Tag Archives: florida

Cuba, United States

Cuba is the perfect example of Trump’s shambolic foreign policy decision-making

Leave a comment
Increasingly, the future of Cuba seems less in the hands of Americans than in the hands of Cubans themselves. (Kevin Lees)

One day, the Castro regime will end, and the Cuban people may have the right to decide which elements of ‘socialism’ they will keep and which they will jettison. It will be their decision, of course, not the decision of any American official sitting in an office in Washington.

Yet the Trump administration’s decision last week to roll back some (importantly — not all) of the changes that characterized the Obama administration’s opening to Cuba makes that day more difficult to see on the horizon.

After just over five months in office, US president Donald Trump’s decision on Cuban policy almost perfectly crystallizes the way decisions are made in his administration. Trump was all over the place on Cuba in his improbable 2015-16 presidential campaign but by the time of the general election, Trump was promising Republicans — including older Cuban Americans in electoral vote-rich Florida — that he would roll back the Obama administration’s overtures.

* * * * *

RELATED: Why normalization with Cuba will be harder than advertised

* * * * *

Dutifully, Trump went to Miami last Friday, flanked by Florida senator (and former presidential rival) Marco Rubio and others, to announce exactly that, denouncing the Obama administration’s ‘one-sided deal’ with Cuba:

But the golden rule of the Trump era is quickly becoming: don’t worry about what he says or Tweets, look at what he does. And behind the bombast about defending human rights or the rhetoric trashing Barack Obama, Trump is leaving the guts of the Obama-era opening in

In reality, Trump’s policy rolls back very little. The hallmark of the Obama-era, Pore Francis-brokered deal — reestablished diplomatic relations and reopened embassies in Havana and Washington — is unchanged. The direct flights that many US carriers now operate from throughout the United States will continue. Trump will not restore Bush-era limits on Cuban Americans to travel back to the island or send money back. US tourists who continue to travel to Cuba under the new regulations will still be permitted to bring home some of Cuba’s famous cigars and rum. Nor does Trump’s new policy reinstate the ‘wet foot, dry foot’ policy that the Obama administration ended on January 13, which previously permitted all Cubans who reached US soil to remain in the United States (while repatriating Cubans intercepted at sea).

It’s classic Trump — make a promise based on short-term considerations, back down in the face of facts and real-world constraints, then keep just enough of your promise to declare victory. Continue reading Cuba is the perfect example of Trump’s shambolic foreign policy decision-making →

Florida, United States

What would Jeb Bush’s foreign policy look like?

1 Comment

jebbush

Is he more like his brother or his father?floridaUSflag

One of the most vexing questions in US politics is whether the foreign policy of former Florida governor John Ellis ‘Jeb’ Bush will look more like his father’s or his brother’s. Bush announced he would ‘actively explore the possibility’ of a presidential campaign on Tuesday.

The common perception is that Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States, was a moderate and a foreign policy realist. He largely navigated the United States to the post-Cold War world with deftness, and he wisely held back US force against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq during the 1990-91  liberation of Kuwait. Bush père surrounded himself with hard-nosed realists like Brent Scowcroft, his national security adviser, and James A. Baker III, his secretary of state.

Conversely, the foreign policy of Jeb’s brother, George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States, weighs heavily his response to the September 2001 terrorist attacks, the onset of the global ‘war on terror,’ and the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq that ousted Saddam and presided over a sectarian civil war between competing Sunni and Shiite forces. Bush frère deployed muscular language in stark tones about democracy, freedom and embraced a neoconservatism that set itself as realism’s counterpart, with support from officials like Donald Rumsfeld, his defense secretary, John Bolton, his ambassador to the United Nations, and Dick Cheney, his powerful vice president.

On the basis of idle speculation and one speech earlier this month in Miami, commentators are already declaring that Jeb Bush, who might run to become the 45th president of the United States, is closer to his brother’s foreign policy than his father’s.

Those false dichotomies will only calcify before they become more nuanced. Continue reading What would Jeb Bush’s foreign policy look like? →