Obama seeks to seal new era of openness during historic visit
WASHINGTON — President Obama will open a new era in the United States’ thorny relationship with Cuba during a history-making trip that has two seemingly dissonant goals: locking in his softer approach while also pushing the island’s communist leaders to change their ways.
Obama’s 2-day visit starting Sunday will be a crowning moment for the ambitious diplomatic experiment that he and President Raul Castro’s government announced barely a year ago. After a half-century of acrimony, the two former Cold War foes are now in regular contact. American trav- elers and businesses are eagerly eyeing opportunities on the tiny nation 90 miles south of Florida.
Joined by his family, Obama will stroll the streets of Old Havana and meet with Castro in his presidential offices — images unimaginable just a few years ago. He will sit in the stands with baseball-crazed Cubans for a historic game between their beloved national team and Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays.
Obama also will meet with political dissidents. Their experiences in the one-party state help explain why some Cuban-Americans see Obama’s outreach as a disgraceful embrace of a government whose practices and values betray much of what America stands for. Increasingly, though, that’s becoming a minority view among Cuban-Americans, as well as the broader U.S. population.
White House officials are mindful that Obama cannot appear to gloss over deep and persistent differences. Even as the president works toward better ties, his statements alongside Castro and dissidents will be scrutinized for signs of how aggressively he is pushing the Havana government to fulfill promises of reform.
Obama’s opponents insist he is rewarding a government that has yet to show it is serious about improving human rights and opening up its economy and political system. Though Obama has been rolling back restrictions on Cuba through regulatory moves, he has been unable to persuade Congress to lift the U.S. trade embargo, a chief Cuban demand.
“To this day, this is a regime that provides safe harbor to terrorists and to fugitives,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. “Unfortunately, it is doubtful that the president will bring up the need for reform during his visit.”
Two years after taking power in 2008, Raul Castro launched economic and social reforms that appear slowmoving to many Cubans and foreigners, but are lasting and widespread within Cuban society. The Cuban government has been unyielding, however, on making changes to its single-party political system and to the strict limits on media, public speech, assembly and dissent.
Obama aims to avoid glaring missteps that could make a rollback of his Cuba policy more palatable to Americans. He hopes a successful trip will make that impossible, even if a Republican is elected in November.
“We very much want to make the process of normalization irreversible,” said Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser.