Canada’s incoherent foreign policy towards Cuba

The more liberal trade and relations agenda hasn't worked

Canada's incoherent foreign policy towards Cuba
By Sierra Rayne (Bio and Archives) Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Following the Cuban revolution in 1959 which brought the brutal
communist dictator Fidel Castro to power, Canada and Mexico were the
only two countries in the hemisphere not to break relations with Cuba.
Canada's foreign policy is generally incoherent and often works at
cross-purposes to that of our strongest ally, the United States, but
with Cuba it achieves new lows.

This is not a favorable foreign policy history for a full democracy such
as Canada. Strong and positive diplomatic statements can be made by
breaking off relations with rogue nations such as Cuba. Indeed, as a
counterfactual, one wonders if Castro's grip on power in the years
following the start of his dictatorship could have been lessened had
Canada stood by other nations in the western hemisphere and vigorously
opposed the regime change. As is too often the case, Canada sometimes
acts incorrectly merely to oppose other nations (particularly the United
States), and thus sometimes displays irrationally contrarian foreign
policy tendencies.

In January 1997, then Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy paid the
"highest level Canadian visit to Cuba since 1976." During his post-trip
interview with PBS Newshour, Axworthy stated that the purpose of his
trip was "to follow through on an engagement to see if we could help
assist in changes taking place in that country, to open up a dialogue on
human rights issues ... it was primarily to open up a dialogue to see if
we can support and produce changes that would open the system up." Of
note, American President Clinton and Senator Helms expressed serious
doubts about the utility of Axworthy's trip.

Axworthy went on to state that the process leading up to his trip
"started with an invitation from the Cubans to hold a series of
discussions. And during those discussions over the past several months
we put on the table that they would have to take into account human
rights questions. They agreed to do that. We have now established some
very concrete measures ... I believe that there are some changes taking
place ... at least we're making an effort, and I would say we believe
that it's a more effective way of doing it than isolating Cuba totally
from the rest of the community." The interviewer—Margaret Warner—was
apparently not convinced by Axworthy, and replied: "Do you think there's
any chance that Canada is perhaps being naive here? I mean, you're going
to give Cuba a great deal in the way of additional investment and other
kinds of assistance, I think some medical assistance. Are you convinced
that this is in good faith on the Cubans' part?"

So the question is whether Canada's foreign policy towards Cuba has been
naive, and more likely incoherent and ineffective? Have any substantial
governance and freedom improvements occurred in Cuba over the past 15
years, or since the transition of power from Fidel Castro to his brother
Raul in 2006. Some believed that Raul Castro was a more moderate leader,
and would move towards freeing the Cuban people. While there are mild
economic reforms taking place (Cuba's per capita GDP grew by almost 60%
between 2001 and 2010 in constant dollar terms), there has been no
substantial improvement in the quality of governance or on human rights
issues. In this sense, Cuba is following the well-established Chinese
model of wealth creation without democratization. And as poor as Cuba
is, its per capita GDP is still 70% higher than that of China.

The danger to the West is that the ruling powers in Cuba become
increasingly enriched through these economic reforms that do not
correspondingly threaten their hold on authority, making longer term
governance and human rights reforms even harder to make. Increasing the
wealth of authoritarian regimes with a history of negative geopolitical
activism, as Cuba has routinely displayed in Angola and elsewhere, is
also a military threat to western democracies and their allies. We've
seen this before in China, where the West dutifully followed the
politically correct line of promoting and contributing to economic
reforms with the vague hopes that other—more important—democratic
reforms would naturally follow. Foreign policy realists were rightfully
skeptical, while the utopian geopolitical dreamers and opportunistic
corporatists clapped their hands in glee.

As expected, the foreign policy realists were right. If we examine the
World BankWorldwide Governance Indicators since 1996, we see no general
evidence of any substantive improvements in Cuba's governance over this
period. Cuba's government effectiveness remains in the 45th percentile
compared to all other nations, rule of law is in the 35th percentile,
while its regulatory quality rank has fallen by about half down to the
5th percentile. Similarly, this island nation's voice and accountability
rank is below the 10th percentile.

The Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International tells a
similar story. Cuba is corrupt and has not become less corrupt since
2004. Cuba has one of the least free press systems, ranked 167th by the
Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Indices, and it is not
improving. Of course, Cuba is an authoritarian regime, ranked 126th on
the Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index behind nations such as
Russia and Nigeria, and barely ahead of Rwanda and Angola.

In particular, one notes just how poor Cuba's freedom and governance
indicators are compared to those of the United States and Canada. When
coupled to recent revelations of arms shipments between Cuba and North
Korea, the data indicates clearly that Canada's more liberal foreign
policy towards Cuba over the previous 15 years has had no positive
effect on the status of basic human rights or governance indicators in
this country—nor has it improved Cuba's continuing role as an
irresponsible geopolitical actor, attesting to the naivety and
ineffectiveness of Axworthy's foreign policy initiatives. Rather than
continue on this immature path with Cuba, Canada not only needs to align
its stance towards Cuba with the United States, but also work convincing
the Americans to re-adopt a tougher stance, especially with regard to
travel and economic sanctions.


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Sierra Rayne is a proud member of the NRA, holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry,
and writes regularly on environment, energy, and national security
topics. He can be found on Twitter at @rayne_sierra.

Source: "Canada's incoherent foreign policy towards Cuba" -
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/56724