With less than a week left in his term, US President Joe Biden is expected to remove Cuba’s designation as a “state sponsor of terrorism”, according to anonymous sources familiar with his plans.
The Associated Press news agency broke the story Tuesday, citing U.S. officials. But this is likely a symbolic measure rather than a lasting policy.
With President-elect Donald Trump set to take office on January 20, the decision could quickly be reversed under the new administration. Still, the Biden administration moved forward, informing Congress of its intention.
“An assessment has been carried out and we have no information to support the designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism,” a White House official told the AFP news agency.
Cuban officials, meanwhile, hailed the announcement as long overdue. On social media, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez called Biden’s actions “positive” but “limited” in their effectiveness.
“Cuba should never have been included on the arbitrary list of states that support terrorism,” he said. wrote. “This is an arbitrary and politically motivated designation that has had a very serious impact on the Cuban population, harming the economy, causing shortages and encouraging migration to the United States. »
This is not, however, the first time that the designation against Cuba has been rescinded and reimposed. And Republicans quickly announced their intention to fight the change.
“Today’s decision is fundamentally unacceptable,” Texas Senator Ted Cruz, a Cuban-American congressman, said in a statement to the media.
“The terrorism carried out by the Cuban regime has not stopped. I will work with President Trump and my colleagues to immediately reverse this decision and limit the damage. »
A cold war policy
Cuba was first designated a “state sponsor of terrorism” in 1982, under the presidency of conservative leader Ronald Reagan.
The US State Department explains on its website that Cuba was sanctioned for “its long history of providing advice, sanctuary, communications, training and financial support to guerrilla groups and individual terrorists.”
The designation was made during the last decade of the Cold War. Diplomatic relations between the two countries had long since broken down, largely because of Cuba’s close ties to the former Soviet Union, the United States’ Cold War adversary.
Cuba had also weathered a decades-long U.S. trade embargo.
However, being labeled a “state sponsor of terrorism” has further isolated the Caribbean country, limiting its ability to engage in financial transactions with U.S.-based institutions and preventing it from receiving aid. American.
Prior to Tuesday’s announcement, only three countries besides Cuba were identified as “state sponsors of terrorism” in the United States. These include North Korea, Iran and Syria.
Back and forth
Biden’s decision, however, echoes that of his close Democratic ally, former President Barack Obama.
Biden served as vice president during both of Obama’s terms, including in 2015, when his administration pursued a “thaw” in U.S.-Cuba relations.
In April of that year, Obama announced that he would remove Cuba from the list of “state sponsors of terrorism,” following meetings with then-Cuban President Raul Castro.
At the time, Obama reassured Congress that Cuba had “given assurances that it would not support acts of international terrorism in the future.”
A few months later, in July 2015, Obama went further and declared that the United States would restore formal diplomatic relations with Cuba for the first time since the 1960s.
“Instead of supporting democracy and opportunity for the Cuban people, our efforts to isolate Cuba despite good intentions have increasingly had the opposite effect: cementing the status quo and isolating the United States from our neighbors in this country. hemisphere,” Obama said at the time. “We don’t need to be imprisoned by the past.”
He pointed out that Cuba is less than 150 kilometers (90 miles) from the coast of Florida.
But when Trump succeeded Obama as president in 2017, he took a tougher approach to foreign policy, including imposing sanctions on Cuban products.
On January 12, 2021, in the final days of his first term, Trump reinstated Cuba to the list of “state sponsors of terrorism.”
“With this action, we will once again hold the Cuban government accountable and send a clear message: the Castro regime must end its support for international terrorism and the subversion of American justice,” the secretary said. State of Trump’s then-Mike Pompeo in a statement. statement.
He accused Cuba of “feeding, harboring and providing medical care to murderers, bomb makers and hijackers” for decades.
The Cuban government, for its part, thunderstruck change as “hypocrisy” and “political opportunism”.
A political bloc
After Trump was re-elected to a second term in November, speculation swirled that Biden himself might make a similar decision, using the final days of his presidency to reverse Trump’s decision.
On November 15, for example, a group of Democratic representatives, led by outgoing Congresswoman Barbara Lee, sent the Biden White House a letter calling for “immediate action” to address the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Cuba.
He discusses the consequences of Hurricane Rafael on the island, as well as the collapse of the country’s energy infrastructure, which led to frequent power outages.
“The situation not only causes immense suffering to the Cuban people, but also poses serious risks to the national security interests of the United States,” the letter said. “If left unchecked, the crisis will almost certainly fuel increased migration, strain U.S. border management systems, and completely destabilize the already struggling Caribbean region. »
By removing Cuba from the status of a “state sponsor of terrorism”, the authors of the letter indicated that more oil resources could reach the island, “thus facilitating access to energy and economic aid for the Cuban people.”
But Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida denounced such a proposal as an “unacceptable risk.”
His state has a large population of Cuban refugees who fled repression and economic instability in Cuba – and who form a powerful Republican-leaning voting bloc.
“The Biden administration’s last-minute calls from communist sympathizers in the Democratic Party for President Biden to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism are not only ignorant, but dangerous,” Scott said in a statement to the Florida Phoenix publication. .
Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, Sen. Marco Rubio, is a descendant of Cuban immigrants and has also lambasted efforts to lift restrictions on the island’s government.
He has previously called Obama’s efforts to normalize relations “unilateral concessions“.
