Development: Following the 14 August flag raising ceremony at the newly restored US embassy in Cuba, a new steering committee of US and Cuban officials will begin work in September with a mandate to discuss human rights and other sensitive matters, as the two countries work towards the normalisation of bilateral relations.
Significance: The US Secretary of State, John Kerry, was clear in his speech in Havana that the US wants to see the evolution of Cuban policies on human rights, fundamental freedoms and political liberties. He called for “genuine democracy” on the island, in remarks reproduced on Cuban State media.
- “My friends, it doesn’t take a GPS to realize that the road of mutual isolation and estrangement that the United States and Cuba were traveling was not the right one and that the time has come for us to move in a more promising direction. In the United States, that means recognizing that U.S. policy is not the anvil on which Cuba’s future will be forged. Decades of good intentions aside, the policies of the past have not led to a democratic transition in Cuba. It would be equally unrealistic to expect normalizing relations to have, in a short term, a transformational impact. After all, Cuba’s future is for Cubans to shape. Responsibility for the nature and quality of governance and accountability rests, as it should, not with any outside entity; but solely within the citizens of this country. But the leaders in Havana – and the Cuban people – should also know that the United States will always remain a champion of democratic principles and reforms… And indeed, we remain convinced the people of Cuba would be best served by genuine democracy, where people are free to choose their leaders, express their ideas, practice their faith; where the commitment to economic and social justice is realized more fully; where institutions are answerable to those they serve; and where civil society is independent and allowed to flourish”.
- With the US government feeling that it has gone as far as it can go for now, it hopes that ‘people-to-people’ contacts, including commercial, will now rapidly accelerate, setting in motion a snowball dynamic that will promote internal political reform in Cuba and hasten the end of the US economic embargo on Cuba. That becomes more legally feasible after 2018, when President Raúl Castro has pledged to step down. The exit of the Castro family from political power is a key condition under the 1996 Helms Burton Act for the removal by the US Congress of the 1961 embargo.
- Meanwhile, conservative US Republicans led by the Cuban-American senator and 2016 presidential hopeful Marco Rubio (FL) are ready to use the continued Cuban repression of political dissidents to blast the White House for its ‘wrong-headed’ policies and keep the anti-embargo lobby in the US Congress strong.
Looking Ahead: Kerry’s counterpart, Cuba’s foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez, replied to Kerry’s speech with pointed criticisms of the serious problems in the US with racism and police brutality. While the steering committee will meet in Havana on 10-11 September and then in Washington, expectations are being kept deliberately low. For now, the most visible progress in official bilateral relations will likely be limited to existing areas of mutual cooperation, including on anti-drug trafficking efforts, migration policy, civil aviation, disaster preparedness, marine environment protection, climate change and other ‘soft’ issues. Cuba’s demand for talks on the Guantánamo Naval Base are not on the table.
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