President Barack Obama's act of plagiarism at the Democratic Convention

"We opened up a new chapter with the people of Cuba..." - President Barack Obama addressing the Democratic Convention

In 1959 the USA recognized the Castro regime, since then pursued normal relations 

 President Obama's "new chapter with the people of Cuba" has a familiar ring that amounts to an act of political plagiarism. Remember that according to Plagiarism.org "the practice of presenting as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source" is plagiarism.

On July 28, 2016 the President repeated an assertion he first made on December 17, 2014 that he was making "the most significant changes in our policy in more than fifty years" when he said that they would begin the normalization of relations with the Castro regime. 

The current Cuba policy is neither new or original but a copy of the policy pursued by President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s and President Bill Clinton in the 1990s that in both cases extended the life of the Castro dictatorship at the expense of U.S. national security interests with mass exoduses from Cuba and increased bad actions that led to the policy being reversed in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan and partially reversed by President George W. Bush in 2003.

Let us also not forget that the first president to normalize relations with the Castro regime was President Dwight Eisenhower in 1959. Fidel Castro overthrew the Batista regime on January 1, 1959. On January 7, 1959 the United States recognized the new Cuban government ushered in by the Castro brothers and had actively pressured the Batista dictatorship to leave imposing an arms embargo in 1958. President Eisenhower thought that he could have normal relations with the Cuban revolutionary government which was also a reason the United States recognized it within the span of a week. In comparison it had taken the United States 17 days to recognize the government of Fulgencio Batista following his March 10, 1952 coup.What happened was that Fidel Castro began installing a totalitarian communist dictatorship, engaging in mass executions, expropriating U.S. companies , embracing the Soviet Union and seeking to subvert democracies in the region . This is what led to economic sanctions in 1960 and the end of normal diplomatic relations in 1961 and the embargo on February 7, 1962 during the Kennedy administration.

Current Cuba policy is a retread of Carter's 1970s policy copied by Clinton in 1990s

President Obama's "new chapter with the people of Cuba" was neither "new" or with "the people of Cuba" but part of the Establishment's long game to normalize relations with the Castro dictatorship that stretches back six decades and time and time again proved negative not only for the people of Cuba, the people of the United States but also the people of Latin America generally.

The claim made by many in the Obama administration that the current Cuba policy was new and original after 50 years of a static policy of isolation is an example of over simplification and political plagiarism that ignored the existing source of this policy during the Carter administration and its repeated failures in the 1970s, 1990s and not surprisingly today.

History rebukes getting into bed with dictatorship whether it be in China, Vietnam, Cuba or elsewhere.  Instead of a talking point to make more palatable a policy of legitimizing dictatorship with the claim that it is engaging with the people, U.S. policy should be in solidarity with the peoples striving to be free, not their oppressors. This is why Rosa María Payá Acevedo (whose dad human rights icon, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, martyred on July 22, 2012 during Obama's rush to normalized relations along with her friend Harold Cepero) felt the need to say before the Senate in February of 2015:

 Don’t turn your backs on Cubans again; don’t earn the distrust of the new actors of our inevitably free future, in exchange for complicity with a gerontocracy who belongs to the Cold War era.

Things are getting worse in Cuba today and negatively impacting the United States, but that shouldn't be a surprise it happened before in the 1970s when Carter did it first and it got Americans killed in the United States, and it happened again in the 1990s when Clinton did it again and it got Americans killed again.

Alcoholics Anonymous recognizes that "Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results".  This sums up Cuba policy as repeatedly carried out during the Carter, Clinton and Obama presidencies.

The High Cost of Doing Business in China

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." - Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963

Presidents Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter meet with Deng Xiaoping in 1979

Normalizing relations with China and engaging it both diplomatically and economically is often given as an example of the inconsistency of a human rights based policy in Cuba. This fails to look at the negative consequences of China policy not only for the United States but the world. Swedish human rights defender Peter Dahlin was taken in China by state security on January 3, 2016 and today was paraded on television to make a scripted confession. In Hong Kong the long reach of the Chinese communist regime has led to five book sellers disappearing because they sold books critical of the dictatorship.  The Free Cuba Foundation in an open letter replying to Cuban American businessmen advocating engagement with the Cuban dictatorship summarizes some of the costs of this policy on the world stage:

Human rights and democracy have been in retreat for the better part of a decade emboldening dictators and terrorists to challenge the international order turning it into something cruel and indifferent to human aspirations for freedom and dignity. We are witnessing today in Venezuela the attempt by the Maduro regime to undermine the results of a democratic election while at the same time rejecting calls for an amnesty to free Venezuelan prisoners of conscience. This change poses a challenge for a democratic Cuba in the future.

This new reality is in large part due to unprincipled engagement with Communist China by Western Countries, including the United States. Corporations shifted manufacturing away from their free markets, labor unions, and environmental protections toward Communist China were workers are paid slave wages, work in terrible conditions and where environmental regulations are non-existent. The world today is dirtier, less free, and human dignity has been debased to the point that organ trafficking is a common practice and the bodies of dissidents are put on display for the amusement and curiosity of paying visitors around the world.   

 Dr. King's epigram "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" can be seen in action in China. The decision to continue the China policy initiated by Nixon and Kissinger in a Cold War context with the Soviet Union when it had a basis in realpolitik but ended with the collapse of the Soviet empire (1989 - 1991). The decision to continue based on narrow economic self-interests has had negative consequences not only in China but around the world. It is long past time for the United States and other democracies to advance a principled human rights policy in China and elsewhere. This also does not mean going to war that often has made things worse but doing the right thing. This is the third way, that neither engages in preemptive wars or appeasing brutal tyrants, and is the best hope to a world of freedom and justice which is necessary for a lasting peace.

Lessons from Eastern Europe on Engagement: Poland and Romania

"I think detente had manifestly failed, and that the pursuit of it was encouraging Soviet expansion and rendering the world more dangerous, and especially rendering the Western world in greater peril." - Jeane Kirkpatrick, U.S. Ambassador to the UN for President Reagan

Ronald Reagan entered office on January 20, 1981 and on December 13, 1981 the communist regime in Poland had declared martial law and was cracking down on the Solidarity movement. 10,000 people were rounded up and about 100 died during martial law. Ronald Reagan in his Christmas Address on December 23, 1981 denounced the crackdown (beginning at 4 minutes into the above video) and outlined economic sanctions against Poland while demanding that the human rights of the Polish people be respected:

We have been measured and deliberate in our reaction to the tragic events in Poland. We have not acted in haste, and the steps I will outline tonight and others we may take in the days ahead are firm, just, and reasonable. 
In order to aid the suffering Polish people during this critical period, we will continue the shipment of food through private humanitarian channels, but only so long as we know that the Polish people themselves receive the food. The neighboring country of Austria has opened her doors to refugees from Poland. I have therefore directed that American assistance, including supplies of basic foodstuffs, be offered to aid the Austrians in providing for these refugees. 
But to underscore our fundamental opposition to the repressive actions taken by the Polish Government against its own people, the administration has suspended all government-sponsored shipments of agricultural and dairy’ products to the Polish Government. This suspension will remain in force until absolute assurances are received that distribution of these products is monitored and guaranteed by independent agencies. We must be sure that every bit of food provided by America goes to the Polish people, not to their oppressors. 
The United States is taking immediate action to suspend major elements of our economic relationships with the Polish Government. We have halted the renewal of the Export-Import Bank’s line of export credit insurance to the Polish Government. We will suspend Polish civil aviation privileges in the United States. We are suspending the right of Poland’s fishing fleet to operate in American waters. And we’re proposing to our allies the further restriction of high technology exports to Poland. 
These actions are not directed against the Polish people. They are a warning to the Government of Poland that free men cannot and will not stand idly by in the face of brutal repression. To underscore this point, I’ve written a letter to General Jaruzelski, head of the Polish Government. In it, I outlined the steps we’re taking and warned of the serious consequences if the Polish Government continues to use violence against its populace. I’ve urged him to free those in arbitrary detention, to lift martial law, and to restore the internationally recognized rights of the Polish people to free speech and association.

This was in marked contrast to the relationship with the regime in Romania. Out of all the countries of Eastern Europe, the United States had the closest diplomatic relations with Romania. This was due to the Nixon administration seeking to exploit differences between Romania and the Soviet Union. Nicolae Ceasescu denounced the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and continued diplomatic relations with Israel maintaining an independent foreign policy from the Soviet Union.



Richard Nixon visited Romania in August of 1969. In 1972 Romania became eligible for U.S. Export-Import Bank credits and in 1975 was accorded most favored nation status. In 1978 Nicolae Ceasescu and his wife visited Washington, DC on a state visit and was hosted by President Jimmy Carter who welcomed the dictator and described him in the following glowing terms:

I've enjoyed being with him. He's a very good adviser. He's a man who in the past has suffered greatly, imprisoned, tortured, but because of his courage and because of his belief in the future of his own country, notable achievements have been brought to the people who have confidence in him. It's a great pleasure for me again to express my welcome to him to our country, and I would like to propose a toast to a great leader, President Ceausescu, and to the brave and friendly people of Romania. Mr. President, to you and your people. 

Despite having the worse human rights record in Eastern Europe it was not until 1988 that to preempt congressional action, Ceausescu renounced MFN treatment, calling Jackson-Vanik and other human rights requirements unacceptable interference in Romanian sovereignty. Secretary of State Schultz had warned Ceausescu in 1985 to improve his human rights behavior or lose favorable trade status. The Heritage Foundation argued in 1985 that the previous twenty years of U.S. engagement with the regime in Romania had coincided with deteriorating human rights standards.

Ceausescu with Presidents Nixon, Carter and Secretary of State Schultz

Ceasescu's regime was one of the nastier dictatorships of the East block. In addition to the typical accoutrements of a Stalinist regime this "American ally" managed to reach new lows. Imagine for a moment being born and placed in a cage as a newborn washed via a hose with cold water and never experiencing human touch.

10,000 Romanian babies infected with HIV through dirty needles

 Fed like an animal and contracting HIV, hepatitis, and other diseases through dirty needles used to inject the child with vitamins. All of this done to sell the children, as one would any other commodity, on the international black-market. Heartless capitalists? No, heartless Marxist- Leninists in the Ceausescu communist regime in Romania. The regime decided it needed to increase its population and in 2013 Scientific American explained how this crime was systematically planned out and its aftermath in the article Tragedy Leads to Study of Severe Child Neglect.

Nicolae Ceausescu decreed in 1966 that Romania would develop its “human capital” via a government-enforced mandate to increase the country's population. Ceauşescu, Romania's leader from 1965 to 1989, banned contraception and abortions and imposed a “celibacy tax” on families that had fewer than five children. State doctors—the menstrual police—conducted gynecologic examinations in the workplace of women of childbearing age to see whether they were producing sufficient offspring. The birth rate initially skyrocketed. Yet because families were too poor to keep their children, they abandoned many of them to large state-run institutions.

 Hundreds of thousands of children were subjected to this. This was the country that US taxpayers subsidized with US Export-Import Bank credits.

This close relationship that for decades ignored the human rights situation on the ground contrasted with Poland were U.S. revoked most-favored-nation (MFN) status in response to the Polish Government's decision to ban Solidarity in 1981. The outcome in Poland was a nonviolent transition led by the Polish solidarity movement and a national dialogue between the government and the opposition that ended in free elections in 1989.

Meanwhile the country with the closest diplomatic and economic relationship with the United States in Eastern Europe saw the rule of  Nicolae Ceasescu end in a violent blood bath. The dictator and his wife executed in a show trial on Christmas day and scores of innocent Romanians shot by the state security services. More than a thousand people were killed. The communists in power under Ceasescu remained in power until 1996 in a system marked by continuity until democrats were able to wrest control from them nonviolently. Meanwhile, Poland had already been a functioning democracy for seven years.

Prior to getting involved in the struggle for a free Cuba as a college student in the late 1980s and early 1990s joined with Lithuanian exiles in supporting democrats in the Baltic Republics at a time that Gorbachev was trying to starve them out and sent Soviet black beret commandos into Lithuania killing civilians. Decades later traveling through Eastern Europe in 2013 it is Ronald Reagan who is remembered favorably and whose statue is prominently displayed in Warsaw, Poland not Richard Nixon's or Jimmy Carter's.

 Ronald Reagan statue in Warsaw, Poland (2013)

Castro, Kissinger, Carter, Clinton, Obama and the Long Game

The New Cuba Policy: How did we get here?  Pt. 3

Carter and Clinton have done more than Obama to normalize relations

 President Barack Obama's claim on December 17, 2014 that he was making "the most significant changes in our policy in more than fifty years" is patently untrue when he says that they would begin the normalization of relations with the Castro regime. The two men who have achieved the most significant changes on Cuba policy to date are Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. President Obama still has a way to go in terms of policy but has achieved one significant and shameful change: swapped three of the Castro regime's terrorist spies (one of which was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder of four Americans) for Alan Gross, an innocent man who should have never been arbitrarily detained for five years in a Cuban prison.

Fidel Castro and Jimmy Carter

On March 19, 1977 President Jimmy Carter allowed the US travel restrictions to lapse. Six months later on September 1, 1977 Carter opened the U.S. Interests Section in Havana where the old U.S. Embassy had been and the Castro regime opens an Interests Section in Washington, DC. If  Jimmy Carter had been re-elected President in 1980 he would have completed normalizing relations with the Castro regime. American voters decided differently and elected President Ronald Reagan in 1980 who on April 19, 1982 re-established the travel ban and tightened trade sanctions against Castro regime. Restoring full diplomatic relations would entail changing stationary, business cards and appointing an Ambassador in practical terms. Jimmy Carter did all the heavy lifting 37 years ago. None of this changed the behavior of the Castro regime which succeeded in overthrowing the Somoza regime in Nicaragua and installing the Sandinista regime, a Marxist dictatorship while at the same time assisting in a genocide in Ethiopia. Twenty five years later Jimmy Carter was the first president to visit Fidel Castro in Cuba.

Bill Clinton and dictator Fidel Castro shake hands in NY

Bill Clinton shook hands with Fidel Castro in September of 2000 and a month later signed the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act and opened cash and carry trade with the Castro dictatorship at the end of his Administration.  At the time of its passage,  Fidel Castro said "his country would not buy 'even a grain of rice' under the current terms."  The Cuban dictator ended up buying much more than a grain of rice under those terms. Between 2000 and 2013 American companies have sold $4.689 billion dollars in goods to the Castro regime on a cash and carry basis.

According to Raul Castro in a December 2008 interview with Sean Penn under the Clinton Administration a new relationship was initiated between the Castro regime's military and the United States military : "We've had permanent contact with the US military, by secret agreement, since 1994." Not only contacts but joint military exercises. Again the source is Raul Castro:

"It is based on the premise that we would discuss issues only related to Guantánamo. On February 17, 1993, following a request by the United States to discuss issues related to buoy locators for ship navigations into the bay, was the first contact in the history of the revolution. Between March 4 and July 1, the Rafters Crisis took place. A military-to-military hot line was established, and on May 9, 1995, we agreed to monthly meetings with primaries from both governments. To this day, there have been 157 meetings, and there is a taped record of every meeting. The meetings are conducted on the third Friday of every month. We alternate locations between the American base at Guantánamo and in Cuban-held territory. We conduct joint emergency-response exercises. For example, we set a fire, and American helicopters bring water from the bay, in concert with Cuban helicopters.

On Clinton's watch the Castro regime shot down two civilian planes in international airspace in a premeditated and calculated conspiracy that allegedly included members of the Clinton Administration and the Cuban Wasp spy net work that would be broken up on September 12, 1998 when it was discovered that they had planned acts of sabotage and terrorism on American soil, including the murder of an alleged CIA agent living in Bal Harbour Florida. During the Clinton Administration a threat assessment was prepared by the Department of Defense that reported Cuba was no longer a threat to the national interests of the United States, but in 2001 it was discovered that the main author of the report, Ana Belen Montes, was a long time agent of  the Castro regime. Fulton Armstrong, a harsh critic of U.S. pro-democracy programs suspected of leaking information to the Associated Press was a close confidante of Castro's spy at the Pentagon.

President Barack Obama and dictator Raul Castro

 Despite the 2003 crackdown on dissidents known as the Black Cuban Spring where the Bush Administration tightened sanctions on being able to travel to Cuba and set limits lower on remittances sent to the island. However, nothing was changed in the cash and carry sales made by U.S. companies to the Castro regime.Towards the end of the Bush Administration in August of 2008 the Cuban government announced that the United States was its fifth leading trading partner. Despite the rhetoric the joint military exercises continued through out the eight years of the Bush Administration, and not surprisingly have continued under the Obama Administration. In 2009 President Barack Obama loosened embargo restrictions and four years later shook hands with Raul Castro at Mandela's funeral in South Africa on December 10, 2013 while human rights defenders in Cuba were being beaten up and arbitrarily detained on International Human Rights day.

Dictator Fidel Castro and Vice President Richard Nixon

Ironically, the first U.S. president to shake hands with Fidel Castro was Richard Nixon on April 5, 1959 when he was President Eisenhower's Vice President. Nixon met with Fidel Castro for two and a half hours in what was supposed to be a 15 minute meeting. Fidel Castro described the meeting as "very friendly." Ironic because after Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974 to avoid impeachment in the Watergate scandal it was his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who made a serious attempt to normalize relations with the Castro regime during the Ford Administration.

Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller

At the time Secretary  Kissinger was engaged in diplomatic outreach in 1975 with the Khmer Rouge who he himself recognized were murderous thugs he was also advocating lifting the embargo on Cuba and normalizing relations with Fidel Castro.  Kissinger has also had a close relationship with David Rockefeller, a man who always opposed sanctions on Fidel Castro and hosted the Cuban tyrant at a dinner at the Rockefeller family's Westchester County, N.Y., estate in 1995. 

Fidel Castro and David Rockefeller

President Barack Obama's new Cuba policy is neither brave nor the "most significant" in the past half century but part of the Establishment's long game to normalize relations with the Castro regime that stretches back at least 39 years.

This is the third of three reflections (The New Cuba Policy: How did we get here?) in a multifactorial analysis of what is taking place on Cuba policy today. The first part looked at the state of the United States in 2014 and why it would be susceptible to the machinations of the campaign underway. The second part provided an overview of totalitarian networks and why democracies have difficulty defending themselves from them.