Controlled panic on Calle Ocho

A smart friend reminds me regularly that everyone is talking about a coming change in U.S. policy toward Cuba – except the officials who make that policy in the U.S. government.

Still, the talk has provoked unease among embargo advocates, who may be wondering if the wheels are starting to come off the wagon that has dragged this foreign policy relic well into the 21st century.

For some time now they have tried to deny what Republican political operatives know – that the Cuban-American vote in Florida split evenly between President Obama and Governor Romney in 2012, that demographics dictate that Cuban-American support for the embargo will continue to decline, and that Cuban Americans are losing importance in Florida politics as Puerto Ricans and other Latinos have increased greatly in number.

They now see activism in their own community promoting engagement with Cuba (including this recent television ad urging voters to defend their right to travel), and it’s coming not from the Venceremos Brigade but rather from Cuban Americans who want change in Cuba and are not tied to el exilio’s ideas.

They are seeing a united front in Latin America and the Caribbean insisting that Cuba attend the next inter-American summit in Panama next April, and they see the Obama Administration accepting that political reality. A State Department official told reporters in Panama last month that the United States insists on the meeting’s “democratic character,” but “if the Cuban delegation comes, I believe it will be important that the region have the opportunity to hear its vision,” as well as “the vision of the United States, the Pacific Partnership, the countries of the Caribbean where democracy has prospered.” The result could be the first serious meeting between the Cuban and American heads of state since 1959, albeit in a multilateral setting. It would represent a normalization of sorts, where we deal with Cuba as we deal with others, expressing disagreement directly rather than through a policy of non-contact.

They see that the Cuban government is reacting to the Ebola crisis by sending hundreds of doctors to Africa to treat patients in dire need of care. The Obama Administration has welcomed Cuba’s help; our UN Ambassador says she is “proud” of the work of “American, European, and Cuban doctors” in Africa, and adds that while U.S. and Cuban missions “are not an integrated effort, we are working shoulder to shoulder.” You don’t need a poll to figure that most Americans dislike Cuba’s form of government but admire Cuba’s doctors and its government’s decision to contribute so strongly. But if your supreme goal is to prevent movement in U.S. policies toward Cuba, this is a big problem; the Cuban medical mission is “thinly disguised propaganda” and a U.S. official’s attendance at a meeting on Ebola in Havana is a “disgrace.”

They see a series of New York Times editorials calling on President Obama to normalize relations, including one today that calls for a prisoner swap to get USAID contractor Alan Gross home before he marks five years in jail. (The editorial prompted one dissident to tweet, “Let Alan rot!” – give him points for frankness!) No one likes prisoner exchanges, a sometimes distasteful but necessary adjunct to war and covert operations. If this involved any situation other than Cuba today, a swap would be effected to live up to the Administration’s responsibility to the man it sent to Cuba.

They see that the 2016 Presidential campaign, which is about to begin, will have something unprecedented: a major-party frontrunner calling not for re-examination or adjustments to Cuba policy, but for the end of the embargo itself. (Also, we may soon have a Florida governor-elect who opposes the embargo.) Secretary Clinton’s move is surprising because she, like President Clinton, used “tough” approaches toward Cuba to counter the Republican rap that the Democrats have a weak foreign policy. Her reversal leads to questions about how many more U.S. political figures might be prepared to reverse long-held positions on Cuba, as if they were held for convenience rather than conviction.

The pro-embargo forces, along with the rest of us, are left wondering about President Obama and his year-old musings about “updating” his Cuba policy. That policy has been largely to embrace and continue that of President Bush, except for some very constructive changes involving travel, remittances, and diplomatic contacts. The economic sanctions in effect in 2008 are almost entirely intact. It’s an approach deserving of President Obama’s favorite epithet – a “20^th century” policy. If there’s conviction behind it, it’s hard to discern; it seems to be sustained by inertia. That inertia could last two more years, or it could be swept away by a decision to form an actual Obama policy toward eleven million neighbors in Cuba. That would make me a little skittish too.

Quotable

“Please read the NY Times editorial from 11/02/14. You need to start negotiating for Alan Gross to be released from jail NOW!!”

– Linda Gross, cousin of jailed USAID contractor Alan Gross, in a tweet to President Obama

“Let Alan rot!”

– Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, Cuban dissident now in residence at Brown University, on Twitter

One more chapter in USAID's covert action adventures

On Monday AP reported on yet another case where USAID attempts to beat Cuban intelligence services at its own game on its own turf. (AP provides its long report here, a shorter one here, a five-point summation here, a video report here, and selected documents here.)

The new programs described by AP – where USAID sends Latin Americans into Cuba to raise the political consciousness of Cuban youth – raise issues not very different from those that came to light when Alan Gross was arrested five years ago. Those issues were addressed then by Mauricio Vicent of El Pais and by me before we even knew Mr. Gross’ name. So I’ll note just a few things.

First, USAID continues to be very prickly about the term “covert operations.” However, the agency is not bashful about asserting that it will continue to operate in Cuba by sending in operatives who don’t disclose their U.S. government connection, not even to the Cubans with whom they work, as its spokesman’s statement makes clear. What USAID wants is the option of operating covertly with none of the responsibilities of agencies that do so professionally. They have lost former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton, no softie on Cuba, who says he likes the programs “in principle,” but “this strikes me as a bunch of teenagers playing at covert political activity, and that’s dangerous.” On the comical side, the editors of Investor’s Business Daily attacked the AP for exposing the USAID program, but their editorial calls it a CIA program seven times, which is a natural, if dumb, mistake to make if you don’t read the AP story closely. But it’s not fair to the CIA.

In contrast to other USAID operations, this one did include training for operatives who traveled to Cuba – coded phrases to signal distress, etc. Not that it did any good. In the case of a Costa Rican organization that ran a HIV/AIDS seminar in Santa Clara, a state security agent was present and questioned the operatives and was apparently content to observe them and allow them to go on their way. AP reports that this project fell apart when a Costa Rican traveled later to Cuba to bring money to some Cubans. The Costa Rican organization took issue with AP’s reporting; see here and here. 

Like the fake Twitter program called ZunZuneo that AP described last April, the USAID programs in this week’s reporting do not involve assisting political dissidents. Rather, they use the contractor Creative Associates to reach average Cubans and to move them toward political action.

ZunZuneo surveyed its subscribers to gauge their political leanings. In the newly disclosed programs, the Costa Rican organization was one of several that contacted Cuban students and student organizations. The idea, its documents state, is to show the value of organizing to address social concerns, and the hope was that this idea would catch on and spread across Cuba in later phases of the program. In that sense, USAID told AP, the advertised purpose of the HIV/AIDS seminar, health care education, was merely a “secondary benefit.” The main goal was to build civil society organizations in Cuba.

USAID, in its world of its own, doesn’t seem troubled by the idea that health programs worldwide, including those run by Americans who operate in good faith and who do not soak up taxpayer money, and also including USAID health programs, might be affected by the news that USAID operates health programs under false pretenses.

And I continue to believe that Cuban citizens deserve more respect from the U.S. government. If they are brought into a U.S. government program, particularly one that is inherently political right down to its founding statute, they deserve to know. The financial wellspring of these programs, the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, aims to overturn Cuba’s political order. Agree or not with that aim, it’s something that Cuban “targets”  deserve to know especially when the agency running the programs is incapable of concealing its role.

But we have been through this before.

One wonders whether we’ll go through it again. The newly disclosed programs were carried out after Alan Gross was arrested, which would seem to indicate a decision by the Obama Administration that this modus operandi is just fine.

Another similarity between Zunzuneo and these more recent programs is that they are based on the idea that Cuba’s dissidents are ineffective.

AP reports that the Costa Rica-based manager of Creative Associates’ programs was Javier Utset. Utset is author of a 2008 assessment of the Cuban dissident movement. Reading it now, it sounds like the theoretical foundation for the programs he would later run. Excerpts:

“While Cubans desire change, they are generally too atomized, apathetic, or fearful to demand it and they see no available platforms to pursue it. Up to date, the movement has not been effective at engaging average Cubans as active constituencies for change…[The movement has] been generally unable to incorporate the average citizen as active supporters.

“Of particular note is the disconnect from receptive social sectors such as the youth.

“The [opposition activists’] ‘martyr mindset’ dismisses the general population as a player in the equation for power. It contributes to create a strong social bond between fellow activists based on trust, loyalty, and camaraderie. That social bond strengthens the core but weakens the links to the average citizen…The opposition’s strategy should seek to impact government policy not only through direct confrontation, but also by incorporating broad-based citizen engagement effecting targeted pressure on the government to change behavior. Ultimately, no nonviolent social movement stands a chance against an authoritarian system until it wins the willful participation of the average citizen.

“The movement’s message has remained basic and static: freedom, human rights, and democracy…Short-term, ‘bread and butter’ concerns such as housing, food availability, and transportation are in the minds of most Cubans. Thus, focusing on highly political issues that are detached from the daily experiences of regular Cubans may be considered a strategic weakness.”

Finally, there’s a lot of outrage about AP’s reporting from the USAID program’s supporters, in and out of Congress. There’s outrage that AP did the reporting at all, as in the editorial cited above. And there’s also a general assertion that these programs are good because their goal is good, with no consideration of effectiveness, even after the failure of the Alan Gross program, ZunZuneo, and now this one. That’s an easy position to take if you’re not the one in jail, and if your money isn’t at stake in programs that Cuban security services see coming and going.