As a continuing majority of the countries of the Caribbean Community have continued to maintain normal relations with Cuba, especially over the many years when Cold War relations between the US and that country were most intense, our governments will no doubt feel a certain justification as the two countries have now proceeded with a gradual evolution of their relations towards a full and formal exchange of ambassadorial representatives. So we can now say, although economic relations are still to be normalized, that the long era of mutual isolation of the two states is over.
Apart from the issue of relations between the two countries themselves, this development is important in that it marks a substantial return to normalization of wider inter-American relations. This has been an objective of the President Obama’s period of office, itself a part, as is becoming clearer and clearer, of a wider objective of normalizing the remaining geopolitical peculiarities of the Cold War, and not allowing specific bilateral difficulties to inhibit United States involvement in wider regional and global relations. And in that sense, the normalization of Cuban-American relations is of a piece with the President’s pursuit of normalization of Iran-US relations now in progress.
It is, in our view, in that sense too, that the President appears to be refusing to let the politics of the present Venezuelan government lead to a negative influencing of US-Venezuelan relations, although some elements in the United States would well wish to see a continuation of verbal and diplomatic hostilities between the two countries, with the objective of encouraging a worsening of domestic political relations in Venezuela. But clearly, in that case, Mr Obama would appear to be ensuring that no excuse is given, if a negative turn in those relations should take place, for domestic forces in Venezuela to be able to pile a mountain of blame on his government and American imperialism.
This, what we can call an American diplomacy of tolerance, is also being reflected, at the present time, in the President’s course of action vis-à-vis Iran, in spite of voices in the American Congress desirous of continuing the isolation of that country. It is evident that, unlike the situation in the Americas, the President has a vociferous Israel trying to influence the politics of the American Congress in the direction of continuing hostility, in much the same way as in much of the 1960s well into the 1990s, attempts were made to influence American presidents to continue the Cold War and isolation of Cuba.
In much the same way too, Obama has also refused to allow the discovery of a system of American spying on the leaders and governments of other countries (the Snowden revelations), and in the specific case Latin American case, of Brazil, to deflect his objective of a persistence of normalization of relations with that major country in the context of a wider normalization of US-inter American relations.
And it is well to note that he took this perspective at a time when Brazil in particular, experiencing substantial economic growth, was reaching out to a more autonomous and expansionist diplomacy as one of the BRICS. Today, present economic difficulties experienced by that country, appear to have resulted in a more muted demonstration of Brazilian diplomatic strength even within the hemisphere, in a period now of wider American involvement in ensuring that a normalization of Cuban-American relations comes to a positive conclusion.
Of course in Latin America in particular, American diplomacy has been helped, over the years, by a policy undertaken by Brazil under Lula, with his particular prestige, of engagement in the wider Latin American sphere, a stance that has allowed smaller countries like those of the Caribbean to pursue similar efforts, particularly as they have sought economic and related assistance from within the hemisphere. And in turn, that Brazilian policy has ensured that, in the context of the American Congress, there has been much less scope for finding allies in the hemisphere willing to engage with the Americans in respect of any continuing hostility to Cuba in particular.
As has been evident in articles in this newspaper and in the wider region, there is a tendency to change the nature of Cuba-Caribbean relations from a Cold War perspective to one that virtually poses the future economic development of Cuba as something of a threat to the development of the Caricom sphere, particularly as a contest for the tourism market is likely to be seen in terms of that country having a comparative advantage. And in that context, it is often said to be the case that Jamaican tourism, in particular, flourished after the Cuban revolution and the isolation of that country by the United States.
Some of this argument would appear to be based on a certain fast-forwarding to a situation where Cuba’s economic strategy becomes more and more island-centric or isolationist, and American-centric, and less concerned or engaged than it has been in the revolutionary era, with its Caribbean environment. And a further long-term assumption is that there will be a diminution of the communist character of the Cuban regime.
It is to be hoped that this kind of argument does not begin to hold sway among those who are considered experts on Caribbean tourism. It is obviously the case that Caricom discussions on regional tourism must begin to engage Cuba more and more, entailing a non-zero-sum approach to wider economic policy. Caribbean diplomacy, including a persistent engagement with a reorganizing Cuba, must be the name of the new game of so-called normalization of Cuban economic relations, and therefore of hemispheric and regional engagements.
President Obama has been doing his part. We must continue to do ours, acknowledging an inevitability of a new post Cuba-isolation environment.
