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Cuba: U.S. Policy and Issues for the 113th Congress
Abstract
Cuba remains a one-party communist state with a poor record on human rights. The country's political succession in 2006 from the long-ruling Fidel Castro to his brother Raúl was characterized by a remarkable degree of stability. In February 2013, Castro was reappointed to a second five-year term as president (until 2018, when he would be 86 years old), and selected a 52-year old former Education Minister Miguel Díaz-Canel as his First Vice President, making him the official successor in the event that Castro cannot serve out his term. Raúl Castro has implemented a number of gradual economic policy changes over the past several years, including an expansion of self-employment. A party congress held in April 2011 laid out numerous economic goals that, if implemented, could significantly alter Cuba's state-dominated economic model. Few observers, however, expect the government to ease its tight control over the political system. While the government reduced the number of political prisoners in 2010-2011, the number increased in 2012; moreover, short-term detentions and harassment have increased significantly.
... Large parts of that funding went to media outlets dedicated to two main goals: creating an image of Cuba as an enemy (Bolender 2019) and as a repressive regime and thus justifying US actions, and directly influencing the Cuban population, thus alienating both domestic and international support. Further amounts of money were appropriated to fund the operation of US government agencies targeting Cuba (Sullivan 2010(Sullivan , 2011(Sullivan , 2014(Sullivan , 2015(Sullivan , 2016(Sullivan , 2017. ...
The article proposes an approach to the US Cuba policy in the 21st century as public policy. We examine the core variables that drive this Cuba policy and their behaviour during the 21st century. We then identify the central axes of the policy and study their expressions. This allows us to explain the evolution of that policy across three administrations, the first year of a fourth and ten and a half legislative periods. The conclusions of the study provide a better understanding of the making and the nature of that policy. Consequently, it will help to explain the framework that the US Cuba policy creates to thwart the development of Cuba.
El artículo aborda la política de Estados Unidos hacia Cuba en el siglo XXI, entendiéndola como una política pública. Se examinan las variables clave de la política hacia Cuba y su comportamiento durante el presente siglo. Se identifican los ejes centrales de esa política y se estudian sus expresiones. Esto permite explicar la evolución de la política hacia la isla a lo largo de tres administraciones estadounidenses, el primero de una cuarta y 10 y medio períodos legislativos. Las conclusiones del estudio proporcionan una mejor comprensión del proceso de conformación y la naturaleza de esa política. Consecuentemente, el artículo ayuda a explicar las condiciones que esta crea para obstaculizar el desarrollo de Cuba.
... As Cuba increased trade with the Soviet Union, nationalized US-owned properties, and hiked taxes on American imports, the United States responded with escalating economic retaliation. For the last 60 years since the 1960s, successive U.S. administrations have maintained a policy of economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation with Cuba (Sullivan 2014). Due to the new development in terms of diplomatic relationship with the United States, general donative remittances to Cuban nationals and donative remittances for humanitarian projects will no longer require a specific license. ...
Migration is no longer a new area of research. It has become a crucial issue for the world since the last two decades for a range of reasons. Migration has attracted so many allied issues such as development; security; international relations, and conflict. Immediate before these issues gained attention, migration was seen as a development mantra. In the effort of making migration and development link, researchers, academics, policy makers tended to overemphasize migration. The hypothesis of migration-development nexus is drawn generally on the contribution of migrants’ remittances to the gross domestic products (GDP) of receiving countries. While this contribution could no way be undermined, the cost and benefit calculation is performed largely by trivializing some key variables of migration such as opportunity cost and psychological costs. In setting the scene, we take a position to critically look into the debate of migration and development nexus.
... For example, the U.S. administration and Congress never dramatically reduce the funding allocated for democracy promotion in Cuba through USAID programs and RTM. 25 According to the last report of the OIG, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting still continues to be "engaged in an aggressive campaign to distribute weekly its television programming content via broadcast, Internet, and even hand-to-hand, via digital video disks (DVDs) and flash drives. " 26 The main innovation under Obama is related to the "technologization, " and the construction of new media infrastructures to help the Cuban people communicate with each other. ...
... For example, the US administration and Congress never dramatically reduced the funding allocated for democracy promotion in Cuba through USAID programs and RTM. 90 According to the last report of the Office of the Inspector General, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting still continues to be engaged in an aggressive campaign to distribute weekly its ...
The promotion of democracy in Cuba has been, especially after the Cold War, a distinguishing feature of US foreign policy towards Havana. This article analyzes the evolution in US democracy promotion in Cuba, especially after the latest openings to Cuba (December 2014). Regarding the promotion of democracy on the island, the so-called 'abandonment of democracy' in US foreign policy never took place, and this implies a renovated effort to foster regime change – or at least a regime evolution – in Cuba. Obama resisted the virulent and invasive rhetoric of the 'Bush doctrine', and introduced some changes in US-Cuba state-to-state relations, while giving a strong relevance to the 'people-to-people's diplomacy' and 'public diplomacy', still perceived as tools to foster a political change on the island.
... The Administration's FY2014 request was again for $15 million, but Congress ultimately appropriated up to $17.5 million. 87 And we should also add over $27 million per year for the transmission of Radio and Television Martí to the island. 88 Nevertheless, the US Section of Interest in Havana (USINT) and its sub--partners seem to maintain -as far as is possible --their independence from the political establishment in Washington and USAID, as the Government Accountability Office (GAO) lamented in both 2006 and 2013. ...
For almost three decades, democracy promotion has been
the cornerstone of US policy towards Cuba and it has shaped
bilateral relations around the democratic conditionality codified in
the embargo against the island. Obama entered the White House as
the ‘open minded candidate’ who could realize the promise
embedded within Jimmy Carter's 2002 speech in Havana, but, for
different reasons, the new President opted for a more ‘Clintonian’
approach characterized by only a partial relaxation of sanctions and
people-to-people diplomacy as a tool for obtaining more political
concessions from Raúl Castro.
Resumen. Históricamente, ha sido una constante en la política exterior de Estados Unidos la búsqueda de estrategias para implementar en Cuba un orden político favorable a su cosmovisión. Aprovechando las oportunidades que ofrecen las Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones, las administraciones estadounidenses están adaptando su política subversiva contra el sistema político cubano al escenario de Internet. En esta incursión científica se demuestra, a través del estudio de documentos oficiales, cómo se financia esta operación desde instituciones ligadas al poder político en Estados Unidos: el Fondo Nacional para la Democracia y la Agencia de Estados Unidos para el Desarrollo Internacional. También relaciona los temas que, desde una perspectiva opuesta al sistema político vigente en Cuba, promueven los proyectos impulsados: derechos humanos, el papel de la sociedad civil y la democracia en Cuba.
The United States and Cuba moved to end five decades of hostility and agreed to revive diplomatic relations in December 2014 while US President Barack Obama finally made an official visit to Cuba on 20 March 2016 as the first sitting president to do so in 88 years. In contrast with the Cuban case, US–North Korea relations are only getting worse due to the North Korean nuclear program. The United States adopted new legislation for strong economic sanctions against North Korea after the country's fourth nuclear test was carried out on 6 January 2016 and its launching of a long-range missile on 6 February 2016. This study aims to find an answer as to why Cuba and North Korea are walking different paths in their relationships with the United States even though they have been subject to similar sanctions from the US. Recent analysis shows that factors in security, international and economic surroundings, geostrategic factors and domestic politics contribute to notable divergence between Cuba and North Korea in regards to their relationships with the United States.
This second part of the article deals with the importance of democracy promotion towards Cuba as an internal political issue in the US, the so-called ‘two-level game’. In the last decade, democracy promotion has been receiving criticisms from the academic community and policymakers. The backlash on democracy promotion, the unintended consequences of democratic assistance in developing countries and the difficulty of predicting outcomes of democracy promotion in ‘transitional countries’ posed several questions to US foreign democratic assistance. While at a theoretical level, these problems have helped to redefine US democratic efforts abroad, the Cuban case has been highly dominated by democracy promotion as the cornerstone of US Cuba policy. Apart from Obama's new course with Cuba, which has not dramatically changed US goals on the island, US vision and strategy for the Cuban democratic transition have survived: despite everything, the US has continued to promote democracy in Cuba, with little or no change. In fact, despite Obama not abandoning democratisation, it seems he is pursuing a more ‘teleological approach’ to the matter.
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