With the US presidential race currently too close to call and with the Republican camp moving shamelessly away from issues to the populist appeal of Sarah Palin among white women, blue collar workers, small town folk, Christians and conservatives, it is becoming a little difficult for the more discerning observer to take a dispassionate look at the candidates’ positions on the issues at stake.
In Guyana and the Caribbean, as in Latin America and the rest of the world, the election is proving to be the most keenly watched in living memory, due to the galvanizing presence of Senator Barack Obama and the hope that a victory for Mr Obama will bring about real change in US attitudes to multilateralism, global warming, the environment, poverty reduction and social development, among others.
But whoever is elected in November, there is no clear indication that Latin America and the Caribbean – the latter sadly no more than an appendage of geographical convenience, and an oft forgotten one at that – will figure prominently on the new administration’s radar screen.
On the Democratic side, neither Mr Obama nor his running mate, Senator Joe Biden, chosen in part because of his considerable experience on the Foreign Relations Committee of the US Senate, has given any sign that Latin America and the Caribbean will be a foreign policy priority.
For the Republicans, Otto Reich, Senator John McCain’s main adviser on Latin America and a former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, admitted at their convention in St Paul that Latin America would not be high on the foreign policy agenda of a McCain presidency.
Indeed, ever since 9/11, America’s ‘backyard’ has remained firmly in the background as the Bush administration has pursued its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and been distracted by its strategic interests in other regions of the world. Even now, too many people in the US ignore the fact that the southern states are the soft underbelly of the country, vulnerable to security threats such as illegal migration and narco-trafficking. And in spite of the social, cultural and economic ties of Florida, California and the south-western states with Latin America, and those of Florida and New York City with the Caribbean, the Washington establishment seems to be paying little heed to arguments for closer engagement with Latin America, much less the Caribbean.
Cuba is, however, a case apart and is a genuine campaign issue because of the Cuban American vote in the swing-state of Florida.
Back in May, Mr Obama told the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) in Miami that he would maintain the 45-year-old US economic embargo against Cuba. He did say though that, if elected, he would remove the Bush administration’s restrictions on Cuban Americans travelling to Cuba and sending remittances to relatives. Mr Obama thus held out the prospect of change, both in the conduct of US-Cuba relations and with regard to the possibility of influencing democratic change in Cuba through a process of opening up.
Mr McCain on the other hand remains intransigent, promising in his own play for the Cuban American vote to continue the same failed policies of the past, which have arguably served only to reinforce the siege mentality and buttress the predominance of the Communist Party and the state under the Castro brothers.
Now, if Mr Obama were to pursue a more flexible policy of diplomatic engagement with Cuba, this should, one would expect, contribute to reducing the tension between the two countries. Except that is, for one little matter .
As we pointed out in our editorial of June 20 last (‘Fidel Castro’s questions for Barack Obama’), Mr Obama’s CANF speech prompted an indignant response from Fidel Castro, giving him an opportunity to score some political points off the double standards of successive American administrations in their hostile relations with Cuba. But the speech also raised the former Cuban strongman’s hackles for other reasons, as he attacked Mr Obama’s proposed concessions as “a formula of hunger for the nation, remittances as alms and visits as propaganda for consumerism and the lifestyle that sustains it.”
Indeed, there are real fears in certain quarters in Cuba that a relaxation of the embargo could lead to an influx of thousands, hundreds of thousands even, of Cuban Americans, with their success stories from the ‘land of opportunity’ and their gifts of the very consumer goods craved by ordinary Cubans and derided by Fidel, but denied them by years of economic deprivation.
Such external pressures, coupled with the internal pressures being generated by Raúl Castro’s own suggestions of structural change, would clearly undermine the very integrity of the Cuban Revolution and all that it has stood for.
For the hardcore in Cuba, Mr McCain’s own hard-line policy could well be preferable to Mr Obama’s pragmatism, as it would allow the regime to continue using the spectre of the USA as the bogeyman and main threat to the existence of the Communist state. But it would be fascinating to see which American candidate the Cuban population would vote for, if given the chance.
