Biden must re-engage with Havana

Few countries have evoked for Americans the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine as much as has Cuba.

Few countries in the Western Hemisphere have evoked for Americans the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine as much as has Cuba. For years, the Soviets used the island nation 103 miles off the coast of Florida as a listening post, and, in 1962, they brought the world to the brink of existential conflict by secretly placing nuclear ballistic missiles on the island. Today, America’s most worrisome unwelcome guest in the Caribbean is China. That’s also true elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere.

Beijing has been using Cuba as a spy base since 2019, the White House said recently. The Biden administration’s statement was aimed at refuting a Wall Street Journal report that China was planning to build a new listening post in Cuba, though, given the history, it’s anything but comforting to know that Beijing has been eavesdropping on the U.S. from close range for the last four years.

Both economically and militarily, China looms as a worrisome threat to U.S. interests. The U.S. can expect China to step up spying from Cuba, and must ensure sensitive American targets are adequately firewalled.

But there’s also a diplomatic approach that the Biden administration should pursue — one that the president should know all too well.

One of the smartest foreign policy moves that Biden’s former boss, Barack Obama, made was to reengage Havana. Obama used his executive powers to allow the reopening of embassies in each other’s countries, resume commercial flights, ease restrictions on U.S. computer and telecommunications technology to Cuba and recharge the island’s tourism industry.

Obama recognized the value of ending America’s longstanding policy of isolating Havana — it didn’t make much sense when the rest of the world freely traded with Cuba. And while his administration was all too aware that the Castro regime continued to muzzle dissent and run roughshod over human rights, there was an awareness that a new generation of leaders would eventually take over in Havana, and that economic engagement would yield better results than disconnection, both for U.S. interests and for the Cuban people.

When Donald Trump took over the White House, he undid Obama’s normalization of relations with Havana and reimposed tougher sanctions on Cuba.

A Biden commitment to proactively returning to a policy of engagement with Havana would rekindle the aspirations of everyday Cubans for a better, freer life. It would discourage dangerous makeshift boat voyages to Florida by desperate Cuban migrants who find no cause for hope at home. And it would make Havana think twice about allowing Beijing to exploit Cuba’s proximity to the U.S. coastline.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Beijing to meet with senior Chinese officials. We wouldn’t be surprised if Blinken raises with China’s leadership U.S. opposition to Beijing’s spy station in Cuba.

But rekindling engagement with Cuba is another way to get at the problem, and it could pay bigger dividends — for both Havana and Washington.