Much Ado About Muy Poco – Bush’s Cuba Policy Speech

President Bush’s Cuba policy speech today at the State Department was heavy on symbolism and light on new policy initiatives. Present on the same stage as Bush were the family members of several Cuban dissidents. The President promised to maintain the trade embargo, extended access to Cuba to foreign aid programs he knows Fidel Castro will reject and sketched the outlines of an “international multi-billion dollar Freedom Fund for Cuba” without specifying how much his Administration would chip in. As the President acknowledged, “Few issues have challenged [the State Department] — and our nation — longer than the situation in Cuba.”

The lukewarm speech contrasted with the advance billing provided in the lede of a New York Times article posted yesterday:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 — President Bush is planning to issue a stern warning Wednesday that the United States will not accept a political transition in Cuba in which power changes from one Castro brother to another, rather than to the Cuban people.

As described by an official in a background briefing to reporters on Tuesday evening, Mr. Bush’s remarks will amount to the most detailed response — mainly an unbending one — to the political changes that began in Cuba more than a year ago, when Fidel Castro fell ill and handed power to his brother Raúl.

Raúl Castro was not mentioned by name in today’s speech. And I don’t think the Castro brothers will view it a “stern warning”. Seems more destined, as the NYT article mentions, for an audience of South Florida Republican primary voters.

The President called on other nations to take largely symbolic measures:

They can open up their embassies in Havana to pro-democracy leaders and invite them to different events. They can use their lobbies of the embassies to give Cubans access to the Internet and to books and to magazines. They can encourage their country’s non-governmental organizations to reach out directly to Cuba’s independent civil society.

As for the U.S. government:

To further that effort, the United States is prepared to take new measures right now to help the Cuban people directly — but only if the Cuban regime, the ruling class, gets out of the way.

For example — here’s an interesting idea to help the Cuban people– the United States government is prepared to license non-governmental organizations and faith-based groups to provide computers and Internet access to Cuban people — if Cuba’s rulers will end their restrictions on Internet access for all the people.

Or the United States is prepared to invite Cuban young people whose families suffer oppression into the Partnership for Latin American Youth scholarship programs, to help them have equal access to greater educational opportunities — if the Cuban rulers will allow them to freely participate.

Except it turns out, the offers are not so new after all. And like previous offers this will be rejected.

You know, we’ve made similar offers before — but they’ve been rejected out of hand by the regime.

The only new offer is:

In that spirit, today I also am announcing a new initiative to develop an international multi-billion dollar Freedom Fund for Cuba. This fund would help the Cuban people rebuild their economy and make the transition to democracy. I have asked two members of my Cabinet to lead the effort — Secretary Rice and Secretary Gutierrez. They will enlist foreign governments and international organizations to contribute to this initiative.

And here’s how the fund will work: The Cuban government must demonstrate that it has adopted, in word and deed, fundamental freedoms. These include the freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of press, freedom to form political parties, and the freedom to change the government through periodic, multi-party elections. And once these freedoms are in place, the fund will be able to give Cubans — especially Cuban entrepreneurs — access to grants, and loans and debt relief to help rebuild their country.

Yet, there was no mention of specific financial contributions that the Bush Administration might request of Congress or seek from allies. Or, for that matter, any mention of which other governments might contribute. I don´t foresee any nation other than the Czech Republic or possibly El Salvador committing any funds. There are certainly wealthy individuals and some foundations which might be willing to contribute funds but on the whole it seems like a project that is destined to gather dust on someone´s shelf.

It is hard to see what the appeal to Cuba´s communist rulers of hypothetical assistance based on kicking themselves out of power might be particularly in contrast to the no-strings attached petro-fuelled aid from Venezuela.

The only truly new element introduced today was one of political theater. Namely, Bush´s use of the Spanish-language phrase “ya viene llegando” (”our day is coming”) to describe the immanence of change in Cuba. The phrase was popularized by Cuban American singer Willy Chirino in a song “Nuestro día (ya viene llegando)” that is enormously popular with the Cuban exile community.

The song was recorded in 1992.

The above YouTube clip is apparently of Chirino performing the song at a Panamanian camp for balseros.

Tags: Cuba