“In the most significant changes in our policy in more than fifty years, we will end an outdated approach that, for decades, has failed to advance our interests, and instead we will begin to normalize relations between our two countries.”-American President Barack Obama
”We can’t pretend that by improving ties with the Unites States, Cuba will renounce the ideas for which it has fought for more than a century” -Cuban President Raul Castro
In its cover story of November 23rd last year, the British Economist weekly magazine dubbed President Barack Obama as the “The man who used to walk on water” . The cover picture actually said it all; a sinking President in coat and tie in a deep sea! The impression according to the The Economist, was that President Obama had lost credibility at home, citing what it dubbed “the chaos of his health reform” and abroad it claimed that the 44th American President ” is seen as weak and disengaged”. But well before The Economist bully hysteria cover, President Obama and the author of the The Audacity of Hope has shown that far from being weak and disengaged, he was capable of a number of commendable innovative activist domestic and foreign policies which previous American Presidents could not have contemplated for fear of being smeared with the establishment political incorrectedness. In Novermber this year, President Obama frontally took on the hostile Congress which had shut down the administration more than once. He bypassed it and took direct executive actions to reshape the nation’s immigration system which had kept the fate of millions hanging. By the singular 15-minute address to the nation, Mr. Obama announced executive actions on immigration policy which prevented as many as five million people from deportation and allow many to work legally if they passed some background checks and pay their taxes . President’s Obama’s executive action on immigration complimented the earlier executive actions through which he audaciously increased the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour despite the opposition of the Republican lawmakers!
However the most far-reaching important bold foreign policy decision of President Obama was contained in the December 17, 2014 speech in which he disclosed he had instructed the Secretary John Kerry to immediately “begin discussions with Cuba to reestablish diplomatic relations that have been severed since January of 1961”. In addition he added that “Going forward, the United States will reestablish an embassy in Havana, and high-ranking officials will visit Cuba” .
In return, speaking on Saturday in the National Assembly in Havana, President Raul Castro hailed Mr Obama’s speech that terminated 50 years of bilateral Cold War between the countries following the Cuban revolution of 1959. The major highlights of Obama’s Cuba new policy include reviewing the designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, the notorious policy of president Gorge bush. Obama rightly argued that “Terrorism has changed in the last several decades. At a time when we are focused on threats from al Qaeda to ISIL, a nation that meets our conditions and renounces the use of terrorism should not face this sanction”. Others are easing travel ban for US citizens, easing financial restrictions, Increasing telecommunications links and most importantly, efforts to lift the 54-year-old trade embargo. The new audacious relations between USA and Cuba shows that international relations is desirable for all nations notwithstanding the ideological differences. President obama put it rightly when he exposed the hypocrisy of maintaining ties with far way Communist China while keeping far away Cuba at arms length. He said America would directly engage Cuba on issues related to “democracy and human rights in Cuba”. Conversely Cuban President Raul Castro disclosed that Cuba was open to discussing a wide range of issues with Washington but stressed that Cuba would not give up its socialist principles: “In the same way that we have never demanded that the United States change its political system, we will demand respect for ours.”
The new diplomatic relations between America and Cuba is a victory for Africa and progressive forces of the world that have conversed and demanded for this era of new relations in the past decades. All African governments and trade unions such as NLC (of which I belong) have always demanded for the lifting of trade embargo on Cuba. Cuba is a country that has sacrificed much in terms of humans and financial resources in spite of modest prosperity for the liberation of Angola, Namibia and South Africa from the clutches of colonialism and apartheid. The recent practical solidarity of Cuba with Africa is seen in the ongoing medical battle against Ebola in which Cuba has sent hundreds of doctors and medical personnel. The past 50 years of Cuba America relations has been characterized by dramatized power games including the Failed Bay of Pigs invasion by CIA-backed Cuban exiles in 1961, the year Obama (like me!) was born, Soviet Union deploys ballistic missiles to Cuba, prompting Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the jailing of Cuban Five , in Miami for spying in 2001, and the detention of US citizen Alan Gross detained in Cuba in 2009 accused of spying and recently in Dec 2013: US President Barack Obama and Raul Castro historic hands shake at Nelson Mandela’s funeral – the first such public gesture since 1959.
The latest new relation was made possible by the commendable intervention of His Holiness Pope Francis in the release of US citizen Alan Gross. As President Obama acknowledged in his historic speech, the world can be better off with improved Cuba-America relations. Witness him;. “It was a Cuban, Carlos Finlay, who discovered that mosquitoes carry yellow fever; his work helped Walter Reed fight it. Cuba has sent hundreds of health care workers to Africa to fight Ebola, and I believe American and Cuban health care workers should work side by side to stop the spread of this deadly disease”. The world hails Obama’s global statesmanship!
ISSA AREMU mni
