On 23rd May, with an eye already on the battle with John McCain for the world’s most prestigious political prize, Senator Barack Obama, the then presumptive presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, told the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) in Miami that he would maintain the 45-year-old US economic embargo against Cuba.
Senator Obama was very clear in his statement: “Throughout my entire life, there has been injustice and repression in Cuba. Never, in my lifetime, have the people of Cuba known freedom. Never, in the lives of two generations of Cubans, have the people of Cuba known democracy… I won’t stand for this injustice… I will maintain the embargo.”
Mr Obama was undoubtedly playing to the Cuban American gallery in an early bid for their votes in the strategically critical State of Florida. But it was nevertheless a surprising statement by the man who had hitherto repeatedly made the controversial but eminently sensible point that America “has to talk with its enemies”.
Mr Obama is, of course, increasingly seen around the world as an outstanding example of America’s capacity to reinvent itself. He is an inspirational advocate for real and meaningful change in politics, and he is being hailed as the new face of a post-racial America and as the great, not-so-white hope for a more responsible and more responsive America, in the wake of the cynicism and neo-conservatism of the Bush administration.
One would have wished therefore that Mr Obama could have been more nuanced in his declaration on Cuba.
His words have already prompted an indignant response from none other than the ailing, former Cuban president, Fidel Castro. If anything, Mr Obama gave the ex-dictator cum columnist the perfect opportunity to score some political points off successive American administrations and their double standards in justifying their hostility towards Cuba.
Declaring that he felt “obliged to raise a number of delicate questions”, though he did not expect answers, Mr Castro rhetorically asked, among others:
“Is it right for the president of the US to order the assassination of any one person in the world, whatever the pretext? Is it ethical for the president of the US to order the torture of other human beings? Should state terrorism be used by a country as powerful as the US as an instrument to bring peace to the planet?”
“Is it fair to stage pre-emptive attacks? Is it honourable and sane to invest millions and millions of dollars in the military-industrial complex, to produce weapons that can destroy life on Earth several times over? Is that the way in which the US expresses its respect for freedom, democracy and human rights?”
In this context, Mr Castro called on Mr Obama not to rush to judgment but rather to recognize Cuba’s achievements in “education, health, sports, culture and science programmes, implemented not only in its own territory but also in other poor countries around the world, and in spite of the economic and financial blockade and the aggression of his powerful country – [a]s proof that much can be done with very little.”
One does not, at this point, wish to enter into the moral relativism of the arguments of the former president as opposed to those of the presidential hopeful. Suffice it to say however, that one would have hoped that Senator Obama would have refrained from pandering to the Cuban-American vote by indulging in the type of Cuba-bashing more associated with narrow-minded, reactionary Republicans than with more enlightened, liberal Democrats.
This moment in his campaign does not augur well for Mr Obama’s message of change. But perhaps it is just a moment.
One hopes that, as his quest gathers more momentum, Senator Obama will revert to his core belief in dialogue and change, and that the door will be open for dialogue with Cuba, which has been unfairly demonised as an enemy of the American people because of ideology and the strength of the Cuban American lobby.
One hopes too that, if elected, his affirmation to the CANF will be one campaign promise that he would be prepared to break in the interest of engagement. For Mr Obama would do well to remember that the embargo has done nothing but add to the hardship of life in Cuba and has always been seen by the vast majority of Cubans as an act of aggression against the Cuban people, which has paradoxically helped the Communist Party to remain in power all these years.
Mr Obama would also do well to bear in mind that the sanctions against Cuba violate international law and the UN Charter and that they have been maintained against the will of the international community, which has at successive United Nations General Assemblies since 1992, voted overwhelmingly in favour of a Resolution demanding that the US lift the embargo.
Ultimately, Mr Obama would do well to answer Mr Castro’s questions honestly and ask him and his brother, Raúl, his own hard questions about life in Cuba, in the spirit of dialogue and change he so clearly favours.