U.S. President Barack Obama (L) shakes hands with Cuban President Raul Castro during the official memorial service for former South African President Nelson Mandela. U. S. officials announced on December 17, 2014 that the U.S. and Cuba would resume diplomatic relations and an American embassy would open in Havana, over 50 years after relations were severed in January 1961. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images WASHINGTON — Ending more than five decades of at times terrifying cold war politics, the United States has announced steps to establish an embassy in Cuba and open negotiations to normalize relations with Havana.
In announcing this sudden reopening of diplomatic relations with a country at the eye of the missile crisis that brought the world within a hair’s breadth of nuclear war, the White House admitted Wednesday in a statement that U.S. policy toward Cuba has been a failure.
Decades of a U.S. trade embargo and a policy of total isolation “have failed to accomplish our enduring objective of promoting the emergence of a democratic, prosperous, and stable Cuba,” the statement said.
Instead, the White House conceded, “long-standing U.S. policy toward Cuba has isolated the United States from regional and international partners, constrained our ability to influence outcomes throughout the Western Hemisphere, and impaired the use of the full range of tools available to the United States to promote positive change in Cuba.”
The statement continued, “Though this policy has been rooted in the best of intentions, it has had little effect — today, as in 1961, Cuba is governed by the Castros and the Communist party.”
U.S. President Barack Obama announced that the U.S. will begin normalization of diplomatic relations with Cuba. Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro relaxing at a sugar plantation near Havana, surrounded by children. (Elizabeth Frey/Getty Images)
The announcement came after Cuba released prisoner Alan Gross, 65, an American subcontractor for U.S. Aid who was arrested in 2009 for trying to bring satellite phones to Cuban. Cuba claimed he is a spy and sentenced him to 15 years in prison.
Gross flew back to the U.S. Wednesday morning. In response, the U.S. is releasing three Cubans accused of spying.
In stark contrast to Canada’s policy of continued diplomatic and commercial relations that has helped maintain a warm but guarded friendship particularly during the Pierre Trudeau years, the U.S. policy has been to drive that country into economic collapse.
Now the U.S. concedes that that policy has unnecessarily inflamed relations, increased tensions and harmed Cuba’s 11 million people.
“We cannot keep doing the same thing and expect a different result,” the White House said. “It does not serve America’s interests, or the Cuban people, to try to push Cuba toward collapse. We know from hard-learned experience that it is better to encourage and support reform than to impose policies that will render a country a failed state.”
U.S. President Barack Obama has for years hinted that he favours a more open and generous policy toward Cuba. During the 2012 election he told Miami’s 2 million Cuban American population that it is time to rethink U.S. policy.
As a new generation of Cuban Americans takes hold, memories of the Cuban revolution, the spectacular failure of the C.I.A.-led Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the 13-day Cuban missile crisis of 1962 have faded along with the political will to continue Cuba’s isolation.
U.S. President Barack Obama announced that the U.S. will begin normalization of diplomatic relations with Cuba. circa 1965: Cuban revolutionary and prime minister Fidel Castro making an address in Cuba. (Keystone/Getty Images)
Fidel Castro, his brother Raul and Che Guevara all became legendary figures in the Latin American communist revolutionary movements of the times.
But since the end of the Soviet Union and its communist party, the Cuban government of Fidel Castro became increasingly isolated and lost the financial support of Russia.
When Fidel fell ill and relinquished the presidency to Raul, the country showed signs of wanting to reopen relations with the U.S. Still, it remained unyielding in its rejection of capitalism and democratic institutions.
Some Republicans immediately condemned the new policies.
“I want the Cuban people to have freedom and democracy and then they can chose any economic model they want,” Senator Marco Rubio of Florida said. “Nothing that is happening here will help that cause. On the contrary, I think it will set it back. It is a lifeline for the Castro regime that will allow them to become more profitable because they control every sector of the economy, and allow them to become an even more permanent fixture for decades to come.”
Normalizing relations, however, does not mean a reduction in all trade and travel barriers, the White House said.
Authorized items for export to Cuba will be restricted to certain building materials for private residential construction, private sector goods and agricultural equipment for small farmers.
The U.S. will also open banking transactions including credit and debit cards.
wmarsden@postmedia.com
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