A World Apart on Cuba

David Adams
November 11, 2007

I've been covering Cuba since 1988, so not much surprises me anymore when a U.S. president speaks out on policy toward Castro and what comes after.

But President Bush's recent speech was astonishing, not in its newness, but in its lack of realism about where most of the world stands on Cuba. Put simply, the president asked the rest of the world to join U.S. efforts to strangle Cuba's communist government politically and economically, while demanding a democratic opening. Cubans on the island were encouraged to rise up and oust their government - peacefully, of course. Bush also asked other countries to contribute to a Freedom Fund for Cuba to help reconstruct the island after the Castro regime was gone - not just the ailing Fidel, but his brother, acting President Raul Castro, as well.

Maybe I've been doing this job too long. I can personally track policy back to the Reagan administration. I am not alone.

Carl Hiaasen, the Miami satirist, put it well the other day in a column for the Miami Herald. "Bush's speech was recycled from his father, who recycled it from Ronald Reagan, who recycled it from Richard Nixon, who recycled it from Lyndon Johnson, who recycled it from John F. Kennedy," he wrote, leaving out only Bill Clinton, who was just as guilty. Al Gore offered the same formula when he ran for president in 2000.

"Now is the time to stand with the Cuban people as they stand up for their liberty," Bush said. "And now is the time for the world to put aside its differences and prepare for Cuba's transition to a future of freedom and progress and promise."

Most European governments have their own programs in Cuba, as well as participating in the multilateral policy of the European Union. Why would Europeans put their money in a U.S.-controlled Freedom Fund? And why wait for some magic moment to help Cuba when democracy arrives?

"Our allies are engaged in Cuba and looking for things they can do now, rather than wait until the system has changed," says Phillip Peters, a former U.S. diplomat and Cuba expert at the independent Lexington Institute.

Even in Latin America, where Cuba resonates more, the speech was a huge flop. Brazil and Mexico, for example, the two most important countries in the region, are also fully engaged in Cuba. While they have made their political differences known to the Cuban Communist Party, they prefer to do it diplomatically, without a lot of noise.

The speech even got a mixed reception from Cuban exiles. The aging hard-liners loved it, even claiming credit for having had a hand in crafting it Bush had been in Miami a few days earlier and met with exile leaders. But other exiles just dismissed it as electoral pandering. Sgt. Carlos Lazo, an Iraq war veteran currently training to return to the Middle East, said it was "shameful" of Bush to ask Cubans to demand freedoms "while, at the same time, the president prevents Cuban-Americans in the United States from visiting their families on the island and having a satisfying relationship with them."

Last, but not least, there is Cuba itself.

While blasting the speech for all the usual "anti-imperialist" reasons, the Cuban authorities actually found it quite to their liking. In fact, they thought it was so embarrassingly out of touch, they chose to broadcast and print it on the island.

Okay, so they left out the bit about Cuba's "socialist paradise is a tropical gulag." But they left the rest intact, including the call for an uprising.

"They're happy to put it in the paper and show people what he's saying, because it strengthens their position," said Peters.

If there was anything remotely new in the speech, it was Bush's emphasis on popular upheaval on the island. This has long been implicit in U.S. policy, but it has rarely been stated this directly. Some will find comfort in those words.

To be sure, everyone who enjoys the benefits of democratic freedoms wishes the whole world had them too. But the White House's all-or-nothing rhetoric reveals how out of touch it is with the situation in Cuba.

If there is one thing I have learned in my years visiting Cuba, it is that while most ordinary Cubans desire change, they are fearful of what may come next. Hence most avoid direct political action.

On top of that, Bush's words also ignore the like-it-or-not reality of the solidity of Cuba's political system.

"Change in Cuba will never be radical and happen overnight like President Bush said," according to Oscar Espinosa Chepe, a dissident economist living in Cuba. Espinosa Chepe and others say the Bush administration's biggest error is to ignore the internal dynamics of change in Cuba.

In a July speech, which I attended, Raul Castro acknowledged that the economy needed "structural and conceptual changes." He went on to call for an "open debate" on what to do, insisting nothing was off the agenda.

The Economist magazine noted the same thing: "The debate has taken place at local branches of the Communist Party, as well as trade unions and other mass organizations. At each meeting, a note taker has recorded without attribution the criticisms and suggestions."

It's a sad commentary that Cuba may be making progress, but U.S. foreign policy is stuck in the 1960s.

David Adams is the Times Latin America correspondent.