Financial Times (London). April 18, 2000, Tuesday London Edition 1. Section: Comment & Analysis; Pg. 23.
To understand the high-stakes battle going on in America over the fate of Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy, it helps to look back to other such battles at other points on the globe.
Take the struggle in West Germany in the late 1980s over the tottering Communist regime in the East.
On the one hand stood the mollifiers. Prominent among them was Franz-Josef Strauss, Bavaria's premier, who arranged a DM1bn (Dollars 489m) loan for East Berlin. Then there was the Social Democratic party, West Germany's opposition, which argued that Bonn must trade measured Ostpolitik for a
policy of do-or-die conciliation. In the media, newspaper Die Welt, an anti-communist bastion, abandoned its ancient policy of referring to the dictatorship as the "so called" German Democratic Republic.
On the other hand stood the starchy Cold Warriors, who seemed unbearably retrograde. In their time they were vilified as merciless, just as the Miami Cubans who insist on keeping Elian from his father are portrayed as heartless today.
Yet, as it turned out, it was the crabby old hardliners who were right. When the Berlin Wall fell, and the people behind it got their first chance to speak, it was not the softies but the Cold Warriors whom they named as their rescuers. When asked what had liberated them, they mentioned the
Helmut Kohl government's decision to remain stalwart, the west's rigorous technology transfer laws, its economic predominance, and Ronald Reagan's Star Wars programme.
In retrospect, it became clear that the old toughies were the merciful ones. Because, without Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Margaret Thatcher and Mr Kohl, east Europeans would have languished for additional years under Communism.
So it is with Cuba. The humane thing is to stand strong. The first task is to keep Elian in the US. But even more important is to continue with the core policy - in this case, the four-decade-long economic isolation.
The first economic embargo against Cuba was laid in place as early as 1960, following nationalisation of foreign-owned property on the island. Washington has been fiddling with the screws, mostly tightening, ever since. Particularly powerful has been the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which forces
non-American companies to choose between maintaining good standing in the US and setting up business on confiscated property in Cuba.
The embargo policy is working, at the very least in the sense that the South Africa sanctions were said to be working in their day. Lately, without support from either Moscow or the West, Communist President Fidel Castro has dropped to his knees. The best evidence of this is el jefe maximo's
desperate manoeuvring over Elian.
Yet the battle is not won, for again, as in Germany, the mollifiers have moved to the fore: America's Franz-Josef Strauss has emerged in the form of Governor George Ryan of Illinois, who felt the need to travel to Cuba to establish bilateral relations between Havana and Springfield.
Much more troubling is the unpopularity of the core policy itself. Helms-Burton, for example, has made the name Jesse Helms the object of furious derision in capitals from Tel Aviv to London to Ottawa. Nearly every American who has dared attend a dinner in Europe in recent years has found
himself forced, over dessert, to defend the Helms bogeyman. Europe's businessmen and women think Cuba hardliners are troglodyte ideologues.
They are confusing Cuba with China, when it is really more like East Germany.
What matters here is that President Bill Clinton, unlike Mr Kohl and Lady Thatcher in their day, cares desperately about popularity. In the matter of Helms-Burton, for example, he has signed waiver upon waiver to the legislation's right of action provision, which would haul European companies
into America's dread courts. The White House would like nothing better than to use the uproar over Elian as an excuse to loosen the embargo.
Such a move would represent inhumanity on a scale grander than anything that can transpire with a single boy. Because, as is acknowledged by even the "return Elian" lobby, Castro seems to keep all the hard cash for himself, leaving Cuban boys of Elian's age to subsist on milk rations
of two servings a week.
Even on the American right, there are those who do not acknowledge this connection. Many in the Republican party's powerful social conservative wing share Mr Clinton's human rights focus, and tell themselves that caving in on Elian will help them win future battles.
This is self-deception. The human interest theme is something policymakers wheel out only in cases that suit them. "If this little boy were being returned to Pinochet's Chile, the reaction then would surely be different," says Dan Fisk of the Heritage Foundation.
What the Clinton administration does in its remaining few months matters quite a lot. This year Congress must decide food and medicine sales to Cuba. What is important here is to ensure that the rules for these humanitarian transactions benefit Cuban people without subsidising the regime. Then
there is travel. Democrats would funnel hard currency to Mr Castro's tourism arm by shipping packs of Americans to sun themselves on segregated beaches. This should be blocked.
And later? The fact that Al Gore, the vice-president, has veered occasionally from the Administration's position is noteworthy, although a consistent position would do more to inspire. Also important is Governor George W. Bush's plan to invite Elian's father to convince US courts that his son
really belongs in Cuba.
Because conviction in the White House, unfashionable as it may seem, is the surest path to preventing future Elians. |