Has Obama Forgotten About Human Rights in Cuba?

Seven months after President Obama announced his intention to normalize U.S.-Cuba relations, dissidents and human rights activists on the island are already saying they’ve been abandoned. Last week, the Associated Press ran a story headlined “Cuban Dissidents Feel Sidelined as U.S. Focuses on State Ties,” which reported that “more than 20 U.S. lawmakers have come to Cuba since February without meeting with opposition groups that once were an obligatory stop for congressional delegations.”

Indeed, it is not hard to see why human rights have been moved to the back burner. Much of the reporting and analysis of President Obama’s new policy has focused on normalization and reconciliation with the Castro regime as ends in themselves — as in, letting Cold War bygones be bygones, accepting the status quo in Cuba, and, meanwhile, it’s peace and mojitos for our time.

That is not the way President Obama presented it last December, or even at the beginning of July, when he said, “I believe that American engagement — through our embassy, our businesses, and most of all, through our people — is the best way to advance our interests and support for democracy and human rights.”

Yet, somehow, what began as a strategy to support democracy and human rights has morphed into one of building “mutual respect” between the U.S. and the Castro regime, as John Kerry put it in hosting the Cuban Foreign Minister at the State Department last week.

Let’s be clear: supporting democracy and human rights in Cuba and building “mutual respect” with the regime are utterly incompatible, no matter how artfully White House spinsters put it. Interestingly, not a single administration spokesperson has to date been able to articulate just how Obama’s new approach is supposed to work, so let me take a crack.

The administration is taking the Castro regime’s propaganda at face value that the Cuban opposition has been created in Washington and its goal is to promote regime change. By assuring the Castro brothers that Washington doesn’t indeed seek their overthrow, then that will allow a level of comfort to the regime to be more tolerant of opposition and their demands. Meanwhile, supporting existing micro-enterprises will create an inexorable force for change on the island as more economically independent Cubans will begin to petition their government for redress of their grievances and, slowly, peaceful, orderly change will come to Cuba.

If only the world worked as agreeably as a theory developed in an academic lounge.

In any case, leaving aside important questions as what could possibly be the regime’s interest in democratization or why it otherwise would be a willing participant in its own undoing, I’ll take the president at his word that his goal is democracy and human rights for Cuba. However, if that is truly the case, then he is seriously in need of resurrecting that purpose as the lodestar of his policy, as legions of Castro apologists are threatening to hijack his effort to provide nothing but succor to the Cuban regime.

The president can first reassert control over his policy by ensuring that members of Cuba’s beleaguered dissident community are invited to the flag-raising ceremony to take place at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana on Aug. 14. With Secretary of State John Kerry to be in attendance, it will overwhelmingly be the hottest ticket in town and command worldwide media attention. The presence of Cuban dissidents will send an unmistakable signal that the United States sees them as legitimate actors in the Cuban political process — and put the regime on notice that their continued abuse of dissidents will put the onus on them for a failure in his outreach.

The second thing the administration needs to make abundantly clear is that any U.S. presidential visit to Cuba before Obama leaves office is predicated on exactly that, the regime’s behavior towards dissidents: they must stop assaulting them on a daily basis.

It is a fact that the regime’s behavior since Obama’s decision has only worsened, as they have read the same headlines we all have, seemingly portraying the administration as de-prioritizing human rights. A very clear signal to the regime that the U.S. has in no way lessened its commitment will reinvigorate the dissident community and serve better than any other policy prescription to advance U.S. ultimate interests in Cuba.

It is quite clear the White House sees the president’s Cuba initiative as part of securing his legacy. But history will not record if normalizing relations simply led to better co-operation with the Castro regime on transitory issues, but only if it led to transformative change in Cuba. If that is the case, it is difficult to see how marginalizing those Cubans who share his vision for a different Cuba will achieve what he has ostensibly set out to accomplish.

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