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Question: summarize what you have read and how you believe (based on what we've studied so...

Question: summarize what you have read and how you believe (based on what we've studied so far) that topic should be approached from a law and policy perspective.

Introduction
The U.S.-Cuba relationship has been plagued by distrust and antagonism since 1959, the year Fidel Castro overthrew a U.S.-backed regime in Havana and established a socialist state allied with the Soviet Union. During the half century that followed, successive U.S. administrations pursued policies intended to isolate the island country economically and diplomatically. The United States has sanctioned Cuba longer than any other country.
Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro, who replaced his brother as Cuban leader in 2008, took some extraordinary steps to normalize bilateral relations, meeting with each other, restoring full diplomatic ties, and easing travel restrictions. President Donald J. Trump has reversed some actions taken by the Obama administration and raised the prospect that the United States will further roll back ties. Both Castroism and hard-line policies toward the United States are expected to continue under President Miguel Diaz-Canel, who succeeded Raul in April 2018.
Cold War Antagonism
The tumultuous U.S.-Cuba relationship has its roots in the Cold War. In 1959, Fidel Castro and a group of revolutionaries seized power in Havana, overthrowing the U.S.-backed government of Fulgencio Batista. Despite misgivings about Castro’s communist ideology, the United States recognized his government. However, as Castro’s regime increased trade with the Soviet Union, nationalized U.S.-owned properties, and hiked taxes on U.S. imports, the United States responded with escalating economic penalties. After slashing Cuban sugar imports, Washington instituted a ban on nearly all U.S. exports to Cuba, which President John F. Kennedy expanded into a full economic embargo that included stringent travel restrictions.
The United States severed diplomatic ties with Cuba and began pursuing covert operations to overthrow the Castro regime in 1961. The Bay of Pigs invasion, a botched attempt to topple Castro backed by the Central Intelligence Agency, fueled Cuban mistrust and nationalism, and encouraged Havana to allow the Soviet Union to install nuclear missile sites on the island in secret. U.S. surveillance aircraft uncovered the installations in October 1962, setting off a thirteen-day showdown between the Kennedy administration and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that threatened to escalate into nuclear war. In the end, Khrushchev agreed to withdraw Soviet missiles in exchange for a pledge from Kennedy not to invade Cuba and to remove U.S. nuclear missiles from Turkey.
In the decades that followed, economic and diplomatic isolation became the major prongs of U.S. policy toward Cuba. In 1982, the Ronald Reagan administration labeled Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism for its support of leftist militant groups in Central America and Africa. Both Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton signed laws—the Cuba Democracy Act of 1992 and the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996 [PDF]—that significantly strengthened the U.S. sanctions regime, requiring Cuba to transition to a democratically elected government that excludes the Castros and upholds fundamental freedoms before the embargo can be removed. Some adjustments were made to the embargo in 1999 to allow for the export of certain U.S. medical supplies and food products to the island, but the introduction of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba under President George W. Bush increased enforcement of existing sanctions. The Cuban government estimated that U.S. trade restrictions cost the country $4.6 billion in economic damages in 2015 and a total of $126 billion since the start of the embargo.
Reform and Rapprochement
During the 2008 U.S. election, presidential candidate Barack Obama said that it was time for the United States to “pursue direct diplomacy” with Cuba, and pledged that he would as president meet with Raul Castro, who had recently replaced his brother Fidel as leader. Several weeks after taking office, the Obama administration eased restrictions on remittances and travel, allowing Cuban Americans to send unlimited funds into Cuba and permitting U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba for religious and educational purposes. Over the course of his first term in office, Obama continued modest loosening of restrictions in these areas.
Meanwhile, the new Cuban leadership also signaled an openness to reform. Facing an aging population, heavy foreign debt, and hardship amid the global economic downturn, Raul Castro began in 2009 to liberalize parts of Cuba’s largely state-controlled economy, though state companies still account for roughly seventy percent of the island’s economic activity. Reforms in subsequent years included decentralizing the agricultural sector, relaxing restrictions on small businesses, liberalizing real estate markets, making it easier for Cubans to obtain permission to travel abroad, and expanding access to consumer goods. Cuba’s private sector swelled as a direct result, and in 2014 was reported to be about 20 percent [PDF] of the country’s workforce. Cuban government figures estimate that the number of self-employed workers nearly tripled [PDF] between 2009 and 2013.
Obama and Castro surprised the world in late 2014, announcing that their governments would restore full diplomatic ties and begin to ease more than fifty years of bilateral tensions. The historic moment marked the culmination of eighteen months of secret diplomacy brokered by Pope Francis in which the parties agreed to an exchange of prisoners, including intelligence officers and a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) contractor, among other concessions.
The thaw in relations continued in the months that followed. The Obama administration eased travel and trade restrictions on Cuba, and removed it from an official list of terrorism sponsors. Cuba’s inclusion on the U.S. blacklist was a major obstacle to normalization talks. The two governments also reopened their embassies.
In early 2016, President Obama took another significant step down the normalization path, visiting Havana in what was the first trip to Cuba by a sitting U.S. president since Calvin Coolidge toured the island in 1928. In a keynote address broadcast live with Raul Castro sitting in the audience, Obama urged both countries to press on with reforms. The Cuban government should continue political and economic liberalization, and the U.S. Congress should lift the trade embargo, he said. Ahead of his trip, Obama further loosened U.S. travel and financial restrictions with regard to Cuba. Later that year, commercial U.S. airlines began offering service between the countries for the first time in more than fifty years.
Days before leaving office in January 2017, Obama repealed the so-called “wet foot, dry foot” policy, which had since 1995 allowed Cubans who reached U.S. shores without authorization to pursue permanent residency there. The move brought the U.S. government’s treatment of Cubans in line with its handling of other undocumented immigrants. The Cuban government welcomed the change and agreed to allow back into the country all Cubans removed by the United States.
Lifting the Embargo
Leaders in both U.S. political parties want to see the Cuban government improve its human rights record as part of significant political and economic reforms. Human Rights Watch reported that Cuban authorities continued to “repress and punish dissent and public criticism” in 2017, and the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation documented a total of 5,155 arbitrary detentions that year.
But there is disagreement in Washington on what the United States should do to encourage that process, particularly on the question of the trade embargo, the major diplomatic obstacle on the road to normal U.S.-Cuba relations. Most Democrats, along with some Republicans, support ending the embargo forthwith, which they hope will spur further liberalization and human rights improvements in Cuba. On the other hand, many Republican lawmakers say the Cuban government needs to move first and institute greater reforms before the United States makes any more concessions.
While some analysts say Raul Castro’s departure could provide a political window for lifting the embargo, Diaz-Canel is largely expected to embrace the Castro brand of authoritarian communism and the suppression of civil liberties that comes with it.
Public Opinion
There is widespread support for normalization in both the United States and Cuba. A Pew Research poll conducted in late 2016 found that 75 percent of Americans approved of President Obama’s decision to resume diplomatic relations, while a poll from a year earlier found that 97 percent of Cubans thought normalization is a positive thing for the island. Recent polling has found that the majority of Americans also favor ending the trade embargo with Cuba. Meanwhile, global support for normalization has been overwhelming, particularly in Latin America. In 2016, the UN General Assembly approved a resolution condemning the U.S. embargo for the twenty-fifth consecutive year, with 191 member countries backing the resolution.
Trump and U.S.-Cuba Ties
The death of Fidel Castro and election of Donald J. Trump in late 2016 rekindled debates over U.S.-Cuba policy. President Trump announced during a visit to Miami in June 2017 that he would reinstate some restrictions on travel and trade that had been eased by the Obama administration, but would not break diplomatic relations. Trump said that the “outcome of the last administration’s executive actions has been only more repression” and issued a memorandum directing the U.S. Treasury and Commerce Departments to plan for reinstating the ban on individual travel by Americans to Cuba; halting economic transactions involving GAESA, a military-run conglomerate; and regularly reporting on human rights progress in Cuba. Trump said U.S. sanctions will not be lifted until Cuba frees all political prisoners and holds free and fair elections, among other rights-related conditions.
The administration announced in September 2017 that it would pull two-thirds of its embassy staff from Havana, after twenty-one American and ten Canadian diplomatic staff suffered unexplained injuries, including hearing loss and cognitive impairment, believed to have been caused by sonic devices. The move called for suspending most of the embassy’s functions, including visa processing. The Cuban government had urged the United States not to cut diplomatic ties, denying any involvement. (U.S. investigators have not determined who was behind the attacks.)
Some U.S. business leaders and members of Congress have criticized the policy reversal, saying isolating Cuba could worsen the economic and political situation there. Administration officials said the new restrictions would not disrupt existing U.S. business ventures; many U.S.-based companies, including Google, Airbnb, and Starwood Hotels & Resorts, invested heavily in Cuba following the warming of relations.
The Trump administration’s rollback, along with the reelection of Republican majorities to the U.S. Congress in 2016, increased the likelihood that the trade embargo will remain in place. Republican lawmakers in both chambers have routinely blocked bills that would roll back the embargo, a stance that is unlikely to change with Diaz-Canel in office. “[The Trump administration’s] policy toward Cuba is being guided by a desire to isolate and coerce changes from the government,” says Columbia University’s Christopher Sabatini. “As long as U.S. policy is driven largely by hard-liners, the embargo won’t be lifted no matter who’s in power.”

Homework Answers

Answer #1

It is quite clear that the U.S. Cuba relationship is a long winded tale of mistrust and antagonism. The ties were severed much more because of the Soviet Union presence. It is also clear that isolating Cuba has had a deleterious effect on ties and economic growth of Cuba. The Obama administration took several measures to ease tension, but the communist power inhibited clearing of the embargo. If coerce forces are used by US than it is likely that the Cuban government would not try to co-operate and this would create a further step back in bilateral relations. From a law and policy perspective, the US government should try to punish any human rights violation in Cuba after opening up for trade with them, as it is clear that several years of embargo has not improved the human rights issue. By opening the economy for trade, several people would prosper, leading to better human conditions.

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