Diplomatic Dance
Posted by Tim Padgett Tuesday, August 9, 2011 at 8:16 pm
Now that Cuba's highest court has upheld the 15-year prison sentence for
U.S. development worker Alan Gross, the key question is whether
President Raúl Castro will free him as a humanitarian gesture. Castro
has hinted he's willing to do that. But there are other important
questions to consider: Does Castro want something in return from the
Obama Administration? And would the U.S. even offer anything? The
answers may well determine how much colder, or warmer, the Gross case
ends up making dysfunctional U.S.-Cuba relations.
The best-case scenario is Cuba's unilateral release of the 62-year-old
Gross, who has lost 100 lbs (45 kg) in jail since his December 2009
arrest for subversion, and whose 27-year-old daughter has been diagnosed
with breast cancer. But if Cuba is waiting for a U.S. goodwill gesture
in advance of a humanitarian one, Gross' horizons look darker. The Obama
Administration insists, for example, it won't release as part of a swap
any of the five convicted Cuban spies currently sitting in U.S. prison.
And it's pressing on with the USAID-financed democracy-promotion program
for which Gross was a subcontractor, which it insists only "helps the
Cuban people connect with the rest of the world" by delivering computers
and cell phones to the island, but which Havana says seeks to topple
Cuba's communist government.
Still, notes Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst and Cuba director at the
independent National Security Archives in Washington, D.C., "It could
take quite a political dance to get Alan Gross released." And toward
that end, Kornbluh and numerous other Cuba analysts I've spoken to since
Gross exhausted his legal appeals on the island last Friday, August 5,
say there is in fact one "legitimate, defensible" thing the U.S. can
offer that would hasten the American's freedom. That is, remove Cuba
from the State Department's list of states that sponsor terrorism.
Cuba, which has been the object of a U.S. trade embargo since 1962, is
certainly not recognized as a paragon of human rights. But only the most
hardline anti-Castroites believe Cuba belongs with Iran, Sudan and Syria
on State's current roster of countries that aid terrorism – especially
since far more worrisome nations like North Korea and Libya were
recently taken off it. Most analysts agree Cuba is on the list to
appease powerful Cuban-American politicians like U.S. Senator Bob
Menendez of New Jersey and U.S. Representative and House Foreign Affairs
Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, a crucial swing
state where Cuban-American voters still have some clout. "It's
senseless," says Kornbluh. "The campaign against terrorism is the last
place you want the stain of electoral politics to intrude."
Cuba has remained on the terrorism list since the Reagan Administration
first put it there in 1982 to protest Havana's support of leftist rebels
in Central America. It stayed even after the CIA admitted in 2003 it had
"no credible evidence" that Cuba was "engaged in or directly supported
international terrorist operations." And when a new list comes out,
perhaps as soon as this month, Cuba is expected to be there still – even
though Spain's and Colombia's ambassadors in Havana earlier this year
told former U.S. President Jimmy Carter that the presence in Cuba of
certain rebel figures from their countries, one of the only rationales
left for including Cuba, was "no longer a concern."
Could Gross' situation now change Obama's mind about keeping Cuba on the
terrorism sponsor list? Gross, a Jewish American who had made frequent
trips into Cuba to deliver computer and cell phone equipment to the
island's Jewish community, conceded in his trial that he broke Cuban law
by giving locals satellite communications technology that circumvents
the government's networks. But he and the Administration insist his
actions did not merit the espionage conviction that resulted in his
15-year sentence. (Cuba has been widely criticized for not releasing the
transcript of Gross's trial and the evidence used against him.) On his
visit to Cuba this year, Carter too told Castro that Gross "should be
released because he is innocent of any serious crime."
Still, notes Jennifer McCoy, Americas Director for Carter's
Atlanta-based Carter Center, "The Cuban government feels that there are
[five] Cuban citizens in U.S prison who were not legitimately tried,"
and it believes that Gross was involved in "unacceptable interference"
in Cuban affairs because "the law authorizing the [USAID program] calls
for regime change" in Cuba. "There is a risk to these programs, of
putting people [like Gross] in danger," says McCoy, echoing critics like
U.S. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who until recently put a hold
on USAID's $20 million Cuba program.
So if the Obama Administration does face a degree of negotiation for
Gross' release, then the state terrorism sponsor list, which the
President can change at his discretion without Congress' approval, could
be its best bargaining chip. Then again, Castro, who insisted he had to
wait for the Cuban Supreme Court's decision on Gross before he could
consider his own, could make Gross' humanitarian release unconditional.
Either way, Gross' U.S. lawyer, Peter Kahn, said last Friday that while
Gross' wife and family were "heartbroken" by the Cuban high court
ruling, they're "hopeful that there continues to be room for a
diplomatic resolution."
When it comes to the U.S. and Cuba, unfortunately, that room is usually
as narrow as the Florida Straits. But, says Larry Birns, director of the
Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington, "This is most likely going
to require a political solution from both sides." If Obama can look
beyond Cuban-American politics – and if Castro can acknowledge that
Gross was not attempting an electronic Bay of Pigs – this political
dance could bring Washington and Havana into closer step for a change.
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