[News] The State of Cuba-US Relations: An Interview With Dr José Ramón Cabañas

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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<https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/03/31/the-state-of-cuba-us-relations-an-interview-with-dr-jose-ramon-cabanas/>
The State of Cuba-US Relations: An Interview With Dr José Ramón Cabañas
Helen Yaffe - March 31, 2023
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In January 2023, Dr José Ramón Cabañas travelled to Britain to talk about
his book, *US-Cuba Relations: The Inside Story of the 2014 Breakthrough*.
Dr Cabañas was head of Cuba’s US Interests Section on 17 December 2014,
when Presidents Raúl Castro and Barack Obama announced rapprochement and
the restoration of diplomatic relations. His new book explains the
background and significance of this historic moment in international
relations. Helen Yaffe caught up with Cabañas in London.

*Helen Yaffe: What is your view of the current state of Cuba-US relations?
Can you put this in a historical perspective? *

José Ramón Cabañas: Between 2015 and 2017 we created the foundations for
any future negotiations between Cuba and the United States. There are
accomplishments that go beyond the MOUs [Memorandums of Understanding] for
instance. One clear message is that Cuba was, and is, ready to talk on
several subjects any time you come to the table with respect and
reciprocity.  That has been a consistent position of Cuba. What happened
under Trump goes beyond Cuba-US relations, with very conservative political
forces trying to erase any legacy from the previous administration,
increasing political polarisation in the United States.

The Trump administration didn’t press so hard in the first two years. But
from 2019 and 2020, Cuba was not treated as an independent subject, it was
linked to US strategy against Venezuela. Late 2019 and 2020 they had the
perfect scenario; the effects of an enhanced blockade and the Covid-19
pandemic combined. It was about waiting and seeing; a little more pressure
and then that’s it.

*HY: Meaning the collapse of Cuba’s revolutionary government?*

JRC: What they didn’t get in 1962, what they didn’t get in 1992; it goes in
30-year cycles. It should have happened around 2020, but it didn’t. Biden
was elected and his national security team inherited the vision of the
region. The United States’ Cuba policy has been a bipartisan policy for
many years. Over the years they have elaborated a state policy towards
Cuba, which is basically to change the status quo, and the only debate is
about how to do that; putting pressure and the military option, or by being
friendly. Obama was the second option in general terms.

Most of Biden’s team and his bureaucrats had participated in many decisions
and actions taken under Obama. But they inherited that approach; to wait
for another six months, or a year. They confirmed Trump’s last-minute
decision to put Cuba back onto the US list of countries that allegedly
sponsor terrorism. They waited for the implosion in Cuba. They believed
‘something will happen, we don’t have to do anything’. It didn’t happen
when they planned it [July 2021]; they reprogrammed for the end of 2021. It
didn’t happen again. Then there were consequences. If you don’t comply with
the migratory agreements and you put enormous economic and political
pressure on Cuba, what do you expect? If you impose a war on Libya, or
Iraq, you have immigrants as collateral damage. The same thing happened in
Cuba. It’s not a war where you hear guns but the consequences are basically
the same; migratory flow, as has happened in the past. There were a large
number of immigrants from the island, but total numbers include Cubans from
third places going to the United States as well. Cubans here in the UK, or
in Spain, or Europe in general, Central America, they said: ‘opened
doors…that’s it.’ So the figure is large but not all migrants were going
directly from Cuba.

Migration is always an important subject for them in terms of national
security, but there were other issues. In US Federal agencies, officials
involved in technical subjects, not political declarations, for instance
law enforcement, started to ask: what did we accomplish by doing this? For
instance, last year we provided information to US authorities about 57
Cuban Americans involved in drug trafficking in the Caribbean, from Central
America into the United States. Seven of them were included on Interpol’s
‘red alert’. We received no answer from US authorities. This does not
impact Cuba, but we traced information that is relevant to prosecute them
in the United States which is where the narcotics are going.

Finally, some clever guys said ‘we didn’t accomplish anything. We have no
control over the migratory flow, and we are missing opportunities to fight
criminals, to enforce legislation’. That is not to mention cooperation in
the fields of medicine, health or the sciences in general, and more
pragmatic fields like civil aviation. There are flights to Cuba and over
Cuba to other destinations, and they need to check information with us. Not
to mention climate change, oil spills in the Caribbean, hurricanes. That is
a pragmatic list, most of the subjects related to the MOUs we signed, and
you have a lot of experts involved. In addition, polls in the United States
show that most people want a different approach to Cuba. I am not referring
to the semantic debate about ‘normalisation’ – no one knows that that is.
But at least communication, at least specific cooperation.

There are small signs that they recognise the need to talk on these issues.
There were talks on migratory issues (in April and November 2022), US law
enforcement experts recently went to Cuba (in January 2023). They are not
enforcing limits on scientific and cultural exchanges; more people are
travelling from universities and research centres. These are signals of a
very partial reversal of Trump’s maximum pressure strategy. But the window
is 12 months.

*HY: That’s related to the US election, right? How do you assess the recent
small steps taken by the Biden administration on the **issue of migration*
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/02/02/whats-driving-irregular-cuban-emigration-to-the-united-states/>*
in January 2023 and to what extent is it linked to the US electoral cycle? *

JRC: These decisions are positive but limited. We have to wait and see. In
the United States you have a statement, then you have legal norms – how
they are written – then you have interpretation of the norms, and finally,
you may have a legal judgment. You have to go through four different steps.

The statement itself is not that meaningful, but it is something a little
different from what we got before. There are more official talks. The
important factor in the midst of this is the Latin American and Caribbean
context and how Cuba fits there. The Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles
was basically a fiasco. Despite having Latin America experts in the State
Department, in National Security, or whatever, Biden felt he had to
nominate a former Senator (Chris Dodd) as his liaison with regional
leaders. The US needs to realign its Latin America policy to face the new
scenario; a consistent position from Mexico, changes in Brazil, changes in
Colombia.

Former Colombian President Iván Duque criticised Cuba’s relationship with
Colombia’s ELN (National Liberation Army) and its role in the Colombian
peace process. That was a key pretext for the United States putting Cuba
back on its list of state sponsors of terrorism. Now the new Colombian
government criticise this and demands Cuba is removed from the list, so
there are no arguments to support Cuba’s inclusion. The scenario has
changed dramatically. The new president of Colombia didn’t wait two weeks
to state this, he said it on his very first day. It has been said by
Colombia’s Minister for Foreign affairs, by Ambassadors, everyone. It’s a
message that comes from the grassroots in Colombia, people in communities,
people who lost relatives, trade unionists, whoever. It’s a huge message.
If you want to have peace and stability, Cuba has been a factor, because
it’s a place to meet and negotiate. Cuba has accompanied the peace process.
Now, what do they want to accomplish in terms of Venezuela? It has a more
comprehensive policy, maybe more constructive. The scenario in Latin
America has changed. Let’s remember what happened immediately after the
Summit of the Americas in Cartagena (2012).

*HY: After that Obama authorised the secret talks with Cuba…*

JRC: Obama decided that he was ill-advised on Latin America and he changed
the bureaucracy. Biden didn’t decide that, but to nominate Senator Chris
Dodd as responsible for Latin America says many things.

*HY: It is a positive sign? *

JRC. He is a person with a brain, with a huge responsibility. The team that
you select to conduct a process is a factor. We were productive and
efficient in negotiations between 2015 and January 2017 because they were
able to structure a team that found background information and learned how
to negotiate with Cuba. From the beginning they said, ‘we know that only
through respect and reciprocity will we accomplish something’. And we said
‘Yes, that’s it.’

*HY: The United States is alone in the world in sanctioning Cuba; but it
uses its leverage over the international financial system to make the
blockade of Cuba extraterritorial. Can you explain how it does that? For
example, Cuba is excluded from multilateral development banks, so in a
scenario like Covid-19 or an economic crisis, it doesn’t have a lender of
last resort.*

JRC: Beyond being excluded from those mechanisms, the issue is the clearing
system based in New York. 90% of international transactions with US dollars
go through that system. It is connected with the Federal Reserve, major
banks, and so on. Under that system any transaction with the letters C, U,
B, and A is automatically frozen, whether payments from the Cuban National
Bank or a Cuban living in Spain. Beyond that you have bilateral actions
against foreign banks; direct pressure put on people; a phone call to a
bank in Japan to tell the CEO, ‘30% of your business is with us, 0.20% of
your business is with Cuba. You must decide.’ Cuba has spent many years
without being involved in the IMF or the World Bank. We are not a large
economy, we can have some space. But putting pressure on creditors, having
this automatic response in the clearing system, makes it difficult for us
to operate. We went to euros and other currencies, but it is still
difficult for us. We are 90 miles away from the United States. We are very
close, and we need to use US dollars in many transactions.

*HY:  You said that this even affects Cubans outside of Cuba, but as you
know it affects us all. I am affected as a UK citizen sending money to a
Belgian bank account. Last summer, a new international campaign was set up
with groups in Britain, Europe and Canada, to challenge the illegal
imposition of unilateral US sanctions by non-US banks in violation of those
countries’ laws – the 1 cent for Cuba campaign (**www.1c4cuba.eu/*
<https://1c4cuba.eu/>*).  *

JCR: I know about this campaign. It is very important, not only in terms of
the outcome, but more so in terms of informing people about this situation.
During the tough period of 2021, I wrote that, ‘what the United States is
doing to Cuba is described in the Genocide Convention.’ Some people felt it
was too strong a statement. But they reacted without reading it. Please
read what the Genocide Convention says. The US impose these limits and
pressures on a country with few resources; there are documents from the US
government stating that the aim is to put Cuba on its knees. They know many
of these transactions are related to health services. People are literally
dying, for example, when we could not obtain oxygen. For many families
these measures, the blockade, is not abstract. It has a direct impact and
people are dying or not recovering from diseases. People who cannot receive
a prosthesis, many things. Not to mention the impact on importing food or
products that affect food production in Cuba.

In the midst of that our authorities have made a tremendous effort to
confront Covid-19, which has been a second blockade. We are used to the
regular blockade. Trump enhanced the blockade, and then we had the
pandemic. We are a country with limited resources, we don’t have oil, we
don’t have gold. We have human capacity, but we don’t have natural
resources. How do you face this situation?

Our critics claim that these are the consequences of the failure of the
Cuban government. I say this: impose the same limits on any other country,
neighbouring countries, the United States, countries in Europe. What will
the outcome be? How will people react? In many places people would be
killing each other to survive. In our case, we have had demonstrations, of
course. We have had some people with funding from United States to go to
public places, to attack banks and stores, to destroy property. But in the
midst of that situation we discussed and passed a new Constitution (2019)
and a new Families Code (2022), which went through 24 drafts. A huge
exercise in democracy! We know democracy is not related to how many parties
you have in parliament.

*HY: In November 2022, Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz Canel visited Algeria,
Turkey, Russia and China. How important was that trip for Cuba in the
current context you described and for strengthening counter-hegemonic
forces internationally.*

JRC: They were important visits. We have historic links with those
countries, and we had the chance to update them. There are new issues and
even new wars in the world. The geopolitical map is changing dramatically,
and that’s well before what is happening in Ukraine. There are new
leaderships. People talk about multipolar world, we prefer to talk about
multilateralism because it is not about poles, it is about equality between
people and in international relationships and how we face the future.
Countries are interested not just in what they can offer Cuba, but what
they can receive from Cuba. Many countries are getting ready for the next
pandemic. We have gathered knowledge and experience on that and we feel
ready for the next one; most countries are not. They would like access to
our knowledge and in some cases the discoveries, vaccines, and similar
things. There are many other fields in which those countries have an
interest in developing links with Cuba, from culture to sports, to science
to education, many areas. They have been meaningful visits with concrete
outcomes. After the presidential visit, you have experts, ministers,
diplomats going, negotiating and signing documents.

*HY: China has donated $100 million dollars to help Cuba cope with basic
goods shortages and energy crisis. *

JCR: It’s meaningful and important, but beyond donations there are specific
programs, investment, results that will multiply the effects of the visit.

*This interview was originally published in Fight Racism! Fight
Imperialism! 293, April/May 2023.*
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