COMMENTARY Cuba should not be on the U.S.'s state sponsors of terrorism list. Dissidents should not be in Cuba's prisons. A new deal gives Havana and President Trump a better opportunity to fix that.
A longstanding maxim about Cuba’s communist regime is that it never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Cuba’s critics say it is so spellbound by its own dogmatic righteousness that it rarely sees any reason in give-and-take bargaining circumstances to give at all.
That was apparently the case two years ago, when the Biden Administration, with Vatican mediation, raised the likelihood of removing Cuba from the U.S.’s state sponsors of terrorism list if the regime greenlighted the release of a large portion of the island’s more than a thousand political prisoners.
The regime fumed that President Biden’s predecessor, former President and now President-elect Donald Trump, had unjustly pasted Cuba on the SST blacklist — so removing it created no obligation for Cuba to free unjustly incarcerated dissidents.
READ MORE: U.S. Cuba policy can cut out the Miami middleman and still consult Cuban exiles
Since then, however, Cuba has kept sinking deeper into the economic abyss. And that crisis admittedly hasn’t been helped by the fact that its SST stigma makes foreign banks and investors as uncomfortable as hypochondriacs in a mosh pit.
So, here we are this week, just days before Biden leaves the White House and Trump steps in again, with Cuba suddenly agreeing to gradually release 553 political prisoners — as Biden suddenly removes Cuba from the SST list.
The Cubans of course insist the former has nothing to do with the latter, that opening the cell doors resulted instead from a deal with the Pope. OK, the Pope.
If this moment seems to indicate anything, it’s that Cuba’s comunistas may realize they’re running out of opportunities they can afford to miss.
Biden meanwhile is also lifting Trump’s sanctions on the military-run companies that dominate what’s left of Cuba’s economy. And he’s re-suspending the provision of the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba, which Trump had activated, that permits Cuban-Americans to sue for compensation for property in Cuba confiscated by the communist revolution.
The diplomats are calling all of this “gestures of goodwill,” not quid pro quo. Fine. But this turn of events now raises a question on this side of the Florida Straits:
Will the new Trump Administration miss its own opportunity?
Reversing the reversals
Trump’s lieutenants are already roaring that as soon as he’s sworn in on Monday, they can start the executive process of reversing Biden’s Cuba reversals. They certainly can. But — if their goal really is desperately needed political and economic change in Cuba — should they?
If this moment seems to indicate anything, it’s that Cuba’s comunistas may realize they’re running out of opportunities they can afford to miss.
Agreeing this way to release more than half the regime’s political prisoners — including some of the hundreds rounded up for taking part in unprecedented, island-wide anti-government demonstrations on July 11, 2021 — is fairly uncharacteristic. Enough so that it suggests a crack in la revolución’s uncompromising façade.
So it may make more strategic sense for the new Trump White House to keep Cuba off the SST — particularly since the Cubans are right when they argue they never should have been on it in the first place.
The Cuban regime is a lot of things — iron-fisted human rights oppressor, obstinately incompetent economic steward — but it does not meet the definition of a state sponsor of terrorism. Branding it one as a favor to hardline Cuban exiles, aside from gratuitously placing an added economic burden on folks inside Cuba, seemed more like a cavalier political abuse of a serious U.S. foreign policy tool.
Trump should now reconsider repeating it — especially since rescinding it just seemed to have proven effective in extracting a rare human rights concession from Havana. Why not push for more of the same?
He should also consider this: if Havana suddenly pulls away from releasing the prisoners because the U.S. re-applies the SST listing, the optics — Cuban Cubans remaining behind bars while Miami Cubans remain behind Trump — won’t be good for him and his team, including his Miami Cuban nominee for Secretary of State, Sen. Marco Rubio.
Then again, the optics would be bad for Havana, too, since the regime denies its removal from the SST roster played any role in prompting it to open Cuba’s cell doors.
As a result, “Trump and the Cubans both risk looking ridiculous if they back away from this,” argues former Democratic Miami Congressman and Cuban-American Joe Garcia, who helped push for the arrangement.
Maybe. But remember, this is U.S.-Cuba relations — where opportunities go to be missed.
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