Why Cuba won't join the OAS

Why Cuba won't join the OAS
Tue, 06/09/2009 - 7:15pm

That pesky little detail about "democracy"...

By Lino Gutierrez

On September 11, 2001, minutes after the attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon, representatives of the Organization of American
States (OAS) in Lima, Peru, signed the Inter-American Democratic
Charter, a document that established that only democracies could be
members of the organization. Last week, representatives of the same
organization, which expelled Cuba in 1962, rescinded Cuba's expulsion
and invited the hemisphere's lone Marxist dictatorship to return.

What happened in eight years? For one thing, the regional dynamics have
shifted. After September 11, many believed that the United States,
occupied elsewhere in the world, was paying little attention to its own
backyard. Latin American countries, moreover, were never comfortable
with the Iraq war. Even Chile and Mexico, usually staunch Washington
allies, failed to provide needed votes when the United States sought the
U.N. Security Council's approval to take Baghdad. Abu Ghraib, reports of
civilian casualties, and George W. Bush's personal unpopularity all
contributed to a precipitous drop in the U.S. image across the region.

Things changed for Cuba, too. Once a feared, Soviet-backed promoter of
worldwide revolution, the Castro regime got new support thanks to the
election of populist leaders like Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, Bolivia's Evo
Morales, and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega -- all of whom are admirers of
Fidel. Suddenly, it is politically correct to welcome Cuba back to the
family like a prodigal son. Under the leadership of Brazil's President
Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva, the Rio Group, a collection of Latin
American democracies, asked Cuba to join its ranks late last year (Cuba
accepted). At least eight hemisphere presidents have visited the island
of late, all getting the requisite picture with the ailing Fidel in his
track suit (none of these official visitors asks about or visits Cuba's
brave dissidents).

In the United States, too, some members of Congress are calling for an
end to the 47-year-old trade embargo and travel ban. Although President
Barack Obama has affirmed that libertad (freedom) will be the
cornerstone of his Cuba policy, he has called for a new approach. Obama
fulfilled his campaign promise to lift the Bush administration controls
on remittances and travel by Cuban-Americans to visit their relatives in
Cuba -- a measure that will mean additional foreign exchange for Cuba.
Now, the U.S. president has called for Cuba to reciprocate.

The OAS would have been a great chance for Cuba to do just that. But
Cuba won't rejoin the organization, which Fidel Castro once called a
"Yankee bordello," anytime soon. The island's leaders did hail the OAS's
invitation as a great victory, of course. But becoming an OAS member
would subject Cuba to the kind of international scrutiny it has avoided
for the past half century. The invitation calls for Cuba to rejoin the
organization and commit to its established norms -- including the
Democratic Charter. And while Venezuela and its allies would gladly give
Cuba a pass, the United States, Canada, and others would require that
Cuba at least begin a process that leads toward democracy.

That is a process that Cuba will not undertake so long as the Castro
brothers are in charge. Though Fidel is no longer on stage, he continues
to influence decisions behind the scenes. Brother Raúl seems to be open
to more dialogue with the United States, and many Cubans hoped he was a
closet reformer. But after announcing some modest economic reforms in
2008 (Cubans can now stay in tourist hotels), the regime seems to have
retrenched and closed ranks, as the recent firing of reform-minded
economist Carlos Lage and Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque seems to
indicate. Both Fidel and Raul have said that, while they're willing to
talk to the United States, the revolution's principles are non-negotiable.

Curiously, the variable in the present equation is none other than
Obama. Despite Fidel's boast of having outlasted 10 U.S. presidents,
neither he nor Raúl have dared take on the popular U.S. president.
Cubans are fascinated with Obama, having been told by the Castros for
years that blacks were second-class citizens and that no
African-American could ever hope to be in a position of power in the
United States. In a country that is 60 percent Afro-Cuban, Obama's very
election has sparked new hope among many that things could at last get
better. How and when this will happen remains to be seen -- but at least
for now, Cuba's future won't be in the OAS.

Lino Gutierrez was the U.S. ambassador to Argentina from 2003 to 2006.

Photo: ADALBERTO ROQUE/AFP/Getty Images
Why Cuba won't join the OAS | The Argument (9 June 2009)

http://experts.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/06/09/why_cuba_wont_join_the_oas