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Obama Moved Aggressively to Restore Relations with Cuba

by Isabela Cocoli

   WASHINGTON --

   The United States restored diplomatic relations with Cuba July 20,
   2015, but has maintained the commercial, economic and financial embargo
   against the Communist island.

   President Barack Obama, however, has moved aggressively to also restore
   economic relations with the country, implementing a number of changes
   as recently as October.

   The changes included the easing of restrictions on the island in an
   attempt to create more economic opportunities between the two
   countries. The administration approved a package of regulatory changes
   that was intended to expand scientific, humanitarian, trade and
   commercial opportunities between the U.S. and Cuba.

   President Obama said "very real differences" on democracy and human
   rights still exist between the two countries but the best way to
   address the differences is through engagement.

   The administration's plan was intended to promote joint medical
   research between the two countries, the sale of Cuban pharmaceuticals
   in the U.S. and banking opportunities for Americans in Cuba.

   Humanitarian-related initiatives involving scholarships for scientific
   research and improving Cuba's infrastructure would also be expanded.

   "These steps have the potential to accelerate constructive change and
   unlock greater economic opportunity for Cubans and Americans," Treasury
   Secretary Jacob Lew said in a statement.

   From Kennedy to Obama

   In March 2016, Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit
   Cuba since the Castro revolution, opening a new chapter in relations
   between Havana and Washington, but over the past half-century other
   American leaders had tried to do the same.

   In late 1962, after the Cuban missile crisis that brought the world to
   the brink of global nuclear conflict, then-President John F. Kennedy
   explored the idea of normalizing relations with Cuba by capitalizing on
   Castro's displeasure that Moscow withdrew its missiles from the island
   without consulting him.

   Kennedy asked an Algerian-French journalist, Jean Daniel, to convey a
   message to Castro in 1963, and Daniel later wrote that Castro and
   Kennedy "seemed ready to make peace." But the diplomatic project
   collapsed after Kennedy's assassination in Texas, November 22 of that
   year, and former Vice President Lyndon Johnson did not pursue the
   initiative when he took over the White House.

   In fact, suspicions abounded in some parts of the U.S. for years
   afterward that Cuba had had a role in orchestrating Kennedy's
   assassination.

   During Gerald Ford's presidency in the mid-1970s, then-Secretary of
   State Henry Kissinger explored the idea of rapprochement with Cuba,
   under conditions of the utmost secrecy. The intervention of Cuban
   forces in Angola's civil war in 1975 killed Kissinger's efforts.

   Breakthrough began in 2013

   A few weeks after President Jimmy Carter took the presidential oath of
   office in 1977, he ordered a new round of talks in the hope of
   normalizing ties with Havana, but Cuba's military adventures in Africa
   in support of leftist causes and candidates doomed that initiative,
   too.

   Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W.
   Bush maintained a foreign policy that ruled out any concessions toward
   Havana unless there was regime change in Communist Cuba.

   It was not until the spring of 2013, when Obama was in his second term,
   that he authorized the start of exploratory discussions with Havana.
   The first meeting took place in June that year in Canada, in full
   secrecy.

   FILE - Pope Francis gestures while addressing the crowd from the
   Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption in Santiago, Cuba, Sept. 22,
   2015.

   Pope brokered U.S.-Cuba talks

   Pope Francis wrote to the U.S. and Cuban leaders -- Obama and Raul
   Castro, who had by then succeeded his brother, Fidel, as president --
   urging them to normalize relations.

   In October 2013, U.S. and Cuban delegations met in the Vatican,
   together with officials from the Holy See, to finalize the terms of
   re-establishing diplomatic ties.

   That development managed to stay out of the public eye until December
   17, 2014, when Obama and Castro announced that Washington and Havana
   would resume diplomatic ties.