Cuba welcomed into Summit of the Americas

President Barack Obama announced renewed relations with Cuba in December of 2014 charting a new course of action after fifty years of failed isolationist policies. Within days of the announcement The Summit of the Americas announced that Cuba’s president Raul Castro will be invited to the summit for the first time in its history.  President Barack Obama will also be attending the event.

The White House’s consistent diplomatic philosophy of engagement rather than isolation seeks to promote positive change in Cuba even though the current regime is ruled by the Castros and remains a communist country.

President Obama has been reopening discussions with Cuba and working to re-establish an embassy in Havana in the future, though no date has been set. The U.S. will work with Cuba on matters of mutual concern that advance U.S. national interests, such as migration, counternarcotics, environmental protection, and trafficking in persons, among other issues, which is a comfortable fit with goals of the summit taking place in Panama City next weekend.

Cuba was not invited to the previous six summits, sponsored by the Organization of American States (OAS), as it was expelled from the OAS in 1962 at the initiative of the United States when John F. Kennedy was president. The 34-nation bloc invited Cuba to rejoin in 2009, but Cuba declined; however, times have changed and Cuba has decided to become part of the Americas community of nations.

"Cuba has confirmed that the highest level of government will attend the summit," said Luis Martin, a spokesman for Panama's Foreign Ministry.

At the previous summit in Colombia in 2012, Latin American countries threatened to boycott the next summit if Cuba was excluded, and in recent months Cuba's participation has become widely expected, reported in Voice of America.

The Seventh Summit of the Americas will open on Friday April 10 for two days.  Heads of State and government officials from North America will gather and address the theme this year of “Prosperity and Equity:  The Challenge of Cooperation in the Americas.”  A broad range of topics will include education, health, energy, environment, migration, security citizen participation and democratic governance.

The summit takes place every three years and this year will be an historic opportunity for countries to truly join in unity to define and discuss a North American agenda to propel change and illuminate matters urgent to the continent.

As a United States sponsored event, the first summit was held in Miami, Florida in 1994 when Bill Clinton was president. The 34 nations met and accepted a Declaration of Principles including a Partnership of Development and Prosperity inspiring heads of state to commit to the principles of democracy including pursing open markets through economic integration and free trade.

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We will have to wait and see if President Obama will speak about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) at the summit.  The only two North American countries involved, besides the U.S., in the agreement at the summit are Mexico and Chili.

The TPP has proven to be a contentious issue with Americans and the agreement has not moved forward.  Questions concerning protection of intellectual property rights, agriculture, human rights and civil liberties in some countries, environmental standards, and services and investments have caused negotiations to stall.

The agreement has been met with skepticism by many Americans because of the devastating effects a similar treaty The North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA) had on American industry and employment since its implementation in 1994.  Still, the TPP continues to be a top goal for the Obama Administration.

Grab your hat it could be a rough ride in Panama!

While hemispheric reforms between the US and Cuba move forward, relations with the Venezuelan government continue to deteriorate furthering an ideological divide that could rupture in Panama next weekend.  

“On March 9, President Obama signed executive orders relating to Venezuela; one formally declaring a ‘national emergency’ and the other relating to ‘the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States’ posed by the Venezuelan government. The measures, both legal precursors required under US law to introduce sanctions, were, according to US officials, not intended to be seen as being aimed at the country but as the necessary steps for it to take action against high-ranking Venezuelan individuals the US deemed responsible for human rights and other violations,” reported in the Dominican Today.

The Venezuelan government considered this a threat by the US to invade the country casting the Obama Administration as a destabilizing influence in an effort to overthrow their government, which is hyperbole by Venezuelan officials.   

One of the repercussions was that on March 17 member nations  - including Antigua, Dominica, Grenada, St Lucia, St Vincent, Suriname, and Guyana, with Haiti participating as an observer - attended an emergency summit in Caracas to express solidarity with Venezuela.

Some nations are grouping to support Venezuela and have called on the US to “immediately cease its harassment and aggression.”  Cuban President Raul Castro issued a statement of support for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

President Castro described President Obama’s executive order as “arbitrary, aggressive” and “unjustified,” and suggested that the United States was willing “to sacrifice the peace and the direction of hemispheric and regional relations, for reasons of domination and domestic politics.”

The US perspective is decidedly different.  A senior U.S. administration official told reporters last week that the use of "national security" language is standard when issuing an executive order to impose sanctions. “Most of the sanctions programs that we have, from Iran to Syria, Burma, across the board, rely on these same types of national emergency declarations,” the official said according to a report by Huffington.

Adam Isacson, senior associate for regional security policy at the human rights nonprofit Washington Office on Latin America, explained that under U.S. law, the executive has to declare a national emergency that threatens national security in order to freeze a foreigner’s assets by executive order, they said.

“It has to look like a big, special thing, if you’re going to do it,” Isacson told The Huffington Post. “That’s why it has that stupid language at the beginning. I think the sanctions themselves are pretty legitimate. The United States has the right to decide who gets to do business and own property here in our country, and we should be limiting the number of human rights abusers who get to do that."

Let’s hope one of the only “big, special things” in Panama this weekend will be delegates donning Panama hats. Having the US and Cuba appear together at the summit—or anywhere for that matter—is going to be monumental. Whatever other events unfold in Panama on Friday and Saturday, the meeting of these two countries will definitely provide plenty of anticipation as the 34 nations gather to discuss the themes of “prosperity and equity” amid the conflicts that are already being touted as divisive rather than unifying.

Resources
http://www.voanews.com/content/reu-cuba-summit-of-the-americas/2557400.html
https://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/foreign-policy/cuba
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/16/unasur-venezuela-sanctions_n_6881886.html

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