Obama: First American president to visit Cuba in 88 yrs
US President Barack Obama spoke passionately last year about the importance of term limits during a visit to Africa, where he argued that “nobody should be president for life”. His administration has been more muted on this issue in Latin America, where a handful of leaders have become strongmen disinclined to share or relinquish power.
Next month, when he becomes the first American president to visit Cuba in 88 years, Obama will have an opportunity to make that point closer to home. As an American president who is wildly popular in Cuba, his message about democratic traditions, leadership and power stands to resonate powerfully.
He should challenge President Raúl Castro of Cuba, who has vowed to step down in 2018, to set the stage for a political transition in which all Cubans are given a voice and a vote. He should urge Cubans of all ideologies to start debating their differences constructively, ending the repression of those who are critical of the regime.
Obama should note that Cuba’s leaders could be doing far more to revitalise the island’s languishing economy, which would stem the flow of people seeking to leave for better futures elsewhere. And he should tell Cubans that they deserve better than leaders picked by the Communist Party who are unaccountable to their people.
The relatively small faction in Congress that continues to favour a punitive policy toward Cuba has stubbornly stood in the way of efforts to repeal the embargo against the island. Those critics contend that Obama’s visit to Cuba will be interpreted as a validation of a repressive regime. That is shortsighted.
The United States has sought for decades to bring about regime change in Cuba through a series of failed strategies that included the use of force and subterfuge. Those policies failed and gave Cuban leaders a pretext to run the country like a police state.
Obama and a growing number of American politicians have come to recognise that the United States is ill equipped to dictate how leaders of sovereign nations should govern, and is more effective when it leads by example and champions those who fight peacefully for dignity and self-determination.
Obama’s short trip is unlikely to spark overnight reforms in Cuba. But it has the potential to do more to plant the seeds for transformational change than any of his predecessors ever achieved. MIXED REACTIONS
The trip, planned for March 21-22, drew denunciations from critics in both parties of Obama’s Cuba policy, many of them CubanAmericans who have long opposed any engagement with the Castro government.
“To this day, we have not seen one substantial step toward transparent democratic elections, improved human rights, freedom of assembly, or the ability to form independent political parties and trade unions in Cuba,” said Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey. “Despite the lack of reciprocity from a despotic and reinvigorated Castro regime, our president is rewarding this oppressive regime with a visit.”
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a Republican presidential candidate, released a letter to Obama urging him to reconsider the trip.
“Having an American president go to Cuba simply for the sake of going there, without the United States getting anything in return, is both counterproductive and damaging to our national security interests,” Rubio wrote. “You will send the message to the oppressed Cuban people that you stand with their oppressors.”
But the planned visit was met with jubilation from lawmakers who have begun pressing to repeal the embargo against Cuba.
“For Cubans accustomed to watching their government sputter down the last mile of socialism in a ’57 Chevy, imagine what they’ll think when they see Air Force One,” said Senator Jeff Flake from Arizona.
OBAMA’S TRIP IS UNLIKELY TO SPARK OVERNIGHT REFORMS BUT HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BRING MORE CHANGE THAN ANY OF HIS PREDECESSORS