Center for International Policy

October 3, 2006

Former diplomats to debate Cuba relations

By Bruce Edwards Herald Staff

Rutland Herald

With Fidel Castro's future in doubt, U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba will take center stage this month when two career diplomats address the "Vermont Forum on Cuba — Perspectives on Change."

Ambassador Dennis Hays and Wayne Smith are Cuba experts who differ sharply on the course U.S. foreign policy has taken since Castro seized power in 1959 and established a communist enclave on the largest island in the Caribbean.

Sponsored by the Cuba Program of the Vermont Institute on the Caribbean, in conjunction with the Vermont Council on World Affairs and the Vermont Global Trade Partnership, the forum will be held Thursday, Oct. 26, at 7 p.m., at the Waterfront Main Street Landing — Presentation Hall, Burlington. The moderator will be former Vermont governor and U.S. ambassador to Switzerland Madeleine Kunin.

Smith, an embargo opponent, spent 25 years with the State Department, including a stint as chief of missions at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.

"Our policy is counterproductive. It hasn't worked," Smith said during a telephone interview from Washington. "If the idea was to get rid of the Castro government or if the idea was to encourage the Castro government to move toward a more open society, it has obviously failed."

A far more productive course of action, Smith said, would be for the United States to lift the travel ban on U.S. citizens.

"It's virtually been a maxim that travel of Americans abroad is the best way to spread the message of American democracy," said Smith, who directs the Cuba Program at the Center for International Policy.

While the U.S. has attempted to isolate communist Cuba, he noted the U.S. has normalized relations with communist regimes in China and Vietnam.

Smith said for some time, U.S. policy toward Cuba has been driven by the Cuban-American community in Florida. And that policy, he said, has taken on more aggressive overtones since President Bush took office.

He cautioned that given the track record of its interference in Cuban affairs, the U.S. won't be able to influence events there in a positive way as long as it keeps meddling in Cuba's internal affairs.

"… the United States is not only not allowing American citizens to travel, but saying we are going to bring down the Cuban government," Smith said.

Efforts by Smith and others to lift the nearly 50-year-old embargo have largely failed. The only exceptions are food and agricultural products that U.S. companies began selling on a cash-only basis in 2001. Last year, Vermont farmers made their first sale of heifers to help replenish Cuba's dairy herd.

Hays, who was coordinator for Cuban Affairs at the State Department from 1993-95, argues that opening up U.S. trade and travel to Cuba will only help prop up a repressive regime.

"People go to Cuba and they expect Castro to react in a way that's logical or in what they perceive to be his self-interest and they're missing the basic point because Castro's self-interest is not to improve the living standards of the Cuban people … his desire is to maintain his grip on power," said Hays, who later served as executive vice president of the Cuban American National Foundation.

Castro knew early on, Hays continued, that "if you control the economic life of the individual you control the political life."

For those who say the embargo and travel ban have failed to bring Castro to heel, Hays, a former U.S. ambassador to Suriname, said embargos are not intended to topple repressive regimes.

"What they're designed to do is restrict the flow of resources that repressive regimes use to continue their repression and to export them to others," Hays said.

While Cuba's human rights record has been sharply criticized, the U.S. has normalized relations with any number of repressive regimes including Saudi Arabia, China and Libya.

Hays acknowledged U.S. foreign policy hasn't always been "very enlightened and far-sighted" when dealing with those regimes.

The forum takes on added significance given the declining health of the 80-year-old Castro, who has temporarily relinquished power to his brother, Raul.

Hays believes the uncharismatic Raul, who commands the army, will have a difficult time maintaining the status quo and keeping the aspirations of the Cuban people in check once Fidel is gone.

"Raul and company are going to have a very tough time as would anybody meeting that anticipated demand," said Hays, who is currently vice president of Novastar/Thorium Power.

Hays and Smith both agree once Castro dies economic liberalization is likely under Raul. "Raul is somewhat more pragmatic," Smith said.

Hays warned, however, that economic liberalization, like the policies embraced by China, would not translate into political freedom for the Cuban people.

Although Cuba is far removed from Vermont by distance and culture, Marisha Kazeniac of the Vermont Institute on the Caribbean said the state has longstanding ties with Cuba and its 11.4 million people.

"We've had educational programs and cultural exchanges where it's permissible and humanitarian assistance into Cuba and more recently agricultural trade," said Kazeniac, the institute's executive director as well as being the founder and former coordinator of the Cuba Project at the University of Vermont.

But because of restrictions on travel and information between the two countries, Kazeniac said "there is still a lot about Cuba that is unknown or unclear."

"One goal of the Vermont Institute on the Caribbean is to contribute to an informed citizenry here in Vermont and we see the forum as an opportunity to hear from two guests who have extensive experience in Cuba," she said.

Admission to the forum is free. However, a donation is requested to support the work of the Vermont Institute on the Caribbean.

For more information, call 864-4334 or info@institutecaribe.org.

Contact Bruce Edwards at bruce.edwards@rutlandherald.com.