A recent Foreign Policy Association book forum on Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know offered its well-heeled and academic attendees an opportunity to hear author Julie E. Sweig’s impressions on U.S. policy toward the captive island nation. 

The cold Manhattan weather had many seeking a refuge for the warmth of an evenhanded discussion on the issue, as was given during a September 2nd New America Foundation book forum on Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause.

However, her parochial views had FreeMarketeros.com pining for an unprejudiced treatment of the subject as much as for the heated political and actual climate of exile-dominated South Florida.

Sweig described herself as a historian, policy wonk and follower of Latin America and Cold War studies.  Her many trips to Cuba over the years have given her an enviable perception of Cuban life that those not having visited can only imagine.

Rather than summarize her book, Sweig said, she wanted to discuss recent history (2006-09), views on Cuba and spotlight the future of U.S.-Cuba relations.  For a standard book review, visit the L.A. Times.

As for Sweig’s thoughts on the Cuba question, first know that they were consistent with her early 2009 open memo to newly elected President Barack Obama published in Cigar Aficianado magazine.  Sweig fits squarely inside the policymaking community that seeks to unilaterally lift many of the trade and travel restrictions the U.S. government places on Cuba.  Her writing and presentation argue that restrictions have failed to meet U.S. objectives and the humanitarian aims many hope to bring about for the Cuban people.

Nationalistic Cuba has a history of independence from the U.S. that was fueled by the communist nation’s concern over perceived fears that the latter sought regime change.  This threat to sovereignty shaped Cuba policy over the decades, and despite reformist signals from Raul Castro following his ascendance to power in the wake of Fidel’s illness, these worries persist because Cuba’s challenges increased, its worldview endured and struct U.S. policy soldiered on, for the most part. 

Raul came to power with heightened expectations of relaxing internal repression, but issues such as hurricane rebuilding and the global financial crisis affecting Cuba have take precedence over any reforms Raul hoped to institute.  Instead, today we see a Cuba that persists in maintaining total control over the economy and society for its own reasons, but also because Cuba is responding to Bush-era remnants of regime change policies.  According to Sweig, the policy of regime change persists even though the rhetoric left with Bush.  This is due to the impact of USAID projects that seek regime change through civil society empowerment.  An example of such projects is the unfiltered Internet access initiative of an American contractor detained in December 2009, reports the Miami Herald.

A more severe example of U.S. interference in the internal workings of Cuba was President Bush’s establishment of an official office to oversee Cuba’s transition to democracy, and taken together these policies and the message they sent merely fed into the Castro regime’s paranoia of an external threat.  Thus, the hopes for true change in Cuba that could occur at its natural pace with better U.S.-Cuba relations are being hindered by the specter of a U.S. still intent on regime change. 

Sweig recommends that all civil society projects with a regime change focus be purged from appropriations, and that the U.S. lift travel restrictions, lift limitations on remittances and remove Cuba from the U.S.’s globally despised terrorist watch list.  Because a broad consensus in favor of unilaterally lifting restrictions of these kinds on Cuba does not yet exist, Washington still talks of normalizing U.S.-Cuba relations only if Cuba makes certain “gestures” such as releasing political dissidents.  Those contingencies, she argues, are tantamount to asking Cuba to “commit domestic political suicide” and are a recipe for policy impasse.  The U.S. has a role in changing Cuba from within, Sweig concludes, but “not as the decider.”

So what leeway do liberty-minded friends of Cuba have, given her conclusions?  Not very much room at all.  Sweig hopes that certain gestures from the U.S. will bring about a kinder, gentler Cuba: if travel restriction are lifted, she says, then Cubans will “breath the air” from the influx of Americans who visit, resulting in the gradual enlightenment of Cubans vis a vis democratic values imparted from American tourists.  Unfortunately, there was no mention of why visits from tourists from democratic nations that do have strong Cuba ties have failed to transmit freedom.  (FreeMarketeros.com sought to ask that question of Sweig, but this was impeded by an event rule dictating that an equal number of questions be asked by men and women, and the opportunity was lost.)

As much as Sweig wants to characterize Republican policies toward Cuba as narrow-minded and ideological, she is guilty of almost identical small-mindedness when it comes to answering the Cuba question.  The U.S. requiring gestures of Cuba is impermissible, but the U.S. making unilateral gestures is essential.  The U.S. hoping for gradual change in Cuba is vital, but working toward them is verboten.  Heeding younger Cuban Americans’ calls for re-thinking the isolating strategy is noble, yet responding to older Miamians’ animosity toward gentler U.S. policy is somehow antiquated, unenlightened and counterproductive. 

With the purist Sweig, there is no mention of justice for the Cuban exile community and little mention of actively promoting human rights in Cuba.  That, disappointingly, aligns her with high-minded Washingtonians that trade sovereignty for freedom at every turn, meaning she is as an appropriate a spokesperson for President Obama multilateralism as she is a glowing booster of candidate Obama’s cloudy vision of Hope and Change.