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PS…From the Editor
People-to-People Exchange Through Government Filters
During the February 11 hearing conducted by Senator Byron Dorgan on the Cuba travel ban, one had to feel sympathetic with the uncomfortable position of the Bush Administration’s witnesses (see www.ffrd.org/cuba).
They and the Senator had just heard testimony on how the power of the US government had been directed against such dangerous travelers to Cuba as a grandmother who made a bicycle tour, a son of missionaries who took their ashes to the site of the Pentacostal church they had founded before the revolution, a competitor in an international Go tournament, and a professor who organized visits by people with a professional interest in colonial architecture.
Richard Newcomb, the director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the Treasury Department observed that, "This workload is an extremely heavy drain on finite enforcement and legal resources… At this time, we devote approximately 5 percent of our budget and seven full-time equivalent positions to the administration and enforcement of restrictions involving travel to Cuba." Commenting that travel policy had changed as Presidents changed, he affirmed that under the Bush Administration, "OFAC remains committed to carrying out the President’s mandate that enforcement of the Cuban embargo be enhanced under current law."
If Newcomb did not appeal to Congress to get OFAC out of the business of implementing these restrictions so it could concentrate on more important work, his testimony certainly provided good practical reasons to do so.
He was followed by James Carragher, a professional Foreign Service Officer who now serves as the State Department’s Coordinator for Cuban Affairs. One hopes that Mr. Carragher like many other people in the Department knows the current policy is counterproductive to its expressed goals but that he is obligated by his job to try to make a purse out of a sow’s ear.
Particularly tenuous were his efforts to find distinctions in forms of travel: "One important tool to achieve that goal is engagement between people, outreach by everyday Americans to everyday Cubans. Outreach introduces the best of the United States to the Cuban people, supports the development of civil-society institutions, and brings alternative points of view to the island. However, travel outside the authority of the Cuban assets control regulations does not contribute to outreach or to our policy goal in Cuba."
Senator Dorgan pressed for his justification of the difference with US policy on travel to China and Vietnam. Carragher’s response was to argue that, "the tourism industry in Cuba is under the control obviously of the government of Cuba, and part of the…foreign policy goals of the president vis-a-vis Cuba…is to minimize the flow of hard currency to the government in Cuba." Since the "Communist" governments of China and Vietnam obviously also benefit from such flows, Carragher’s ultimate distinction was classical circular reasoning. The situation is different because "legislation prohibits strictly tourism travel to Cuba." Intentionally or not, he issued an invitation for Congress to change that.
Carragher also offered another opening for Congressional initiative, "I would submit that the outreach possibilities, which are currently licensable under current legislation, enable us to [bring to the Cuban people the currents of freedom] relatively effectively. We certainly could — and always can — achieve even more effective outcomes. (emphasis added) But outreach and introducing new ideas, new currents of thought, alternative ideas to Cuba, is very much in this Administration’s interests, I believe, and very much in US interests."
I marvel at the hypocrisy of denying Americans’ freedom for the presumed purpose of enhancing the freedom of Cubans. More pragmatically, limiting travel to OFAC licensed providers, while insisting on programmed visits in which participants are always engaged with the approved purpose for their trip, minimizes opportunities for spontaneous unsupervised encounters which are presumably the goal of people-to-people exchange. Opponents of Cuba are prone to overstate the authoritarian dimensions of its government, but if they believe their own words, one would think the last thing they would want to do is force American visitors into preset channels which by their nature will also be most easily influenced by Cuban official agendas.
—John McAuliff
