Printable Version

U.S. Cuba Policy — Crisis vs. Compromise

A CNP Panel Discussion With Jeff Flake, Jim Jones, Bill Delahunt, Phil Peters, and Mark Falcoff

July 20, 2004

Summary

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Transcript

Tim Roemer: I want to welcome everyone on behalf of the Center for National Policy and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University to a forum on US Cuba Policy. We couldn’t have a better panel nor could we have better timing to discuss this very important foreign policy issue for the United States. I have to open, before I thank many people here and introduce Mo Steinbruner, the Vice President at the Center.

With the Center I often travel, and have been traveling frequently, and have been asked many questions about the 9/11 Commission. I was recently traveling and talking in detail for about thirty five minutes, maybe too much detail, about the Commission, and I was done speaking and walking off stage, and the person who introduced me walked up to me and said, “Mr. Roemer, you have a very big fan who has been watching the hearings here. He’s 80 years old, quite sick, and it would make his day if you would talk to him.” So we’re always flattered to get those kinds of compliments, so I went over to him, and bent down and said, “Sir, I hope you get better.” He looked at me and he said, “Tim Roemer, I just listened to that long speech you just gave. I hope you get better.” (Laughter) We can always get better in our presentations, formulations, and announcements. I’m not sure we could get a better panel here today.

We have many distinguished people here that Mo will introduce. I simply want to thank three of my former colleagues. Jim Jones, who will be moderating. He is a former Congressman from the great state of Oklahoma. We’re delighted to have him here. Jeff Flake, Congressman from Arizona. Jeff and I worked together where we started our bipartisanship in the Senate working for a US Senator. And a dear friend of mine, Bill Delahunt. Bill and I worked on a number of important pieces of legislation, including some legislation that created a memorial to the John Adams family. He is a Congressman from Quincy, Massachusetts. I’m very happy to have all of them here. I’m also delighted to be working with Lawson Bader. Lawson, if you’ll wave your hand and let everybody know who you are. Many of you know Lawson from his work at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, he does great work up here on Capitol Hill—the Capitol Hill Retreat Program that we do in February, and Rob Rafferty is here with the Center as well.

I do want to say briefly before I introduce Mo, that we now since 1959 when Castro took over in Cuba, fifty years, nine presidents later, we continue to have an identical foreign policy. Now, many of you in the audience don’t remember the Cuban Missile Crisis in the early 1960s, and about 65% of the people in the US right now weren’t born during that time period. But there was probably very good reason to have this policy—when the Soviet Union was a menacing threat to the United States, and threatened to have missiles pointed at the United States and have Cuba as the base point.

Since that day, things have changed dramatically. Now, the former Soviet Union is an ally of the US, but we still treat Cuba, a small tiny island about 90 miles off the coast of Florida, basically the same way—with this failed policy. I can’t think of an issue that is more important in terms of bipartisanship in Congress, other than national security and intelligence reform, than addressing some of the issues in a bipartisan way that this [Cuba] Working Group has done—that Bill Delahunt and Jeff Flake have started. They have started more than a discourse, more than Democrats and Republicans working together, but they have annually tried to attach four or five amendments to the Treasury- Postal Service Appropriations Bill, to forge this new consensus and this new debate, and have not only had the debate, they have succeeded in vote after vote after vote.

This is truly extraordinary today, in today’s environment when so many people, pundits, and politicians say Congress is terribly broken, its oversight doesn’t work, it’s not bipartisan, and it’s poisonous and venomous with its relationships with each other. This is a shining example of bipartisanship and success in trying to forge new policies that is certainly an ideal for the Center for National Policy. Peter Kovler and David Geanacopoulos, two of our distinguished Board Members, are here and those are certainly things that they remind us of all the time—that we need to spark debate and forge consensus, work in bipartisan ways to try and get new policies considered before the United States Congress.

That’s what we’re doing today, and I would encourage people to take a look at the Center for National Policy’s report on Cuba in January of 2003. Many of the recommendations in this report are absolutely fresh and relevant today, given the challenges with changing our policy. As I get ready to introduce Mo Steinbruner, I just want to say one thing about my friends Jeff Flake and Bill Delahunt. In 1946, Richard Nixon first came to Congress and served briefly in Congress. And he said reportedly to David Gergen before he died, that one of his proudest moments was when Truman came to Congress with the Marshall Plan and there was only 18% approval. Nobody wanted to support the Marshall Plan. Truman went up to Congress to work with Democrats and Republicans, tried to forge this consensus to put forward this brand new policy that eventually worked to help rebuild Europe.

Nixon said later before he died, “It was a tough vote,” but when he rose to cast his vote for that plan, he looked across the aisle and saw John F. Kennedy, also as a new member of Congress, on his feet to vote for that plan. And he said, “That bipartisanship was one of my crowning achievements as a public servant.” These two members coming together, and I can't say enough about…maybe Delahunt and Flake might run for President someday, I don’t want to start any rumors, Delahunt’s very ambitious, but I just want to say that this bipartisan working group actually has had a profound impact on the discussion of policy, and will continue to move the Executive branch forward in a positive way, and eventually succeed in the next couple of years. We can’t say enough about their working together to try to achieve this.

I now introduce the Vice President of the Center for National Policy, someone who has worked very assiduously on the Cuba paper and the Cuba policy. She’s traveled to Cuba and has done great, fantastic work for our Center, Mo Steinbruner.

Maureen Steinbruner: Thanks very much, Tim. Since nobody introduced Tim Roemer – he needs no introduction, particularly this week – as someone who has gotten to work with him over the past nine months that I am extremely impressed and extremely grateful that he could be with us at the Center for National Policy. You’ll be hearing more from him all week, I believe.

I was thinking about the Cuban Missile Crisis as well this morning. I guess it’s inevitable. I think Jim Jones was in law school. I was in college with his wife. And most of the people in this room probably weren’t born yet. So, it is a long time ago, and Tim’s mentioned Richard Nixon. One of the things that has happened in the meantime is that Richard Nixon as President made a strategic decision to normalize relations with China—very tough, very important. The Vietnam War ended, and President Reagan made a strategic decision to start engaging with Vietnam. The Soviet Union ended and President Clinton made a strategic decision to establish formal relations with Vietnam. And then a lot of things in the meantime. Globalization replaced the Cold War as a central concern of US policy. Of course 9/11 happened and everything since then. But, as Tim said, Cuba is where it was. It reminds me a little like those cars you see on the streets in Havana—the vintage cars. Policy is lovingly maintained, gets a new tune up every four years or so, has great nostalgia value, day to day it fills a purpose in the absence of something better, you know it’s not very functional and it could totally break down at any time.

Thinking about this, the Center for National Policy assembled a distinguished group of Americans to look at Cuba today, to look at the world today, to look at policy, and to look at options. I’d like to recognize Harriet Fulbright, who was a member of the group who is here today and played a very important role. We were looking for options that would be politically viable or at least politically plausible. With Jim Jones’ good efforts, we were able to include four Cuban Americans in our group – two who were basically in favor of ending the embargo altogether, and two who were open to discussing change but were basically reluctant to accept the idea.

We had two very different arguments coming together about how to get to the same ends basically. And we subtitled this event today “Crisis or Compromise” and the compromise we were talking about is political compromise; something that works, that serves US interests. Since we issued our report, in which we called for a compromise, principled engagement and negotiating engagement, lots of things have happened. There has been some change in Cuba policy very recently, not obviously in the direction that we were looking for at the time. In the meantime, there has been more intensified movement here in Congress in the direction of a different policy. Though, with that in mind, I think the timing here is excellent. There’s an excellent panel here today, which I will turn over to Jim.

After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Jim Jones found himself at age 28 as appointments secretary to Lyndon Johnson in the White House, beginning a long career of government service. He was the youngest person to serve in that job, which now we call chief of staff. He served as a Member of the US House from 1973-1987, and was Chairman of the Budget Committee. When he left Congress, he served for a while as head of the American Stock Exchange, and then President Clinton appointed him to serve as Ambassador to Mexico. He did that from 1993-1997, very important years. The Peso collapse, the passage and implementation of NAFTA, and new cooperative efforts to combat drug trafficking. Jim Jones is one of those people who manages to get to a result, have everybody think that they brought him there, and get everyone smiling while he does it. So, I look forward to the rest of the discussion. Jim Jones…

Jim Jones: Mo, thank you very much. Let me congratulate Mo Steinbruner for her leadership at the Center for National Policy, as well as Tim Roemer who is the President, for not only what they are doing at CNP, but in Tim’s case his enormously effective work at the 9/11 Commission which recently issued its interim report.

It’s a pleasure to help moderate this panel. I look here at the audience, and I think back to the way I started out in Washington as a House Congressional Staffer. And the same is true now as it was then. You invite great speakers, a very interesting issue, and free food, you get a nice turnout. It brings back many good memories for me. Mo mentioned the Commission that we had under the CNP’s leadership on Cuba, Harriet Fulbright being a very important member of that. We issued that report last year, I noticed it at the desk out front, and I commend it to you again. As Mo said, much of what we recommended is still applicable.

In essence it was to have a policy of constructive engagement to recognize that the Castro regime will end at some point. The question being, what kind of position will the United States be in after that? After we issued that report, we were somewhat optimistic that some of the things could be implemented—especially because of the great leadership of Congressmen Flake and Delahunt, who have now forged a bipartisan majority in Congress to change our policies at least in some direction. And then, as often happens at least in the past four years, Fidel Castro himself undercut all the good work that was done with the imprisonment of the dissidents, and now the Bush administration has come forward with their policies in the last couple of months to tighten their restrictions on Cuba a great deal.

I noticed that a poll has been passed out from the Latin America Working Group, showing a recent poll in Florida among Cuban Americans that shows a great disagreement with the latest policies. It shows that the vote that President Bush received from the Cuban Americans in 2000, 82%, has fallen to 66%. That drop hasn’t gone anywhere yet and so it’s up for grabs. Politics and the Cuba issue will continue to be in issue in Florida, which is one of the great swing states, as you know.

What we want to do today, is to have a few brief opening comments from our panel, and then a dialogue and question and answer session with you. To start off as has already been mentioned, Jeff Flake, Congressman from Arizona, Republican side of the aisle. He is co-chair of the Cuba working group here in the House. He is a member of the Judiciary Committee, International Relations Committee, the Committee on Resources. But he’s shown leadership on this issue at a time when it’s been very lonely to be a leader. So, Jeff, would you lead us off.

Jeff Flake: Well thank you.

Jones: You can tell that Bill Delahunt is still an active politician. When I was introduced, I forgot to lead the applause for myself. I’m an inactive politician.

Flake: Thank you very much. I especially appreciate working with such good people. As Tim mentioned, he and I go back a long way, and to be able to work with the good people here at the Center and others, and Bill Delahunt. People often ask how’d you get started in this. How’d a guy from Arizona so far from Cuba get involved? I always say that I took a poll of Cuban Americans in my district and both of them said, “Move ahead. Do what you’re doing. We like it.” But for me, it goes a little further than that. I enjoy being around when Bill Delahunt is right on something. There’s a saying that even a blind squirrel finds a nut, but I really do enjoy it. In fact, when we have amendments on the floor and debates on the floor on this issue, I usually call my wife afterward and say, “How’d it go. What do you think?” She’ll always say, “Well, you were okay, but Bill Delahunt was very good.” Bill tends to enliven the debate and certainly hits the right points every time. I enjoy working with him. I don’t know how it’s affected my mobility within the Republican party or with the leadership but I will say that with the Congressional baseball team that I was moved to left field this year. I wonder if that has something to do with this.

To me, it’s an issue of freedom. These sanctions that we impose on Cuba, in particular the travel ban, is a sanction on Americans and their freedom to travel and not Cubans and certainly not Fidel. He is not missing many meals. He’s doing just fine under these sanctions and in fact, I would argue, is doing just fine because of them. If you go to Cuba, and over to Havana and the US Interests Section, you’ll see it’s a staging point for protest. The Cuban Government will stage these 100,000 person protests right in front of the US Interests Section. And that’s not by coincidence. That’s really helped him, enabled him to stay in power.

He can blame somebody—socialism would be working fine were it not for this embargo, this blockade. And you see this statue of Jose Marti, the founder of Cuba independence, with a baby in his arms, which is supposed to be Elian Gonzalez. He’s pointing with a sneer over at the US interests section. And that summarizes the policy toward the US; it’s basically “blame us” and we allow that to happen. The joke in Cuba is of course, Jose Marti is telling the child, “that’s where you get your visa.” Be that as it may, I think the politics of Florida are at the forefront here.

My own belief is that the Bush administration, certainly with the new regulations that have been proffered, has passed the tipping point in Florida where it’s a net minus politically. Some of us felt that we may have hit that point before, but certainly with the new implementation of these restrictions. The other day, we had a vote to block the implementation of these new restrictions, a vote that was passed. And I’ve always said, and I’m sure Bill would agree with me, if we had a secret ballot on any of these votes, we’d pick up 100 more. There are very few on the merits that would vote against these amendments. We plan several more.

We could have a vote in the Appropriations Committee this week. If we get to the floor, we’ll likely have amendments on specific enforcement actions. For example, under the new regulations, someone, a Cuban American in Florida, if their mother is terminally ill, and they have visited her in the last three years, they could not go to her funeral if she dies. We could, for example, have an amendment naming the person that can travel to Cuba to visit terminally ill relatives. Say, “none of the funds expended could be used to prevent so and so from visiting Cuba at this time.” The effort is to highlight this policy, and the absurdity of this policy. And we’re strategizing and thinking about what we’re going to do if it does get to the floor. There is a possibility that this will be dealt with in an omnibus bill—that has its own possibilities as well. So, we’re actively strategizing and thinking about how we can move this policy forward. I’ll end there, and I look forward to hearing from the other panelists and answering any questions that you might have. So, thank you for having me here.

Jones: Thank you very much. Our next speaker is the other co-Chairman of the Cuba Working Group in the House: Congressman Bill Delahunt of Massachusetts. He also serves on the International Relations Committee and the Judiciary Committee and has really been a leader along with Jeff Flake in moving this policy forward. Bill Delahunt…and I’m going to lead the applause.

Bill Delahunt: Jim, I’m sure you’re aware that I led the applause for Jeff Flake because I knew I was next. I’ll try to be briefer than Tim Roemer in his introductory remarks. Tim Roemer speaking for thirty-five minutes—that’s short. Seriously, I’d like to acknowledge publicly, and I think I speak for every member of the House of Representatives that served with Tim during his tenure here in Congress, that we are genuinely proud of him. He clearly was a leader when he was here, and he continues that leadership in a very important role on the 9/11 Commission, and you make us proud, Tim.

And I have to say, it is a lot of fun working with Jeff Flake. Jeff, in his youth, was the director of the Barry Goldwater Institute. I, on the other hand, was co-chair of Students for Jack Kennedy for President in 1960. I think that really underscores where we come from on this particular issue. But it brings us to a point, and that point is something that Jeff alluded to: freedom, particularly as it relates to the travel issue. We are both passionate about individual liberties for Americans. The reality is that a fundamental American right is the right to travel.

There are many people in this audience that are familiar with the reality that you can get a flight to Beijing, and if the North Koreans allow you to enter, you can visit Pyongyang. And clearly, the same is true with Iran.

As we look at our international relations and whom we recognize, and we put it in the context of human rights, and a certain moral aspect or quality to these relationships, we cannot forget that today we recognize nations such as Turkmenistan, where the leader decided to change the month of January to name it after himself. Since he was such a devoted son, he changed June to name it after his mother. I think the best description of this man is despot, thug, etc. words that are currently spoken on the floor to describe Fidel Castro. Currently, in the war on terror, we are embracing the likes of the leader of Uzbekistan who has imprisoned 6,000 men and women in a gulag somewhere in Uzbekistan for political crimes much like those crimes that the dissidents were charged with in April 2003. Again, let’s not lose sight of the fact that this is about freedom; our freedoms, the freedoms that our forefathers have fought for. Let me just briefly comment for a moment on the change that I have seen.

Jeff and I have inherited a lot of hard work that was done by individual members. I’m thinking of David Skaggs, for example, who year after year, would stand up on the floor of the House and file an amendment to cut the funding for TV Marti—that TV station that continues to be in search of an audience. But there were other voices that spoke out in their time, I think courageously, and they were very much alone. But on a bus in Havana with Phil Peters, the idea of a coordinated effort among people who shared the same concerns that Jeff and I spoke of, about freedom for Americans, that particular conversation gave birth to the concept of the Cuba Working Group.

Clearly, the results speak for themselves. The vote margins are significant, the sentiment in Congress is overwhelming, for the end of the travel ban, specifically. And I dare say, we have achieved a critical mass in terms of trending toward normalization. What’s happening however, at this particular moment in terms of our relationship with Cuba, is a development that will accelerate that change. It has already been referenced in terms of the polling data. Clearly, there is a generational change between those who came before the 1980s, and those who came post-1980. They are dramatic.

And I dare say, that change will be accelerated by the promulgation of the recent OFAC regulations, which Jeff described, I think in very human terms. One can only imagine both parents dying in a single year. If you are a Cuban American, I guess you have to make a painful decision if you want to attend your mother’s funeral or your father’s funeral. That has outraged the Cuban American community. I concur with Jeff. I think the Bush administration has gone past a point, and I believe it will impact the vote that is generated from the Cuban American community in Florida. I would suggest that we should all be aware of the fact that Al Gore got, I think it was 16 or 17% of the vote in 2000.

I’ll make a prediction now. I think because of the actions of this particular administration, Kerry will exceed that comfortably and could very well take 25% of the Cuban American vote—because of the outrage it provoked. I believe it was a serious political miscalculation by this White House. But, I believe in terms of policy considerations, that it will accelerate a fundamental change in the relationship between Cuba and the U.S. And finally, American civil liberties will be restored and hopefully that will result in a benefit for the Cuban people. Thank you.

Jones: Thank you very much. Now our next two speakers for remarks will be two people who have been most helpful to the CNP Commission on Cuba Policy and the Cuba Working Group in the House. The first would be Phil Peters, Vice President of the Lexington Institute. And the second will be Mark Falcoff. Phil has also been advisor to the Council on Foreign Relations Cuba Task Force and he has been published widely in newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and so forth. So Phil Peters, the microphone is yours.

Phil Peters: Thank you, Ambassador. Thank you, Mo. Thanks, everyone for having me here. Mo asked us to comment on where the Cuba policy debate will go. I’ll try to do that—it’s kind of hard in that we’re in an election year. One hopes that at the end of the year, regardless of how the election turns out, we’ll sit back and reflect on where things are and what our national interest is with regard to Cuba. And to do that, it’s useful to think about where we are now, and I’d like to go more deeply into the issues that the members of Congress have raised, because I think we’re into some new territory in Cuba policy and it’s worth reflecting on.

I’ll start by remembering a very dear old professor that I had who taught not far from here, Luis Aguilar. I say old, but he is still alive and very young at heart and young at mind. He wrote an article in the Spanish version of the Miami Herald a few years ago, when the food and medicine debate was up, and it was called, “Re-evaluating the Embargo.” He took a hypothetical case about a state of war, whether it would be justified to bomb a city and bomb civilians, if it would be assured that it would bring the war to a conclusion. Now, like all of us who attended that great Jesuit university, Georgetown, he was I think, thinking back to what the Jesuits call “Just War Theory” and how Christians grapple with the dilemma of how you can justify taking tough measures or even war in order to bring about a better result.

What he was getting at in that column, was that it’s not enough to have good reason to go to war—in our case to think that the Castro regime is not a good regime and that it’s good to replace Communism. He was thinking back to the Christian thinking that if you’re going to go to war, you’ve got to have a likelihood that you’re going to succeed if you’re going to inflict all of the damage of war. You’ve got to conduct yourself in a way that you avoid damage to civilians and pain to civilians. And if you do inflict damage on civilians, you very well better be sure that you’re going to win, and that it’s going to be as short as possible. That’s the gist of what he was talking about.

Why am I bringing this up? Because this is the new territory we’re in. Obviously, we’re not at war and the economic sanctions aren’t exactly analogous to war, but we are targeting civilians now. This is what the Members here alluded to, and I think it’s worth pointing out that in the recommendations of the President’s Commission on Cuba that have now been implemented, we have new measures that it’s hard to find parallel anywhere in our economic sanctions where we’re directly targeting families. We are directly targeting families from helping each other across the Florida Strait, from visiting each other, from sending packages or money to each other. So that, if you have an 83 year old aunt for example in Cuba, you cannot visit her, you cannot send her any money, you cannot send her a package with anything at all in it, and if she dies, you can’t go to Cuba to make sure that she has a dignified Mass and a dignified burial. You can just forget it. That’s the sanctions that we’ve put in place, among many other things.

We’ve now reached a point where the State Department, having put some of these sanctions in place, is now re-thinking some of them. So now, when it comes to packages that families can send to each other, yes you can send food and band-aids and Tylenol, but no you can’t send shirts, and seeds, and a fishing pole to your grandpa. And maybe you can send soap or deodorant or tampons. This is what they’re pondering. I submit to you, when you’re pondering things like that, when this is the pinnacle of our diplomacy here where we’re trying to figure out what kinds of things can go in gift packages, you’re really at a point where you’ve got to say that this model is exhausted.

In Cuba, people who are critical of the government say, “the model is exhausted”, and of course, they’re referring to the model of Communism or at least the variant of it that is practiced there. But I think that the model has been exhausted here too – the model being the one that we have pursued for so many years now, since the cold war ended of trying to bring about political change by starving the Cuban government of hard currency. I think we have enough of a record to know that that does not work. Now, we are just adding to the variations of this model with sanctions on families, by eliminating people to people contact, by limiting educational visits so that unless you’re there for a whole semester, we won’t let Americans go on educational programs. No high school kids period. Nobody in the universities, unless they’re there for a full semester.

Obviously, this kind of thing won’t work. It sends a message to Cuba that the whole totality of our sanctions that as the Catholic Bishops once said in one of their Pastoral Letters, that we’re trying to use hunger and want to drive the Cuban people to revolt. If there’s one thing that we’ve seen in all of this time of sanctions, that doesn’t work. They’re not prone to do that—not even ten years ago when the economic crisis was absolutely horrendous.

It doesn’t take much study or sophistication to think of what the other model is. We just got through mourning Reagan. So many who eulogized him talked about the success he had in ending the Cold War. Just think back to the way he dealt with “The Evil Empire.” It was through contact, it was through a vigorous program of official exchanges that he promoted and expanded as much as he could, it was through a policy that he had to get government out of the way of contacts between the peoples. People to people programs, there were no regulations of it, and of course through diplomacy.

Now, we’re not going to carry the analogy too far; obviously, we don’t have a Gorebechev in Cuba to work with. But the generation will change in Cuba at some point. Castro has held the country together. The Revolution so to speak has survived. The economy has improved modestly in the last ten years. The stability of the government is assured, but there’s a lot that is wanting. And the people in Cuba are of course wondering what is going to happen when he goes? What kind of economic policies are they going to have? How are they going to deal with the idea of pluralism that is rattling around that no one is coming to terms with?

And the shame of our policy today is that the people who will deal with that issue are right there now to be dealt with. The next generation is waiting in the wings. A policy that opens things up with Cuba will allow us to address that generation. There’s no…I think the President’s Commission disingenuously throws around the word “transition” and sort of for political purposes tries to dangle the idea that this is a big plan—it’s 500 pages, so it certainly is substantial and will bring about a transition. Well, the measures in there won’t, the measures that I’ve outlined won’t.

Cubans will bring about political change in their country, and it’ll happen in ways that they exclusively will bring about. But we shouldn’t have an embargo on our own influence now for when that policy does take place. So, we’ll see how this election turns out. Interestingly, as Congressman Delahunt mentioned, we don’t have a race to the right in this election. We have two candidates taking fairly different positions on Cuba. I don’t think that Cuba is going to be a pivotal issue. But regardless of how the election turns out, there’s a bipartisan movement in Congress that I think will take on new energy after the election regardless of the result.

Jones: Thank you, Phil. Our final panelist, before we go into the questions, is Mark Falcoff. Mark is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He was a member of the US Delegation to the UN Human Rights Commission. He was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He’s written several books including most recently, Cuba the Morning After. He’s living a good part of his life in Miami now where he is going to be working on another book the Bay of Pigs. I met Mark on my first trip to Cuba…

Mark Falcoff: …which was my last…

Jones: And much to the chagrin of the Cuban government, Mark Falcoff was a part of that particular delegation. Mark, welcome.

Falcoff: Thank you very much. I want to make a few remarks having to do with my book, which is partly historical, so let me start out by saying that it is my considered view that US policy cannot fix what is wrong with Cuba. It couldn’t do so in 1898, it couldn’t do so in 1901, it couldn’t do so in 1993, it couldn’t do so in 1960, and it won’t be able to do so today. Most of Cuba’s problems are similar to those of other Caribbean Island Nations.

Let’s remember that those societies were created in the 18th Century to provide the world with sugar, molasses, and rum. And all of them are in the same dilemma: they no longer have anything the world needs or wants. They’re competing for the same tourist nickel, and they’re vessels leaking illegal immigrants and drugs. The major differences between Cuba and let’s say the Dominican Republic or Jamaica are the ideological trimmings and an extremely nasty government. That, and an international solidarity movement which lobbies on its behalf.

Now, to say that we cannot rescue Cuba from itself, does not mean that there are not agendas that a change in US policy would satisfy and I have made a list of them here, which I thought might be useful. First of all, it would get us off the hook with the European Union and to a lesser degree, the Latin American countries, who are reluctant to condemn the Castro regime, either because they see it unfairly singled out by the United States, or because it represents a sort of pornographic movie for anti-Americanism—and you really do see this at the UN Human Rights Commission, where I was last year. It is at least arguable that our opposition to the Castro government has at least helped it go garner support in many parts of the world, and to normalize relations would deprive Castro of much of his adversarial mystique.

Secondly, it would open markets for some US agriculture exports. The actual size of this market is not large, and I believe has been greatly exaggerated. But, presumably, a resumption of US tourism would require some purchases of food because Cuban agriculture is not able to meet the country’s needs and is not likely to in the foreseeable future. Additionally, it would facilitate the transfer of remittances from Cubans who have relatives outside of Cuba in the United States, and I don’t need to emphasize the importance of this from a humanitarian point of view.

It would make possible for Americans to vacation in Cuba, and as President Bush pointed out last week, it would open up new romantic vistas for Cubans and Americans. It would make it more difficult for Castro to continue to blame all of his troubles on the United States—difficult, but I have to say, not impossible. Authoritarian governments do not persist simply because they’ve found a superficially satisfying intellectual rationale for their existence. It would give the Castro regime a new infusion of resources, so that it’s system could be locked into place. And it would solidify the power of the Cuban military, which has taken over most of the productive economic activities on the Island.

But, it would also complicate the work of the Cuban police and security forces, since an invasion of Americans would make it more difficult to monitor what’s going on. When the President of the Cuban Congress told me, “We can’t monitor 2 million tourists.” I thought good, let’s give them six million, eight million, ten million. It would open up new investment opportunities for some American hotel companies that are willing to cut deals with the Regime.

You can tell from this list, and the way I’ve presented it, that I regard some of these outcomes as desirable, some neutral, some of which I’m not sure. But as is the case with all of our policies, they tend to be double-edged swords. What I do not believe is that a change in US policy will promote a democratic transition on the island. And I should point out that a policy of economic denial is not likely to accomplish that either.

As I explain in my book, US policy has been balanced between two imperatives: one, to bring down or at any rate make life difficult for the Castro Regime; two, to avoid a migration crisis. Evidently, these two objectives are not mutually self-reinforcing. The experience of many years, decades now, illustrates that economic denial does not provoke an uprising against the regime, but rather encourages people to leave by regular or irregular means. At some point down the road, I could imagine our primary policy goal to be stability rather than Democracy. Under such circumstances, I could anticipate a huge change in the Cuban issue in the United States, where the right rallying to support an authoritarian government on the island, and the Left engaging in a pitiless critique of the regime’s human rights record. In fact, I already see some signs of this shift in political geography underway. And if such a change in our policy would create such an outcome, even I would tend to favor it. Thank you.

Jones: Thank you, Mark. Ok, now the floor is open to your questions and comments. Go ahead in the back. Would you identify yourself, please.

[Question inaudible]

Jones: Who wants to take a run at the question?

Flake: I’ll take a portion of it, relating to "do I have a right as a non-Cuban American to impose my views," I guess. I’m offering freedom for Cuban Americans to send to their families what they will. If there was a consensus among the Cuban American community that no one should send soap or food then I would submit that they wouldn’t be sending it. So, I’m not trying to stipulate to any Cuban American family what they cannot do.

I was told on the floor that by offering the amendment, to allow Cuban Americans the freedom to decide for themselves, I was being patronizing, condescending, and racist. These were the words that were being used. Maybe I’m just not seeing it, by offering them the freedom for themselves rather than stipulating ‘you can’t practice family charity.’ So, if I were to stipulate and say you can’t travel or you can’t do this, those descriptions that you mentioned would be accurate. But, I’m not. I’m saying, you decide for yourself. That ought to be up to you.

Jones: Congressman Delahunt.

Delahunt: I would associate myself with Jeff’s remarks. In addition, I would make the point that there is no particular community, ethnic community in the United States that is solely responsible for American foreign policy. I happen to be an Irish American. I welcome the debate on the floor about our bilateral relationship with Ireland, and as we describe them, the troubles in Northern Ireland.

But I also think, again putting it in the larger context, the inconsistency of our treatment I alluded to earlier, the nation of Uzbekistan and the nation of Turkmenistan, I suggest to you and commend to you reading the Human Rights report of some of our traditional allies. Begin with Egypt, let’s go to Saudi Arabia. I dare say that in Saudi Arabia, we have the most oppressive regime anywhere on the planet, including Cuba. I attended a Catholic Mass in Havana. I saw women driving in Havana, neither of which could I do in Saudi Arabia. So, my point is the inconsistency of our policy vis a vis other nations, tend to erode our credibility, and our credibility is something that we’ve discovered is absolutely essential in the era where the U.S. is the dominant power.

We are experiencing severe problems with our credibility in terms of our role in Iraq today. I don’t want to go into that particular subject, but it is our credibility, as Mark pointed out. What was your term? The pornographic movie of inconsistency. Inconsistency leads others in this world that do not have our interests, to point to Cuba and suggest that we are hypocritical. We cannot, given our claim to a certain moral authority, be dismissive of that. Again, to go back to it, don’t tell me I can’t go anywhere. I am an American, and that is the bottom line.

Jones: Phil?

Peters: I would say briefly, that I would have a great many qualms about supporting a change in our current policy if it were a policy that was going to bring about democratic change in Cuba. But it’s truly not…the ends and the means are completely out of whack. None of the things that President Bush brings to the table are going to bring about political change in Cuba. I would think that at some point, the community would get tired of really getting teased by this idea that is dangled in front of them.

In 1992, we' re going to cut off subsidiary trade and stop shipping to Cuba, and that’s going to bring about change. And then, we're going to fight off foreign investment as much as we can with Helms-Burton, and that’s going to bring about change. Then we expel diplomats, and now we’re stopping families from supporting each other, and all of this other stuff in that report, and this is going to bring about political change. It’s not. I would expect at some point that they would get tired of it.

As for the unconditional business, I would confess, I have a fairly limited view of government. I believe in limited government is what I mean to say. I unconditionally support the right of Americans to send money overseas, or to go visit them as an expression of their love and their family ties. So, for me, it’s inconceivable that that’s a concession to Castro. That is an unconditional expression of our rights.

Jones: I would only add to that, on the Cuba policy commission of CNP’s, when they asked me to be chairman, I insisted that we have good representation of the Cuban American community – 4 of the 11 members of the commission, two of whom were very successful business people. And the way they approached the subject was to go back the original embargo and everything in between, one of the fundamental goals was to get rid of the Castro government. Forty years of something not working, we ought to take a slightly different view of it, and say that something else may work more effectively. And they’ve approached it as a business person would. I mean, if you had a business that was running deficits for forty years, you’d say, “well, maybe we ought to have a different approach to marketing or what have you.” That was their approach. So, I would commend some of the recommendations that were made by that commission.

Mark, did you want to say something?

Falcoff: Very briefly, this is going to be the last presidential election in which the Cuban issue can be used to the advantage, I think, of either candidate. The reason for that is the demographics. Since 1994, we’ve been taking 20,000 unhappy Cubans per year. So, that’s 200,000 right there. These people come from a completely different social class than the historic immigration. They still have family on the island. They go back and forth or want to go back and forth. And that continues to grow. That particular part of the community has not yet found its own form of political expression. The organized part of the community is based on earlier generations. So, the result is that community is really divided. When a community is divided and no one can speak for it, in that case, it becomes neutered politically.

The other comment I want to make is about the reaction to the Powell, or so-called Powell report. The first thing I read was a statement by Joe Garcia, President of the Cuban American National Foundation and who by the way is also a Democrat, and he said, “well, this is doing nothing.” Well, if this is nothing, than it seems to me that there is no point in trying to satisfy your constituency. If this is nothing, than clearly there is nothing that can be done. Again, everything points to the fact that this is the last election, and perhaps even not this election, in which this issue is going to be important.

Jones: Gentleman in the back.

Voice: [Comment inaudible]

Jones: Thank you very much. We have about four more hands, and we have to close at 1:30. Harriet Fulbright.

Voice: [Inaudible]...my husband, Senator Fulbright. He absolutely believed in the power of free exchange, and I saw it working when we lived in the Soviet Union years ago. That's the experience we had and it motivates a lot of us today.

Jones: Good point. And Harriet Fulbright took the lead on the exchange-- on idea exchange as part of the Commission’s report. Yes sir.

Voice: [Inaudible]

Jones: Congressman?

Flake: As to the current policy right now, they have been under review for quite a while and there have been hints that these regulations were going to be implemented. It wasn’t certain how they would come down and when they did, they quickly realized…for example the medical students, there wasn’t a provision to deal with them. Or people who had been in Cuba and hadn’t heard of the new regulations, it was illegal for the charter companies to bring them back. They ended up extending for a month and doing some other changes. We’re still in the process of doing that, I’m told.

One way you can impact is there’s a public comment period right now—where you can write to the State Department, OFAC, and the Administration and tell them what you think. I would urge everyone to do that as well as contact your member of Congress.

Jones: Right here and here and here.

Voice: [Inaudible]

Jones: [Laughter]

Delahunt: [To Flake] You take Bush and I’ll take Kerry.

Flake: I don’t know. The other day, I heard Bill Delahunt on the floor talking about this tyrant, this thug, this despot, and I thought, “he’s talking about Cuba. Man, I’m going to go down there and help him.” I didn’t realize that he was talking about Bush. No, that’s not true.

I truly don’t know. I would hope that when Bush is re-elected in November, as was said by Mark, that it’s not as important as it was before. I hope that we don’t direct our foreign policy toward satisfying one particular group. Instead, we do have a more principled foreign policy that reflects our values. And so I hope that that’s the case, but I just don’t know.

Delahunt: I agree with Jeff on that. I think that clearly if John Kerry is elected president that the change will occur much more quickly. But the change is inevitable. I think we all recognize that. And I think, again, seeing the dynamic in Congress. And I do believe this: the most recent regulations are serving as a catalyst to change the Cuban American community. Recently, Kirby, there was a panel…Jeff was there for a while, and a member of the panel was Ignacio Sanchez, a member of the Cuban Liberty Council. And for the first time, he indicated, “well, if Castro changes, then we should do something.” I have never heard that before from a member of the Liberty Council, which for those who are not familiar with the Council, I would dare say, represents the very hard-right of the Cuban American community. So, Jeff and I are practical people. We believe in absolute right to travel, yet at the same time I think whether it be Kerry or Bush, we will see a phased-in change in policy.

I think we should challenge Fidel Castro. If Fidel Castro eliminates the so-called carta blanca, the exit visas for Cubans, and allows Cubans the freedom to travel off the island without permission, then how can we as Americans even contemplate the continuation of the current policy? And, I think that we should do that. I think that we should issue a challenge. That would be my approach.

Jones: Mark, you had a comment.

Falcoff: Uh, two comments. The first is that Felipe Gonzalez, the former Prime Minister of Spain, made headlines in the Latin American newspapers recently, saying that he expected the embargo to be lifted by 2005, regardless of who wins the next election. And I really wanted to write him a note and say, what do you know that I don’t know? He’s not a stupid man, and he’s not a bit unsophisticated.

The other thing I want to say is that if Castro dies tomorrow, we are in a new universe. And that is also true, although I think it unlikely, if Castro does some of the things you [Congressman Delahunt] have suggested. In either case, I believe we are in a completely new policy universe. The great unifier of the Cuban American people has been Castro himself. If he’s gone from the scene or if he, I don’t know why, decides to change, this is all going to cause a complete change in the policy environment.

Delahunt: Tim, can I make one final point?

Roemer: Sure.

Delahunt: I’d just like to make an observation, and again, from Harriet Fulbright’s comments about the need for continuing change…I think we have to understand with Cuba that this is a nation that has no experience with democracy. I mean, why Fidel Castro? Why, because you had Batista. You had a thug there prior to Fidel Castro. I mean, the history of Cuba under Batista is repugnant, repulsive, and should be decried. Mark in his opening, talked about 1898 and 1901, it’s so important to plant the seeds of democracy.

Jones: Right here.

Voice: [Question inaudible]

Delahunt: You know, just let me respond to you, Americans travel for inappropriate reasons to London, to Paris. I dare say, they do not want you to say where and when they can travel. In our nation, in our democracy, that is not the role of government.

Jones: Go ahead with your question.

Voice: My question is, if we do have these travel restrictions, and we do eliminate them, what do we do about this moral issue of people just sitting on a beach and sipping mojitos?

Jones: Let’s get an answer because we have another….anyone want to answer that?

Flake: I…sure there are people who go and do that, but there are also people who go and distribute bibles. The woman, Joannie Scott out of Indiana last year, went with her Church and distributed bibles for a couple of weeks. She comes back to a $10,000 fine. She just settled, I believe, for $1,000. For everyone that goes to sip mojitos on the beach, there are others who go to take books to an independent library, or to give money to artisans or taxi drivers or what have you. And we have no clue who will do what, nor should it be our business to do so. I asked Joannie Scott because it was alleged that she had gone there to simply sip mojitos on the beach. And so I asked her, “Did you get to the beach while you were down there?” and she said, “Yes, once at night, to a baptism.” That’s it, yet she was fined $1,000. Should we be doing that? I just don’t think so.

Peters: Sure, there are people who go and just go to the beach vacation. But, I think it’s important to recognize the benefits that accrue to the Cuban people from the travelers that go there. For every traveler that goes there on a beach vacation, and obviously it’s better if they do other things, I’ll leave to you the moral judgment, but I’ll agree with you to that degree. When they leave tips, and things like that, they help people in that industry that have a much higher standard of living than people who have normal jobs in the state.

The jobs in the tourism industry are the most coveted jobs in Cuba precisely for that reason. Those who go where they eat in private restaurants…a lot of people who travel stay in private homes, and they support a private part of the Cuban economy—both the licensed part and people who work without licenses and make a very good living—taxis, private homes, restaurants—all kinds of services that help people live a better life. So, there’s a lot of benefits that I hope people will recognize.

Jones: This has to be the last question, unfortunately, we’re running over.

Voice: [Inaudible]

Jones: We only have five minutes. Miss, thank you very much. Let me just…You raise some good points, and I’d like to have the people comment on them. And particularly the point that I was hoping would be made earlier if we had the time, about the $39 million to aid the dissidents and the response from some of the dissidents that didn’t like that. Anyone want to make a comment on that?

Flake: Just a very brief one in terms of aid to the dissidents. I would submit that here, again, if we try to figure out who’s going to go down and sit on the beach as opposed to take a book and find a library, we have the same problem when we try to fund the dissident movement down there. Some of those that we funded were not dissidents at all—they were government stooges. And, we have had a very clumsy effort in trying to have that kind of diplomacy. Unless we have a better plan than we’ve had in the past, it’s not working.

Delahunt: I would agree with Jeff. I don’t think there’s anybody on the panel that would object to support for democratic movements in Cuba. But what we’ve seen again, is the ability of the Cuban regime to penetrate those movements, and what we don’t want is to provide a direct deposit from the American taxpayers to the Castro government. And I have not seen any plan that can guarantee that American dollars will not end up in the pockets of Fidel Castro…no, through the aid program. These dissidents that ended up testifying against…

Voice: That was a minority. That was a minority…

Delahunt: How do we know?

Jones: Ok, we thank you all very much.

Delahunt: I’m happy to debate here afterwards. I think others have to get going.

Jones: Mark, did you want to say something?

Falcoff: I think we need to know that history doesn’t move in a straight line. That means I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone on this panel knows, exactly what the impact of policy changes will be. Some of them I think will be good. Some of them will not be good. I don’t know what they will be. I think we should all be a little bit more humble about this. There’s a lot we don’t know.

With respect to the dissidents, I believe what Alessandro Sanchez told me. He said, “I don’t want $29 million. Give me $5,000. You’d be surprised what I can do with that.” And they’re always being accused of being tools of the US, so dramatic gestures by the US Congress does not help them, I must say.

Jones: Okay. This is…one thing is for certain. This issue is not weakening in terms of the passions on both sides. I think there is a lot of misinformation on both sides that needs to be further explored. But I do think we need to keep an open mind and recognize that some of the policies, if they’re working for the purpose that’s one thing. If they’re not working, then we need to explore a different way to reach our ends.

Roemer: Jim, terrific job moderating. I want to thank all of you for taking precious time away from your jobs on the Hill and off the Hill and from universities to come and attend the Center for National Policy and Mercatus Center’s debate/forum on Cuba and American policy. I want to say that as a former member, the great thing about this House of Representatives that I truly miss…there are a lot of things that I don’t miss…but one of the things that I miss is that debate that we just heard. That doesn’t make me feel uncomfortable. That makes me feel like people in this country can stand up, disagree with a powerful panel, and talk about their ideas.

And that’s what we’re talking about with freedom in Cuba. We’re not talking just about the freedom of Americans to travel, we’re talking about the freedom of ideas and liberty. And when you can hitch up human rights, democracy, and a free market to the engine of freedom and liberty, you have a powerful forces going forward. And we’ve heard the themes of change today, that the world is changing but this policy has not, that we’re spending too much of our time talking about deodorant and shirts, and not enough time talking about a new policy to reflect the post-9/11 world.

We’ve heard about ideas like bipartisanship, and I was very interested to hear the senior from Georgetown University who has been down to Cuba and hopefully will go back, talk about how can I make a difference. “How can I possibly make a difference in today’s world?” I can tell you, Jeff Flake and Bill Delahunt are making a difference on an important foreign policy issue. They have told people, “you can’t join the policy working group unless you get another Republican or another Democrat to join our effort.” And they have slowly built, not just that internal mechanism to get change one person at a time on this major issue, but they’ve also done that to try and change the debate in the world for American policy. They’ve today that single people can make a difference. So thank you again for coming.