No one saw this coming when it came: the stop-the-presses agreement to normalize relations between the United States and Cuba. Whether you welcomed it or whether you were outraged by it, you were caught off guard. Whether you were Kathy Castor or Marco Rubio.
But what was really behind this unforeseen decision–after more than a half-century of Cold War time warp? Some context.
We knew the U.S. would likely be making at least some concession(s) leading up to April’s Summit of the Americas in Panama.
For the first time in memory, Cuba had been invited to the 34-nation gathering. New Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela had gone out of his way about the propriety and significance of the Cuba invite. The U.S., of course, was not pleased, and there was speculation about how President Barack Obama would–or should–handle it.
It was a given that there would be inevitably awkward, Obama-Raul Castro optics. Even worse was the possibility of embarrassing, loud lectures from the countries most stridently opposed to America’s Cuban policies–polices that are uniformly seen as indefensible among America’s hemispheric neighbors.
Concession, yes, but normalization? It was still blind-siding.
After all, we’re still talking about a pragmatic president with a track record of nothing beyond incremental progress on Cuba.
And speaking of incrementalism, I hearken back a few years for some additional context.
In 2007 I sat down in an Ybor City restaurant with Frank Sanchez, the former mayoral candidate who would later become Barack Obama’s Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade. He was then a key Obama liaison to the Hispanic community and a major Florida fundraiser. Sanchez had the future president’s ear.
After generic campaign talk about Florida and the I-4 Corridor, we got down to specific issues. Among them: How did Sen. Obama, who was pushing to make history as an African-American candidate, feel about Cuba? Would Cuba be part of a bigger historical pivot?
Sanchez chose his words carefully.
If the Castro government institutes a host of democratic reforms and releases political prisoners, he said, then an Obama administration would certainly be responsive. But first it needed to see signs of change.
As for pushing to lift the embargo? No, that was “turning on a dime.” And there would be no dime-turning on Cuba. Obama favored “incremental” steps. He considered the embargo as “leverage.”
I left thinking I could have been talking to a John McCain adviser. I didn’t hear anything new beyond the possibility of making travel a bit easier for Cuban-Americans.
So, the upcoming summit stage in Panama seemed likely set for softer rhetoric and maybe an “incremental” move or two. Perfuming-the-pig progress.
But then there’s a certain historical, political reality in this country.
The final two years of a two-term president is typically focused on foreign policy. Time to get out of the lame-duck weeds of domestic politics. Time, frankly, to take some legacy shots.
What with all the Amateur Hour fallout from health care reform, a Muddled East policy mired in mixed messages and compromised post-Newtown, gun-control priorities, the Obama legacy has been looking increasingly like: first black president. But that’s what it was the minute he took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2009.
Back to Cuba’s place in the equation.
It should have been low-hanging fruit all along, but the Obama Administration fared no better against the well-organized, well-motivated, well-financed anti-Castro Cuba lobby than its intimidated predecessors. The sovereign state of South Florida was still, inexplicably, dictating foreign policy on relations with Cuba. The debt, in effect, was still owed from The Bay of Pigs infamy.
But now it’s the “fourth quarter,” as the president has termed it.
Cuba now beckoned. There will eventually be a reset button on some American president’s watch. Might as well be this one’s.
And, arguably, it won’t be that long–as generational change becomes more pronounced in South Florida, as the Castro brothers inch closer to their biological expiration dates and as abnormal relations with Cuba are increasingly being seen as a counterproductive, vendetta-agenda Cold War relic.
The next big move, however, is not Obama’s.
Executive orders can’t carry the entire day. Congress controls funding for things such as embassies. Senate confirmation is required for ambassadorial nominations. Only an act of Congress can formally end the five-decade-old economic embargo. And who knows what geopolitical stunt may yet come out of Havana while a Castro-surnamed leader still presides.
But an endgame had been ineluctably approaching. Might as well accelerate the process in the name of legacy–and doing the right thing. Finally.