Additional and Dissenting Views

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

January 1999

Council on Foreign Relations

 

On Expanded Telecommunications with Cuba
   Allen R. Adler, Mario L. Baeza, Philip Peters

The Cuban Democracy Act properly sought to expand opportunities for communications between Americans and Cubans. Our recommendations note the need to follow through on the Cuban Democracy Act’s call for direct postal service between the two countries. We would go further, however, and reexamine the Cuban Democracy Act provisions regarding telecommunications between Cuba and the United States. It seems to us that telecommunications and computer technology have evolved rapidly enough, even in the relatively few years since the enactment of the Cuban Democracy Act and Helms–Burton, to merit such a reexamination. Among other things, we believe the OFAC should consider licensing U.S. companies and firms to provide communications facilities and services on the island, as long as those facilities do not and could not reasonably be expected to enhance the military posture of the regime or otherwise facilitate actions inimical to U.S. interests. (Today, U.S. telecommunication companies are limited to running wires up to Cuba’s shores and must, therefore, interconnect with the decrepit Cuban telephone system.) In the meantime, the Cuban telecommunications system—including access to the Internet—will eventually be the mechanism by which information is disseminated. As such, it is a fundamental element of many of the recommendations we have made and should be strengthened and improved. We see no reason why U.S. technology and know–how should be excluded from the process of upgrading Cuba’s telecommunications infrastructure.

 

The Case Against the Necessity of Executive and Congressional Consensus
   Mario L. Baeza

When a number of us first approached this project, we decided to use as our point of departure the most recent congressional and executive branch consensus regarding Cuba policy—namely, the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996, commonly referred to as the Helms–Burton Act, and the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 (collectively, the “Acts”). Instead of focusing on the punitive measures contained in the Acts, however, we turned our attention to those provisions that call for increased contacts between Cubans and U.S. citizens, and to other measures designed to encourage and support the growth of private enterprise and individual freedoms in Cuba. In particular, we focused on the plain meaning and intent of the Acts, which, among other things, are designed to “assist the Cuban people in regaining their freedom and prosperity,” as well as to “seek a peaceful transition to democracy and resumption of economic growth in Cuba.” Starting from this presupposition, we concluded that a much wider range of permissible activity and contacts between U.S. and Cuban citizens are justified under the Acts than those currently permitted by administrative orders. We then set out to come up with policy prescriptions that, in our view, were vital or desirable in accomplishing certain goals.

I believe the Task Force Report accomplishes this objective. However, I would go further and make clear that, as a legal matter, the implementation of most of our recommendations does not require both congressional and executive branch consensus. I believe that substantially all of our recommendations can, as a legal matter, be implemented by executive orders or administrative actions only. While I concur that as a matter of political pragmatism it would be desirable, if not essential, for the executive and legislative branches to proceed hand–in–hand, I do not wish to concede that the presidential powers to implement the law do not extend to the taking of actions recommended in the Task Force Report, except with respect to certain private–sector initiatives which would, in fact, require amendments to the existing law.

 

On the Benefits for the United States from Increased Contact
   Mario L. Baeza

The report of the Independent Task Force is focused almost entirely on what Cubans can gain from additional U.S. contacts. I would like to make explicit what is perhaps implicit in our report—namely, that there are many benefits we Americans can derive from increased contact with the Cuban people. The U.S. business community has a keen interest in making its own assessments of who is who in Cuba and of the nature of the problems, risks, and opportunities that it is likely to encounter in a post–regime era. In the fields of health care, medicine, bioengineering, and computer science, there are advances by Cuban scientists and professionals that we could benefit from. Similarly, there is much to Cuban cultural life, including the celebration of the Afro–Cuban culture, that, even today, can enrich us greatly.

 

On the Cuban Economy and the Scope of Proposed Changes in U.S. Travel and Investment Policy
   Ted Galen Carpenter, Craig Fuller, Franklin W. Knight, Philip Peters

We signed the report but want to express our own assessment of U.S. policy and the situation in Cuba, and our consequent belief that U.S. interests would be served by more far–reaching changes in policy.

Whatever its successes in the past, American policy toward Cuba today is counterproductive at its core. The 1960s–vintage objective of the political and economic isolation of Cuba made sense when the Soviet Union still existed and Cuba’s behavior threatened security and democratic development in the Americas. Today, those factors are gone and the policy chiefly serves to limit American influence by blocking the flow of people, commerce, and ideas. Moreover, it restricts freedoms of American citizens in ways that have no justification in the absence of a security threat.

The policy sends a deeply hostile message to the Cuban people. U.S. law bars trade, even in benign goods. It bars U.S. investment and uses extraordinary legal means to discourage foreign investment. It calls for the United Nations to impose a global trade embargo on Cuba. It bans any ship that calls on Cuba from entering American ports for six months, even if that ship delivered only rice and aspirin to Cuba.

It is little wonder that Cuba’s Catholic bishops call this a “cruel” policy that attempts to “destabilize the government by using hunger and want to pressure civic society to revolt.” One is hard pressed to find dissidents or Cubans on the street who see virtue or political reason in this approach.

In sum, American policy toward Cuba lacks the magnanimity and confidence that befit a great power whose chief global adversary has vanished.

The report mentions small businesses, but does not capture the full extent of economic change in Cuba. A series of limited openings—incentive–based agriculture, farmers’ markets, small business, foreign investment—have, in addition to other measures such as the legalization of foreign currency, created a new economic sector governed by market mechanisms, not state planning. Workers who earn tips or high dollar wages from foreign investors generate demand for produce at farmers’ markets or for small business services. Family remittances add to this demand.

This sector would surely expand if Cuban policies were more open, but even now it represents a significant step forward for Cuban and American interests. It has raised Cubans’ incomes and skill levels, and has introduced new ways of doing business that prepare Cuba for a more capitalist future.

We are confident that greater contact between Americans and Cubans will benefit U.S. interests, and we offer some illustrative recommendations below.

Today’s severe restrictions on American citizens’ travel to Cuba have no national security justification, no political logic in the Cuban context, and no precedent in U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union or China since the 1970s. Our colleagues constructively support “targeted” travel, but we go further. All American citizens personify American ideas and values. The travel ban and its onerous licensing processes should be dropped. Americans traveling freely, without government licensing or program restrictions, will support the expansion of free–market activity in Cuba and will build links with Cuban society that no government program would envision.

Under the Helms–Burton law, American policy allows sanctions to be eased only when Cuba’s leadership and political system are replaced. Previous law allowed sanctions to be eased in a calibrated response to positive reforms undertaken in Cuba. This provision should be restored.

Regarding investment in Cuba, we agree that changes in Cuban policy are desirable, but we also recognize that foreign investors working under current Cuban law are improving the lot of Cuban workers today. We therefore urge a bolder step: permitting full economic relations in a single sector such as agriculture, telecommunications, or housing. As commerce develops, American companies will surely bring benefits to Cuban workers and their families, and they could encourage positive change in Cuban policy. Further action could depend on the results of this single– sector experiment.

 

The Case for Ending Discrimination Against Cuban Scholars and Artists
   Rodolfo O. de la Garza

While the Task Force Report indicates that, because of pressure from Cuban authorities, U.S. institutions have barred Cuban Americans from participating in existing exchange programs and states that such practices should not continue, it makes no mention of continuing efforts by some groups to prevent Cuban scholars and artists from participating in scholarly and cultural events in the United States. Both types of discrimination and censorship should cease.

 

The Case for Maintaining the Embargo
   Mark Falcoff, Daniel W. Fisk, Susan Kaufman Purcell

This report correctly emphasizes the importance of strengthening civil society in Cuba to help bring about a peaceful transition to democracy on the island. Efforts toward this end will be undermined, however, if most of the new resources reaching Cuba end up in government, rather than in private, hands. This is why the embargo must remain in place for now. If democracy is to develop in Cuba, the balance of power and resources between the state and the civil society that currently exists on the island must be reversed so as to favor the people.

 

The Case for Executive–Congressional Agreement
   Daniel W. Fisk

Since the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992, and as reiterated in the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996, U.S. policy toward Cuba is based on an embargo on the Castro regime and efforts to support the emergence of a civil society in Cuba. This Task Force Report, for the most part, affirms and builds on this framework and avoids the premise that U.S. policy must change for Castro to change. In fact, the strength of this report is its attempt to find ways to build civil society despite the continuing intransigence of Castro. For these reasons, I endorse the general policy thrust of the report. One aspect of the report which raises a concern, however, is that many of the recommendations call for unilateral executive implementation even while the Task Force notes the importance of a bipartisan consensus to a policy’s effectiveness. This seems to contradict the Task Force’s call for enhanced executive–congressional consultations. Many of the report’s recommendations have merit, but part of building a bipartisan consensus is executive–congressional agreement on moving forward, not unilateral presidential actions. These recommendations will be effective only if such consultations would occur before implementation or changes in policy. Executive–congressional agreement on these recommendations will signal that U.S. resolve on behalf of a democratic Cuba, not rapprochement with the Castro regime, remains firm and consistent.

 

 

Dissenting Views

 

The Case Against Counternarcotics Cooperation
   Ted Galen Carpenter

The report’s recommendation regarding counternarcotics cooperation is misguided on two levels. First, as such distinguished Americans as Milton Friedman and George Shultz have pointed out, Washington’s hemispheric war on drugs is a futile policy that causes serious collateral social and economic damage to numerous countries. Second, cooperation on narcotics issues would require U.S. collaboration with the most odious and repressive agencies in Cuba’s police–state bureaucracy. Such collaboration would send precisely the wrong message to Cubans who want to weaken these instruments of repression.

 

The Case Against Further Counternarcotics Cooperation
   Mark Falcoff, Daniel W. Fisk

Any initiatives for cooperation should clearly place the burden on Cuba to show that it respects international standards in combating illegal drugs. Specifically, by harboring fugitives—including Cuban officials facing outstanding indictments for drug trafficking—Cuba has shown little, if any, serious interest in combating this threat to the hemisphere. Even more problematic, however, is that any expansion beyond the current case–by–case cooperation would require U.S. law enforcement to engage directly with Castro’s state security apparatus. If we require human rights to be respected by other entities with whom we engage in counternarcotics efforts, the same threshold is doubly important in the case of Cuba. At most, the Task Force should recommend a comprehensive U.S. government assessment of the extent of drug trafficking in and through Cuba, including an assessment of any official Cuban complicity, a briefing prepared for the Congress, and a determination by the two political branches as to the appropriate next steps.

 

On Potential Problems with Facilitating “Targeted Travel”
   Daniel W. Fisk

There is a qualitative difference between those seeking to help, or reunite with, their families and those simply seeking something “forbidden.” Recommending a “general license” for tourist agencies potentially facilitates tourism for those who have no demonstrable professional or other serious interest in Cuba, but who are interested in the novelty of leisure tourism, or who are investors scavenging to make a quick buck or to exploit a controlled labor force. These serve the interests of neither the United States nor the Cuban people. Such a result would benefit a sector of the Cuban economy that is a significant source of hard currency for the regime.

 

The Case for Executive–Congressional Agreement on Sales of Food
   Daniel W. Fisk

Given that the extent of the president’s authority to authorize sales of food unilaterally is uncertain, I must dissent from the recommendation that the president change the current structure by unilateral action. While I support developing ways to provide food assistance, any change should be a decision by both political branches of government.

 

On the Complexity of Food and Medicine Sales to Cuba
   Daniel W. Fisk

U.S. law currently allows the sale of medicines and medical supplies to Cuba. It is doubtful that the Cuban government is interested in this, having made only one effort to purchase anything, despite repeated positive efforts by U.S. officials and private citizens to facilitate the provision of supplies the Cuban government claims it cannot get from anywhere else but the United States. More significantly, regarding the food situation, the fact that an island that was an exporter of food prior to Castro’s ascendance cannot feed itself after nearly 40 years of the Castro regime is a consequence of that system’s failure, not the U.S. embargo. The United States remains the most generous nation in assisting the victims of natural or man–made disasters; Cuba is clearly the latter. On the other hand, there is a purpose for daring the regime to live up to its rhetorical commitment to provide for the Cuban people: every dollar spent on food and medicine is one less dollar spent directly on the repressive apparatus of the state. There should be no illusions about Castro’s interest in food and medicine, but there should be no mistake about our humanitarian objectives to mitigate the odious consequences for the people resulting from that regime. Pursuing our humanitarian objectives while minimizing benefits to the Castro regime is a delicate process that requires a positive consulting process between the executive and legislative branches.

 

The Case Against Expanded Military–to–Military Contacts
   Daniel W. Fisk

The United States has made clear that it has no aggressive intentions toward Cuba, and the U.S. military has conducted itself accordingly, even when Cuban aircraft have violated U.S. airspace or shot down civilian aircraft over international waters. Cuban military tolerance of democratic change is dependent on the Cuban leadership, not the United States. The United States also has enunciated its willingness to assist the Cuban military in a democratic transition. At most, we should be encouraging the governments and militaries of the former communist regimes in Eastern Europe to engage their military counterparts in Cuba. To have the U.S. military engage in such measures with a country that remains on the U.S. State Department list of countries supporting terrorism, beyond the monthly meeting related to Guantánamo, would legitimize an instrument of Castro’s repression.

 

The Case Against Access to the United States by High–Level Cuban Officials
   Daniel W. Fisk, Adrian Karatnycky

In our view, the degree of access afforded to Cuban government officials in “Basket Two: The Open Door” is excessive. Cuban cabinet ministers and high–ranking parliamentarians are complicit in the regime’s repression and should be denied access to the United States.

 

The Case Against Official Exchanges

We support most of the humanitarian recommendations, but the report goes too far. The premise of the exercise was supposed to be to bypass the regime and start the rebuilding of Cuban civil society. Yet, the report urges exchanges with the most senior government and military officials on the odd theory that they will be agents of change. In Central Europe, on the contrary, the most successful new democracies are those that went furthest with lustration—that is, purging the senior levels of their institutions (civil service, military, universities, etc.) of communist hacks. Similarly, a “Working Group on the 21st Century” with such regime–approved individuals strikes us as quite naïve.

Moreover, the report is wrong to imply that its recommendations will promote political change. The regime is not in its Gorbachev phase, but at its most Stalinist—witness the recent crushing of the Concilio Cubano. This is another reason to avoid legitimizing the regime, and to stick to modest measures that may ease the burden of ordinary Cubans and help restore private institutions.

The regime is doomed anyway, no matter what we do, so U.S. policy has considerable margin for error. But we need not be so eager to use it all up.

 

 

Dissenting Views Submitted by Observers

 

The Case for a Fundamental Reassessment of Cuba Policy
   Kenneth R. Maxwell

While I understand and sympathize with the desire for consensus and bipartisanship and have the highest regard for participants in the Task Force, I regret that the report is not more forceful and ambitious. I also regret that the report does not explicitly support the idea put forward by Secretary Lawrence Eagleburger and other distinguished foreign policy practitioners for a bipartisan national commission on Cuba. Cuba policy deserves fundamental reassessment, not tinkering at the edges. Above all, the debate needs to be lifted out of the straightjacket of narrow electoral political considerations where it is currently mired. A broad–based bipartisan national commission may or may not recommend drastic changes such as the ending of the embargo, but it is essential in my view that an open debate take place on the fundamental questions and the sooner the better.

I personally do not agree with the premise that the embargo has been a success. I have always believed that openness is the best policy, and that contact, not ostracism, is a greater threat to dictatorships, be they of the left or the right. This is especially true where regimes like Castro’s can exploit a strong history of nationalism. In the Cuban case, it is an inescapable fact that despite 40 years of embargo Castro remains in power; he has not fallen. He may indeed be “contained” in politico–military terms, but it is also a fact of life that Havana is awash with Europeans and Canadians, that the papal visit will be followed this year by the Ibero–American summit and a parade of Latin American and European leaders, and that there are very few U.S. luminaries who can resist the chance to sup with Castro if invited. Nor for that matter did the embargo restrain Castro’s adventures in Africa and Latin America in the past. It would be nice to think that small unilateral steps will undermine the regime and promote fundamental political change in Cuba, but I do not believe that they will. They are too dependent on Castro’s implicit agreement. Castro has never carried through on positive overtures of this type from Washington in the past, preferring to kick away the ladder when it seemed a mini détente might be in the offing. I am even more skeptical of the proposition that one can play favorites with functionaries within his apparatus of power; if anything it will expose them to risk and discovery. Castro has never hesitated to remove potential threats to his power, even when it involved the judicial murder of the most popular leader of his Angolan expeditionary force, General Ochoa.

Yet one thing does seem certain: it is that change, when it happens, will come quickly and unexpectedly, and that once Castro is gone his ramshackle regime will collapse in short order. Like Louis XIV, even Castro seems to believe that “après moi le déluge.” It is therefore critical that the United States free itself from the legal and emotional handicaps that now bedevil its Cuba policy and that will prevent the U.S. government and U.S. society, including Cuban Americans, from reacting with speed, flexibility, and good sense when the happy moment of liberation arrives. To promote minor modification in the status quo is no answer. It leaves Castro with a situation he has long known how to navigate and exploit. And it leaves the United States with a policy that perpetuates the all–too–familiar pattern of paternalism and micromanagement toward Cuba’s internal affairs that has bedeviled U.S.–Cuban relations now for over a century.

 

On the General Limitations of the Report
   Marc A. Thiessen

The Task Force should be congratulated for the spirit in which they undertook this enterprise, and for their effort to find some consensus on initiatives that can be taken within the framework of the current U.S. policy of isolating the Castro regime.

The report’s specific policy recommendations are a mixed bag—some have merit, others go too far, and still others are too timid. But the basic framework is correct: the U.S. embargo has indeed been a success, as the report definitively states, and the Congress and the executive branch should now work together in developing bold new measures to support democratic change in Cuba and to help the Cuban people build a civil society independent of the communist regime.

The major problem with the report is that, for the most part, it does not require any real systematic changes in Cuba as a condition for changes in U.S. policy. The Task Force Report correctly cites Poland as a model for promoting democratic change in Cuba, and notes that each change in U.S. sanctions on communist Poland in the 1980s was made as a quid pro quo for some form of systematic change in Poland—the release of political prisoners, legalization of the Solidarity Party, etc.

Unfortunately, there is no discussion in the report of similarly conditioning many recommended changes in U.S. policy toward Cuba on release of political prisoners, legalization of opposition parties, legalization of independent press, etc. Only once does the report lay out such a quid pro quo, when it suggests that broad U.S. investment in Cuba be permitted only when Cuba changes its labor laws to permit direct hiring of workers, free association of labor, and other freedoms laid out in the Arcos Principles. Similar requirements for change in Cuba should have been included as conditions for some of the Task Force’s other recommendations.

Of course, Castro is not likely to engage in such a give–and–take with the United States—but his successors might. The Task Force missed an excellent opportunity to recommend ways these future leaders could trade a normalization of relations with the United States for Cuba’s democratic transition.

Indeed, the Task Force would better have broken its recommendations into two distinct categories: steps that could be taken immediately to break the information blockade and to increase the flow of humanitarian aid and support for civil society in Cuba, and steps that could be taken in exchange for systematic change in Cuba.

Some recommendations, such as proposed military–to–military contact, are very bad ideas. The motivation is correct: there is a need to communicate to junior officers in the Cuban military that there is life after Castro, and that if they do the right thing during a transition (i.e., don’t fire on the people) they will have a place of pride in a democratic Cuba. But the Cuban government will never let U.S. officers have contact with those in the Cuban military who might be open to such a message—only die–hard loyalists will be allowed near the American military. The net effect would be a legitimization of Cuba’s instruments of repression, without the effect of increased communication with the desired elements in the Cuban military—thus violating the Task Force’s own principle that “no change in U.S. policy should have the primary effect of consolidating or legitimizing the status quo on the island.” We must find other ways to communicate with these officers that do not legitimize the Cuban regime.

The same goes for recommendations for government–to– government cooperation on issues such as the environment and drugs. Today, some 90 fugitives wanted on criminal charges in the United States—including several Cuban officials indicted in U.S. courts on drug–smuggling charges—are being given refuge in Cuba by the Castro regime. At a bare minimum, Cuba should be required to extradite these fugitives before any drug cooperation is even contemplated. The Task Force does not make clear what benefits, if any, would be achieved that outweigh the legitimization such contacts would provide the Cuban regime.

On the positive side, some of the recommendations to help strengthen indigenous private enterprise on the island are worthy of consideration. Thanks to combined pressure from the U.S. embargo and the loss of Soviet subsidies, Castro has been forced to allow some private businesses to function on the island (principally paladares, small private restaurants where Cubans can serve food in their homes and employ immediate family members). However small, these cracks in the wall of Cuban communism must be exploited. Helping existing and potential private entrepreneurs expand space in Cuba independent of communist society is a worthy goal.

The recommendation to allow all Americans, and not just Cuban Americans, to send remittances to Cuba is also worthy of consideration. This would allow a church in New Jersey to adopt a church in Santiago de Cuba by sending donations that will help the Cuban church expand its space in society through programs for the elderly, running private pharmacies and health clinics, or other private activities that help build an independent civil society in Cuba.

However, the recommendation to raise the remittance limit to $10,000 (up from the current $1,200 per person) would essentially blow a hole in the embargo, allowing back–channel private investment on the island and large cash flows into the coffers of the regime. The administration’s recent decision to maintain the $1,200 limit but allow all Americans to send remittances is a more prudent course of action.

The report’s recommendations on “targeted travel” are also much too loosely structured. Granting special multiple–entry licenses to travel agencies, which could then invite clients to travel under these licenses, would amount to a lifting of the tourism travel ban. Narrower measures to facilitate increased contacts with Americans traveling to aid the development of Cuban civil society would be preferable.

The “cash and carry” recommendations on the sale and donation of food and medicines also go too far. The goal of increased donations and distribution of humanitarian relief is indeed desirable, because it helps private Cuban relief agencies to expand their space in society and decreases the Cuban people’s dependence on the state. But sales to the Cuban government are another matter. Any sale of food would require an act of Congress. The sale of medicine and medical equipment is already allowed under U.S. law, yet Cuba does not buy American medical products—because it cannot afford to. Better that the United States simply give them food and medicine, and legislation has been introduced in the Senate to facilitate humanitarian donations and give $100 million in free food and medicine to Cuba via private Cuban nongovernmental organizations.

In the end, some of the Task Force’s recommendations will prove unworkable, while others might be worth considering if conditioned on specific changes in Cuba. But the broad thrust of the report is correct: taking the embargo off the table, bipartisan consensus can be developed on new ways to reach out to the Cuban people, expand civil society on the island, and break Castro’s embargo on his own people. Some of these ideas could become the basis for further discussion between Congress and the administration on developing bipartisan Cuba legislation.