By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.
How do you make a person or a country change?
One option is to use overwhelming force so they have no choice but to bend to your will and eventually maybe even embrace it. It can work but is often unavailable and comes at great cost – for example, when West Germany and Japan became free market democracies after World War II under American occupation. On the other hand, if it fails, it fails big.
A second option is using less than overwhelming force – diplomacy, nagging, the silent treatment. It often results in only partial, pacifying change.
A third option is using influence and persuasion so effectively that the other chooses to change, often while in a state of crisis or transition. It’s the most effective option, but it requires patience, confidence, and the acceptance that others may adopt only some of your suggestions.
Which brings us to Cuba.
There, overwhelming force has never been an option for American policymakers for various reasons, most notably that it could have led to World War III. So instead, for half a century the United States chose option number two – ending diplomatic relations, condemning the Cuban Castro regime, and enforcing a trade embargo.
It didn’t work. Ninety miles from the planet’s wealthiest and most powerful nation, Cuba remained a hardline communist country even as most of the rest of the world rejected Soviet-style communism, including the Soviets.
So near the end of the Obama administration, the United States finally tried the third option, the one based on influence and persuasion, by re-establishing diplomatic relations and easing travel and trade restrictions. The change cracked open the door to American products, visitors and ideas. Meanwhile, it drew enthusiastic support from Arkansas’ agricultural interests, who see Cuba as a nearby and readymade market for Arkansas rice and poultry.
It’s far too early to gauge that policy’s success, but if Cuba is to change, this could be the time. Its longtime leader, Fidel Castro, died last year, while his successor brother, Raul, is 86 years old. Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who traveled to Cuba in 2015, said last year that Castro’s death was “the moment that I believe needs to be seized.”
Last week, President Trump rolled back the Obama policy – though not completely – by announcing new restrictions on travel and by prohibiting commerce with businesses that are owned by the Cuban military. Perhaps more important than the policy changes was the adoption of a much more aggressive, Cold War-era tone.
The move drew criticism from two members of Arkansas’ all-Republican congressional delegation, Rep. Rick Crawford of the 1st District and Sen. John Boozman. Crawford’s district produces half the nation’s rice, a product Cuba currently purchases from Vietnam, a slow boat ride away from the other side of the world. In a statement from his office, Crawford called America’s decades-long policy toward Cuba “failed, outdated, and isolationist” and said returning to it could open the door to increased influence from Iran, Russia, North Korea and China. Boozman released a statement arguing that the Cold War policy didn’t work and that a more open relationship allowed for not only trading goods but also trading ideas. Days earlier, the two had jointly published an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that called for allowing Cubans to buy American-grown food on credit instead of requiring cash transactions, a policy Crawford has long championed and tried to pass through Congress.
The other members of Arkansas’ congressional delegation didn’t release statements. They’re generally reluctant to criticize Trump, who remains popular in Arkansas, and to varying degrees some agree with him on Cuba. Sen. Tom Cotton strongly condemned Obama’s opening with Cuba when it happened, saying it was wrong to do business with the oppressive Castro regime.
We’ll have to see how serious and long-lasting this latest American policy is, or if it’s just temporary politics that changes nothing, and never would have.