Normalizing relations with Cuba.

• Author: Kline, Michael
• Position: Report

By As a former senior operations officer in the CIA clandestine service, I have avidly followed Cuba-U.S. relations since shortly after the Fidel Castro takeover in 1959. Throughout much of this period I witnessed U.S. endeavors--through an economic embargo and international isolation--to overthrow Castro and, failing that, to foster a respect at home for human rights and at least to prevent him from exporting his revolution. After 50 years, it's clear that this U.S. policy to isolate and strangle the Castro regime economically has had mixed results at best, and served instead as Castro's justification for demonizing the United States and promoting his hemispheric and global ambitions.

I believe that circumstances have now changed sufficiently--for us and Cuba--to recommend significant modifications to that policy. The most obvious shift is the transition of power from Fidel to his evidently more pragmatic and measurably less ideological brother Raul. Cuba is hurting economically. The loss of military and economic assistance that followed the demise of the Soviet Union has accentuated Cuba's severe economic crisis, made even worse by three catastrophic hurricanes that battered the island this year. In the United States, the election of Barack Obama has weakened the position of the major exile political groups opposed to relaxing political and economic pressure on Cuba. Miami Cubans voted Democratic, helping Obama to win 57 percent of the Latino/Cuban vote in Florida.

Both countries have strong reasons for normalizing relations and breaking the cycle of mutually failed policies on terms favorable to both. I favor ending the embargo, not through one-sided concessions by the United States but as the product of serious direct diplomacy requiring the Cubans, among other things, to alter their human rights policy, including release of all political prisoners, and the end of censorship and state control over the media and free flow of information. The ultimate goal of any U.S. policy remains as always: eventual return of Cuba to democracy and the rule of law.

In exchange, the United States can negotiate issues of prime interest to the Cubans, such as closing the Guantanamo military base; removing Cuba from the State Department's State Sponsors of Terrorism List; ending restrictions on travel and remittances by Cuban Americans; reversing the ban...