The new Cuba divide.

• Author: Erikson, Daniel P.

THE U.S. embargo of Cuba has been an extraordinarily resilient foreign policy, able to weather diverse political trends and even historical eras without substantial challenge. Change is afoot, however, and the best evidence of that change may be found in Congress. In July 2001, the House of Representatives voted for the second consecutive year to cut off the funds to enforce travel restrictions to Cuba; key Senators pushed for even broader repeal of the sanctions. The September 11 attacks stunted this process, but not, it seems, for very long. On the one hand, a palpable sense of national crisis eclipsed any movement to normalize relations with Cuba, particularly in light of Fidel Castro's public criticism of the U.S.-led "war on terrorism." With the continued support of President Bush, the embargo seemed virtually unassailable. It was no small irony, therefore, that one of the chillier moments in U.S.-Cuban relations was suddenly interrupted by the first direct trade between the two countries in 38 years.

In November 2001, central Cuba was devastated by Hurricane Michelle, the most powerful storm to strike the island since the 1950s. V/hen the United States offered humanitarian assistance, Cuba responded by negotiating an all-cash food purchase, made possible by U.S. legislation passed the previous year. Within a month, several American companies had consummated a deal with Cuba valued at nearly $30 million. The trade included shipments of frozen chicken and corn symbolically selected from nine different states, and, rather odd for the launching of such routine cargo, it shipped off from New Orleans to Havana with the fanfare of a press conference on the dock. In Congress, moreover, the sale breathed new life into the broader debate over U.S. policy toward Cuba. Castro spent the early days of 2002 greeting visitors such as Republican Senators Arlen Specter and Lincoln Chafee and Democrat Maria Cantwell, while a separate delegation from the House of Representatives toured the island. With the impending retireme nt of Jesse Helms and other anti-communist stalwarts, it has suddenly become possible to ask once again: Can U.S. Cuba policy be refashioned with Fidel Castro still in power?

The simplest, if not especially satisfying, answer to this question is perhaps yes, perhaps no. Congress has tried to take matters into its own hands before. Throughout much of the 1990s, debate was polarized between anti-Castro hardliners who advocated tightening sanctions to hasten the collapse of Cuban communism and "normalizers" who believed that establishing economic and diplomatic ties to the United States was the best way to bring about change in Cuba. At first, the hardliners held sway, as illustrated by the two main pieces of legislation dealing with U.S. Cuba policy: the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 and the Helms-Burton Act of 1996. But the failure of these policies to induce substantive change in Cuba has gradually nurtured a search for alternative strategies. At the same time, new political forces have elbowed their way into the Cuba debate. Together, these developments have turned the previously stable world of U.S.-Cuba politics upside down. We have witnessed high-profile defections and unlikely alliances between Democrats and Republicans, humanitarians and free-traders, religious organizations and American farmers. The realignment of these alliances composes the new Cuba divide. To appreciate its novelty; it is worth a moment's reflection on how it has come to be.

The Politics of the Cuban Embargo

THE U.S. trade embargo of Cuba originated when President John F. Kennedy initiated the full embargo in 1962 through a presidential directive issued under the 1917 Trading With the Enemy Act. In 1963, the Treasury Department set forth the Cuban Asset Control Regulations, which further solidified many other aspects of the embargo, prohibiting all unlicensed financial transactions, forbidding direct or indirect imports from Cuba, and imposing a total freeze on Cuban government assets held in the United States. Through these regulatory initiatives, the Executive Branch cemented its power over U.S. Cuba policy, a dynamic that remained in place through the end of the Cold War. However, when the collapse of the Soviet Union deprived Cuba of an estimated $33 to $4.5 billion in annual subsidies, Cuba's teetering economy prompted congressional hardliners--with support from Cuban Miami--to tighten the screws. Thus, it is only within the last decade that the U.S. Congress has asserted itself as the primary arbiter of U.S . policy toward Cuba.

The signal indication of this shift was the passage of the aforementioned Cuban Democracy Act in 1992. Sponsored by then-Rep. Robert Torricelli (D-NJ), who represented a state with a large Cuban-American population, the bill...