Two weeks ago, and one more time, a Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs addressed the United Nations General Assembly on the ‘Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba’ which has now lasted somewhat over fifty years. And on this occasion, Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla chose to lay an indictment against US President Obama that in spite of indications after his first election to the presidency that he might take a softer line on Cuban-American relations, “the reality of the last four years has been characterized by a persistent tightening of the economic, commercial and financial blockade, particularly in its extra-territorial dimension.”
The emphasis on the “extra-territorial dimension” indicates Cuba’s continuing displeasure with the fact that the United States objective is not simply to ensure that nothing substantial moves from the US to Cuba, but that the blockade is also directed at ensuring that goods sold from other countries by American companies, or with parts manufactured in the United States, or on the basis of American patents, are also prohibited from passage to Cuba. In effect, business dealings, of whatever kind, in which US companies are fully, or tangentially involved, are prohibited. And in that regard, the Cubans have been particularly disturbed at the efforts made by the US to ensure that American-made, or owned, machinery – oil rigs for example – make it difficult, though not impossible, for them to undertake oil exploration in Cuban waters.
The statement by Foreign Minister Rodriguez Parilla is, as would be expected, a harsh one, though the Cubans would be aware that President Obama did, after 2009, introduce some measures to liberalise his country’s engagement with Cuba by, for example, removing restrictions on travel and on the sending of remittances by Cuban Americans. Though, in some degree, the results of the presidential elections indicate that the President was as much a beneficiary, in terms of Latin votes, of that initiative, as have been the Cuban people.
The Cubans, however, have perhaps anticipated that the American attitude to their country, and to the nature of their political regime, would have been treated in a manner similar to the much more liberal attitude to the communist regimes in China and Vietnam that the US has taken for some years now. But obviously, two factors are present in the case of those two countries that the US sees as not present in the case of Cuba. First, the US would justify their attitude to those two countries, by the fact that though they are operating autocratic regimes, they are now operating virtually capitalist economic systems, sometimes referred to as state capitalism. And, in their view, Cuba is far from that point.
The second is that anti-China and anti-Vietnamese sentiment has not been reflected in any bloc in the United States in contrast to the large Cuban population that has been used by American politicians as electoral fodder, though that has been changing in recent times, as Mitt Romney found out in the recent presidential election. Yet, the salience of that factor as an inhibition to the pace at which President Obama feels he can go is indicated in a recent statement by the Chairperson of the House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committee (an individual of Cuban origin) that “the sanctions on the regime must be strengthened and in fact should be strengthened, and not be altered. Responsible nations must not buy into the façade the dictatorship is trying to create by announcing ‘reforms’ while, in reality, it’s tightening its grip on its people.”
In fact, the rigidity of the blockade has varied over the years, and President Raul Castro might well have thought that the reforms that he announced at the last Congress of the Cuban Communist Party would hasten a lessening of the American sanctions. But some of the main instruments of the embargo, for example the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act and the 1996 Helms Burton Act, remain in place, premised as they are on a major change in the nature of the Cuban political system before substantial reforms can be introduced.
Reports from Cuba certainly indicate that the loosening of travel restrictions, and the transmission of funds and of goods and materials from the United States have certainly eased the situations of a class of the Cuban people. This is particularly so in respect of small businesses in commercial goods, and in the acquisition of machinery, generally unavailable in Cuba, to be utilized for the maintenance of various kinds of personal and industrial equipment. And from a Cuban government perspective, there is a certain anxiety that activities and resources facilitating the development of the tourism industry, particularly, should not remain a major concern of United States policy and legislation, as these might inhibit business with third countries.
The Cuban situation, in terms of access to imports and investment in particular has, of course, been eased in recent years, as more and more countries see the embargo as an impediment even to American objectives of liberalization of the Cuban political system. As the recent vote in the UN General Assembly indicated, many countries see the embargo as an anachronism, and not the best instrument to facilitate the objectives of American policy itself.
For some time, the Americans’ neighbour Canada, has, even while expressing reservations about the Cuban political system and its human rights regime, not allowed itself to be inhibited from investments in tourism, facilitating the access of visitors to Cuba, and latterly, facilitating investment in the search for oil in Cuban waters. And the recent vote in the General Assembly 188-3, with two abstentions, indicates a continuing solidarity with Cuba on the matter.
In some measure, many countries, probably including those of Cuba’s neighbours in the hemisphere, understand the ritualism of the present exercise. But in practice they are willing, as long as they can avoid major harm from US legislation, to facilitate what, to them, is a process of Cuban economic liberalization, still hesitant as it is, on the basis that the process of political liberalization is a matter for the Cuban people themselves. They might well surmise that the present efforts of liberalization, with Raul Castro even hinting at the last Cuban Communist Party Congress, that there could be term limits on the holding of office, are, in the last analysis a matter for the Cuban people themselves. They will be watching the back and forth efforts relating to the political regimes in China and Vietnam, and are no doubt mindful of what must be a deep Cuban fear of any repetition, in terms of the rapidity of disintegration of the communist regime, of the Russian post-1992 experience.
All indications are that in Latin America, efforts are being concentrated on facilitating and encouraging the changes in the economic regime, and in facilitating the search for sources of foreign exchange by pursuing the possibilities of oil exploration in Cuban waters. Their encouragement to Cuba to fully participate in the Community of Latin American States, with its development initiatives, suggests that for them, this is an important mechanism for facilitating structural change in that country in the foreseeable future.
