President Obama will make history by being the first U.S. president to visit Cuba since 1928. This trip will mark an important watershed moment since the Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro announced that they would normalize relations in December 2014.
The U.S. and Cuba have been in a state of Cold War since the infamous Cuban missile crisis in October 1962. Before the conflict, Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev had secretly reached an agreement with late Cuban President Fidel Castro (who was also Raul Castro’s brother) to build missile sites and stockpile weapons in Cuba. Despite warnings from then President John F. Kennedy, the Soviet Union (figuratively and literally) continued a course which was quickly leading to a nuclear war.
On October 22, 1962, Kennedy ordered a naval “quarantine” of Cuba. They called it a quarantine instead of a “blockade” for legal purposes, this allowed them to receive support from the Organization of American States.
President Kennedy went on national television to deliver an address which would set the world on edge for generations. Kennedy’s speech invoked what was called the Monroe Doctrine which stated:
“It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”
On October 24, 1962, the Russian premier called the U.S. blockade an “act of aggression” and ordered Russian ships loaded with missile cargo to proceed to continue course to Cuba.
This moment marked a pivotal “line in the sand” which brought America, Cuba, and Russia to the brink of war.
Fortunately, the Soviet Union relented and turned their ships around. However, the conflict was the beginning of what would be known as the “Cold War” with the U.S. and both Cuba and The Soviet Union.
Relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union did not begin to normalize until 1989 when both countries declared an end to the “Cold War.” However, the U.S. had not gone as far to improve relations with Cuba. In fact, the U.S. had in place a “wet foot, dry foot” policy offering any Cuban refugee political asylum who could cross the Gulf of Mexico onto American shore.
President Obama’s trip in March will be a part of his broader tour of Latin America.
Word of Obama’s Cuban trip drew immediate criticism from Republicans, who believe the normalizing relations with Cuba is a mistake.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is one of the strongest critics of the president’s decision. Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz, is a Cuban defector. Cruz said that the president should not visit Cuba while the Castro family is still in power.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is also of Cuban descent; he railed against America legitimizing what he characterized as “anti-American communist dictatorship.”
“Today, a year and two months after the opening of Cuba, the Cuban government remains as oppressive as ever,” Rubio said on CNN. Told of Obama’s intention to visit, he added, “Probably not going to invite me.”
Here’s a video of Rubio’s interview.
In the interview, Rubio says that U.S. diplomatic relations should be conditional on how Cuba treats its people. However, Rubio and other Republicans seemed to have no issues maintaining diplomatic relations with countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, and Pakistan without using that ideology as a barometer.
Florida Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was born in Cuba; she called the president’s visit “absolutely shameful.”
“For more than 50 years, Cubans have been fleeing the Castro regime,” said Lehtinen, the longest-serving Cuban-American in Congress. “Yet the country which grants them refuge — the United States — has now decided to quite literally embrace their oppressors.”
The center issue is the U.S. trade embargo of Cuba, which the president has expressed interest in lifting.
“If I go on a visit, then part of the deal is that I get to talk to everybody” — including political dissidents, Obama told Yahoo News in December. “I’ve made very clear in my conversations directly with President Castro that we would continue to reach out to those who want to broaden the scope for, you know, free expression inside of Cuba.”
White House officials have not revealed what had changed over recent weeks that cleared the path for the president to visit Cuba. But on Tuesday, the U.S. and Cuba signed an agreement which would restore commercial air traffic between the two nations later this year, which would allow isolated Cuban-Americans unfettered travel to Cuba to visit friends and family.
The agreement clears the way for the Department of Transportation to begin the bidding process for American commercial carriers. The agreement opens as many as 110 commercial flights per day to Cuba. Right now there are only charter flights going to Cuba, which number about one-fifth of the new agreement’s total flights.
For the Obama administration, this will mark one of his crowning diplomatic achievements. Not since President Calvin Coolidge has their been a sitting president in the capital city of Havana, Cuba.
Here’s the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSkRguFL2dU
Featured image by es.panampost.com, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.
