Virtual New York. June 30, 2000
Cuban-Americans big losers in Elian fight
By Ramesh Ponnuru . Thursday, 29 June 2000 18:37 (ET)
This week witnessed two defeats for the Cuban-American lobby. The House of Representatives passed a bill loosening the embargo against Cuba, which Cuban-Americans had long resisted. And the Supreme Court cleared the way for Elián González to return to Cuba. The defeats were
closely connected: The Cuban exile community, once invincible in American politics, has lost power, and the Elián González affair is an important reason for that loss.
For years, Cuban-Americans exercised a veto over U.S. policy toward Cuba. But when they tried to use that veto in the González case, the public turned on them. The public had seen Cuban-Americans as a patriotic and conservative group. In this case, however, they seemed to many Americans
to be taking a position that was anti-family, anti-law enforcement, and even anti-American. Polls suggested that there was a backlash even in Florida, which may be why its governor, Jeb Bush, was not seen in the Little Havana section of Miami during the controversy.
As Ruben Rumbaut, a sociologist at Michigan State university, put it to Sarah Wildman of the New Republic: "They are flying the American flag upside down. Why are they flying the American flag upside down? Because they don't want to comply with U.S. law. Why don't they want to comply with
U.S. law? Because they want to keep [Elian] from his own father who wants him and loves him. That just does not compute in the minds of the American electorate, by and large."
The González controversy was not, of course, the only reason Little Havana suffered a defeat on the House floor. The collapse of the Soviet Union, Fidel Castro's patron, made him a less threatening figure; it also reduced the public's familiarity with communism. Also, foreign-policy
experts have in recent years increasingly taken the view that trade helps open closed societies such as Cuba. Many congressmen thought it incongruous to maintain a rock-solid embargo against Cuba while promoting vigorous trade with China. For all these reasons, public support for the embargo has
fallen.
But the decline of Cuban-American political power should not be overstated. They still have ideological allies among conservatives such as House majority whip Tom DeLay. The Republican leadership in the House consented to holding a vote to loosen the embargo only after two Cuban-American
Republicans -- Lincoln Diaz-Balert and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen -- accepted the deal. In exchange, the Cuban-Americans won some concessions. The embargo will be lifted only for food and medicine, and neither the government nor the private sector will be able to extend credit to Cuba. An outright end to
the embargo is not in sight.
It is also a measure of how much power Cuban-Americans retain that both presidential candidates essentially sided with them in the González dispute. (Admittedly, this was before it was clear how public opinion would turn out.) George W. Bush even criticized the House vote to weaken the
embargo.
What both Bush and Al Gore understand is that even if public opinion has shifted, Cuban-Americans are still the voters with the most intense concern about Cuba policy. Other Floridians may have approved the administration's handling of the González matter, but Cuban-Americans will still
be steaming about it in November. Most political analysts assume that they will therefore vote heavily Republican.
That's a problem for Vice-president Gore. The Cuban-American vote put Florida in the Republican column in 1992, and it was only a weakening of Cuban-Americans' Republican allegiances that allowed Bill Clinton and Gore to carry the state in 1996. If the presidential race is tight,
Cuban-Americans just might be able to swing the election-in which case they, and not the administration, will have the last laugh.
Ramesh Ponnuru is a Senior Editor on the magazine National Review.
Reno wishes Elian, father were in 'free country'
By Michael Kirkland. Thursday, 29 June 2000 11:44 (ET)
WASHINGTON, June 29 (UPI) -- Attorney General Janet Reno said Thursday she is glad 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez is with his father but wishes both were in a "free country."
Father Juan Miguel Gonzalez returned with Elian and the rest of his family to Cuba by chartered jet Wednesday evening only hours after the Supreme Court of the United States refused to intervene on behalf of Miami relatives trying to keep the boy in the United States.
Reno and the Justice Department had sided with Juan Miguel, saying only a parent could speak on immigration matters for a child that young, but the attorney general sounded a little wistful now that it is all over.
Despite the ups and downs of the case, "in the end he is with his father and I am glad of that," Reno said. "I just wish he were with his father in a democratic, free country."
She also said she is troubled by the continuing anger among Cuban exiles in her hometown of Miami. "I'm going to do everything I can to heal it. I don't know if I can," Reno said. "...This hurt may go too deep, which I will regret. But I still have to do what I think is right
under the law."
When the Miami relatives defied a department order to turn over the boy to his father, Reno ordered the federal raid that took him from the relatives' Little Havana home early in the morning on April 22.
The attorney general said she has no second thoughts about the course she took during the controversy. "I don't know what else could have been done," she said. "I go over it frequently."
As she contended earlier this spring, Reno again said Juan Miguel had the chance to change his mind and stay in the United States instead of returning to Cuba. "The subject came up" during a private April meeting with Reno away from Cuban officials in her conference room at the
Justice Department. "He said he wanted to go home," the attorney general said.
Elian was rescued from an inner tube off the coast of Florida on Thanksgiving Day after a rickety boat capsized, drowning his mother and at least 10 other Cubans trying to flee from the island to the United States.
His father remained in Cuba, but came to the United States in April to reclaim his son. But the Miami relatives refused, insisting that the boy was a symbol in the fight against the Castro regime.
Spokesman: Family did what was right
Thursday, 29 June 2000 8:00 (ET)
MIAMI, June 29 (UPI) -- A spokesman for the relatives who cared for Elian Gonzalez said Thursday morning the family did what they felt was right in trying keep him in the United States and that now Cuban leader Fidel Castro will use the 6-year-old boy as a propaganda tool.
"Elian never had his day in court," Armando Gutierrez said in a television interview. "... Now you will see Elian all over the place with Fidel Castro," who has destroyed the island nation and kept its people prisoner.
Elian and his immediate family returned to Cuba Wednesday, ending a seven-month saga that began when Elian was found floating in an inner tube off the coast of Florida, one of three survivors of a shipwreck that killed his mother and at least 10 others trying to flee from Cuba to the United
States.
Before boarding the flight to Cuba Wednesday, Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, thanked the American people and the U.S. government for their support. He added he had meet "very beautiful and intelligent people" during his stay and said he hoped in the future this type of
friendship could happen "between our two counties, Cuba and the United States."
The Supreme Court has refused to block the families' departure.
Kendall Coffey, who headed the legal team that represented Elian's great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez and other family members in their battle to keep the boy in the United States said he and the family were "truly heartbroken at this moment, with a sense of sadness that an injustice has
occurred."
"We remain as committed as ever to the cause of this child, to the cause of other refugee children like him whose legal rights are more imperiled than ever and more committed than ever to the cause of justice for the Cuban people here and on the island," Coffey said.
"Returning this child to the worst dictator in the history of this hemisphere without even a hearing, without even an interview, is a grave injustice. It was our duty to do everything we could within the law to fight that injustice," Coffey said.
Elian and his family are expected to spend the next few weeks in a house provided for them by the Cuban government in the Havana suburb of Miramar before returning to their hometown of Cardenas.
Are economic sanctions dead as a U.S. foreign policy tool?
By John R. Bolton. UPI Analysis. Thursday, 29 June 2000 20:13 (ET)
WASHINGTON, June 29 (UPI) -- Republicans in the House of Representatives recently reached an intra-party compromise that will slightly ease the prohibitions against U.S. trade with Cuba, North Korea, Libya, Iran and Syria.
This development comes shortly after the full House agreed to Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) with China, over the objections of many who believed that China's repression of religious freedom, its proliferation of weapons of mass destruction technology and other factors disqualified it
from this much-prized status.
Combined with the Clinton administration's persistent efforts to eliminate or weaken economic sanctions against rogue states -- and the near total collapse of the international sanctions regime against Iraq -- there is a real question whether sanctions have any future as a viable foreign policy
tool.
Under the recent House compromise (brokered by Republican leaders between Cuban American and farm-state Republicans), sales of foods and medicines would be allowed, but only in exchange for hard cash (no credit arrangements, governmental or private, are permitted). Barter or exports to pay for
the imported goods are prohibited, and the U.S. government must license commercial firms (although not charitable organizations).
The congressional future of the compromise is uncertain, but strong, bipartisan pressure from farm state members favors passage during this session, at least with respect to Cuba. Whether the other rogue states will be included in the final legislation is much less clear. Neither President
Clinton nor congressional Republicans will consider more-sweeping changes in Cuba sanctions before November's presidential elections.
Economic sanctions have had a long history of controversy in the United States, where their deployment is much more common than in other industrialized democracies. Since Woodrow Wilson first championed economic pressure as preferable to the use of military force, however, opponents have argued
that they are ineffective, counterproductive, and distract from real efforts to address important international problems.
Particularly when sanctions are imposed only by the United States, rather than through a broad multilateral arrangement, opponents argue that the United States is often as disadvantaged as the target regime, because U.S. trading opponents are able to grab commercial opportunities denied to
American firms. In recent years, opponents have also claimed that Congress is imposing sanctions wholesale, thereby rendering them collectively far more burdensome on U.S. business interests.
Sanctions proponents, by contrast, assert that a policy option between mere diplomatic words and military force enhances the United States' international flexibility, and demonstrates the seriousness of American objections to the sanctioned regimes. Most proponents agree that multilateral
sanctions are preferable (as with the anti-apartheid sanctions against South Africa), although there are also compelling reasons for unilateral sanctions where the United States has especially strong interests (as with Cuba). Moreover, even where sanctions alone may not prevail against a
transgressor, their usage may help build a political consensus for the eventual use of force (as with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait).
Even before the Cuba compromise, sanctions opponents seemed to be gaining the upper hand. Although the earlier House vote on PNTR was not on sanctions as such, it represented a victory for those asserting the sole primacy of trade benefits for the United States, rather than the more
objectionable aspects of Chinese policy. Overwhelming House Republican support for PNTR for China, though, emboldened those chafing under the Cuba sanctions, and put the House Republican leadership in the embarrassing and inconsistent position of arguing for sanctions against Cuba but not against
China.
Moreover, the Clinton administration had already substantially lessened sanctions against North Korea following the recent summit of the two Korean leaders; it had made an unprecedented apology to Iran for past American covert activities, leading to possibly easing sanctions dating back to the
Tehran hostage crisis; it has assured Syria that progress in its negotiations with Israel would lead to lifting sanctions imposed because of Syria's past terrorist activities; it accepted Libya's decision to turn over two defendants accused of destroying Pan Am 103 as sufficient to justify lifting
modest U.N. sanctions; and it said recently, for no apparent reason, it would support lifting U.N. sanctions against the murderous regime in Sudan.
Even more seriously, the Clinton administration's failure to oust Saddam Hussein, let alone contain him within the post-Gulf War constraints of economic sanctions and U.N. weapons inspections, has further demonstrated its unwillingness or inability to use sanctions effectively.
Taken together, these actions have proven to rogue states around the world
that simple persistence alone can wear down American resolve, and allow them to escape form the sanctions trap. (Indeed, the Clinton administration has now even abandoned the term "rogue states" so as not to offend these countries or their supporters.) Whether the United States will
continue to employ economic sanctions is thus very much in doubt, and may well be the subject of debate during the fall presidential election campaign.
(Mr. Bolton is the senior vice president of the American Enterprise Institute. During the Bush administration, he served as the assistant secretary of State for International Organization Affairs.)
Copyright 2000 by United Press International. |