Cuba reversal a mistake in more ways than one

There is a lot about President Donald Trump’s decision to roll back the Obama administration’s engagement with Cuba that doesn’t make sense.

In terms of substance, the president’s eight-page directive is very light — a completely unnecessary and partial policy shift aimed at placating a handful of congressional allies. And yet, strategically, this whisper-sized decision will be heard as a negative roar for U.S. interests in the hemisphere.

Speaking in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood at a theater named after a fallen Bay of Pigs leader, President Trump challenged the Cuban government to come to the table with a new deal, demanding, among other things, that they release political prisoners and open themselves to political and economic freedoms.

Sounds like good stuff. But any international relations expert will tell you that a successful foreign policy requires both believability and predictability and Trump’s Cuba directive has neither. As The Economist said a few weeks ago: “International alliances weaken from confusion and neglect as much as willful demolition.”

For a president who has complimented Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on doing “a fantastic job,” who was one of the few to congratulate Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on a recent power grab, and who quite recently enjoyed a ceremonial sword dance with Saudi Arabia’s leadership before signing a $110 billion arms deal, this sudden awakening to human rights is almost offensively disingenuous.

The idea that Trump doesn’t really own this Cuba policy is fairly clear. As he acknowledged in his speech, he was guided by Congressman Mario DíazBalart and Sen. Marco Rubio, describing the latter as “a man who has really become a friend of mine.”

Considering the contempt and derision the senator from Florida was treated to during the campaign, it is disconcerting to watch Rubio pivot so swiftly to the defense of the president from his seat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which happens to be investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

It may be normal for presidents to trade favors with lawmakers, but it shouldn’t come at such a high cost to U.S. interests. The crux of the administration’s mistake is to not understand that Cuba policy, for better or worse, is not just about Cuba, but rather about U.S. relations with the rest of Latin America.

The rollback has already received universally negative reactions in the region, even among our closest allies and friends, as it signals a shift away from pragmatic engagement back toward ideology and antagonism. It comes right at a moment when the region was already moving our way, with democracy consolidating, economies and borders opening, and relations improving.

This announcement is concomitant with Trump’s contemptible behavior toward Mexico and his repudiation of trade at exactly the moment Latin American electorates vote in regimes espousing integration. Now add the reversal on Cuba to the list of items that just push the region into the hands of our global adversaries.

China and Russia are the first to gain in the region — already, Chile and Peru have free trade agreements with the Asian giant, the new presidents of Brazil, Peru, and Argentina chose Beijing as their first travel destination, and chaotic Venezuela is every day more in hock to China. Cuba is desperate, impoverished, and deeply indebted, and will be forced to look elsewhere in the face of this throwback to isolation.

China already holds the most Cuban debt and has interests in making the country into a bargaining chip in possible future territorial disputes. Russia of course has a long history with Cuba, and also has strategic interests to move in. We can only begin to speculate what opportunities could be available to Iran and other opponents, but it is clear the United States should have no interest in accelerating this process.

President Trump is correct that Havana has a long way to go on improving rights, and his gripe that they have dragged their feet on promised reforms is not without merit.

But we need to play for the future. The way to prepare Cuba for a post-Castro era is not to isolate it, but to open it to more U.S. businesses and products, more U.S. tourists, more U.S. culture, more access to U.S. information. If we aren’t going to work with Cuba, others will fill the vacuum.