Frank Calzon. Published Wednesday, January 10, 2001, in the
Miami Herald
The Council on Foreign Relations is the pre-eminent private foreign-policy
institution in the United States. It represents the ``establishment'' in the
best sense of this term. It brings together international businessmen, bankers,
labor leaders, diplomats and foreign-policy scholars to apply the old dictum
that ``politics stops at the water's edge.'' It suggests that there can be
found, through the exercise of reason, a mix of policy prescriptions that will
advance America's national interest while preserving ideals of good citizenship.
In this light, the Council's report,
U.S.-Cuban
Relations in the 21st Century, is welcome. It contains prudent analysis that
one would expect. For example, it examines the question of how and under what
terms the current ban on travel to Cuba might be lifted. To Castro, cut off for
the past 10 years from Soviet subsidies, tourism has become a critical source of
hard currency. He cannot but hope to attract ever larger numbers of American
tourists.
On this issue, the report says: ``People-to-people contacts are desirable
only if they help level the playing field between the Cuban people and the Cuban
government. Allowing unrestricted travel to Cuba by U.S. citizens under existing
conditions in Cuba would overwhelmingly benefit the Cuban government at the
expense of the Cuban people.''
On labor rights, the Castro regime claims it has the interests of workers at
heart. But, the report notes that ``[We] must have realistic expectations and
measurements for progress toward the legal recognition of independent labor
unions.'' After all, ``the world has a universal standard on labor rights,''
which ought ``to be enforced in Cuba and everywhere else in the world.''
With the Cold War over and new security threats -- terrorists armed with
weapons of mass destruction, narco-traffickers acting like independent states
and others -- emerging, it is fitting to reappraise the U.S.-Cuban military
relationship, characterized until now by hostility. The report makes a
fundamental point: ``Joint measures between U.S. and Cuban agencies help
legitimize the role of the Cuban military and, worse, the Castro regime's
internal security apparatus.''
It would be difficult to disagree with such views. The problem is that they
belong to the ``additional and dissenting views'' section of the report. In
other words, the report endorses the type of initiatives that the sources cited
above oppose, from American participation in Castro's ``apartheid tourism'' in
hotels whose employees' hard-currency, i.e., dollar wages, are 95 percent
confiscated by the government to official contacts with the military, which
protects the dictator from an increasingly bitter population.
And these aren't insignificant sources. They include labor leader Jay Mazur
and foreign-policy scholars Susan Kaufman Purcell and Ted Carpenter -- precisely
the kind of individuals who give the Council its eminence as an institution. The
report covers 33 pages, followed by more than half as many pages of dissent.
It was funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur, Christopher
Reynolds and General Services foundations, which over the years have spent more
than $1 million annually promoting a lifting of the embargo, while ignoring
human rights. The report's credibility is further undercut by its misstatement
that Sen. Jesse Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
supported an authorization bill softening the sanctions.
The mistake is serious because it remained in the report even after Sen.
Helms's aide, Marc Thiessen, pointed it out. If the task force cannot pay
attention to Helms, can it at least take note of real facts in Cuba? As the
Heritage Foundation's Daniel Fisk -- one of the dissenters -- puts it with
unbeatable simplicity, ``The problem on the island is the denial of freedom to
the Cuban people.'' This is a simple problem that the task force solves simply
-- by ignoring it.
But facts are stubborn, and it's a good idea for the new administration to
keep them in mind when assessing further concessions to Havana.
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 