Throughout his presidency, Barack Obama has always given the impression of trying to hold true to the principle that one should heed the lessons of history and take actions that are grounded in a deep awareness of history, without allowing oneself to be shackled by history. His historic visit to Cuba at the beginning of the week; his eloquence in declaring that he had come “to bury the last remnants of the Cold War” and that it was time for the United States and Cuba to leave the past behind and make a “journey as friends and as neighbours and as family, together” towards a “future of hope”; and his call for the lifting of the 54-year old trade embargo by the US Congress, all bear ample testament to this. As Mr Obama himself reaffirmed, “I know the history, but refuse to be trapped by it.”
In breaking new ground in the historically fraught relationship between the two countries, Mr Obama moved the complicated process of normalising relations, initiated in December 2014, a huge step forward. By so doing, he cemented his legacy in Latin America as, at one and the same time, the American president and a president for the Americas. It would be no exaggeration to say that the visit was transcendental in the context of US-Cuba bilateral relations, hemispheric affairs and US foreign policy in general.
But while the Western media have been focusing on Mr Obama and his administration’s initiatives to open a new chapter in US relations with and American attitudes to post-revolutionary Cuba, relatively little attention has been paid to the role played by the Cuban president, Raúl Castro.
True, President Obama must be given kudos for reaching out to the Cuban government and people, by taking the first steps to roll back official American antagonism towards Cuba and to use his executive power to circumvent the embargo where legally possible. But President Castro is equally deserving of credit for responding to diplomatic overtures and for also showing himself willing to enter into a new era of respectful engagement. Indeed, our editorial on Wednesday provided a detailed background to and useful insights into Mr Castro’s recognition of the need to end “the economic isolation of Cuba by the US” and to resume diplomatic relations.
There are still, however, major obstacles to the full normalisation of relations, such as the lifting of the embargo, the return of Guantánamo to Cuban sovereignty and differences of opinion on democratic governance and human rights, with the latter thrown into relief by Mr Castro’s obvious irritation at being challenged on political prisoners in Cuba by media representatives at Monday’s joint press conference with Mr Obama.
In addition, even though the Cuban government has welcomed the shift in US policy, Mr Castro and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez have made it quite clear that they firmly believe that Cuba has been the historically wronged party and that the Obama administration must do most of the running. Nor is the Cuban government about to jettison its current political system. As President Castro himself has stated, “We will not renounce our ideals of independence and social justice, or surrender even a single one of our principles, or concede a millimetre in the defence of our national sovereignty. We will not allow ourselves to be pressured with regard to our internal affairs. We have won this sovereign right with great sacrifices and at the cost of great risks.”
The process will clearly take time and patient diplomacy will be critical to it. But Cuba and the USA would not be where they are today and the American president would not have been in Cuba this week or entertaining questions from the media alongside his Cuban counterpart, much less directly addressing the Cuban people, in an unprecedented live television speech from the Grand Theatre in Havana, had it not been for Mr Castro’s own statesmanship and pragmatic diplomacy.
This new relationship is, therefore, not just about Mr Obama’s charisma and bold determination to change the parameters of the US-Cuba relationship in order to bring about change in Cuba itself; it is also about Mr Castro taking a calculated risk even as he seeks to manage the pace of change in Cuba. In this respect, the media and all of us would do well to remember that, as the saying goes, it takes two to tango – or rather, since we are speaking of Cuba, to mambo.
