President Barack Obama’s
announcement on 17 December that Washington and Havana have decided to take steps to
normalise relations came as a pleasant surprise and will possibly pave the way
for a more thoughtful and reflexive phase in US foreign policy towards
Cuba.
This was the speech most countries
had been hoping to hear from a US president for decades - especially after
President Obama’s election in 2009. But such a move required imagination,
courage and common sense which no US president was prepared to display before.
Obama’s speech, delivered with his
natural eloquence, contained objective facts as well as the usual rhetoric on
promotion of human rights and democracy.
(Watch "To
the Cuban people, America extends a hand of friendship." https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/545268614656323584)
Politically, the speech was
an admission of US failure to change the nature of the Cuban political system
after 54 years, and that the US hopes to do so from now on through
‘constructive engagement’. Washington had driven itself into a corner since the
end of the Cold War, when there was ample opportunity for new diplomatic initiatives
to normalise relations with Cuba, denying itself an exit strategy particularly
when Havana could no longer be a national security threat. The only way out of
this impasse was for the US to admit defeat and change policy. Apart from the
President’s own enlightened contribution to the policy shift, other external
factors have also played a role. The increasing political isolation of the
United States at international level reflected in UN General Assembly votes
every year in favour of removing sanctions, and the growing political
consciousness in the region leading to the emergence and consolidation of
anti-hegemonic states such as Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and
Venezuela among others have demonstrated that the US ‘backyard’ cannot be managed
in the old ways.
Cuba, on the other hand, has
shown that hegemonic aggression can be defeated with resolve and sustained
resistance. While the US succeeded in causing a great deal of human suffering
in and economic damage to Cuba – the embargo has cost Cuba $1.1
trillion (BBC) – its main political objective was not achieved. Let’s hope that this
may be the harbinger of a wider change in US foreign policy thinking, given
that the negotiations with Iran could also lead to a rapprochement with Tehran
by July 2015. The picture, however, is much more complex than it seems at first
and one should expect more continuity rather than change in the direction of US
foreign policy: the new sanctions imposed on Venezuela in the same week on the
pretext of human rights abuses there confirm this concern. It seems that for
decision-makers each case has its own merit and ‘new thinking’ will not apply
to Venezuela for the time being, as long as there is still the possibility of
destabilising the government in Caracas.
However, Washington’s
continued coercive measures against its adversaries in the name of human rights
will undermine its standing internationally. All nations, small or large, want
to be treated with respect, integrity and on a fair basis in international
interaction. Demonising our adversaries is an old practice. However, with the
advent of communication technologies, there is more scrutinising of politicians
and states by citizens everywhere on the planet. The louder US rhetoric is on
human rights and civilised norms of behaviour, the more attention it draws to
its own actions internationally.
World public opinion has
been witnessing a series of exposures in the past few weeks on
institutionalised racism in the US as well as the use of torture authorised by
its highest officials. Is it not about time that the US contemplated its own
actions and slogans? As far as race relations are concerned, the US Civil War
in the 19th Century was supposed to end slavery and racism in the
country, and then again the civil rights movement in the 1950s sought to end
racism in this modern society. Yet earlier this month UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called
on the United States to make the police more accountable, amid a spate of
police killings of African Americans across the country.
The Senate Report last week
on the use of torture as part of President George Bush’s War on Terror also
raised some serious questions about the degree to which US decision-makers
address human rights concerns in practice. The question is why at the beginning
of the 21st century, the most vociferous liberal democracy on human
rights refuses to prosecute those involved in the process and needs to be told
by the United Nations to prosecute those responsible for torture. This is not
the first time that the US record on human rights has come under the spotlight:
Amnesty International named the US the No. 1 human rights abusing country in
its 2004 annual report following revelations about the torture of inmates in
Iraq’s Abu-Ghraib prison. Do those innocent civilians who are killed by US
drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen or by its allies such as Israel in
Palestine, have any human rights? Have US regime changes in Iraq and Libya and
the attempts to overthrow the Syrian government not claimed enough innocent
lives and brought pain and suffering to the people of these countries? It is
high time Washington took an honest look at its own record. This would only
increase its chances of maintaining its global leadership.
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