For the first time in more than three decades, there is serious talk about making fundamental changes in U.S. policy toward Cuba. But the talk has not yet led to constructive change in Washington, where inertia and domestic politics often spawn foreign-policy neglect and disaster. U.S. diplomatic and economic pressures on Cuba made sense in the past as a response to Fidel Castro's active support for the Soviet bloc and international policies that were contrary to our national interests. For decades, those interests coincided with objectives of the majority of Cuban exiles in the United States. Thus, the U.S. government and Cuban Americans cooperated in a variety of programs intended to hobble or topple the "maximum leader."
Then the Cold War ended, and Castro, one of the few survivors on the communist side, became a relic marginalized by the history he had said would absolve him. All of the original national-security grounds for imposing the embargo against Cuba disappeared. When this happened, the interests of Americans as a whole diverged from those of the most militant members of the Cuban American community and their supporters.
The Cuban Democracy Act
In late 1992 Congress passed the Cuban Democracy Act (CDA), legislation spearheaded by Rep. Robert Torricelli (D-New Jersey) with strong support from the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF). The CDA increases pressure on Cuba and allows Bill Clinton less flexibility with respect to Cuba than any president has had in decades. But if Clinton is in a box, it is one of his own making. President Bush at first wisely opposed the CDA's embargo tightening, just as President Reagan had rejected the idea in the early 1980s. But when candidate Clinton decided to support the legislation, Bush caved in and did so too. In the scramble for votes, the Torricelli Bill became law.
In a speech at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) just after Clinton's inauguration, Torricelli summarized the essence of U.S. policy enshrined in the law: "We [the United States] will increase the pressure. We have drawn the line. We await only for Cuban patriots to bring about an end of the dictatorship."
The CDA expands the existing U.S. embargo, which had long prohibited trade and investment in Cuba, to include sanctions against U.S. subsidiaries in Third World countries (and even foreign ships) doing business with the island, as well as against any country that gives assistance to Cuba. It states that because the United States cooperated with allies during transitions in Europe, "it is appropriate for those allies to cooperate with United States policy" toward Cuba. The act
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