Belated Half Measures on Cuba
My time as a U.S. diplomat in Cuba during the Obama thaw of 2015-17 showed me what was possible to achieve when diplomacy was given a chance to work.
Historic wave of protests washes across Cuba
This past Sunday, the largest popular protests in decades erupted in Cuba, with thousands of demonstrators across the island taking to the streets to decry acute shortages of basic necessities (including food and medicine), rolling blackouts, and suffocating restrictions on political freedoms that persist over six decades after the Cuban Revolution.
How should the U.S. support change in Cuba? Lift the embargo.
It’s time to call the Cuban government’s bluff. Ending the embargo would help the country’s embattled private sector, giving its people hope for a non-Communist future.
Cuba’s sagging economy, regime change, and U.S. policy
Cuba has entered the 2020s much in the same fashion as it did in the 1990s; the world is a more uncertain place, its main economic backer is riven by a major economic collapse, and its relations with its northern neighbor are tense. But there are differences.
The president has the constitutional power to unilaterally terminate the embargo on Cuba
While the Helms-Burton Act imposes conditions that must be met before the Cuban embargo can be lifted, the president has “the authority to unilaterally terminate the embargo based upon the constitutional primacy of the president’s office in managing U.S. foreign relations.”
A Cuban lifeline to CARICOM
In looking for pragmatic solutions to address the COVID-19 crisis, and given the absence of global leadership during the pandemic, Caribbean governments are seeking support from long-time partner, Cuba.