Use 'smart power' to help Cubans
BY VICKI HUDDLESTON and CARLOS PASCUAL
Miami Herald Op Ed 2/24/09
www.brookings.edu
Contrary to popular myth and public
misunderstanding, if President Barack Obama wishes to change the U.S.
policy toward Cuba, he has ample authority to do so. If he takes
charge of Cuba policy, he can turn the embargo into an effective
instrument of ''smart power'' to achieve the United States' policy
objectives in Cuba.
Obama's leadership is needed to change
the dynamic between the United States and Cuba. The status quo is no
longer an option. Not only has it failed to achieve its goals; it has
tarnished our image in the hemisphere and throughout the world.
Waiting for Congress to act will only further delay change.
Fortunately, even in the case of Cuba, Congress has not materially
impaired this country's venerable constitutional arrangement under
which the president has the ultimate authority to conduct our foreign
affairs.
Executive authority
Again and again we hear that the
embargo can't be changed because the Helms-Burton law codified it.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Whether you agree or
disagree with the current commercial embargo, the president can
effectively dismantle it by using his executive authority.
Helms-Burton codified the embargo regulation, but those regulations
provide that ``all transactions are prohibited except as specifically
authorized by the Secretary of the Treasury by means of regulations,
rulings, instructions, and licenses.''
This means that the president's power
remains unfettered. He can instruct the secretary to extend, revise
or modify embargo regulations. The proof of this statement is that
President Bill Clinton issued new regulations for expanded travel and
remittances in order to help individuals and grow civil society.
Obama will have to modify Office of
Foreign Assets Control regulations to fulfill his campaign promise to
increase Cuban-American travel and remittances. If he wants to
reproduce the more open conditions in Cuba that led to the ''Cuban
Spring'' of 2002 and Oswaldo Payá's Varela Project, he could
reinstate people-to-people and educational travel. By a simple rule
change, he could also speed the entry of life-saving medicines from
Cuba, rather than subjecting them to delays from cumbersome OFAC
licensing procedures.
Since 1992, U.S. law -- the Cuban
Democracy Act -- has sought to expand access to ideas, knowledge and
information by licensing telecommunications goods and services. Yet,
in practice, regulations are so strictly interpreted that the United
States in effect is imposing a communications embargo on Cuba. To
lift it, the president can authorize a general license for the
donation and sale of radios, televisions and computers. In addition,
rather than helping Cuban state security keep Yoani Sánchez and
others off the Internet, the Obama administration could make Internet
technology readily available so that any barriers to communications
would be clearly the fault of the Cuban government, and not ours.
Environmental concerns rate high with
the Obama administration. So it might open bilateral discussions,
exchange information and license the provision of scientific
equipment to improve the health of the ocean and success of
commercial fisheries.
The United States Geological Survey
estimates that the North Cuba Basin holds 5.5 billion barrels of oil
and 9.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves. If the president
wishes, he can instruct the secretary of the treasury to license U.S.
companies to explore, exploit and transport these resources that we
and the region so badly need.
Failed policy
After a half-century of failed policy,
there is enormous support in the Cuban-American community for
initiatives that will improve the well being and independence of the
Cuban people. What they didn't know -- but know now -- is that there
is no reason they can't reach out to the Cuban people and still
retain the embargo as symbol of their concern about the Cuban
government's failure to live up to international norms of human
rights, democracy and transparency.
Vicki Huddleston is a visiting fellow
at the Brookings Institution and former chief of the U.S. Interests
Section in Havana. Carlos Pascual is vice president of the Brookings
Institution. They are co-directors of the Brookings project on U.S.
Policy Toward a Cuba in Transition.
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/918404.html
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