One of the disappointments of the Obama administration thus far has been the extent to which it has embraced the traditional U.S. policy toward Castro-run Cuba. Yes, the president lifted Bush 43-era restrictions on Cuban-Americans traveling to the isolated island, but that leaves in place a travel ban for the remainder of the population, not to mention a trade embargo whose futility is demonstrated by its longevity.
The National Economic Council's Lawrence Summers was on Meet the Press this morning and the first question host David Gregory posed to him was about Cuba--under what circumstances would President Obama lift the Cuban embargo? (This question is in itself incorrect: Obama cannot unilaterally lift the embargo; doing so would require an act of Congress.)
Summers gave an answer that could have been given by virtually any U.S. official for the last 50 years: U.S. policy depends upon what Cuba does next. "Cuba's known what it needs to do for a very long time and it's up to them in terms of their policies, their democratization and all the steps they can take and we'll have to see what happens down the road," Summers said. He added: "Fundamentally, David, this is an issue that's going to get decided on the basis of Cuba's behavior, on the steps that they choose to take or that they choose not to take in terms of their policies in this hemisphere."
In other words: Cuba will dictate U.S. policy toward Cuba.
But he concluded on a contradictory note: "The president's decisions are really going to be grounded in what's best for the United States."
The last statement does not follow from the earlier ones. Letting a strategically insignificant country dictate our policy is not in U.S. interests; treating Cuba like a strategic peer is not in our interests; leaving this Cold War policy in place is not in our interest for reasons having to do with both economics (there's a reason the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for example, opposes the embargo) and international relations (for many decades we made Cuba policy a litmus test for our southern neighbors--now they are doing the same with us, demanding that we normalize relations).
In fairness we should not expect too much too quickly. Lawrence Wilkerson, the former aide to Colin Powell, was on a panel at the New America Foundation this week and made a good point about this: Obama has made aggressive policy turns on Iraq, Iran, nuclear weapons, and so forth. Cuba is low-hanging fruit when it comes to looking strong on national security, it's easy to maintain the policy while expending political capital on larger (and more important) issues. And herein is the great irony of U.S.-Cuba policy: Because it ultimately has little strategic value, there has traditionally been more down-side to changing policy than up-side. But the politics are starting to change, so maybe there's room to maneuver here.
New America's Steve Clemons, who organized the Cuba panel mentioned above, made a great point in his blog: The Obama administration is unlikely to go it alone, but if Congress joins them, they might yet make sensible changes to our Cuba policy. Fingers crossed.