Clinton Takes a Weak Cut at Baseball Diplomacy

If you want to see how cautious and politically driven American foreign policy has become, there is no better example than the Clinton administration’s recent half-step forward on Cuba.

Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos will be visiting Havana this weekend, serving in effect as a stalking horse for a slightly new U.S. approach to Cuba. One might wonder whether it is wise to give a role in foreign policy to the meddlesome owner who fired Davey Johnson, the best manager in baseball.

Angelos will explore whether President Fidel Castro and his government are willing to approve two exhibition games between the Orioles and a Cuban team this spring, the first in Cuba and the second in Baltimore. In the larger sense, his mission will test the extent to which the Cuban leadership will give a role to nongovernmental organizations outside its control.

The inside story of the Orioles and Cuba says a lot about what the Clinton administration is and is not willing to do overseas in its final two years.

During President Clinton’s first term, his National Security Council carried out a series of back-channel discussions with Cuba. The two sides successfully worked out some practical issues, including an immigration accord. They also explored other possibilities. Meanwhile, Americans seeking to improve U.S. ties to Cuba persuaded Angelos to endorse the idea of exhibition games between the Orioles and Cuba.

There things stood in February 1996, when Cuban fighter jets shot down two small planes belonging to the Miami-based Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue.

The administration reacted with outrage. Madeleine Albright, then the ambassador to the United Nations, accused the Cubans of “cowardice.” Congress passed and Clinton signed the Helms-Burton Act, which tightened economic sanctions on Cuba and opened the way for suits against foreign companies that invest in Cuba. The idea of an easing of U.S. policy toward Cuba went into a deep freeze.

Last fall, things began to thaw. A bipartisan group of about 20 senators united behind a proposal by Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) to appoint a presidential commission for a comprehensive review of American policy toward Cuba. Former Secretaries of State Henry A. Kissinger, George P. Shultz and Lawrence S. Eagleburger endorsed the idea.

In other words, members of America’s foreign policy establishment and some congressional leaders were attempting to give the Clinton administration the political cover and respectability needed for a significant change in Cuba policy.

Two months ago, administration officials seemed interested in the idea. They even discussed who might head the new Cuba commission. Should it be Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles--who died last month? Or former Clinton aide Thomas F. “Mack” McLarty?

But in late December, the White House got cold feet. Politics intervened. Cuban exile groups voiced alarm that a commission might recommend easing or lifting the 37-year-old trade embargo against Cuba--as, indeed, it might have. Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and some other members of Congress with Cuban constituencies weighed in with concern about the commission.

Most important of all, Vice President Al Gore was unwilling to go along. Gore isn’t eager to arouse the ire of the Cuban community in Florida, which could be an important state in his presidential race next year.

Administration officials don’t deny that politics was a factor. They say it would have taken months to set up a Cuba commission, and the panel might not have made its recommendations until early 2000, in the midst of the presidential primary contests.

“While the commission had bipartisan support, the community that really matters was strongly opposed,” explained one U.S. official. “In American politics, the people who really care about an issue carry weight.”

So the Clinton administration switched gears. It decided to announce a series of small steps that will ease the trade embargo against Cuba. Among these are resuming direct mail service to Cuba and loosening the previous rules for sending money to Cuban families.

The administration’s Cuba package still lacked a centerpiece. At the last minute, Secretary of State Albright added one more component: She said the administration was ready to go along with the old proposal for the Orioles’ exhibition games against the Cubans, provided that the proceeds went to charities rather than the Cuban regime.

“We decided that high-visibility exchanges were now appropriate,” explained one policy-maker.

The organizers of the Orioles exhibition were stunned by Albright’s announcement; their plans weren’t ready and hadn’t been approved by the Cubans. Nevertheless, Angelos will now sojourn to Havana to see if he can work out two games in which the profits will go to charities or other nongovernmental groups.

At issue is more than baseball. The underlying question is what kinds of groups in Cuba will be defined as “nongovernmental”--and therefore eligible to receive money from the United States. If the definition is broad, the way would be open to broader financial transactions between America and Cuba.

In a column last year, I predicted the Clinton administration might unveil some bold initiatives in foreign policy soon after the 1998 elections were safely over. I put Cuba at the top of the list of possibilities.

I was wrong. The administration moved on Cuba, all right, but it made at best an incremental change. In the current milieu, even appointing a commission is seen as too daring. Politics is a year-round occupation now, in which there is no safe time for bold initiatives.

Jim Mann’s column appears in this space every Wednesday.