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10/25/09 - Miami Herald - Diplomat Robert Pastor reflects on Cuban
relations, looks ahead to new opportunity

BY JUAN O. TAMAYO
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

Robert Pastor says that when he sees Israelis and Palestinians at each
other's throats, he sometimes tells himself, ``Boy, this sure reminds of
something.''

And well it should, for Pastor played a lead role in the deepest and
broadest U.S. effort to normalize relations with Cuba since 1959, a campaign
by President Jimmy Carter that achieved dramatic successes but eventually
led to the chaos of the Mariel boatlift.

Today, he watches the Obama administration's gestures toward Havana with a
measure of impatience and the sense that knowledge of the Carter
administration's experience could help the new effort to improve
relations -- this time with a new Castro at the helm in Havana.

``I am an inveterate optimist,'' he told El Nuevo Herald in an interview.
And 78-year-old Raúl Castro, he added, ``is very much aware that he doesn't
have a lot of time to secure the future of the revolution.''

Ending decades of animosity between Havana and Washington was not and will
not be easy -- but needs to be done, Pastor argued in the interview and an
unpublished academic paper in which he recounts the history and impact of
Carter's Cuba initiative.

Pastor was just 30 years old when Carter was sworn into office Jan. 20,
1977, and appointed him to head the Western Hemisphere section of the White
House's National Security Council, making him the president's top in-house
advisor on Latin American affairs.

At least five U.S. presidents since John F. Kennedy tried, to some degree or
another, and failed to negotiate an understanding with Fidel Castro. But
Carter's vision was by far the most ambitious.

``Our objective is to set in motion a process which will lead to the
establishment of diplomatic relations . . . and advance the interests of the
United States with respect to . . . human rights; Cuba's foreign
intervention; compensation for American expropriated property; and reduction
of Cuban relations [political and military] with the Soviet Union,'' said a
secret presidential directive that Carter signed just three weeks after his
inauguration. At that time, ``foreign intervention'' referred largely to
Cuban troops in Angola.

During several rounds of public and secret talks with Havana, Carter's
various envoys even took up the thorniest of issues in the bilateral
relations -- the full range of U.S. concerns over human rights in Cuba,
lifting the U.S. trade embargo and returning the U.S. naval base in
Guantánamo, Pastor recalled.

Carter's initiative sparked dramatic changes, he added:

• Castro freed 3,600 political prisoners, and about 1,000 left for the
United States.

• The two countries opened diplomatic missions in each other's capitals,
called Interests Sections because they fall short of being embassies.

• All restrictions on U.S. travel to Cuba were lifted from 1977-82, allowing
even American tourists to go to the island.

• The U.S. Coast Guard and its Cuban counterpart began cooperation on drug
interdiction and search-and-rescue operations.

• Cuba released 10 American prisoners, allowed U.S. officials to interview
six others and permitted 450 dual Cuban-U.S. citizens to leave the island.

• Carter ordered the U.S. attorney general to ``take all necessary steps
permitted by law'' to prevent Cuban exile attacks on the island.

• The U.S. military stopped flights over Cuba by SR-71 spy planes.

The year 1977 seemed full of promise, Pastor said. Yet it all came crashing
down quickly.

``Within months, we became frustrated with signs that Cuba was increasing
its involvement in Africa, and the lack of Castro responses to the very
significant steps that we had taken to improve relations,'' Pastor said.

Castro began sending Cuban troops to Ethiopia, to fight an invasion from
neighboring Somalia, and thumbing his nose at a stern U.S. warning against
expanding his military presence in Africa beyond Angola. Eventually, 17,000
Cuban troops went to Ethiopia.

``The ruling circles in the United States are wasting their time by
obstinately making an improvement in state relations . . . dependent on the
withdrawal of the international Cuban troops in Angola,'' Castro declared in
late 1977. ``Cuba's solidarity with the African peoples is non-negotiable.''

Shortly afterward, amid suspicions of Havana involvement in fighting in
Zaire, the Carter administration ordered the SR-71s to overfly Cuba again,
staged a large naval exercise near the island and stepped up its public
criticism of Cuba's meddling in Africa.

``We made a profound effort, but the opportunity for normalizing relations
opened and closed in one single year -- 1977,'' Pastor said.

The final nail came when Castro unleashed the Mariel boatlift in 1980,
sending 125,000 Cubans to South Florida in a chaotic exodus that helped
Ronald Reagan defeat Carter in the elections that year.

Pastor is now a professor of international relations at American University
and has helped monitor the election process in Palestinian territories. But
he is still deeply interested in Cuba, and last traveled there in March.

After the Carter initiative collapsed, Pastor said, he ``came to believe
that Fidel Castro did not really want to normalize relations, did not really
want the U.S. to lift the embargo.''

``This is how Fidel has mobilized Cuban nationalism,'' he said. ``The U.S.
has played a role as foil for all of Cuba's problems . . . so there's a
profound ambivalence that Castro must feel toward good relations with the
United States.''

He recalled Castro once telling him in a private meeting ``essentially that
if the U.S. lifted the embargo, he would be imposing restrictions the next
day in order to control the flow of goods.'' Good Havana relations with
Washington, Pastor added, ``would sink Cuba.''

But there's now another major opportunity for warmer relations, Pastor
added, with President Barack Obama willing to make some friendly gestures
and a new Castro ruling Havana -- Fidel's younger brother Raúl, who has a
reputation as a pragmatist.

And while he once believed that only Fidel had the power to manage a full
opening toward the United States, he now believes Raúl also can do it
because he controls the Cuban security forces and has the revolutionary and
family credentials.

What is needed now, Pastor said, is a test of Raúl Castro's thinking on
relations with Washington.

``This is a cautious administration,'' he said, ``and we have not really
begun to explore the idea that Raúl is different, that he's more pragmatic
and more open to U.S. relations, that with Raúl maybe we have another
chance.''

``The president should send a personal envoy to spend time listening and
probing Raúl Castro's perspective,'' he said. ``If the envoy had similar
experiences with Fidel, he would be able to detect any differences . . . and
thus any opportunities to advance U.S. interests.''

Asked later if his words meant he was interested in the task, he wrote in an
e-mail, ``My purpose was not to put myself forward.''

Without a U.S.-Cuba understanding, Pastor wrote in his academic paper,
bilateral relations could well return to the hostilities that have marked
some periods in the past 50 years.

``Except during a crisis, the United States can afford to forget Cuba, and
indeed, the political incentives within the United States encourage the
status quo,'' he wrote. ``Because of the differences in power, Cuba will
always be obsessed with the United States -- wanting attention but fearing
control, seeking respect but not knowing how to gain it.

``This may continue to characterize the relationship unless or until
American or Cuban leaders demonstrate real political courage, or Cuba
becomes unstable. If instability precedes leadership [courage], the two
countries may revert to a tragic confrontation.''