U.S. policy on Cuba to receive full review

The Bush administration has ordered what it calls the first comprehensive review of U.S. policy on Cuba in several years in an effort to find more effective ways to bring about democratic changes on the island, senior administration officials say.

Otto J. Reich, the Cuban-born top State Department official in charge of Latin American affairs, said in a telephone interview that he has ordered a review of all areas of the policy, including the four-decades-old U.S. trade sanctions on the communist-ruled island. The review is scheduled to be completed within weeks, he said.

While not ruling out any outcome, Reich said the administration is seeking to make the policy more effective and thus is not likely to loosen the embargo -- a position that would have Congress and the White House headed in opposite directions.

Moving slowly since 1998, Congress has sought to loosen the embargo. Medical and agricultural sales to Cuba are now permitted, as long as Cuba pays cash for the goods. And for the past two years, the House of Representatives has voted to lift restrictions on travel by U.S. citizens to Cuba, although the Republican leadership in the House killed it both years.

U.S. agricultural firms, eager to pry open the Cuban market, have been actively campaigning against the embargo. Later this month, Congress is to decide whether to let U.S. companies offer Cuba credit to buy scores of goods classified by the U.S. government as ''agricultural commodities,'' including bourbon, plywood, cigarettes, canned foods and beverages.

Many Washington analysts speculate that the order to review Cuba policy may be an effort to seize the initiative from Congress, partly because of domestic political concerns over Gov. Jeb Bush's reelection battle in Florida later this year and President Bush's own possible reelection effort in 2004.

Reich, who will be officially sworn in Monday as assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, said one area of innovation may be greater support for civil society groups in Cuba. Other U.S. officials say this may include support for human rights activists who are deemed ''traitors'' by the Cuban government.

The officials say they are considering ways to overcome the Cuban government's jamming of the U.S.-financed Radio and TV Martí, and new rules to limit travel by Cuban diplomats in the United States.

''We are going to review the whole thing,'' Reich said. ``The problem is that we have relied entirely on one component of the policy, the embargo.''

He added that U.S. foreign policy has a variety of tools at its disposal, including ''political, economic, diplomatic, informational and military components,'' and that some of these may be employed.

Asked specifically about the trade sanctions, Reich said that ``we are taking a closer look at the efficiency of our economic sanctions. I don't think we are going to loosen them. Unless we have changes in Cuba, we are not.''

''There are some people who argue that economic sanctions alone don't hurt totalitarian countries, that they only hurt authoritarian countries -- that the more open the country, the more effective the sanctions are. They may have a point, but we are not going to replace the sanctions with nothing,'' he said.

'The objective is, as the president has said, to help bring about a rapid and peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba. There is equal emphasis in `rapid' and 'peaceful.' And we want a real transition. We don't want a continuation of the current failed political and economic system,'' Reich said.

Anti-embargo legislators, some of whom fiercely opposed Reich's nomination before he was given a recess nomination by Bush, are already expressing skepticism about the Cuba policy review.

''The policy review will not be fair, impartial or in the interest of the United States,'' said Marvin Fast, a spokesman for Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn.

''Moreover, Senator Dodd is troubled by the fact that one of the first issues Mr. Reich chooses to involve himself in since being appointed to the job is so fraught with potential conflicts of interest related to Mr. Reich's past business connections,'' he said.

U.S. officials and Reich supporters scoff at Dodd and other Democratic senators' references to Reich's previous work as a consultant for the Bacardi liquor company. Reich has been investigated for possible conflicts of interest in his new job and cleared of any suspicions, they say.

On other issues, Reich said his top priorities will include helping redress the recent setbacks of major democracies in the region and helping countries fight corruption.

''The emphasis will be on strengthening democracies,'' Reich said. ``That is supporting beleaguered democracies such as Colombia's, and supporting democratic and peaceful dialogue in other countries where democracy may be under attack.''

Asked about Venezuela, where he served as U.S. ambassador between 1986 and 1989, Reich echoed Secretary of State Colin Powell's recent statements about that country's populist president, Hugo Chávez.

''We are concerned about Chávez's statements and some of his actions,'' he said. ``We are concerned by the strange places that he visits, including Baghdad, Tripoli and Havana, and by the company that he keeps.''

"On Trade, Cuba is Not China"

Senator Jesse Helms

The New York Times June 24, 2000

Some lawmakers, including a number of Republicans, have argued in recent weeks that if Congress believes trade will promote democratic change in China, then why not adopt the same policy for Cuba? Here is why: Cuba is not China. The argument that American investment will democratize China has itself been wildly oversold. Beijing is doing everything in its power to dampen the impact of private investment: placing stringent control on the Internet (all users must register with the Public Security Bureau), and most recently declaring that it will insert "party cells" into every private business that operates in China. But regardless of how one feels about permanent normalized trade with China, there is simply no case to be made that investment would democratize Cuba.

Cuba has undertaken none of the market reforms that China has in recent years; there is no private property, and there are no entrepreneurs with whom to do business. The Fidel Castro regime maintains power by controlling every single aspect of Cuban life: access to food, access to education, access to health care, access to work.

This permits Castro to stifle any and all dissent. Any Cuban daring to say the wrong thing, by Castro's standards, loses his or her job. Anyone refusing to spy on a neighbor is denied a university education. Anyone daring to organize an opposition group goes to jail.

American investment cannot and will not change any of this. It cannot empower individual Cubans, or give them independence from the regime, because foreign investors in Cuba cannot do business with private citizens. They can do business only with Fidel Castro.

It is illegal in Cuba for anyone except the regime to employ workers. That means that foreign investors cannot hire or pay workers directly. They must go to the Cuban government employment agency, which picks the workers. The investors then pay Castro in hard currency for the workers, and Castro pays the workers in worthless pesos.

Here is a real-life example: Sherritt International of Canada, the largest foreign investor in Cuba, operates a nickel mine in Moa Bay (a mine, incidentally, which Cuba stole from an American company). Roughly 1,500 Cubans work there as virtual slave laborers. Sherritt pays Castro approximately $10,000 a year for each of these Cuban workers. Castro gives the workers about $18 a month in pesos, then pockets the difference.

The net result is a subsidy of nearly $15 million in hard currency each year that Castro then uses to pay for the security apparatus that keeps the Cubans enslaved. Those who advocate lifting the embargo speak in broad terms about using investment to promote democracy in Cuba. But I challenge them to explain exactly how, under this system, investment can do anything to help the Cuban people.

The anti-embargo crowd should drop its rhetoric about promoting democracy and be honest: the one reason for their push to lift sanctions on Cuba is to pander to well-intentioned American farmers, who have been misled by the agribusiness giants into believing that going into business with a bankrupt Communist island is a solution to the farm crisis in America.

Whoever has convinced farmers that their salvation lies in trade with Cuba has sold them a bill of goods. Cuba is desperately poor, barely able to feed its own people, much less save the American farmer.

Castro wants the American embargo lifted because he is desperate for hard currency. After the Soviet Union collapsed and Moscow's subsidies ended, Castro turned to European and Canadian investors to keep his Communist system afloat. Now he wants American investors to do the same. We must not allow that to happen.

Unfortunately, some in Washington are all too willing to give Castro what he wants. At the least they should stop pretending that they are doing this to promote Cuban democracy and American values.

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To affirm that by ending the embargo and with the interaction with the American tourists and businesses the results would be in anyway different to those obtained by the other 150 nations that have been dealing for 43 years with Castro, is to believe that freedom, democracy, and business’ acumen is a virus that can only be transmitted by contact with Americans.

In fact, those lobbying for the end of the embargo are aiding to keep in power a terrorist regime whose leader has pledged to destroy the U.S.

The truth of the mater is, as Senator Jesse Helms stated: "Unfortunately, some in Washington are all too willing to give Castro what he wants. At the least they should stop pretending that they are doing this to promote Cuban democracy and American values.” Send to jail those who travel to Cuba in violation of the Trading with the Enemy Act, the Cuban Democracy Act, and the Helms-Burton Act.

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