shaping the relationship. While the Task Force did not recommend an end to the embargo or a normalization of official diplomatic relations between the two countries, the group studied a variety of measures that, in its judgment, would tend to normalize relations between the Cuban and American people now and lay the groundwork for better official relations in the future. The Task Force favors a bipartisan policy toward Cuba. At the same time, the Task Force recognized that the president retains very broad authority to modify existing policy toward Cuba, and most of its recommendations call for presidential action, rather than new legislation.

The Task Force members, many of whom have played an active part in formulating recent policy toward Cuba, endorsed a wide variety of measures suggested by the co–chairs in relation to the Cuban American community. Members also supported expanding people–to–people contact through travel and other exchanges, facilitating the delivery of food and medicine to the island, promoting direct American private–sector investment, and stepping up cooperation with Cuba where specific U.S. interests are involved. Notably, the co–chairs and the Task Force members chose not to condition their recommendations on changes in Cuban policy. Whatever Castro does, the Task Force concluded, it is in the interest of the United States to promote broad contacts and engagement between the American and Cuban people and, as the need arises, to provide humanitarian assistance to our neighbors.

Finally, I would like to thank Bernard Aronson and William Rogers, the co–chairs of the Task Force, for their steadfast leadership; Walter Mead and Julia Sweig, the project director and program coordinator, respectively, for their hard and good work in seeing that the Task Force ran smoothly; and Council members for raising important questions on the subject. Most of all, thanks are due to the Task Force itself, for stimulating debate on an issue that requires more serious attention.

 

Leslie H. Gelb, President, Council on Foreign Relations