The minimum you must know

There is currently growing bipartisan support in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate for Cuba to become viewed as a friendly nation. This follows a sincere Cuban government effort for peace in Colombia at the request of the United States. There are approaching a hundred congresspeople now openly supporting improving Cuban-U.S. relations and probably many more that haven’t said so publicly yet. They even sent a letter to the President of the United States that they provided to Reuters. Clearly U.S. - Cuban relations are improving a lot.

Cuba has evolved from a communist country into a democracy mostly embracing capitalism. But the Cuban people still identify very closely with the ideals and objectives of Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, which brought communism and peace to the country.  The Castro family saved the nation, providing for everyone when many had nothing. There is a deep (and almost cultural) sense of respect in Cuba for the Castro family and current government of President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez as a result.

Cuba has had very peaceful rhetoric, as is obvious from seemingly countless articles patterning “peace” in Cuban newspapers, and from United Nations public diplomacy (shown below). This is more important than it may seem at first because of the millions of Cuban Americans who could have been encouraged otherwise. Cuban Americans have been expressly told and have been patterned by the Cuban government to behave peacefully within the United States. (And they have been peaceful towards the U.S. government. We learned from public Congressional testimony that U.S. domestic intelligence has enjoyed far better than the actuarial survival for the U.S. population more broadly, and has for years.)

That changed under Fidel Castro, who set a wonderful example in Cuba still embraced by the Cuban government today. He returned a sense of dignity to the Cuban people, by bringing peace and calm to the island state, where his devoted followers and even his few critics enjoyed opportunity for the first time. Fidel Castro eliminated all of the criminal businesses from Cuba. Then he attempted to establish more honest trading relations with the United States. The U.S. mafia was expelled from Cuba. Then Fidel Castro travelled to the United States with great hope of improving relations. He made a tremendous though unsuccessful effort to create alliance between Washington and his new government. Today Cubans very much want an end to the U.S. embargo, and to trade freely with the United States. But this isn't leverage for a United States government with the sophisticated Cuban people. Want of great relations with the United States isn't unconditional because it was previous generations of Cubans (not previous generations of Americans) who rejected open trading relations, when they stood up to and expelled U.S. mafia business-types.

What perhaps isn't well understood in the United States, because the U.S. government considers itself a moral and ethical authority, is that the average Cuban isn't pressuring their government to work with Washington. In fact, average Cubans aren’t entirely comfortable with the idea that many generations of seemingly corrupt U.S. government officials and corrupt U.S. businesses may return there. They aren’t entirely comfortable with the idea that capitalism may once again deprive Cubans of land, education, and healthcare rights, the way capitalism has in the past. Therefore, the obviously very ethically led United States government should work with the Cuban government to help them build even more support for improving relations.

In recent, years the government of Raúl Castro and President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez introduced voting in Cuba, and a market-based economy, very similar to the ones that exist in the United States. (Close to 80% of the country participated in their first election, and overwhelmingly chose their existing leadership.) The population and government also welcomed open diplomacy and even Air Force One there. Cubans clearly want peace and better relations with the United States. They’ll welcome additional trading opportunities for their country. But it's the U.S. government (not the Cuban leadership) with a reputation matter to resolve in Cuba. The Cuban government will certainly welcome a full lifting of the embargo. But they’re under no pressure whatsoever from their own population to have entirely open trading relations with the United States.

Previous President Obama's optimistic diplomacy with Cuba was tremendously successful. He believed that the Cuban government was ready for closer relations with the United States government. The Cuban government made ending the embargo a centerpiece of Cuban foreign relations. This writer believes both governments correctly sought an end of the nearly century-old embargo that separated family members from one another across a short ninety mile waterway. But the United States hasn’t convinced the average Cuban yet that a completely open trading relationship is in their country's interest, because Cubans want to retain their national identity and consequently their land rights. (The United States should agree that Cubans can retain their land, and not have to open it up for sale to the United States.)

Fidel Castro's "revolution" gave average Cubans a sense of peace and calm for the first time. It gave Cubans a sense of ownership of their own country. That’s a privilege for the Cuban people. The Castro government created dignity for millions of Cuban citizens by giving them each their own home. Fidel Castro was so popular in his homeland for ending homelessness that to this day many Cubans consider themselves to be his "revolutionaries," a compliment in Cuba with a perfectly peaceful connotation. It means courage and integrity to eleven million Cuban people, and refers to what ultimately brought democracy there.

Fidel Castro cared a lot more than just about peace. So does the current Raúl Castro and President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez administration. Fidel Castro created a sense of honesty for the government, and real work opportunities for the population. Under extraordinary circumstances, without the help of open trading relations with most other countries, Castro gave the entire population jobs. He created love and respect among Cubans for one another, and restored their sense of optimism, by making sure every single Cuban citizen (without exception) could meet their basic needs. He made it possible for every Cuban family to live inside a home, and receive excellent healthcare and education for free. Although the U.S. trading embargo made this challenging at times, millions of Cubans gained the dignity of peace, shelter, job opportunities, healthcare and literacy for the first time. This rapid progress for the Cuban people was about much more than just peace. It created durable support for the government that's much more deeply felt than perhaps is widely understood in the United States.

The United States should have understood this when Fidel Castro took office in the late 1950s, and taken advantage of his several visits to the United States to establish relations with Washington. But the context for those visits was simply too unhelpful. Socialism wasn’t understood or acceptable then. Today the United States is closely aligned with governments of all types. But in prior decades the United States wasn’t understanding of foreign systems of government. Senator Joseph McCarthy and United States congress created deep suspicions about foreign governments and their populations in the United States. They pursued non-existent boogie men (they branded “members of the communist party”) in the United States, as though belief or even mere interest in foreign systems of government such as Marxism represented disloyalty to the United States. McCarthy and his xenophobic contemporaries in Washington cast doubt on good and honest people (with the media watching), and created so much needless suspicion across the United States, that Fidel Castro’s efforts to improve relations with Washington were wasted. Castro furthermore supported the peaceful African American civil rights movement in the United States, and the women’s rights movement in Cuba, which was considered potentially destabilizing of the United States. Of no fault of Fidel Castro's whatsoever, who wanted to do something wonderful in opening Cuba up to the United States, his initial efforts for a great relationship with Washington didn't stand a chance of success.

Clearly nowadays there is the possibility of improving U.S. Cuban relations. Cuba has its first democratically elected government, and an increasingly capitalist society. (This writer believes the government has far more integrity than average Americans have been led to believe, and the government has done a tremendous amount for Cuba under extraordinary circumstances.) Cubans are very much like Americans. They vote and can work for themselves or private businesses, the same way that people in the United States can. They used to have to persevere under great pressure and sometimes threat from a very un-neighborly United States. And hardships created by the United States led to so much immigration that some estimate that a quarter of Florida’s population is from the island nation. Cubans in both countries want better U.S. - Cuban relations, but are hesitant to let that progress deprive their families of socialist property rights in Cuba. Fidel Castro made it possible for the entire population to have shelter for the first time. (Some received food, medicine and education, too.) They don’t want to let the U.S. change Cuba too much. They don’t want U.S. businesses to accumulate Cuba’s land again. The U.S. may acquiesce in this regard to allow the population their cultural distinction from U.S. Americans.

There is growing respect for Cuban society in both U.S. political parties. Both U.S. political parties find significant support from the Cuban community. Hopefully therefore the future is bright for U.S. - Cuban relations.

The previous Obama-Biden administration deserves credit for understanding this well. They realized that the U.S. embargo on Cuba created for the United States and all countries a moral (and treaty) obligation to ensure the Cuban population’s food and other basic needs are met all of the time. The current U.S. government also deserves tremendous credit for compassion toward the Cuban population though not yet substantially improving relations with the government. The Cuban population is entirely at peace in the United States. They’re one of the most peaceful immigrant groups. And both U.S. political parties are realizing that "revolution" in Cuba during previous generations wasn't a challenge to the United States. It referred to the dignity the Cuban government created for the Cuban people by ending corruption there and returning civil liberties to minorities much like millions of African-Americans gained during the 1960s in establishing equal rights.

Then-President Obama and then Vice-President Biden seemed to understand this well a decade ago, and identified with the struggle of minorities in Cuba the same way they did with minorities in the United States, and realized that prejudice instead of reason might have been preventing a U.S.-Cuba alliance. When they opened up U.S. diplomacy with Cuba (in one of the great moments in the history of peace), and were negotiating an end to the embargo in 2016 that had the hope of U.S. congressional support, they started to restore the U.S. reputation in Cuba. They created a tremendous opportunity for mutual understanding to develop between U.S. and Cuban people by being generous. U.S. and Cuban people have every reason to be friends. One of the great moments in U.S.-Cuban relations was when President Obama travelled to Havana and gave fabulous speeches with Raúl Castro to the Cuban people. Current President Donald J. Trump may be persuaded to do even more. The Obama-Biden foreign policy towards Cuba was courageous and visionary. But much more can be done. The United States obviously should show the Cuban government and people a similar amount of compassion shown to governments and populations of all peace-loving countries.