THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 23, 1995 TAG: 9507240267
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: Long : 216 lines
The post-Cold War world has seen the warming of relationships between the United States and many of its former adversaries, but there is a notable exception just 90 miles off our shores: Cuba.
In the latest Hampton Roads Roundtable sponsored by The Virginian-Pilot and public radio station WHRV, a group of local panelists who have studied Cuba discussed the United States' frosty relationship with its Caribbean neighbor.
Their consensus: The Clinton administration has taken some steps in the right direction, but it would be in both nations' interest to move still further toward a more normal relationship.
Staff writer Bill Sizemore moderated the discussion.
DISCUSSION
President Clinton has extended diplomatic recognition to our former enemy, Vietnam, yet the United States continues to treat its neighbor, Cuba, like a pariah. The U.N. General Assembly has repeatedly opposed the economic embargo that we've placed on Cuba these three decades. When the issue came to a vote last year, only Israel joined the U.S. in support of the embargo. Meanwhile the rest of Latin America increasingly ignores us and is choosing to develop full economic and diplomatic relations with the Castro government. Is it time for the U.S. to normalize its relationship with Cuba?
Maurice Berube: I'm of the opinion that we should have normalized relations with Cuba a long time ago. Cuba's one of the first - the only - communist country that we haven't dealt with in terms of normal relations. We've had Nixon opening up China in the early '70s. All along we've been dealing with the Soviet Union. So I feel that perhaps we should have done it a long time ago.
Now the question that remains is, their economy is in such a bad state that there's a feeling among certain groups, particularly among the conservative right-wing groups, the Cuban Americans like the Cuban National Foundation that Jorge Mas Canosa operates, that if we tighten the screws, it's going to mean the complete collapse of Cuba. I don't think that will happen.
Sen. Jesse Helms has introduced legislation to not only keep the sanctions in place, but to strengthen them. The bill instructs the administration to oppose Cuban membership in the World Bank and other international lending institutions. It asks the U.N. Security Council to impose international sanctions. Fidel Castro says that the Helms bill only makes him stronger by giving him a target to rally people around. What do you think?
George Stabler: I think that that's substantially correct. It's true that the economic embargo even further tightens the screws, causing suffering among the poorest of the people in Cuba, both dietary insufficiency and inadequate medicine supplies. In that kind of a situation, it's easy for the Castro regime to point to the great imperialist neighbor and say, ``See what they do to us! And if you suffer, it's because of them.'' It makes it very difficult for us to find a way out.
But the other thing to take into account is that if the regime collapses under pressure from the United States in this fashion, it's very likely that there will be fairly considerable amounts of violence in Cuba, which may, indeed, be avoided.
In addition, there'll be another wholesale attempt by Cubans to get to Florida and other parts of the United States. There are over a million Cubans who did make it already to the United States. It's likely that there might be another million, maybe 2 or 3 million, who would jump at the chance to come across the water.
By deciding this spring to begin forcibly returning Cuban refugees intercepted at sea, the Clinton administration ended a decades-old policy of giving Cuban immigrants special treatment. Some critics have accused the president of shutting the doors on a safe haven for people who are fleeing communist rule. What do you think?
Cmdr. Thomas Deppe: Well, without arguing the merits of the policy, I think from the military's perspective, it was a very difficult situation that had to be dealt with. As you know, prior to the May 2 announcement, there were about 30,000 migrants there with no hope and nowhere to go. And anybody from that part of the island knows that in close confines when the temperature gets warmer, the conditions weren't very good.
Stabler: You mean in Guantanamo?
Deppe: In Guantanamo Bay. . . . So from my perspective, militarywise, it really probably hedged a greater problem.
How is that going now? How many refugees are there now at Guantanamo? Is the number declining?
Deppe: Yes. They've declined about 500 per week. I believe the number was somewhere around 5,000 people. We will continue to parole those back to the States, and by probably sometime next year, early next year, we'll have most of the migrants out of there.
Your boss, Gen. John Sheehan, has said that he doesn't think Guantanamo will ever again be a fully functional military installation. In years past, having a naval station there was justified on the grounds that we were helping to keep the communist regime in check just a few miles off our shores. But since the fall of the Soviet Union, Castro no longer has any financing from a superpower, and economic troubles seem to have rendered him something of a paper tiger. Some say that Guantanamo has outlived its usefulness. What do we need it for?
Deppe: It is needed less as a training area. I'm sure you've read the Navy's reports about divesting and restructuring. So fundamentally, as we are doing across the U.S. and bringing back forces from overseas, we are also downsizing, restructuring that base. . . .
It does, however, offer you . . . the ability to resupply ships that are operating in the region.
Fidel Castro has said that democratic capitalism is not the formula for Cuba. Despite all the economic hardships there now, he says that his regime has succeeded in providing health care, education, housing and the basic necessities of life to all Cubans. How valid do you think his claims are?
Berube: I think that the people in Miami, the Cuban Americans, really misread Castro. He's a Teflon leader. He's like Ronald Reagan was. You blame everybody else, but you don't blame Castro. . . .
Now in terms of social policy: I'm an educator. I went down there to look at the educational system in 1983 and wrote a book about it. The various expenditures were in the military, No. 1, and No. 2, the health care system, which became one of the best in Latin America, and No. 3, the educational system, which was into a developed nation category, as well as the health care system.
But he sacrificed expanding the economy for spending money on social programs. . . .
It's ripe for investment. I think what might happen is, the business community in the United States is going to get very anxious, with the Latin American business investment there, to see if they can get a foothold into Cuba.
But it's a political situation. With Vietnam being recognized, I don't see the Clinton administration jumping in to recognize Cuba right away.
You bring up a good point about the political realities. Does anybody want to address that, particularly given the current climate in Washington? I mentioned the Jesse Helms bill. How politically possible is it to normalize relations with Cuba?
Stabler: One of the major forces in opposition to changing the policy has been the strength of the conservative Cuban-American forces in Florida and their desire to not give up on the pressure.
What about politics in Cuba? They recently had some local elections down there, and I saw a report that said there were some 29,000 candidates running for 14,000 or so seats on city councils across the country. None of them, of course, belong to opposition parties, since there aren't any opposition parties. Cuba is at least hinting that there might be some modest political change in the wind. Last month Castro released six prominent political prisoners. But still it seems clear that major political change isn't going to be embraced very quickly. Dr. Berube, what do you think?
Berube: I don't think there's going to be major political change in terms of the direction of a democratic system. . . .
Perhaps if we normalize relations, the democratic idea would take root as people in Cuba saw alternatives. . . .
We deal with right-wing dictatorships like Guatemala, Chile and Argentina, and we never question the human rights and democratic systems there at all. Nor do we really do it with China, basically. Ditto with the Soviet Union.
Let's look down the road. Castro can't hold on forever. What is going to happen, do you think? Is this really a one-man show there? Or has he established enough of a political infrastructure that there's going to be someone who can carry on his policies after he's gone?
Berube: I think it's going to be a vacuum. I mean, when I went to the schools there, you saw in every school a picture of revolutionary leaders and Castro - I think it's just going to be a vacuum. What's going to happen after is anybody's guess. Nobody has an inside track on what's happening in the political infighting in Cuba.
So we can really be in for a very unstable period, perhaps?
Stabler: I think that's likely.
What about our new policy on Cuban immigrants? Is it too early to make any judgments about how that's going? Cmdr. Deppe, can you tell us, since we made the decision to begin repatriating Cubans who leave, how has that gone?
Deppe: In terms of the migrant flow?
Yes.
Deppe: I think it's gone down to a trickle, and there's no surprises why that is. Meaning if you were trying to get away, you're going to be taken back immediately. The word gets out pretty quickly. In the Havana area, of course, the word spreads very, very quickly.
That doesn't mean that there aren't people still trying to get out, but we certainly have seen the numbers - as everybody is probably aware, the numbers in summertime, because of the warmer water and the current and the winds, go up historically to 200 or 300 a month. And those numbers are way below that, of course, now, because they don't have any opportunity to either seek safe haven or to come to the U.S., unless it's through the normal parole process. We're still bringing - I guess the new policy is 30,000 a year to the States through normal parole. So it's not that they can't get to the States, it's just part of a normal legal parole instead of trying to get here via the rafts and the barrels or whatever they could get on to get out.
Some officials believe that increased East-West contacts played a major role in the unraveling of communist rule in Eastern Europe we saw a few years ago. Now the Clinton administration is considering easing restrictions on travel to Cuba in hopes of producing the same kind of result there. Do you think that could happen?
Stabler: I think it could, and I think it could benefit both the United States and Cuba to have more exchange of intellectuals, artists - we already have it in sports. But other kinds of exchange would be of great benefit in both directions.
How do you overcome the political obstacles? Clinton is, I'm sure, going to be inundated with criticism for normalizing relations with Vietnam. He certainly could expect the same thing if he tried it with Cuba, and I guess he figures he can only take so many hits like that. How do you overcome that?
Berube: I think it's easy. Well, I say it's easy. Most of the Cubans, the Cuban Americans, are in the Republican Party. They vote conservative politics, and they wouldn't vote for Clinton or a Democrat come hell or high water. That's one of the reasons Jimmy Carter was able to open it up, because he figured, ``They're not going to vote for me at any rate.''
If you had another Democrat - I don't think Clinton would do it in this administration. Time is short, and he took a big gamble with Vietnam. That's a much bigger gamble than the Cuban situation. But if he were to be re-elected, I wouldn't be surprised if he wouldn't move towards normalization with Cuba. He's not beholden. It's like blacks, African Americans: They vote Democratic, so the Republicans write them off. You can write the Cuban Americans off in terms of the presidential race. They're not going to vote for him anyway. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
Photo
BETTMANN ARCHIVES
Cuba faces an uncertain future after the rule of Fidel Castro comes
to an end.
Graphic
ON LINE
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