Analysis: Much uncertainty in US-Cuba ties
WASHINGTON—Fidel Castro’s passing removes what was long the single greatest psychological barrier to a warmer USCuba relationship.
But it also adds to the uncertainty ahead with the transition from an Obama to a Trump administration.
“A brutal dictator” of a “totalitarian island,” declared President-elect Donald Trump, underscoring the historical trauma still separating the countries.
Reflection
A more restrained President Barack Obama, carefully promoting and working to preserve his own attempt to rebuild those ties, said history would assess Castro’s impact and that the Cuban people could reflect “with powerful emotions” about how their longtime leader influenced their country. In death as in life, Castro has divided opinion: a revo- lutionary who stood up to American aggression or a ruthless dictator whose movement trampled human rights and democratic aspirations.
President Raul Castro, Fidel’s younger brother, is 85.
Their Communist Party shows no signs of opening up greater political space despite agreeing with the United States to re-establish embassies and facilitate greater trade and investment.
Engagement
As Obama leaves office in January, his decision to engage rather than pressure Havana in the hopes of forging new bonds could quickly unravel.
Trump has hardly championed the effort and Republican leaders in Congress fiercely opposed Obama’s calls to end the 55-year-old US trade embargo of the island.
“We know that this moment fills Cubans — in Cuba and in the United States — with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families and of the Cuban nation,” Obama said.
He offered neither condemnation nor praise for Castro, who outlasted invasion and assassination plots, and presided over the Cuban missile crisis, which took the world to the brink of nuclear war.
“History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him,” Obama said, adding that US-Cuban relations shouldn’t be defined “by our differences but by the many things that we share as neighbors and friends.” (AP)