U.S.-Cuba Relations
Communist Cuba has long been a major foreign policy challenge for the United States. President Biden is the latest U.S. leader to grapple with how to balance democracy promotion with the desire for a better bilateral relationship.
A man shows U.S. and Cuban flags at his house in Havana. Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty ImagesWRITTEN BY
CFR.org Editors
UPDATED
Last updated June 3, 2022 12:45 pm (EST)
Summary
The United States and Cuba have had a strained relationship since Fidel Castro overthrew a U.S.-backed government more than sixty years ago.
Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro took steps to normalize bilateral relations, including restoring diplomatic ties and expanding travel and trade. The Donald Trump administration reversed many of these reforms.
President Joe Biden loosened some U.S. restrictions in the wake of widespread protests on the island and a renewed crackdown by Havana.
Introduction
The U.S.-Cuba relationship has been plagued by distrust and antagonism since 1959, the year Fidel Castro overthrew a U.S.-backed regime in Havana and established a socialist state allied with the Soviet Union. During the half century that followed, successive U.S. administrations pursued policies intended to isolate the island country economically and diplomatically. The United States has sanctioned Cuba longer than it has any other country.
President Barack Obama took some extraordinary steps to normalize U.S. relations with Cuba, meeting with leader Raul Castro and restoring full diplomatic ties. However, President Donald Trump largely reversed course, hitting Cuba with a raft of new sanctions. The Joe Biden administration has eased some restrictions, but renewed anti-regime protests and a worsening humanitarian situation on the island have further complicated the policy challenge.
RELATED
See How Much You Know About Cuba
by CFR Staff
What Is Cuba’s Post-Castro Future?
by Rocio Cara Labrador and Christopher Sabatini
U.S.-Cuba Ties
by Robert McMahon and Carla Anne Robbins
What triggered the falling out between Washington and Havana?
The tumultuous U.S.-Cuba relationship has its roots in the Cold War. In 1959, Fidel Castro and a group of revolutionaries seized power in Havana, overthrowing the U.S.-backed government of Fulgencio Batista. After the Cuban Revolution, the United States recognized Fidel Castro’s government but began imposing economic penalties as the new regime increased its trade with the Soviet Union, nationalized American-owned properties, and hiked taxes on U.S. imports. After slashing Cuban sugar imports, Washington instituted a ban on nearly all U.S. exports to Cuba, which President John F. Kennedy expanded into a full economic embargo that included stringent travel restrictions.
UNITED
STATES
BAHAMAS
Havana
CUBA
CARIBBEAN SEA
HAITI
0
100 km
JAMAICA
0
100 mi
CUBA AT A GLANCE
Area
110,860 square (about the size of Pennsylvania)
Form of government
Communist state
Population
11 million (2022)
Life expectancy
79 years (2020)
GDP
$107 billion (2020)
GDP per capita
$9,478 (2020)
Primary language
Spanish
Primary religions
Christianity 59%, folk 18%, none 23% (2020)
Sources: CIA World Factbook; World Bank.
What was the Cuban Missile Crisis?
The United States severed diplomatic ties with Cuba and began pursuing covert operations to overthrow the Fidel Castro regime in 1961. The missile crisis arose after Cuba allowed the Soviet Union to secretly install nuclear missiles on the island following a botched CIA attempt to topple Castro, known as the Bay of Pigs invasion. U.S. surveillance aircraft uncovered the Soviet installations in October 1962, setting off a thirteen-day showdown between Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that threatened to escalate into nuclear war.
Kennedy demanded that the Soviets remove the weapons and ordered the U.S. Navy to impose a maritime quarantine of Cuba to block additional arms from reaching the island. In the end, Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the missiles in exchange for a pledge from Kennedy not to invade Cuba and to remove U.S. nuclear missiles from Turkey. The crisis was a turning point in the Cold War, as the two superpowers made efforts to avoid nuclear confrontation.
How did relations evolve over the rest of the Cold War?
In the decades that followed, economic and diplomatic isolation became the major prongs of U.S. policy toward Cuba. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan labeled Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism [PDF] for its support of leftist militant groups in Central America and Africa. Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton signed laws—the Cuba Democracy Act of 1992 and the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996, also known as the Helms-Burton Act—that strengthened U.S. sanctions and stated that the embargo would remain in place until Cuba transitioned to a democracy that excludes the Castro family and upholds fundamental freedoms.
Timeline
U.S.-Cuba Relations
1959–2022View Timeline
Some adjustments in 1999 allowed for the export of U.S.-made medical supplies and food to the island. Restrictions tightened, however, under President George W. Bush, whose Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba increased enforcement of existing sanctions.
How did U.S.-Cuba relations normalize?
During his 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama said isolating Cuba had failed to advance U.S. interests and that it was time to pursue diplomacy with the Castro regime. Several weeks after taking office, he eased restrictions on remittances and travel, allowing Cuban Americans to send unlimited money to Cuba and permitting U.S. citizens to visit Cuba for religious and educational purposes.
As Obama began softening U.S. policy toward Cuba, the island signaled openness to reform under the new leadership of Fidel’s brother, Raul. Facing an aging population, a heavy foreign debt load, and economic hardship amid the global downturn, Raul Castro began liberalizing Cuba’s state-controlled economy in 2009. Reforms included decentralizing the agricultural sector, relaxing restrictions on small businesses, opening up real estate markets, allowing Cubans to travel abroad more freely, and expanding access to consumer goods. Cuba’s private sector swelled as a result, and the number of self-employed workers nearly tripled between 2009 and 2013.
Obama and Raul Castro surprised the world in late 2014 by announcing that their governments would restore full diplomatic ties and begin to ease more than fifty years of bilateral tensions. The historic moment marked the culmination of eighteen months of secret diplomacy brokered by Pope Francis, during which the parties agreed to an exchange of prisoners, including Cuban intelligence officers and an American development contractor, among other concessions.
Daily News Brief
A summary of global news developments with CFR analysis delivered to your inbox each morning. Most weekdays.
Email Address
View all newsletters >
The thaw continued in the years that followed. The Obama administration further loosened restrictions on remittances and travel, as well as trade, telecommunications, and financial services. It also removed Cuba’s designation as a terrorism sponsor, a major obstacle to normalization. The two governments reopened their embassies—a move that was met with widespread public support in both countries—and negotiated a spate of bilateral agreements [PDF].
In early 2016, Obama took another significant step toward normalization, visiting Havana in what was the first trip to Cuba by a sitting U.S. president since Calvin Coolidge in 1928. In a keynote address broadcast live, with Raul Castro sitting in the audience, Obama urged both countries to press on with reforms. The Cuban government should continue political and economic liberalization, and the U.S. Congress should lift the trade embargo, he said. Later that year, U.S. commercial airlines began offering service between the countries for the first time in more than fifty years.
Days before leaving office in January 2017, Obama repealed the Clinton-era “wet foot, dry foot” policy [PDF], which allowed Cubans who came to the United States illegally to pursue permanent residency. The move, which the Cuban government welcomed, brought the U.S. government’s treatment of Cubans in line with its handling of other unauthorized immigrants.
What policy changes did President Trump make?
The death of Fidel Castro and the election of Donald Trump in 2016 rekindled debates over U.S.-Cuba policy. While in office, Trump followed through on campaign pledges to reverse course on much of the Obama administration’s thaw with Cuba.
In 2017, the Trump administration prohibited commerce with businesses controlled by or operating on behalf of the Cuban military, intelligence agencies, and security services. It also banned Americans from traveling to Cuba individually for educational and cultural exchanges. Months later, the administration said it would pull most of its embassy staff from Havana after American and Canadian diplomatic workers suffered unexplained injuries, including hearing loss and cognitive impairment. Many of the U.S. embassy’s functions, including the processing of most visas, were suspended. The Cuban government denied involvement in the mysterious attacks and urged the United States not to cut diplomatic ties. (The U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found that directed, pulsed radio-frequency energy was the most plausible explanation for the injuries among those it considered.)
Washington turned up its pressure on Havana in 2019, when it began allowing U.S. nationals to sue entities that traffic in or benefit from property confiscated by the Cuban regime. Congress provided for this in the Helms-Burton Act, but past U.S. presidents had routinely waived the provision. Canada and the European Union, both major foreign investors in Cuba, condemned the move as a violation of international law and pledged to protect their companies by fighting the decision through the World Trade Organization.
In addition to ending almost all individual travel to the island, Trump banned group educational exchanges in 2019. His administration prohibited cruise ships and other vessels from sailing between the United States and Cuba, and banned U.S. flights to Cuban cities other than Havana. It also suspended private charter flights to Havana and barred U.S. travelers from staying at hundreds of establishments linked to the Cuban government or Communist Party. (Americans have long sidestepped travel restrictions by flying to Cuba through other countries, including Mexico.) Administration officials framed the travel bans as an effort to keep tourism dollars out of Cuban government coffers. The White House further targeted Cuba’s finances by curbing remittances and imposing economic sanctions. In 2018, the United Nations estimated that U.S. trade restrictions had cost Cuba more than $130 billion since the embargo began. That same year, Raul Castro’s hand-picked successor, Miguel Diaz-Canel, took office as president.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration grew increasingly wary of Cuba’s close ties with the embattled socialist regime in Venezuela. In 2018, National Security Advisor John Bolton characterized Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela as a “troika of tyranny,” blaming their governments for massive human suffering and regional instability. The Trump administration sought to staunch the flow of oil from Venezuela to Cuba by sanctioning shipping firms and Cuba’s state oil company. It also banned Cuban officials from entering the United States for their alleged complicity in Venezuela’s human rights abuses.
Where does the Biden administration stand on Cuba?
As a candidate, Joe Biden pledged to reverse Trump’s policies on Cuba, which he said did not advance human rights and democracy. After taking office, the Biden administration said it hoped to eventually lift remittance restrictions and enable Americans to travel to Cuba, and it began a review of other Trump administration actions. It also appointed a high-level official to oversee the State Department’s response to the unexplained injuries U.S. diplomats sustained in Cuba. At the same time, Havana made some economic reforms, including easing restrictions on private businesses and unifying its dual currencies. It also expressed openness to Cuban American investors. In April 2021, Diaz-Canel replaced Raul Castro as the first secretary of the Communist Party, ending decades of leadership by the Castro family.
However, the prospects for rapprochement faced new hurdles following the July 2021 outbreak of nationwide protests, Cuba’s largest in nearly three decades. Demonstrators said they were reacting to worsening economic conditions, including power outages, shortages of food and medicine, and spiking inflation. Analysts attributed these woes to a combination of U.S. restrictions, government mismanagement, and a nearly 90 percent drop in foreign currency due to a pandemic-related collapse in tourism. Cuba’s leaders responded by blaming foreign provocateurs, arresting protest organizers, and clamping down on internet and social media access across the island.
Biden called on the regime to respect Cubans’ rights to protest and “freely determine their own future,” and his administration imposed new sanctions on several Cuban officials, including high-level members of the national police. In Congress, many Democrats argued that Washington should help ameliorate Cuba’s humanitarian crisis, while some influential policymakers, including Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), pressed Biden [PDF] to expand Trump-era sanctions, bolster the island’s internet access, and warn Havana against encouraging mass migration to the United States. In May 2022, following its Cuba policy review, the White House announced a series of measures to ease restrictions on the island, including expanding U.S. flights into the country, reestablishing a family reunification program, and lifting the remittance cap for families. Some critics, including Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Bob Menendez (D-NJ), have argued that the new measures will not help foster democracy but rather bolster the communist government.
Meanwhile, Cuba’s protest movement has stalled. A pro-democracy demonstration scheduled for November 15, 2021—the day the island reopened to international tourists—saw virtually no turnout, as police had preemptively detained hundreds of dissidents. Nearly one hundred people have been sentenced to prison time for violence committed during the protests, which Cuban authorities maintain were a U.S.-backed attempt to overthrow the Diaz-Canel government.
Many analysts say the administration will be careful to avoid playing into Havana’s claims that Washington is fomenting dissent. “It is a balancing act for Biden in the end,” Latin America expert Eric Farnsworth told Politico, “to come out in support of democracy...without creating difficulties for the protestors.”
Recommended Resources
Latin American expert Kezia McKeague spoke with panelists to discuss the outbreak of protests in Cuba and what’s next for the island at this August 2021 event.
The Congressional Research Service explains how the Trump administration reshaped U.S. policy toward Cuba [PDF].
The New Yorker explores the mysterious injuries that afflicted U.S. and Canadian personnel in Cuba.
For Foreign Affairs, Richard E. Feinberg analyzes U.S.-Cuba ties under Obama and Trump, and explains how Biden can restore the countries’ détente.
In her book Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know, Julia Sweig offers a guide to the island’s politics, its relationship with the United States, and its shifting role in the world.
CFR dives into the debate surrounding the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
No comments:
Post a Comment