Life Support for Castro Redux: Clinton Doesn’t Have Time for Blue-Ribbon Commission, Goes Direct to Gutting the Embargo
(Washington, D.C.): Until yesterday’s announcement by President Clinton that he was easing
the
economic sanctions against Fidel Castro’s regime, it appeared that proponents of this course of
action would have to content themselves with creating and awaiting the findings of a blue-ribbon,
“Bipartisan Commission on Cuba.” As the William J. Casey Institute noted in November 1998, 1
this commission would have been a completely “wired” affair — designed to provide political
cover for an Administration anxious to effect the normalization of relations with Communist
Cuba.
Although the Commission’s advocates are making a fuss about the President’s avowed
rejection
of their proposal (a transparent sop to Cuban-Americans and others still opposed to Castro’s
tyranny and determined to bring it to an early end), 2 the
reality is quite different: The Clinton
team has effectively dispensed with the need for such a time-consuming endeavor, moving
directly — if piecemeal — in the direction of providing life-support to Fidel’s regime.
One
unnamed senior official explained the Administration’s thinking in a quote in today’s
Washington
Post: “There is already a bipartisan consensus” supporting such policy liberalization.
The Camel’s Nose
Although Mr. Clinton evidently believes the time is ripe for undercutting the embargo against
the
Castro government — after all, at this juncture there are no looming elections that might be
swayed by blow-back over such a move — his Administration has decided for the moment to
adopt a salami-slicing approach. It has thus approved only an increase in the amount of
remittances U.S. sources may send to “family and friends” among the Cuban people. It has also
okayed increased interaction between the two nations in the form of mail service, flights, sporting
events, etc.
The party line, as expressed by Secretary of State Madeline Albright, is that such initiatives
will
“strengthen support for the Cuban people.” In fact, it is unclear that expanded financial
transfers and other such activities will actually improve the plight of Cuban citizens and
non-governmental organizations, of which there are precious few. Instead, it will have
the
effect of seriously — if gradually — undermining U.S. and what remains of
international —
support for the economic isolation of those imprisoning this captive nation.
A Bill of Particulars
Tragically, Cuba has done little — if anything — to earn the new benefits offered by President
Clinton. The indictment of Fidel’s outrageous behavior includes the following:
- Cuba continues to serve as one of the primary conduits (via its airspace and sea lanes) for
South American drugs targeted for distribution in the United States. 3
- Cuba (and, for that matter, Russia) continues to monitor sensitive commercial and
security-relevant communications along the East Coast and into the Midwest through massive,
technologically-advanced signals intelligence facilities located in Lourdes.
Such capabilities
also lend themselves to use in offensive information warfare activities. 4
- There remain indications that Cuba has embarked on a potentially deadly effort to develop
biological weaponry and delivery systems. 5
Worse still, the misguided and inevitable effect of this policy easing will be to signal a
“green
light” to European and South and Central American governments — not to mention Canada — that
the bazar is now open in Cuba. Over the past few years, at least some of these nations have
behaved relatively cautiously vis a vis their embrace of this totalitarian state. In the wake of
yesterday’s announcement by President Clinton, however, it is predictable that the
floodgates
will start opening for foreign investment and projects spearheaded by foreign firms. We
can also anticipate an acceleration of Cuba’s largest creditors in the Paris Club to reschedule more
than $10 billion in defaulted hard currency debt. 6
Equally predictable is the effect: Such assistance will provide crucial life support to an
otherwise
destitute Cuban government. The notion that additional foreign assistance and investment — even
that provided ostensibly for humanitarian and individual family purposes — will elude Castro’s
stranglehold on every aspect of the Cuban economy is fatuous nonsense.
Especially frightening is the prospect that President Clinton’s evident determination to
“normalize” relations with Cuba will likely embolden prospective foreign suppliers to take more
seriously Havana’s and Moscow’s entreaties to fund the completion of two
irretrievably-flawed,
Soviet-era nuclear reactors near Juragua, Cuba. It is worth recalling that experts across
the
political spectrum — including those of the U.S. government — have concluded that, if these
reactors are brought on-line, it is a question of when, not if, a nuclear accident will
occur. If it
does, the result will be the release of a radioactive plume upwind from much of the U.S. mainland,
with some 50-80 million Americans expected to be exposed to potentially dangerous levels of
radiation. 7
Bottom Line
It adds insult to injury that the latest Clinton opening to Cuba, offering political legitimacy
and
economic life support to its despotic regime, comes at a time when Fidel’s exhausted
ideologies
and policies are on their last legs. This point is made trenchantly in a feature article by
Senate
Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-NC) which appears — of all
places —
in the current issue of the Council of Foreign Relations’ Foreign Affairs Magazine:
- “As for Cuba, until 1991, the U.S. embargo was offset by $5 billion to $7 billion in
Soviet subsidies. Only without them has the embargo begun to take a toll on Castro’s
regime. The moment the embargo kicked in, Castro’s efforts to finance Marxist
insurgencies stopped, allowing the nearly complete democratic transformation of the
Western Hemisphere. Castro’s regime is teetering; unless America gives up its
leverage by unconditionally lifting the embargo, his successors will be anxious to
exchange normalized relations with the United States for a democratic transition in
Cuba.” 8
Sen. Helms’s committee — and others on both sides of Capitol Hill responsible for U.S.
national security interests — must examine carefully what the President’s latest troubling foreign
policy initiative portends for democracy in Cuba and for American interests. If rigorously done,
such a review will show this action to have been premature and
counterproductive.
1See the Casey Institute’s Perspective entitled
Life Support for Castro: New Commission on
Cuba, Paris Club ‘Rescheduling’ of Havana’s Defaulted Debt (
1998).
2The crocodile tears being shed seem approximately as disingenuous
as the claim that one of
Castro’s most assiduous apologists and most tireless promoters of normalization with Cuba, State
Department Policy Planning Staff Director Morton Halperin, was not involved in the President’s
decision.
3 See the Center’s Press Release entitled
Secretary Cohen, Casey Institute Symposia Agree:
Castro’s Cuba Remains An Asymmetric Threat (No.
98-R 80, 7 May 1998).
4See Casey Institute Perspectives entitled
Guess Who Else Was Listening To Newt Gingrich’s
Phone Call — And To Those Of Millions Of Other Americans Every Day? (
January 1997); and Asymmetric Threat: Defector Confirms Moscow’s Lourdes
Complex In
Cuba Compromised Sensitive Gulf War Battle Plans (
5 See the Center’s Press Release entitled
Secretary Cohen, Casey Institute Symposia Agree:
Castro’s Cuba Remains An Asymmetric Threat (No.
98-R 80, 7 May 1998).
6See the Casey Institute’s Perspective entitled
Life Support for Castro: New Commission on
Cuba, Paris Club ‘Rescheduling’ of Havana’s Defaulted Debt (
1998).
7 See Casey Institute Perspectives entitled
Will Moscow Be Allowed To Recreate In Cuba The
Nuclear Nightmare It Has Bequeathed To Bulgaria? (
The Allies Must Demonstrate Their Commitment To Changing Cuba By Halting The Cuban
‘Chernobyl-In-The-Making’ (No. 97-C 3, 6
January 1997); and Clinton Legacy Watch #19:
Will Gore-Chernomyrdin At Last Put A Halt To Russia’s Dangerous Nuclear Sales To Cuba,
Iran? (No. 98-D 40, 6 March 1998).
8 Sen. Helm’s extraordinary article, entitled “What Sanctions
Epidemic?” appears in the
January/February 1999 issue of Foreign Affairs.
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