A Cuba Policy to Cheer

Yesterday, President Bush delivered a speech, announcing his Initiative for a New Cuba. This does what is promised, in that title: inaugurate a new Cuba policy for the United States. It is a policy I happen to support fully and joyfully - not because I support this administration, which I do, generally, but because it's a sound, thoughtful, and right policy.

The speech Bush gave is one of the finest presidential speeches I can remember: in policy, honesty, force, and wording. I will first highlight some of what Bush said, then provide a little commentary (although I can't promise that there won't be commentary until I get to the "commentary" section). I believe that the president has answered those who have wanted to oppose Castro, strongly, but who have questioned the wisdom of Washington's longstanding embargo.

A long time ago, Otto Reich - who is now assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere - told me, "We should not lift the embargo in the absence of a Cuba policy. Come up with a Cuba policy, and we'll talk." Well, now an administration - his administration - has.

The impulse is to quote the entire speech, but I will provide a link. In part out of mischief - this group is abhorred by the Left and by most of the media - and in part out of admiration, I will link to the website of the Cuban American National Foundation, which offers the speech and many other interesting documents, facts, and opinions about Cuba and U.S. policy toward that country.

Bush's speech was given on May 20, which was Cuban Independence Day, and not only Independence Day, but the 100th anniversary of Cuban independence. That accounts for the timing of the speech. Jimmy Carter and others believe that the speech and the new policy were in answer to the former president's visit to Cuba. In fact, they do constitute a kind of answer: but the speech was pegged to this important centennial.

I wonder whether a president has ever spoken so bluntly and honestly about the reality of a much-perfumed, much-dissembled-about country. Said Bush, "Today, and every day for the past 43 years, [the] legacy of [Cuban] courage has been insulted by a tyrant who uses brutal methods to enforce a bankrupt vision. That legacy has been debased by a relic from another era, who has turned a beautiful island into a prison. In a career of oppression, Mr. Castro has imported nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, and he has exported his military forces to encourage civil war abroad."

Continuing, "He is a dictator who jails and tortures and exiles his political opponents. We know this [who you mean, 'we'?]. The Cuban people know this [for sure]. And the world knows this [well, some of it does]."

Then, "Through all their pains and deprivation, the Cuban people's aspirations for freedom are undiminished." True. And, later, Bush said, "Today, there is only one nation in our hemisphere that is not a democracy. Only one. There is only one national leader whose position of power owes more to bullets than ballots. . . . Cuba's independence was achieved a century ago. It was hijacked nearly half a century ago. Yet the independent spirit of the Cuban people has never faltered."

Very nice. You might say that these words are boilerplate, but you would be mistaken. They are extraordinary. They are ordinary in that they speak the simple truth, but they are extraordinary in that they rarely escape the lips of a head of state, including those of the American president, who - whoever he is - should be the world's advocate of, and spokesman for, freedom. The mere facing of the truth is a tonic. Solzhenitsyn exhorted, "Live not by lies." A few words of unvarnished truth about Castro and Communism are worth far more to the Cuban cause than all of Jimmy Carter's apologies for prisons (U.S. ones), the death penalty, and a market-based health-care system.

Bush also enunciated some important principles: "If the Cuban government truly wants to advance the cause of workers - of Cuban workers - surely it will permit trade unions to exist outside of government control [shades of Poland, and elsewhere]. If Cuba wants to create more good-paying jobs, private employers have to be able to negotiate with and pay workers of their own choosing, without the government telling them who they can hire and who they must fire.

"If Cuba wants to attract badly needed investment from abroad, property rights must be respected [a biggie]. If the government wants to improve the daily lives of its people, goods and services produced in Cuba should be made available to all Cuban citizens [a superb slap at Castro's economic apartheid]. Workers employed by foreign companies should be paid directly by their employers, instead of having the government seize their hard-currency wages and pass on a pittance in the form of pesos [that's what the regime does, of course, and why many of us have argued for holding the line on Cuba]. And the signs in hotels reading 'Solamente Turistas' ["Only Tourists"] should finally be taken down [a slap at the island's "tourism apartheid"].

"Without major steps by Cuba to open up its political system and its economic system, trade with Cuba will not help the Cuban people. It's important for Americans to understand that, without political reform, without economic reform, trade with Cuba will merely enrich Fidel Castro and his cronies." Important to understand, to say the least.

Okay, to the new policy: the carrots that go with the sticks, if you call speaking the truth wielding a stick, which it can be. Cuba is scheduled to have parliamentary elections next year, and those elections have always been a sham: Castro fixes them, in the manner of absolute dictators everywhere. But if those elections are free and fair - "certifiably free and fair," as Bush says - then the administration will "work with Congress to ease the ban on trade and travel between our two countries." In other words, "meaningful reform on Cuba's part will be answered with a meaningful American response. The goal of the United States policy toward Cuba is not a permanent embargo on Cuba's economy; the goal is freedom for Cuba's people."

And here comes a little nuance: "Yet, under the Initiative for a New Cuba, the United States recognizes that freedom sometimes grows step by step. And we'll encourage those steps. . . . Our plan is to accelerate freedom's progress in Cuba in every way possible, just as the United States and our democratic friends and allies did successfully in places like Poland, or in South Africa. [Those words must hurt Castro, and inspire ordinary Cubans.] Even as we seek to end tyranny, we will work to make life better for people living under and resisting Castro's rule."

Imbedded in those words is a change: We will not merely wait for the dictator to die and see what happens; we will seek to help Cubans, aggressively, now.

There are steps to be taken immediately, regardless of what Castro does: easing restrictions on humanitarian assistance by "legitimate U.S. religious and other non-governmental organizations that directly serve the needs of the Cuban people and will help build Cuban civil society." So, if you're a church in Union City, N.J., and wish to send books or food or whatever, you may do so, without years of red tape.

Then, "our government will offer scholarships in the United States for Cuban students and professionals who try to build independent civil institutions in Cuba, and scholarships for family members of political prisoners." Ouch: nice. And the administration is "willing to negotiate direct mail service between the United States and Cuba" - a modest but promising gambit.

What the U.S. will not do is permit "U.S. financing for Cuban purchases of U.S. agricultural goods, because this would just be a foreign-aid program in disguise, which would benefit the current regime." Here Bush is standing up to farm-state senators, including of his own party.

All right, some commentary, or some further commentary. This speech can be interpreted as harder-line or softer-line. The media are presently interpreting it as harder-line - undoubtedly because Bush's words contrast so dramatically with Carter's. And yet, there is considerable bend in this speech, and in this policy. Some in the administration had been worried that the New York Times would love the speech and that Miami would not. The opposite seems to be the case today.

Implied in the president's remarks is that if Castro's parliamentary elections - not a presidential one, Heaven forefend, but parliamentary elections - are not a sham, then the U.S. will lift the embargo and travel ban: even if Castro wins. Even with Castro still in office, riding high and flagellating his prisoners. And the parliamentary elections, according to the administration, don't necessarily have to be a sham, even within the Castro framework.

In addition, Bush is willing to take these other steps unilaterally, immediately: the facilitation of humanitarian assistance, etc. The administration is also interested in "micro-loans" to those pockets of the Cuban economy not entirely under state control.

And the scholarships? Aside from the flourish about the families of political prisoners, the administration is hoping that, if a Cuban attends the University of Chicago, for example, in ten years he will be finance minister - applying Hayekian principles, practicing freedom.

An important goal of Bush's speech and new policy was to change the general conversation from the embargo to democracy. The president wanted to remind one and all that, of all the countries in the Western Hemisphere, only one is unfree: Cuba. Even the terrible leaders of Venezuela and Haiti were democratically elected. And the United States, through an imaginative, somewhat flexible, and "forward" policy, is willing to do its utmost to force change in Cuba, here and now, regardless of what the actuarial tables say. To lift the embargo in exchange for nothing seems unwise. The administration has said to Castro, "You will have improved relations - if you want them - when you reform."

Should sanctions on Cuba be lifted? *** More to the point, now is not the time to lift sanctions. Mr. Castro's Cuba - low on cash - finally seems to be running out of lenders as well. Soviet subsidies to the island nation dried up in 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union. Since then, Mr. Castro has survived by purchasing on credit wherever he could. But last September, France reportedly halted $175 million in trade when Cuba failed to pay for commodities purchased in 2000, and other governments and foreign companies have frozen accounts as well.

His economy, lacking a market and free enterprise to generate income, is unable to make good on the arrears. The government's main export is sugar, but inefficient cultivation and distribution policies keep it from competing in the world market. Last year, Cuba's central bank reported a balance-of-payments deficit of $687 million and an overall foreign debt of $11 billion. The U.S. embargo limits commerce with Cuba's unelected leaders, who confiscated property owned by U.S. citizens now worth about $7 billion. Those limits should remain in place until the regime enacts democratic reforms, agrees to respect human rights and releases its political prisoners. If the United States eases the sanctions, such changes definitely won't take place.***

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Sorry, but it looks as though Bush intends to lift sanctions anyway and is simply making faces at Castro while he gets his ducks in a row to do so. I don't trust Bush or any of his family. Here we have Bush lining up another three rail bankshot while pundits applaud his "straightforwardness".

No Sale, ma'am. No offense intended, either.

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