Obama's Cuba Policy Legacy: Normalizing relations with an Abnormal Regime

 A shameful legacy

Why December 17, 2014 Cuba policy changes failed, and shouldn't be repeated

From CubaBrief 

President Barack Obama's rapprochement with Cuba began in 2009 with the unilateral loosening of sanctions, it followed the same failed pattern of other Administrations, opposition leaders killed, increased repression, and hostile actions against U.S. interests abroad. This did not prompt a change in policy, but a doubling down. It did not help that secret negotiations on Washington's side were led by Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, who is a former fiction writer with no foreign policy experience. Senior U.S. diplomats at the State Department were kept in the dark. His counterpart on Havana's side was Raul Castro's son, Fidel's protege and senior Ministry of the Interior official, Colonel Alejandro Castro Espín. His colleagues in the New York Times profile describe the Deputy National Security Adviser as "having no poker face", leading the negotiations versus some of the most seasoned and manipulative intelligence officials in the world. 

 Ben Rhodes with Rodolfo Dávalos León, a Cuban oligarch living in South Florida.  When protests erupted in Cuba in July 2021, Mr. Dávalos León tweeted: "If the revolution falls you will find me in Cuba, with my father, knee on ground, rifle in hand, defending the work of Fidel. Long live Cuba, long live Raul, & long live Fidel!" 

Nine years ago, on December 17, 2014, this thaw was elevated and formalized when President Barack Obama, and Cuban dictator Raul Castro announced the intent to normalize diplomatic relations. Obama freed three Cuban spies the same day, including Gerardo Hernandez, who was serving two life sentences, one of which was for conspiracy to murder four members of the Brothers to the Rescue in return for aid worker Alan Gross, who had been abducted by Havana in 2009, and an unidentified Cuban intelligence agent. This was a great propaganda victory for the Castro regime.

Following Obama’s announcement the Cuban military expanded its control over the national economy during the 2014-2017 detente. 

This was followed by an exodus of over 120,000 Cubans through Central America who entered the United States between 2014-2016, regine influence expanded with their client state Nicaragua becoming a full blown dictatorship under Daniel Ortega, and more hostile actions. In the midst of this on March 20, 2016 President Obama, with his family, arrived in Cuba for a state visit. On August 22, 2016 the Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran Mohammad Javad Zarif visited Cuba, and said Iran wants to forge a “new path” in its relations with Cuba by tightening ties. Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Nikolay Pankov said on October 7, 2016 that Moscow was considering plans to return to Cuba where it had a military base in the past. 

Calder Walton, of the Harvard Kennedy School, in his article "A US ambassador working for Cuba? Charges against former diplomat Victor Manuel Rocha spotlight Havana's importance in the world of spying" published in The Conversation on December 15, 2023 reviews the Russian and Chinese presence in Cuba.

"Putin’s government reopened a massive old Soviet signals intelligence facility in Cuba, near Havana. This facility had been the Soviet Union's largest foreign signals intelligence station in the world, with aerials and antennae pointed at Florida shores just 100 miles away. Soviet records reveal that Moscow obtained valuable information from U.S. military bases in Florida. Russia may well still be trying to try to eavesdrop on U.S. targets today from Cuba, although the U.S. government is doubtless alert to such efforts and is likely undertaking countermeasures. Cuban intelligence today is also collaborating with China, which reportedly plans to open its own eavesdropping station in Cuba. Beijing has significant influence over Cuba as its largest creditor and, following in Soviet footsteps, views the island as a valuable intelligence collection base and a “bridgehead” — the KGB’s old code name for Cuba — for influence in Latin America."

Beginning in November 2016, U.S. and Canadian diplomats stationed in Havana began suffering brain injuries, and on January 2, 2017, Raúl Castro presided over a military parade in which Cuban soldiers chanted: “Obama! Obama! With what fervor we’d like to confront your clumsiness, give you a cleansing with rebels and mortar, and make you a hat out of bullets to the head.”

This was a failed policy that did not understand what motivates Havana. The Communist regime in Cuba is anti-American and over the past 64 years it has sought to end the post-1945 U.S. led world order by seeking out alliances with regimes hostile to the United States, and coordinating efforts to undermine it.  This is the strategic context that too many have ignored.

Proponents of constructive engagement with the Cuban dictatorship are asking policy makers to do three things: disregard the past, dismiss current actions by Havana, and get ready for their own country's taxpayers to foot the tab.

Richard Nixon met Fidel Castro in April 1959 and sought a detente with him in 1974

1. Disregard the past
Multilateral sanctions against Havana worked to contain communist expansion in the Western Hemisphere until Kissinger lifted them.

The Ford administration provided Havana with a number of inducements without expecting anything in return, believing that they could restore relations with the Castros. Initially, the United States supported the OAS resolution on July 29, 1975, which essentially put an end to the multilateral economic and diplomatic sanctions against Cuba. On August 19, President Ford went further loosening the US embargo, removing the sanctions against foreign aid to nations that conducted business with the regime in Cuba and enabling ships traveling to the island to refuel in the US. This was an initiative led by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Rather than the "easing of tensions" that was anticipated, the Ford Administration found itself looking foolish.  Havana’s response was to send thousands of Cuban troops to Africa, first to Angola. Secretary Kissinger was so angered by the Cuban intervention in Angola, and the failure of detente that he entertained the idea of air strikes on Cuba.  Multilateral sanctions were not reimposed and Communist Cuba's influence would expand in the region. Subsequent administrations ( Carter 1977, Clinton 1993 and 2000), Obama (2009-2017) attempted rapprochements with Havana, and endured the same cycle. Carter's opening coincided with plunging Central America into civil war, with the establishment of communist rule in Nicaragua with Daniel Ortega in 1979 and a mass exodus in 1980 which Fidel Castro personally seeded with murderers, rapists, and psychiatric patients. The Clinton Administration's normalization efforts coincided with massacres of Cubans, the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown, another exodus, the expansion of Cuban influence in Venezuela and the take over of Hugo Chavez in 1999.

2. Dismiss current actions by Havana

Lessons from Europe's constructive engagement

Although the European Union (EU) has and continues to pursue a policy of constructive engagement, and was Cuba’s top trading partner in the 1990s it did not curb its international outlaw behavior. Venezuela became Cuba's top trading partner in 2001, and was eclipsed by China in 2016 However, when Europe de-linked human rights considerations from economic engagement with Havana trade shot up. As of 2019, the EU was Cuba's top trading partner for both imports and exports. It was also Cuba’s top development partner and source of foreign investment. In 2019, a quarter of all tourists visiting Cuba, which relies on its tourism sector for income, were from the EU.This did not alter Havana's hostile posture towards Europe. Cubans are in Russian uniforms fighting to advance Moscow's objectives in the illegal war in Ukraine, and Havana is conducting military training in Belarus. Terrorists continue to be harbored in Cuba, and the Cuban dictatorship refuses to extradite them. Cuban diplomats have held high level meetings with Hamas in 2023, and Hezbollah maintains a base in Cuba. Cuba’s communist dictatorship and Iran’s Islamist regime are closely allied and coordinating efforts against Israel.

3. Get ready for taxpayers to foot the tab.

"One of the best-kept secrets of our 40-year-old trade embargo with  Cuba is that it has saved millions of dollars for U.S. taxpayers. Due to the embargo, there are no U.S. banks in the ``Paris Club'', a  consortium of Cuba creditors. (The Paris Club is currently owed between $10 and $15 billion in debt from Cuba.) Otherwise, U.S. banks now would  be hitting U.S. taxpayers to cover their losses in Cuba. If the U.S. begins to subsidize trade with Cuba--estimated at $100  million a year--five years from now, U.S. taxpayers could be holding, or paying off a $500 million tab." - Senator George Allen, May 21, 2002, Hearing on U.S. Trade Policy with Cuba

Cuba scholar Jaime Suchlicki at the Cuban Studies Institute on April 10, 2023 published an important analysis titled “The Folly of Investing in Cuba” that outlines a number of pitfalls both economic and moral to doing business with the Castro dictatorship that is a must read.

Existing U.S. sanctions have protected American taxpayers from having to shell out billions of dollars to subsidize the Castro dictatorship.

Others have not had the benefit of this policy.

China canceled $6 billion dollars in Cuban debt in 2011, On November 1, 2013 the government of Mexico announced that it was ready to waive 70 percent of a debt worth nearly $500 million that Cuba owes it. The former president of Mexico Vicente Fox protested the move stating: “Let the Cubans get to work and generate their own money…They’re normally like chupacabras.  The only thing they’re looking for is someone to give them money for free.” In December 2015 it was announced that Spain would forgive $1.7 billion that the Castro regime owes it. In December of 2013, Russia and Cuba quietly signed an agreement to write off $32 billion of Cuba's debt to the former superpower. Western governments pursued Cuban maritime debts seizing Cuban vessels and negotiating payment through Canadian courts.

The 2015 debt restructuring accord between Cuba and the Paris Club, according to Reuters, "forgave $8.5 billion of $11.1 billion, representing debt Cuba defaulted on in 1986, plus charges."

The Paris Club is made up of the following permanent members: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France,Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States. Thanks to existing U.S. sanctions, none of the $11.084 billion in debt has been left for U.S. taxpayers to pay off.

Carmelo Mesa-Lago is Distinguished Service Professor emeritus of economics and Latin American studies at the University of Pittsburgh, and in his work CUBA’S ECONOMY IN TIMES OF CRISIS: 2020–2022 AND PROSPECTS FOR 2023 provided the following table which lists debt forgiven, and remaining debt owed by the Cuban dictatorship.

 

Lessons from President Barack Obama's detente with Raul Castro

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

On March 22, 2016 the President of the United States did the wave with a dictator

President Barack Obama had good intentions with his outreach to Cuba, but was ill served by those who presented him a false history of U.S.-Cuba relations and the intentions of Cuba, led by a regime driven by an ideological mission that views the United States as existentially hostile. Below are some lessons from President Obama's detente with the Castro regime: :

• The United States rapprochement with Cuba (2009 - 2017) under Barack Obama coincided with a worsening human rights situation in the island for Cubans. The Obama administration, not only began to loosen sanctions on the Castro regime in April 2009, but also refused to meet in June of 2009 with the winners of the NED Democracy Award who happened to be five Cuban dissidents. It was the first time in five years that the president of the United States did not meet with the award laureates. In December of 2009 the Castro regime took Alan Gross hostage and the Obama White House responded with initial silence and it took U.S. diplomats 25 days to visit with the arbitrarily detained American.
  
• In Cuba, the regime's hardliners assessed the nature and significance of this warming of relations by President Obama as weakness and seized the opportunity killing Cuban dissident leaders that could oversee a democratic transition. Human rights deteriorated in Cuba with arbitrary arrests and short-term detentions increasing dramatically, rising levels of violence against nonviolent activists. including machete attacks, and the suspicious deaths of human rights defenders such as Orlando Zapata Tamayo (2010), Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia (2011), Laura Inés Pollán Toledo (2011), Wilman Villar Mendoza (2012), Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas (2012), and Harold Cepero Escalante (2012).
• President Obama's claim that on Cuba policy the United States had done "the same thing for over five decades and expect[ed] a different result" is false. The Eisenhower Administration had opposed the Batista regime and quickly recognized Fidel Castro's revolutionary government on January 7, 1959, and Vice President Richard Nixon met with Fidel Castro on April 19, 1959 over several hours.  It was Cuba's hostile actions against the United States, and other governments in the region that led to relations being severed on January 3, 1961. The Carter, Clinton, and Obama Administrations all engaged in openings to Cuba that ended badly for U.S. interests and others in the region.  The U.S. has not being doing the "same thing."
  
• President Obama announced his new Cuba policy on December 17, 2014 and commuted the sentences of three Cuban spies, including Gerardo Hernandez who was serving a life sentence for his role in a murder conspiracy that claimed four innocent lives in 1996. They returned to Cuba the same day, and Alan Gross, an innocent mas, was finally freed. This submission to blackmail only encouraged the hardliners in Havana.  
  
• Trade between the United States and Cuba collapsed during the Obama opening, and worsened after the December 17, 2014 announcement that the two governments would seek normalized relations. Peak year of trade was the last year of the George W. Bush Administration ($711.5 million) versus ($185.7 million) in 2015. Worse yet, the Cuban military seized control over larger sections of the Cuban economy during the US-Cuba detente.
  
• Unscrupulous pollsters sold the Democratic Party a bill of goods on Cuba policy, and are still trying to spin what happened. President Obama did well with Cuban voters in 2008, and 2012 because he pledged to leverage economic sanctions (the embargo) to improving human rights in Cuba. In May 2008 when he addressed the Cuban American National Foundation he linked loosening sanctions to improved human rights in Cuba.

  “Don’t be confused about this. I will maintain the embargo,” Mr. Obama said. “It provides us with the leverage to present the regime with a clear choice: If you take significant steps toward democracy, beginning with the freeing of all political prisoners, we will take steps to begin normalizing relations.”

•  President Obama abandoned this approach explicitly on December 17, 2014 through the end of his presidency, support for the Democrats imploded. This cost Hillary Clinton the state of Florida in 2016, but pollsters continued to lie costing Democrats a Senate seat and a Governorship in 2018. Candidate Trump in 2016 had echoed the Obama Cuba policy position for much of the campaign, but changed course in September 2016, and his support among Cuban Americans sky rocketed. Following through on his pledge to reverse the Obama Cuba policy his vote among Cuban Americans increased in the 2020 elections. 
• On January 2, 2017, Raúl Castro presided over a military parade in which Cuban soldiers chanted: “Obama! Obama! With what fervor we’d like to confront your clumsiness, give you a cleansing with rebels and mortar, and make you a hat out of bullets to the head.”

Cuba policy is now being reviewed, and there is always room for improvement, but one must also learn from the past and recognize the nature of the regime in Havana. There are scores of brain damaged U.S. diplomats that are apparent casualties of not doing this. Doing the wave with Raul Castro, a dictator who killed Americans, at a baseball game in March 2016 legitimized his dictatorship, but did not advance U.S. interests.

Florida Vote 2020: A post mortem analysis

 "We've seen this movie before."

Contested elections in a free society where we don't know the outcome ahead of time because citizens are actually free to choose is something that those living in dictatorships aspire to one day experience. Cuban Americans want their countrymen on the island to have their sovereignty restored, and the Castro dictatorship brought to an end.

 There has been controversy in the aftermath of 2020 election in Florida where the screen shot above shows a Telemundo Poll with 71% of Cuban Americans polled in favor of President Donald Trump while 23% supported Vice President Joe Biden. Meanwhile The New York Times polled 58% for Trump and 41% for Biden among Cuban Americans. Many have expressed both surprise and outrage at this result, but Cuba observers, and those versed in American politics should not have been surprised. 

Andres Oppenheimer's column "Biden blew it with Miami’s Cuban, Venezuelan voters, and got clobbered" was published on Nov. 4, 2020 and he laid out a pre-existing problem the Vice President had with Cuban American voters. "Many Cuban exiles, especially older ones, still resent President Obama’s 2014 decision to restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba. Biden, then vice president, was part of that move." ... "But Biden could have overcome that by admitting that the Obama administration’s opening with Cuba has not worked as it should." Instead for far too long in 2020 the campaign engaged in gaslighting claiming that things had been better under the Obama Administration. An abbreviated examination should disabuse one of this notion.

Having President Obama campaign in Miami for Biden probably drove up vote for Trump in 2020 and Scott in 2018.

The Obama thaw with the Castro regime did not begin in 2014, but started in 2009 with deadly consequences for Cubans, and five years of arbitrary detention for an innocent American. 

In 2009 the Obama Administration sought to distance itself from the Cuban dissident movement, while pursuing a diplomatic strategy of engaging with Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, and Raul Castro that critics alleged involved ignoring regime abuses.

President Obama met with Hugo Chavez in 2009, with Maduro in the background

On April 17, 2009 President Barack Obama said that his Administration sought "a new beginning with Cuba" and stated further that he was “prepared to have my administration engage with the Cuban government on a wide range of issues — from human rights, free speech, and democratic reform to drugs, migration, and economic issues.” 

Towards the end of 2009 the White House was tested when U.S. citizen Alan Gross was taken and held hostage by the Castro regime. U.S. diplomats did not see him until 25 days later. Furthermore, the policy of rapprochement and loosening of sanctions continued despite Gross's continued detention.

Alan Gross before and after his captivity in a Cuban prison (2009 - 2014)

On January 14, 2010 the "illegal" Cuban Commission for Human Rights, reported the confirmed deaths of at least 20 mental patients at the Psychiatric Hospital known as Mazorra due to "criminal negligence by a government characterized by its general inefficiency" and that a day later the Cuban government confirmed that 26 patients had died due to “prolonged low temperatures that fell to 38 degrees.” This only occurred because the images of the victims had been leaked and reported by independent journalists. 

On February 23, 2010 Cuban prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after a prolonged hunger strike. He had been the victim of numerous beatings and ill treatment that rose to the level of torture over nearly seven years that drove him to go on a water only hunger strike. Prison guards periodically cut off his access to water, contributing to his death.

Extrajudicial killings continued at a higher documented rate than in previous years.

Cuban human rights defender Juan Wilfredo Soto García died on May 8, 2011, three days after being beaten up by police officers in a public park in Santa Clara, Cuba. Amnesty International raised concerns on the circumstances surrounding his death. In the past Juan Wilfredo had been a political prisoner for 12 years.

Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, a courageous woman spoke truth to power and protested in the streets of Cuba demanding an amnesty for Cuban political prisoners. She had been a school teacher, before her husband was jailed for his independent journalism in 2003 along with more than 75 other civil society members. Laura was greatly admired both inside and outside of the island.

Laura reached out to the wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters of the 75 prisoners of conscience jailed in March of 2003 among them was her husband, they founded the Ladies in White, and they carried out a sustained nonviolent campaign that after nine years obtained the freedom of their loved ones. Since she did not dissolve the Ladies in White when her husband returned home because she recognized that the laws had not changed, and that political prisoners remained behind bars and that she would continue her human rights activism, the Castro regime did away with her on October 14, 2011.

On July 22, 2012 Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, founder and leader of the Christian Liberation Movement and Harold Cepero Escalante, member of the cited movement, lost their lives on the Las Tunas-Bayamo highway, in Cuba. Evidence that the "car accident" was a premeditated act arranged for Oswaldo Paya was that this was not the first time; the regime had also tried with another vehicle 20 days earlier while he was in Havana. The East German Stasi trained the Cuban State Security service known as "G2" and one of its standard tactics was arranging car accidents. Calls for an international investigation continue to circulate and fall on deaf ears. Their movement had launched a petition drive that obtained over 24,000 signatures demanding human rights reforms in an initiative called the Varela Project that forced the regime to change the Constitution to block this type of petition in the future.

The Obama White House and the Castro regime began having secret meetings in June 2013 in Canada. These meetings continued throughout 2013 and 2014. Reporting on these meetings do not mention any reaction to provocative actions by the Cuban dictatorship.

On July 15, 2013 the Cuban government was caught red handed smuggling tons of weapons to North Korea.  This was confirmed by a March 6, 2014 report by a panel of experts for the United Nations Security Council that also reported:

 6. In addition, various parts for three SA-2 and six SA-3 missiles were in the cargo, such as the nose cones housing proximity fuses, auto-pilots and transponders, transmitter antennas and some actuators (figure 4). 4 __________________ 4 The Panel notes that some of the SA-2 and SA-3 parts could also meet the criteria defined in the list of items, materials, equipment, goods and technology related to ballistic missile programmes (S/2012/947), whose export and import by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are prohibited. See in particular the Category II, Item 9 of S/2012/947 covering “instrumentation, navigation and direction finding”

There were no consequences for this action of the Castro regime that was also illegal under international law because the White House had prioritized the normalization of relations with the Castro regime, and pressed ahead with their secret negotiations.

On December 17, 2014 both President Obama and General Raul Castro announced that they intended to normalize relations. Alan Gross was finally free after nearly five years in captivity, travel would be further liberalized and that some Cuban political prisoners were to be freed was news that would be received positively.

The President and the dictator address their respective countries on 12/17/14

Nevertheless it was a sobering exercise for Cuban Americans for a number of reasons. Three spies who had spied on military installations and congressmen on American soil, that had plotted terrorist acts in the United States, and were implicated in the February 24, 1996 murder of three American citizens and one American resident were freed in a swap to return to Cuba setting a terrible precedent. Regime hardliners had won, thanks to the Obama Administration's actions. Kidnapping an American and holding him for ransom for five years paid off.  Moderate elements within the dictatorship, seeking to transition Cuba into a responsible member of the family of nations, would remain silent. Gerardo Hernandez, who was serving a double life sentence for espionage and murder conspiracy, returned to Cuba and is now in charge of spying on Cubans domestically through the Committees in Defense of the Revolution.

On February 3, 2015, Rosa María Payá, in testimony before a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, indicted the indifference of the US government and the international community: "The Cuban government wouldn’t have dared to carry out its death threats against my father if the U.S. government and the democratic world had been showing solidarity. If you turn your face, impunity rages. While you slept, the regime was conceiving their cleansing of the pro-democracy leaders to come."

Rosa María Payá testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

  On April 8, 2015 Cuban diplomats streamed out of the the Cuban Embassy in Panama attacked civil society representatives who were laying flowers at a bust of Jose Marti in a public park nearby. Several activists were injured and at least one required surgery. During the Summit of the Americas Cuban diplomats disrupted official meetings in order to block Cuban and Venezuelan dissidents from taking part, despite being officially accredited.  

Cuban diplomats assaulted nonviolent protesters in Panama

 Cuban dissident Sirley Ávila León, age 56, was gravely wounded in a machete attack on May 24, 2015 by Osmany Carrión who had been "sent by state security thug  s" and that she is sure that the aggression "was politically motivated." The attack was severe enough that she suffered deep cuts to her neck and knees, lost her left hand and nearly lost her right arm. 

On May 29, 2015 the State Department removed Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, despite evidence of continued bad actions.

Sirley Avila Leon was the victim of regime engineered machete attack.

On Monday, July 20, 2015 at the State Department, Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo attended a press conference with Secretary of State John Kerry and Castro's foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez. Rosa Maria had proper accreditation as a member of the press. Rear Admiral John Kirby, the State Department spokesman, took Rosa Maria aside and warned her that she would be physically removed if she asked any questions.

Secretary of State John Kerry in an interview with journalist Andres Oppenheimer before his trip to Cuba made it known that "the United States and [the Castro regime] are talking about ways to solve the Venezuelan crisis." 

The United States reopened its Embassy in Havana, Cuba on August 14, 2015, but did not invite Cuban human rights defenders to the flag raising ceremony in what the media labeled a snub. The State Department argued that it was a government to government affair and that there was not enough space to accommodate the dissidents. However, the State Department did accommodate "entrepreneurs and Cuban American activists" who flew down with Kerry and his official delegation. Despite the plane load of lobbyists and businessmen CNN anchor Jake Tapper in a tweet observed that there was plenty of space to have invited Cuban dissidents.

Excuse that there was no space at ceremony for any dissidents to be invited belied by actual space at ceremony pic.twitter.com/Cd8N2HQdT5

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) August 14, 2015

On January 7, 2016 The Wall Street Journal broke the story that in 2014 an inert US Hellfire missile sent to Europe for a training exercise was wrongly shipped on to Cuba. Since then the United States has been asking the Cuban dictatorship to return the missile but it has not done so. Only after the embarrassing news broke was it returned, but no doubt all the technical specs had been deciphered by then and given (or sold) to America's enemies.

Three days before President Obama arrived in Cuba, in March 2016 Roberto Ampuero, a Chilean former Minister of Culture and former Ambassador to Mexico tweeted in Spanish: "Paradox: After decades backing Right wing dictatorships in Latin America, now the United States could end up backing a Left wing dictatorship."

Barack Obama and Raul Castro in Havana in March 2016

International consequences were terrible

The European Union announced in 2016 that its two decade policy linking engagement with the Castro regime to improved human rights conditions in the 1996 EU Common position with respect to Cuba was ended to keep up with Obama's detente with Havana.  The old agreement had been consonant with fundamental EU values as expressed below:

“The objective of the European Union in its relations with Cuba is to encourage a process of transition to pluralist democracy and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, as well as a sustainable recovery and improvement in the living standards of the Cuban people. A transition would most likely be peaceful if the present regime were itself to initiate or permit such a process. It is not European Union policy to try to bring about change by coercive measures with the effect of increasing the economic hardship of the Cuban people. The European Union considers that full cooperation with Cuba will depend upon improvements in human rights and political freedom”

Unfortunately, it was the Obama Administration's Cuba policy announced on December 17, 2014 and the President's official state visit in March 2016 that both negatively impacted international solidarity and human rights in Cuba, and this included Europe. The decision of the European Union to "open a new chapter" on relations with Cuba that dropped human rights as a condition for normalization ended the 1996 European Common Position. This abandonment of a linkage between human rights and commerce was formalized in a December 12, 2016 signing ceremony that did great harm to the cause of human rights in Cuba.

There is much more and the opening ended with scores of brain damaged U.S. diplomats stationed in Cuba, beginning in November 2016.  Cuban troops reviewed by Raul Castro on January 2, 2017 chanting that they would shoot President Obama so many times in the head that he would have a hat made out of bullets.  Despite this affront, the White House continued meeting Raul Castro's demands that negatively impacted Cubans: ended wet foot dry foot policy for Cuban refugees, and shut down asylum program for trafficked doctors at the end of the Obama Administration. 

Cuban troops in military parade chant they'll shoot President Obama in the head

Candidate Donald Trump in 2016 initially said that he backed the Obama opening, but that he would have gotten a better deal. While holding this position he was polling in the low 30s with Cuban Americans, but when he changed and began advocating undoing the Obama Cuba policy his poll numbers jumped into the 50s, and the Cuban American vote in 2016 played a key role in his election. Hillary Clinton had publicly supported continuing the Obama Cuba policy.

President Trump followed through in dismantling much of the Obama opening, and pressed further than other Presidents in fully enforcing Helms-Burton, and this led to higher levels of support among Cuban American voters. 

Bay of Pigs Veterans endorsed Donald Trump

The Sanders wing of the Democratic Party also raised new concerns that drove many Cuban Americans to the Republican Party. They were also concerned about the future of America when Vice President Biden partially embraced Senator Bernie Sanders who described himself as a "democratic socialist." 

Many  Cubans in South Florida that fled Cuba in the early 1960s had seen this movie before. They supported Fidel Castro, who had promised to restore democracy and bring an end to the authoritarian dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, only to install a totalitarian communist dictatorship that ended free speech, freedom of assembly, religious freedom, locked up tens of thousands of Cubans for their political or religious views, and executed thousands more. 

Senator Sanders celebrated the Castro regime's education system (which is a center of indoctrination) and healthcare system, which is not only mediocre for most Cubans, but conditional on political loyalty.

James Freeman writing in The Wall Street Journal on November 4, 2020 called the Vice President to task. "Attempting to generate leftist enthusiasm for a listless campaign, Vice President Joe Biden did the country a disservice by partially embracing the radical Sen. Bernie Sanders (Socialist, Vt.), rather than appropriately shunning him."

Cuban Americans understood that there is a chasm of difference between a "social-democrat" and a "democratic socialist" such as the self-identified Senator Sanders of Vermont. Social democracy works within the framework of democratic governance and the rule of law. It also recognizes the market as a necessary mechanism for the creation of human riches, but that it should be tempered by regulations and legislation to protect the environment, and seek a society that is more equitable. This movement is popular in Europe and can be seen in action in Germany, Sweden, Norway, and many other places.

Democratic socialism views private markets and capitalism as evils that need to be replaced by a system that achieves public control over the means of production with government control. Maximizing government control over the private sector took place in Nicaragua, and Venezuela through democratic socialism that transitioned into communist regimes that took over the economic private sphere, and began to silence free speech, shut down independent media, and enforce a particular political ideology on students that destroyed the democratic framework of governance replacing it with dictatorship.

The vote for Trump by Cuban Americans had a three fold significance: 1. Punishing Obama-Biden for the failed detente with Castro that they continued to gaslight Cubans as a success doubling its offensiveness. 2. Gratitude for Trump-Pence dismantling the Obama detente and identifying the true nature of the dictatorship. 3. To vote against the Party who had major candidates such as Bernie Sanders celebrating the "achievements" of the Castro regime, and omitting its bloody history.

Gaslighting Cuban Americans on Obama's Cuba policy hurting Vice President Biden with Cuban American voters

“We are going to have diplomatic relations with the United States without having ceded one iota.”- Gerardo Hernandez, Cuban spy sentenced to life in prison for murder conspiracy freed by Obama as part of his deal with Raul Castro.

Raul Castro, First Lady Michelle Obama, President Barack Obama in March 2016

On September 3, 2020 Vice President Joe Biden  in an interview with Jackie Nespral of NBC6 said he'd "try to reverse the failed Trump policies, it inflicted harm on Cubans and their families. It’s done nothing to advance democracy and human rights, on the contrary, the crackdown on Cubans by the regime has gotten worse under Trump, not better.” What the Vice President is stating is that he would return to the Obama Cuba policy.  However human rights worsened under the Obama Cuba policy.

Consider the following during and after negotiations:

Machete attacks

The United States and Cuba held secret negotiations for 18 months beginning in 2013. Coinciding with the start of these negotiations were a series of machete attacks against opposition activists. On June 8, 2013 in Holguin, Cuba Werlando Leiva Batista of the Christian Liberation Movement was attacked with a machete on a public street. Later that same month on June 21, 2013 in Camaguey, Orlando Lazaro Gomez Hernandez, a member of the Pro Human Rights Party of Cuba stepped out of his home with a sign supporting hunger striker Luis Enrique Santos Caballero. Seeing this protest the president of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR),  ran out of his home with a machete and attacked Orlando Lazaro with it, cutting part of his right hand and also striking him on the back. Others came out as the activist fell to the ground and began to kick him.

Freeing spy convicted of murder conspiracy of three Cuban Americans and a Cuban resident

The December 17, 2014 announcement by the President broke new ground in only one area releasing Gerardo Hernandez, a Cuban spy and terrorist, convicted of murder conspiracy of three U.S. citizens and a resident. Not only did President Obama commute the sentence but tried to rewrite history calling an act of international terrorism, the Brothers to the Rescue shoot down, a tragedy.  Freeing unrepentant killers is not a good policy for promoting human rights.

Brothers to the Rescue shoot down victims.

Small number of political prisoners released
Obama administration attempt to claim that the release of 53 political prisoners in early January 2014 was a human rights improvement. But once the names were released it was revealed that 17 of the 53 had been released prior to the agreement and had nothing to do with it. This meant that a total of 38 political prisoners were freed at the time.  Some context is needed to understand how small this number is. The Swedish NGO, Civil Rights Defenders, on January 13, 2020 reported that " approximately 8,400 Cubans currently serve time for ”pre-criminal social dangerousness”.

According to a report in The New York Times on January 13, 2020 documents were examined that "showed that approximately 92 percent of those accused in the more than 32,000 cases that go to trial in Cuba every year are found guilty. Nearly 4,000 people every year are accused of being “antisocial” or “dangerous,” terms the Cuban government uses to jail people who pose a risk to the status quo, without having committed a crime." Furthermore, the article says that "records show that Cuba’s prison system holds more than 90,000 prisoners. The Cuban government has only publicly released the figure once, in 2012, when it claimed that 57,000 people were jailed."

Regime behavior worsened in the immediate aftermath of the normalization announcement.

 

Skyrocketing arbitrary detentions

The number of politically motivated arbitrary detentions documented by the Havana based, Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation since 2008 demonstrates a dramatic rise in repression between 2008 and 2016, that spiked dramatically in the year of the Obama Administration's new Cuba policy announcement in 2014 from 6,424 arbitrary detentions in 2013 to 8,899 in 2014. This also occurred with troubling incidents of violence by regime agents.

During President Obama's last year in office the number of arbitrary detentions reached their highest number since 2010 with 9,940 arbitrary detentions. Despite this, on his way out of office in January 2017, President Obama closed the door on Cuban refugees. 

During 2017 there were 5,155 Cubans arbitrarily detained, and although still far too high, it is a dramatic improvement over 2016. There are still prisoners of conscience enduring horrid and dangerous conditions in Cuban prisons and dissenters sent to psychiatric institutions for punishment.

Sirley Avila Leon: Before and after May 2015 machete attack

More extreme machete attack in 2015

Six months after the announcement of normalizing relations on May 24, 2015, Sirley Ávila León was the victim of a brutal machete attack that cost her her left hand and also left her right upper arm nearly severed and knees slashed, leaving her crippled. She was denied adequate medical care and was told quietly by medical doctors that if she wanted to get better she would need to leave Cuba. The regime had been embarrassed by a campaign she organized to keep a school open. She arrived in Miami on March 8, 2016 unable to bend her legs, or use her remaining had.Thanks to a team of medical doctors treating her, by September 2016 Sirley had regained the use of her hand, and was able to walk short distances.

Negative international trends for human rights in Cuba under Obama Cuba policy.

Human rights worsened in Cuba as the dictatorship was legitimized internationally by the Obama Administration's Cuba policy, and March 2016 state visit that led to Cuban dissidents and human rights defenders becoming more isolated. 

EU's High Representative Federica Mogherini with Raul Castro

The Obama Administration's Cuba policy had a negative impact internationally on human rights in Cuba internally. The decision of the European Union to "open a new chapter" on relations with Cuba that dropped human rights as a condition for normalization and ended a European Common Position adopted in 1996. This arrangement was formalized in a signing ceremony on December 12, 2016. Twenty  years of linking improved relations between the EU and Cuba to improvements in human rights ended.

Gaslighting the Cuban American community with the claim that the Obama Cuba policy was good on human rights in Cuba is leading to Biden's poll numbers tanking among that demographic. 

Former Secretary of State John Kerry recognizing this reality began to change the campaign's triumphalist message in order to bring it closer in line with the facts on the ground outlined above when told journalist Andres Oppenheimer earlier this month: “It’s fair to say that everybody shares a little bit of disappointment about the direction that the government in Cuba chose to go” after the normalization of U.S.-Cuba ties. Cuba seemed to harden down after the initial steps were taken.”

No kidding.

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/andres-oppenheimer/article245597340.html#storylink=cpy