Battle Fought but Little Won in Elian Case

While mounting a show of strength in support of Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban American community may ironically be losing the larger battle over the future of U.S. policy toward Cuba, according to foreign policy specialists.

The Cuban Americans’ spirited resistance to turning over the 6-year-old boy has attracted little support elsewhere in the United States. And the awareness of that political reality could ultimately affect broader Cuban policy issues, such as the right of Americans to visit the island or the future of the U.S. trade embargo.

“The Cuban American community has miscalculated. They attempted to politicize a very personal issue, and they failed,” says Julia Sweig, a fellow in Latin American studies at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.

“After Elian, we’re looking at a very different dynamic. The Cuban American community will come out of this weakened in American public opinion, in Congress and in the executive branch,” she said.

Indeed, concerns that the Elian case may alienate the American public on broader questions of Cuba policy help explain why, in recent days, Cuban American organizations have suddenly begun to moderate their defiant stance and urge adherents not to engage in a campaign of civil disobedience against the federal government.

In an oblique reference to the larger policy issues at stake, Jorge Mas, the chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation, warned in a statement Friday that members should refrain from disruptive activities “so that one’s cause is not harmed in the process.”

U.S. Liberalizes Cuba Policy in Small Ways

Over the last few years, the Clinton administration has taken a series of relatively small steps to liberalize U.S. policy toward Cuba. The administration made it easier to travel to Cuba, opened the way for new personal contacts and licensed the Baltimore Orioles’ exhibition baseball games in Havana and Baltimore last year.

At the same time, the administration has left undisturbed the U.S. trade embargo and the broader U.S. policy of seeking to isolate Cuban leader Fidel Castro and his regime.

Even if the administration were determined to change American policy toward Cuba, its ability to do so would be limited by laws already on the books.

The trade embargo against the island is four decades old; it was tightened by the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 and the Helms-Burton Act of 1996. These laws ban all U.S. exports to Cuba except pharmaceuticals and require a license from the Treasury Department for travel to Cuba.

Some Leeway in Existing Restrictions

Still, even within these legal restrictions, the Clinton administration has some leeway.

Currently, for example, Cuban Americans are permitted to travel to the island no more than once a year. But the Clinton administration could open the way for less-restricted travel by Cuban Americans as a means of permitting family reunification.

The administration could even cite the Elian case as a concrete example of the need for an easing of the travel rules. If Elian returns to Cuba with his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, then the relatives in Miami with whom he has lived for the last four months would be permitted to visit him regularly in Cuba.

Under the existing legal framework, the administration also could open the way for U.S. investment on the island if it is limited to Cuba’s tiny private sector.

More far-reaching changes in Cuba policy will probably have to await a new administration. But some Cuba specialists say that the way the Elian Gonzalez case has played out is creating the conditions for these broader changes too.

“The tyranny of the Cuban American [National] Foundation and its followers in Miami is finally over,” said Scott Armstrong, a Washington writer who has worked with the Cuban government on the Orioles baseball games and several other projects.

“They’ve gone too far and they’ve put the administration into the position of insisting that the law will be enforced,” Armstrong said. “. . . The next secretary of State, under either a Democratic or Republican administration, will be able to put together a constituency to normalize relations with Cuba.”

The limited public support for the Cuban Americans’ position in the Elian case has been evident in several recent surveys.

A Newsweek magazine poll released Saturday showed that 53% of Americans believe Elian Gonzalez should be returned to his father, while 30% said he should stay with his relatives in Miami.

A poll of Florida voters conducted for the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel and released Saturday showed that 61% supported the federal government’s decision to return Elian to his father, while 23% opposed it. And 67% of the Florida voters thought the boy should be allowed to return to Cuba with his father.

Speculation about a possible upgrading of Clinton administration policy toward Cuba has been intensified by Gregory B. Craig’s role as lawyer for Elian’s father.

Craig now is in private practice, but, until recently, he served as Clinton’s lawyer when the president was impeached in the Monica S. Lewinsky case and was director of the State Department’s Office of Policy Planning. He retains high-level access within the Clinton administration.

At the same time, in the Elian case, Craig has been talking directly with senior Cuban officials. Thus, he represents a possible channel of communication between the two governments on issues beyond Elian and his father.

Armstrong notes that the Elian case has broken ground in other ways too, by opening the way for the Cuban government to show that it is willing to abide by the American legal system.

“This is the first time the Cubans have been willing to say, ‘You have an established legal process. We’re willing to rely on it,’ ” he observed. “For 20 years, the United States and Cuba have been debating this issue of whether Cuba can observe the rule of law.”

Cuban American groups continue to argue that easing of the trade embargo or other U.S. efforts to isolate Cuba would represent a victory for Castro. Any such liberalization, they say, would bolster the ability of his regime to survive its continuing economic stagnation.

But proponents of liberalizing that policy have argued for more than a decade that, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the old American policy of isolation no longer makes sense.

They contend that Cuba’s Communist regime almost certainly will not survive after Castro’s death. The regime could collapse either with mass emigration, like the Mariel boat lift in 1980, or with civil unrest if Cuban police and security officials try to resist a new wave of protests or emigration.

U.S. policy, these advocates of liberalization say, should pave the way for a peaceful transition to democratic rule in a post-Castro Cuba by opening the way for broader contacts and trade with the island.

“I don’t think anybody is going to keep the lid on Cuba the way Fidel has done,” said Bernard Aronson, who served as assistant secretary of State for Latin America under President Bush.

“The problem with our Cuba policy is that we don’t have a policy,” he said. “We’re not prepared to deal with a number of possibilities that are not only possible but likely over time with Castro’s death. So if this [Elian case] opens a debate on that, it will be beneficial.”