Executive Director, Cuba Democracy Advocates in Washington, D.C.
John Kerry Should Support "Regime Choice" for Cuba
Posted: 05/12/11 12:43 PM ET
The argument du jour for opponents of the U.S. Agency for International
Development's (USAID) programs to promote democracy in Cuba is that they
violate the island's "sovereignty" by advocating "regime change."
The latest congressional manifestation of this opposition comes from
U.S. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), chairman of the Foreign Relations
Committee, who announced last week that he would unilaterally delay the
Obama Administration's disbursement of $20 million appropriated by the
U.S. Congress for FY 2010.
Never mind that these programs support the families of Cubans jailed for
their support of democracy, their loved ones fired from their jobs and
their children expelled from school. The programs also provide cell
phones, laptops and other basic items that Cuba's bloggers need to break
through the regime's censorship and information monopoly in their
efforts to build a civil society; and that they provide books to
independent libraries, paper and pencils to labor unions and journalists
to allow them to exercise their fundamental human right of free expression.
For opponents of these democracy programs, that's all irrelevant. They
want the programs scrapped altogether and replaced with ones
pre-approved by Cuba's dictatorship.
According to Kerry, "there is no evidence... that the 'democracy
promotion' (quotations are his) programs... are helping the Cuban
people. Nor have they achieved much more than provoking the Cuban
government to arrest a U.S. government contractor who was distributing
satellite communication sets to Cuban contacts."
That U.S. government contractor is 62-year-old Alan Gross, who was
helping Cuba's Jewish community connect to the Internet -- a fundamental
right protected by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration on Human
Rights, which states:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this
right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to
seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and
regardless of frontiers.
Kerry also announced that he has requested an investigation by the
Government Accountability Office (GAO) "into the legal basis and
effectiveness of these operations."
Yet these programs are clearly prescribed in the 1996 Cuban Liberty and
Democratic Solidarity Act (LIBERTAD Act). So, is Senator Kerry really
responding to complaints raised by the Castro regime? The regime has
made it abundantly clear -- most recently to former President Jimmy
Carter -- that it considers these programs to be a violation of Cuban
"law" (its dictatorial decrees) and views them as a nuisance to its
totalitarian rule.
It is hard to imagine that this is the same Senator Kerry who has been a
steadfast advocate of "regime change" in Egypt and Libya, and the
biggest cheerleader of the Obama Administration's military operation in
support of Libya's rebels, which cost $100 million on the first day alone.
Why is Senator Kerry so hostile to the concept of "regime change" in
Cuba, but not in North Africa and the Middle East? How can he support
financing the violent overthrow of the Gaddafi regime by armed Libyan
rebels, but not the distribution of laptops and books for Cuba's
opposition movement, which only advocates a peaceful transition to
democracy?
As the well-known Washington maxim goes -- "personnel is policy." And in
the case of Senator Kerry, the answer can be found in his senior advisor
for Latin America, Fulton Armstrong.
Armstrong is a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst with a known
history of hindering the execution of U.S. policy towards Cuba. Together
with his former colleague at the Defense Intelligence Agency, Ana Belen
Montes, Armstrong authored an oft-cited 1998 report that argued that
Cuba no longer posed a security threat to the United States. Ironically,
just three years later (in 2001), Montes was identified as a Cuban spy,
arrested, convicted and is now serving life in a federal prison.
Armstrong's strong opposition to USAID's Cuba democracy programs is
widely-known in the halls of Congress and the State Department to be
based on his strong personal objection to the concept of "regime change."
Here's a permanent solution to this semantic disagreement:
Let's discard the concept of "regime change" and, instead, coalesce
around a new option of "regime choice" for the Cuban people.
Regime choice encapsulates what is surely our shared goal for Cuba --
free and fair multi-party elections. And it is consistent with the
LIBERTAD Act, which would consequently consummate (and expire) when Cuba
holds free and fair elections.
Free and fair elections are also the only means for the Cuban people to
legitimately vest "sovereignty" to Cuba's government; it cannot be
inherited or seized by force -- it is only granted to governments by the
free choice and will of its people.
So, let's move forward and work together to promote "regime choice" for
the Cuban people.
Surely, Senator Kerry would agree.
Mauricio Claver-Carone is a director of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC and
founding editor of CapitolHillCubans.com in Washington, D.C. He is an
attorney who formerly served with the U.S. Department of the Treasury
and has served on the full-time faculty of The Catholic University of
America's School of Law and adjunct faculty of The George Washington
University's National Law Center.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mauricio-clavercarone/john-kerry-should-support_b_861124.html
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