Don’t reward Cuba until it enacts real reforms

The following is from a Miami Herald editorial:

What to do about Cuba could quickly become an uncomfortable political question for President-elect Joe Biden. He’ll soon arrive at a fork on the road. Should he veer right or left?

As Biden crafts his foreign policy, one of his administration’s most prickly dilemmas is wrapped in this simple question: Should the United States return to its 2014 efforts — when Barack Obama was president and Biden his VP — to reestablish relations and diplomatic ties with the Cuban government, wiping away the 60-year U.S. embargo against the communist island? And if he has any intention of doing so, he’ll have to wrangle concessions from the regime before any resumption of relations. The Obama administration’s failure to do so doomed the historic rapprochement.

Biden may have backed himself into a corner. On the campaign trail, he promised to reverse Trump’s restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba.

But he’ll now be dealing with a different Cuba, one that in recent months has cracked down hard on a group of artists, nicknamed the San Isidro Movement. Old, repressive Cuba is the same as ever, as it was even under pre-trump renewed relations.

Obama’s policies promoted an exchange of people, ideas and goods between the United States and the island. Obama said it wouldn’t cost our country much to try a new approach because the island was a “tiny little country.”

But after numerous high-level diplomatic meetings in Cuba and the United States, the result was that the Obama administration received nothing in exchange for his unilateral concessions.

Today, Biden would be making a serious mistake to resume more-cordial relations with Cuba. His support would all but destroy the work of those San Isidro artists, the Ladies in White and so many others fighting from within to change the regime.

Cuba would use that support from the United States to quash the demands of the opposition — that’s the Cuban government for you. This is why our new president should not reward the regime in advance of real reform.

Biden would be making a serious mistake to resume more-cordial relations with Cuba. It would all but destroy the work of those fighting from within to change the regime.