Since President Obama took office nearly eight years ago, relations between the United States and Cuba have slowly normalized. Following the election of Donald Trump, however, some Americans and Cubans now feel uncertain about their countries’ foreign policy futures.
“My expectation is the Trump administration is going to completely roll back most, if not all, of the changes that were made by President Obama,” University of Nebraska-Omaha professor and foreign policy expert Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado told KGOU’s World Views. “I see that as being unfortunate, because I think the biggest element of the relationship between Cuba and the United States has been a lack of trust.”
While Trump may be planning on turning back the clock on U.S.-Cuba relations, Benjamin-Alvarado still sees opportunities for some Americans to experience Cuba. Cultural and educational exchanges, while not unlimited, may remain one of the best opportunities for visit the island nation.
“I still believe that people--academics, journalists--will continue to travel to Cuba, as they have for the last 50 years. But the American public, who's hoping to have all these openings, may see that door slam shut,” Benjamin-Alvarado said. “There's a very small window of opportunity now, for Americans to go and explore. And I'm not certain that's going to be available to people six or eight months from now.”
Additionally, the death of former president and revolutionary leader Fidel Castro may force the world to shift its treatment of Cuba as the country looks to establish its presence in the global economic arena.
“I think for the future, what we have to keep our eyes on is the extent to which the Trump administration can actually develop a Cuba policy, as opposed to a Fidel Castro policy,” Benjamin-Alvarado said.
However, according to Benjamin-Alvarado, Cuba’s reintegration into the world economy will not come without growing pains as the country realizes it’s truly independent.
“They're not beholden to Spain. They're not beholden to the United States. They're not beholden to the former Soviet Union, or Russia, and even less so now on Venezuela,” Benjamin-Alvarado said. “They're truly alone. And if they're going to have any progress, it's going to completely fall to them.”
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INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
On Cuban immigration to the US
We may actually see the Cuban Adjustment Act rescinded, which will no longer grant Cubans the opportunity to come to the United States and almost immediately receive legal permanent residence. They've been the only people in the world that have that opportunity and that luxury, and it's created a lot of problems. It's this whole "wet foot, dry foot" issue in Cuba, that people would very willingly subject themselves to the vagaries of going on the high seas on a rickety raft. And we don't know how many people have died trying to come to the United States. And so I think that may be one of the bigger things that we're going to see almost immediately.
On Fidel Castro’s death and future US partnership
Raúl doesn't have nearly the charisma as his brother did. I think that, perhaps, is going to be the point of departure moving into the future. Castro is dead and buried now, so it's an opportunity now for Cuba to finally move forward. I don't know if they can. To be honest with you, I think that's going to be the big challenge for them moving forward. In the big picture, it doesn't cost the United States a lot to continue to be tough on Cuba. But I think the United States would benefit from having a stronger partner, just 90 miles south of its borders.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
SUZETTE GRILLOT: Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado, welcome to World Views.
JONATHAN BENJAMIN-ALVARADO: Thank you.
GRILLOT: So, Jonathan, we've seen a lot of change coming. The Cuban leader--former leader--Fidel Castro died not too long ago, President-elect Trump is coming into office soon-- And he has said, during his campaign, that he was going to roll back some of the relationship thawing that is happening between the US and Cuba. We obviously have seen, over the past few years, President Obama working to normalize these relationships and slow down some of the--sort of "chill"--the heated rhetoric toward the country. So the relationship has been improving, yet, we don't know what we're about to get, so I'm going to ask you to maybe predict the future. You're paying attention to this issue, obviously, traveling to Cuba. So tell us what you think we should expect under a new administration, when it comes to relations with Cuba.
BENJAMIN-ALVARADO: Well, my expectation is the Trump administration is going to completely roll back most, if not all, of the changes that were made by President Obama. I see that as being unfortunate, because I think the biggest element of the relationship between Cuba and the United States has been a lack of trust. We talk about the necessity of confidence-building measures, the necessity of having a reliable counterpart to negotiate with, and those are things that have to be done over time. I think that's when the countries will arrive at trust. I viewed what Obama was doing as the means to achieve confidence and trust in each other as partners, and I thought that initiative to reopen the embassy was a smart move on his part. That's going to be pulled back. And I think it may go even further than that--that we may actually see the Cuban Adjustment Act rescinded, which will no longer grant Cubans the opportunity to come to the United States and almost immediately receive legal permanent residence. They've been the only people in the world that have that opportunity and that luxury, and it's created a lot of problems. It's this whole "wet foot, dry foot" issue in Cuba, that people would very willingly subject themselves to the vagaries of going on the high seas on a rickety raft. And we don't know how many people have died trying to come to the United States. And so I think that may be one of the bigger things that we're going to see almost immediately. I still believe that people--academics, journalists--will continue to travel to Cuba, as they have for the last 50 years. But the American public, who's hoping to have all these openings, may see that door slam shut. And so there's a very small window of opportunity now, for Americans to go and explore. And I'm not certain that's going to be available to people six or eight months from now.
GRILLOT: Well, you mention that there's obviously been some trust building going on, but the largest complaint, it seems to me-- And if I'm reading President-elect Trump's position correctly, is that this new relationship and this trust building, it didn't come with anything. There wasn't really any change going on in Cuba. I think that's their position, right? And others, who have been opposing US normalization of relations with Cuba--many people in the United States suggesting that maybe there wasn't any regime change, there's no change, there's no real opening.
BENJAMIN-ALVARADO: Well, I think the thing that's interesting about that is you have to look at what the embargo consists of today. And the way that it's been codified, in the Helms-Burton Act of 1996 that lays out, very clearly, the standards and requirements for the Cuban government to be able to have normal relations with the United States and to have that embargo lifted. They have to have a full-functioning democratic regime, which means fair and frequent elections. They have to have a market economy in place. Neither one of the Castro brothers can be a part of the government. They have to completely reform to a human rights standards that we don't even apply to some of our best allies. And so the bar is set really high for the Cubans. And I was hopeful that with the initiative undertaken by President Obama, that that would begin to develop the changes we've seen in Cuba. And Cuba has made some rather significant changes in the past 10 years under Raúl Castro. What we've seen is a return of private property. We've seen the return of small business enterprises. Banks are loaning money in a way that they hadn't done for well over 50 years. We're beginning to see an opening with that. Unfortunately, this past year, I think as kind of a last little tip of the hat to Fidel Castro before he passed away, the Cubans backtracked on a lot of those initiatives as well. I think what they were trying to do was to reiterate that they were the ones in control. I think the regime could be typified as being one that are a bunch of control freaks, at the end of the day. They really wanted to manage all the changes in society, and we know that people who study transitions into democracy or away from democracy--those are usually one of the bigger elements we want to keep our eyes on. And so the government wanted to be in complete control of that process of transition, saw it getting out of their hands, and really decided to draw back. Now, I think for the future, what we have to keep our eyes on is the extent to which the Trump administration, regardless of how it chooses to pursue this--if they can actually develop a Cuba policy, as opposed to a Fidel Castro policy. I think what we've had for the last 60 years has been a Castro policy, and so if we can finally get to a point where we can put a Cuba policy into place, I think that both sides will be significantly better off.
GRILLOT: Well, that's going to require a non-Castro leader. And, as you mentioned, Raúl is still in power, and there's some speculation-- He has said that he will step down in 2018.
BENJAMIN-ALVARADO: Correct.
GRILLOT: There's still some real speculation about who will follow, but it could be somebody very much like a Castro.
BENJAMIN-ALVARADO: Well, Miguel Díaz-Canel, who is the designee to become the next president of the Cuban Council of State, is considered to be a hardliner. He is certainly what we would call a "fidelista"--somebody who has been born, bred, nurtured inside that particular system. But it remains to be seen whether he will be as hardline as heroes of the revolution. You know, they're all octogenarians now. And I think their days are numbered, obviously, as we've seen with Fidel Castro. And we know Raúl's 85. He's planning on stepping down in about 18 months. And so there's a lot of speculation as to where that's going to lead. What I think is important to note, though, is that the reason why the United States continues to be able to keep the policies in place, especially the embargo, is that at the end of the day, it really doesn't cost the United States anything. It's not like being tough on China, or being tough on Russia, where there are significant national security interests of a vital sort, that we have to contend with. Cuba is small change in the spectrum of national security interests. But I think from a regional perspective, it makes sense for the United States to continue to pursue developing a better relationship with Cuba, for all the different reasons we have issues in the Caribbean and Central America to begin with. If it's talking about drug interdiction; we're talking about human migration. We're talking about economic stability in the region, I think that's the one thing that people take for granted. The one thing that Cuba has been for the last 50 years is stable. It hasn't had the kind of tumult that we've seen in Mexico or in the northern triangle of Central America, where you have rampant lawlessness. Granted, people like to bandy about the notion of the "rule of law," but to the large extent, in Cuba, there has been a rule of law--it's just not our laws, and laws that really comport with an American way of thinking about the country. But I would argue that it's been extremely stable, and that's one of the benefits Castro has brought to the table. Now, there's a lot of speculation as to what might happen in a transition. But we've already seen one peaceful transition of power, in 2008. I expect that we should fully see another one in 2018, to a third leader of the regime. But anything's open after that.
GRILLOT: Now, Cuba-- Let's go back in history just a little bit. Obviously, the Soviet Union was very close to Cuba during its days, and then Russia after that. Other relations in the region--Venezuela was a bit of a supporter of Cuba. But beyond that, who is Cuba relating with and to?
BENJAMIN-ALVARADO: Cuba's biggest training partners right now are Canada and China, and to a lesser extent, Brazil. Brazil's been very keen on trying to share some of its technology, and some of its access to markets. There was some hope on the part of Cubans when they discovered offshore oil in 2004 that the Brazilians would move in immediately and start drilling, as they are off the coast of Brazil. But that did not happen. They had a relationship with Venezuela that was very similar to the relationship that they had with the former Soviet Union, of receiving preferential trade agreements for oil. Granted, the oil wasn't of the same type of quality as it was from the Russians, but it really helped keep the Cuban economy alive, and it really allowed Cuba to also develop its own resources for oil and petroleum on the island. And so it helped them to kind of stave off some eventual disaster. Now that Venezuela is imploding, the Cubans are now purchasing oil from Algeria. And so they've found another partner. What should be interesting about this, though, is that there's great interest from China, now that the Panama Canal has been expanded. Cuba now has a deep water port in Mariel. It's supposed to be an economic exclusion zone that will allow for investment from other countries. The biggest question here is whether or not that can become a reality. Cuba's not party of the IMF. They're not part of the World Bank. The United States will not allow them to do that. And so they can't get the kind of financing and capital they need to really move their economy forward. They've been the victim of a lot of self-inflicted wounds, but I think this is where the United States embargo is most effective: in the denial of technology, first-generation technologies, and the denial of finance and capital for infrastructure. I think that's the largest challenge that Cuba's going to be facing over the next couple of generations.
GRILLOT: Well, it still remains to be seen, obviously, what is going to happen under a Trump administration. But what is it that the Cubans need to do, do you think? What do they need to do to continue to make progress? I assume that they want to make progress when it comes to Cuban-US relations. How do they feel about a Trump administration, and what is it they need and want to do moving forward?
BENJAMIN-ALVARADO: Well, I did talk with a couple of people in Cuba, because I'm getting ready to go down in a few weeks. They're very mystified by the election of Donald Trump. Not because they don't believe that Donald Trump could be elected, but because they thought it was such a complete reversal from the trajectory that they thought the United States was pursuing under Barack Obama. Be that as it may, what I think is important now is that the Cubans have realized that they truly are independent. They truly are alone in the world. They're not beholden to Spain. They're not beholden to the United States. They're not beholden to the former Soviet Union, or Russia, and even less so now on Venezuela. So they're truly alone. And if they're going to have any progress, it's going to completely fall to them. And I think it scares them. It scares them to think they don't have any fallback position at this point. And maybe this is why we've seen the reluctance for the Cuban government to open up, in terms of the domestic economy. I think that's a mistake, to be honest. I think they could certainly generate a lot more financing and capital internally if they allowed those processes to take place, but then what you do is you create a society of people with and without resources.
GRILLOT: Well, what about society? What about social movements? Is there any kind of movement within Cuba to persist when it comes to regime change, and not be so isolated in the world?
ALVARADO: You know, that one is hard to say. I'm hoping to hear from people that they have some ideas about where they would like to go in the future. Granted, I think so much of it was in deference to Fidel Castro, but he's gone. And Raúl doesn't have nearly the charisma as his brother did. I think that, perhaps, is going to be the point of departure moving into the future. Castro is dead and buried now, so it's an opportunity now for Cuba to finally move forward. I don't know if they can. To be honest with you, I think that's going to be the big challenge for them moving forward. In the big picture, it doesn't cost the United States a lot to continue to be tough on Cuba. But I think the United States would benefit from having a stronger partner, just 90 miles south of its borders.
GRILLOT: So the people themselves, then, also need some leadership. Not just at the top, not just that president, but perhaps more broadly, throughout society?
BENJAMIN-ALVARADO: I think you're right. I think that in terms of social movements, they like to claim that things are grassroots, but I always make the joke that even nongovernmental organizations need to have government authorization in Cuba. And so that kind of lets you know how convoluted some of those elements are. Even if you're a grassroots organization, it has to be authorized through the state. The saying in Cuba is "everything within the revolution, nothing outside of the revolution." The question my students used to ask--"Well, who determines what's revolutionary?" So I think that will be the operative question for people moving forward, for people on the island. Do they want to continue with this notion of a revolutionary process of social justice? That's what Jose Martí articulated in the nineteenth century, as kind of the architect of the Cuban nation. I don't think that's ever been manifest.
GRILLOT: Alright. Well, thank you so much, Jonathan, for your tremendous insight into this country you have visited and certainly loved for many years. So thank you for being here.
BENJAMIN-ALVARADO: Well, thank you. I appreciate it.
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