COURIER ONLINE Courier, The Stanley Foundation, Regions & Countries, US Foreign Policy, Keith Porter, Emerging From Conflict: Improving US Relations With Current and Recent Adversaries, Cuba and the United States: Approaches to Engagement, 39th Strategy for Peace Conference, US-Cuba relations, bilateral multilateral relationships, conflict resolution The evolutionary pace of US-Cuban relations since 1962 has been maddeningly slow for many people and appropriately cautious for many others.... Courier, The Stanley Foundation, Regions & Countries, US Foreign Policy, Keith Porter, Emerging From Conflict: Improving US Relations With Current and Recent Adversaries, Cuba and the United States: Approaches to Engagement, 39th Strategy for Peace Conference, US-Cuba relations, bilateral multilateral relationships, conflict resolution The US and Cuba Courier, The Stanley Foundation, Regions & Countries, US Foreign Policy, Keith Porter, Emerging From Conflict: Improving US Relations With Current and Recent Adversaries, Cuba and the United States: Approaches to Engagement, 39th Strategy for Peace Conference, US-Cuba relations, bilateral multilateral relationships, conflict resolution
The evolutionary pace of US-Cuban relations since 1962 has been maddeningly slow for many people and appropriately cautious for many others.... Courier, The Stanley Foundation, Regions & Countries, US Foreign Policy, Keith Porter, Emerging From Conflict: Improving US Relations With Current and Recent Adversaries, Cuba and the United States: Approaches to Engagement, 39th Strategy for Peace Conference, US-Cuba relations, bilateral multilateral relationships, conflict resolution
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Courier, The Stanley Foundation, Regions & Countries, US Foreign Policy, Keith Porter, Emerging From Conflict: Improving US Relations With Current and Recent Adversaries, Cuba and the United States: Approaches to Engagement, 39th Strategy for Peace Conference, US-Cuba relations, bilateral multilateral relationships, conflict resolution The evolutionary pace of US-Cuban relations since 1962 has been maddeningly slow for many people and appropriately cautious for many others.... Courier, The Stanley Foundation, Regions & Countries, US Foreign Policy, Keith Porter, Emerging From Conflict: Improving US Relations With Current and Recent Adversaries, Cuba and the United States: Approaches to Engagement, 39th Strategy for Peace Conference, US-Cuba relations, bilateral multilateral relationships, conflict resolution

The evolutionary pace of US-Cuban relations since 1962 has been maddeningly slow for many people and appropriately cautious for many others. This opinion split makes most efforts to expand US-Cuban interaction—at any level—complicated and vulnerable to suspicion from one side or the other.

Finding approaches to US-Cuban engagement that benefit both countries might be one way to tackle the policy problem. A group of policymakers, scholars, and analysts representing a range of views and experiences with US-Cuban policy set that as a goal. They gathered last October as part of the Stanley Foundation's Emerging From Conflict program.

Participants first examined US interests in Cuba. They reached broad consensus that a Cuban "implosion"—or complete social and/or economic collapse—would create serious problems for the US and threaten US interests in the region. But the group split sharply on whether the US embargo of Cuba increases or decreases the risk for "implosion."

Some participants criticized the process of finding small steps to encourage US-Cuban engagement. They pointed to serious domestic political realities in both countries which make meaningful change nearly impossible. Regardless, the conference did identify the following steps as worthy of further exploration.

The Cuban government could:

  • Take steps toward salary reform which would allow foreign investors to pay workers directly
  • Allow the Catholic Church, or some other international organization instead of the US, to verify the human rights of rafters returned to Cuba
The US government could:
  • Drop opposition to Cuban troop participation in UN peacekeeping missions outside the hemisphere
  • Change Treasury Department licensing procedures to smooth academic exchanges and cooperation
  • Make it easier for US artists to perform in Cuba
  • License Cuban-Americans to invest in private businesses with family in Cuba
  • Drop rhetoric which implies that the goal of engagement is to subvert the Cuban government
  • Move forward on the issue of US "certified claimants" to prerevolutionary property and assets in Cuba
The report issued following the conference concluded by saying that when the US national interest is defined as "...'peaceful, rapid, democratic change in Cuba,' the Cubans respond that they are willing to sit down and talk about many issues, but that changing their regime at the behest of the US is not up for discussion. The group hoped, however, that eventually all the barriers to free and constructive interaction between the two neighbors might be eliminated and that the people of Cuba and the US might begin to build a relationship based on respect and cooperation rather than rivalry and intervention."
—Keith Porter
APR 1999
Courier, The Stanley Foundation, Regions & Countries, US Foreign Policy, Keith Porter, Emerging From Conflict: Improving US Relations With Current and Recent Adversaries, Cuba and the United States: Approaches to Engagement, 39th Strategy for Peace Conference, US-Cuba relations, bilateral multilateral relationships, conflict resolution
 
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