By Jason M. Blazakis
The U.S. State Department removed Cuba from its list of countries “not fully cooperating” with anti-terrorism efforts in mid-May 2024, but you would be forgiven for not noticing.
There was little fanfare accompanying the news: no press release, and no public acknowledgment from President Joe Biden.
Rather, the decision was relayed via a department spokesperson who rather dryly explained that, “the circumstances for Cuba’s certification as a ‘not fully cooperating country’ have changed from 2022 to 2023.”
Despite the low-key nature of the announcement, taking Cuba off the list is a big deal. As an expert in counterterrorism and a former State Department official who directed the government’s counterterrorism sanction initiatives, I see the latest move as a potential step toward a rapprochement between Washington and Havana.
Delisting Cuba
With Cuba’s removal, only North Korea, Iran, Syria and Venezuela remain on the list, which was adopted in the 1990s. While being named a “not fully cooperating country” has few legal consequences, it gives pause to people, companies and countries that otherwise might be looking to do business with those states.
In some ways, the State Department announcement on dropping Cuba from the list is lagging behind actual practice.
U.S.-Cuba engagement on law enforcement issues is already going on, having restarted in 2023.
And on Feb. 7, 2024, officials from both countries attended a meeting of the U.S.-Cuba Law Enforcement Dialogue, which promotes cooperation between the two nations’ police – the sixth such meeting since 2015.
That February meeting made it all the more likely that Cuba would be removed from the “not fully cooperating” list, which is, by law, reviewed every year. The question now is what that means for Cuba’s status in the U.S. as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” or SST – could that also be under review?
Unlike the “not fully cooperating” list, there is no requirement to review who is named a state sponsor of terrorism, either yearly or at any time.
On and off and on again
Cuba has yo-yoed on and off the list of state sponsors of terrorism. The communist island nation was first designated as a state sponsor of terrorism in 1982 by the Reagan administration. Cuba’s support for left-wing militant groups like Colombia’s FARC and National Liberation Army (ELN) in the 1980s was cited by U.S. officials as justification for its listing.
The Obama administration removed Cuba from the list in April 2015, having concluded that decades of sanctions levied against the country had not worked – Cuba retained its communist ideology. Simply put, we at the State Department thought it was time to take a new policy approach with Cuba.
AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa
Donald Trump waited until the very end of his four-year presidential term to add Cuba back on the list – and then had to rush to do so before leaving the White House.
In fact, the decision was made so late that the Federal Register Notice legalizing the decision was published on Jan. 22, 2021, after the inauguration of Trump’s successor, Biden.
According to the U.S. Embassy in Havana, the Trump administration was motivated by Cuba’s refusal to extradite 10 ELN leaders living in Havana.
But national security experts have criticized the decision, noting that Cuba hasn’t actively provided support to groups like ELN and FARC for decades.
Moreover, the Trump administration’s reason for adding Cuba back on the state sponsors of terrorism list went away in August 2022, when Colombia suspended the arrest warrant against the ELN commanders it had previously sought the extradition of.
In the hands of Havana
The consequences of being listed as a state sponsor of terrorism are more severe that being named as a “not fully cooperating” state. They include restrictions on U.S. foreign assistance, bans on the export and sale of defense – and some dual-purpose – items, and a range of financial prohibitions.
Cuba remains subject to both those restrictions and those stemming from the Trading With the Enemy Act – a law dating from 1917 but which has applied to Cuba since the missile crisis of the early 1960s.
As such, Cuba will not gain any significant immediate benefits from being delisted as a “not fully cooperating” state.
While countries deemed not fully cooperating with U.S. anti-terrorism efforts are prohibited from receiving defense services or articles, Washington is not in a position, due to other restrictions, where it would consider exporting military equipment to Cuba.
As such, the latest State Department delisting is more important for what it signals: that the United States is interested in expanding its engagement with Cuba. However, Cuba’s placement on the state sponsors of terrorism list – and trade restrictions under the Trading with the Enemy Act – will not make that easy.
But that may not be the point. Rather, the delisting of Cuba from the “not fully cooperating” list can be seen as a litmus test over the willingness of the Cuban government to open up to reforms.
Whether the U.S. follows up on the change in status with a decision to remove Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, allow Trading With the Enemy restrictions to lapse or even normalize relations is very much in the the hands of Cuba’s leaders. The next move will be theirs. They will need to demonstrate reform at multiple levels – economic, social and political.
But that will take time. Such reforms would require a major overhaul of the entire Cuban system, which requires a carefully managed transition away from state communism.
Enagement: An election risk?
But Cuba can begin to demonstrate now, and with success, that it will continue to fight against terrorism.
On this score, the results from Cuba’s last evaluation by the intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force in 2015 and the body’s 2022 follow-up report are promising.
Cuba is deemed compliant or largely compliant with 38 of 40 of the task force’s recommendations on terrorism financing, proliferation financing and money laundering.
If Cuba can demonstrate improvement in the remaining two areas – making sure that nonprofit organizations aren’t being exploited by terrorist financiers and that new technologies aren’t being used to fund nefarious activities – it could provide the Biden administration with more political leverage to begin the process of reviewing Cuba’s status as a state sponsor of terrorism.
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
This leverage is especially important during a U.S. election year in which Trump is increasingly trying to paint Biden as a weak leader on the international stage. Dramatically shifting policy without concessions from Cuba may play into this narrative. It could also be an electoral risk, especially in Florida, where many anti-communist Cuban expats reside.
Enemies no more?
The last meaningful attempt by Washington to bring Cuba in from the cold fell flat. The Obama administration’s 2015 delisting of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism did not receive enough of a runway to see if it could encourage Havana away from communism before the Trump administration reversed course.
The Obama administration’s delisting was reversed in just under five years, which wasn’t enough time to test the theory that warmer relations could induce Havana to move away from communism.
The latest move to take Cuba off the “not fully cooperating” list could, depending on the outcome of the U.S. election in November, similarly become a victim of politics.
But the premise behind the State Department’s decision – much like the Obama administration’s delisting of Cuba from the SST list – is that person-to-person interaction is the best approach to pushing Cubans away from an ideology, communism, that has failed them in regard to their economic well-being and political freedom.
And engagement like that requires time – more than the four years of a U.S. presidential term.
It also requires patience, persistence and a willingness to consider lifting sanctions. After all, successful engagement and policy changes are hard to achieve if you continue to call your would-be partner an “enemy” and “sponsor of terrorism.”
Jason M. Blazakis is Professor of Practice and Director of Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at Middlebury College.
The Conversation arose out of deep-seated concerns for the fading quality of our public discourse and recognition of the vital role that academic experts could play in the public arena. Information has always been essential to democracy. It’s a societal good, like clean water. But many now find it difficult to put their trust in the media and experts who have spent years researching a topic. Instead, they listen to those who have the loudest voices. Those uninformed views are amplified by social media networks that reward those who spark outrage instead of insight or thoughtful discussion. The Conversation seeks to be part of the solution to this problem, to raise up the voices of true experts and to make their knowledge available to everyone. The Conversation publishes nightly at 9 p.m. on FlaglerLive.
Pogo says
@Brilliant
In the home stretch of what may well be the last election in US history — feed red meat to rabid weasels and their suggestible, credulous, zombie horde of followers in a state that may be decided by one vote by an idiot “sending a message” into the void of outer space.
SMH
William Moya says
This seemingly “rapprochement” is a consequence of the U.S. loosing the grip as the sole superpower and economic leader and arbitrator in the “free world”, BRICS, the global South, American decline, and as of late Russian submarines in the Caribbean has move Foggy Bottom away from isolationism to “let’s talk”.
Ray W. says
There might be something to be said for your argument. Have you considered a longer-term view?
When then-President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the 11-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), did the rest of the world take notice? When he moved our embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, did the rest of the world take notice? When he attempted to link the statutorily mandated defense funding for the Ukraine, in accord with our treaty obligations, did the rest of the world take notice. When he disparaged NAFTA, did the rest of the world take notice? When he withdrew the U.S. from the multi-nation nuclear agreement with Iran, did the rest of the world take notice? When he disparaged CAFTA, did the rest of the world take notice? When he threatened to undermine NATO, did the rest of the world take notice? When he placed tariffs on Chinese exports to the U.S., did the rest of the world take notice (yes, the Biden administration recently did the same and the rest of the world took notice)? When he signed an agreement with the Taliban to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan and sent home hundreds of Taliban fighters, including the man who now leads Afghanistan, did the rest of the world notice (yes, the Biden administration botched the actual withdrawal)?
Each action viewed independently; it seems that the U.S. was simply protecting some amorphous idea of nationalism, of acting in our own best interests. Taken together, did it portend a larger trend toward isolationism? An active acceptance of a world in which the U.S. does not intend to lead?
When we withdrew from TPP, it fell apart. China rushed into the vacuum and signed individual trade agreements with some, but not all, of the 10 other potential TPP partners. The splintering of a perceived need to continue in 70-yearlong well established world trade order presided over by the U.S. just might have directly led to the rise of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Iran, UAE and Ethiopia) agreement. Why include the U.S. in trade agreements when the U.S. doesn’t project a desire to participate in them? The rest of the world can no longer reliably project a long-term future where the U.S. is a force for stability in the world. When President Biden famously announced at the first G-7 meeting after he took office that America was back, the response was just as famous: For how long?
There are dozens, if not more than a hundred, small nations scattered throughout the world that have relied on visions of a form of U.S. leadership that was to provide stability against aggression by their neighbors. Many have seen their hopes dashed. Vain, at least to them, was their illusion. This is an old story. Hungary rose up against its oppressor and called for U.S. aid. None came. The Ukraine cannot ground hope in its future on continuing U.S. aid, despite having a treaty with us to do so. NATO has to consider going it alone, should one administration lose the upcoming election. The German parliament introduced legislation a number of years ago during the Trump administration to explore withdrawing from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty in order to develop its own nuclear arsenal. One of the Baltic nations actually invited German soldiers onto its soil during Trump’s administration; the German government sent them the requested soldiers. Another Baltic nation issued pamphlets to its citizens explaining what to do if Russia invaded.
Despite the misgivings and outright hatred by some for Kissinger’s realpolitik model, I am drawn to his editorial to the Washington Post about Lee Kuan Kew, the first President of Singapore. When Kew traveled to speak at the United Nations, he also visited what is now the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he met with a number of professors. Kissinger, one of those professors, wrote that Kew asked the gathered intelligentsia in foreign relations to speak about LBJ’s foreign policy. We were in the middle stages of the Vietnam War. Kissinger recounted that the discussion devolved into a claim that Johnson was a sociopath. Kew announced that the conversation made him feel sick. Kew led a fledgling democracy amid a sea of enemies. Vietnam was about 500 miles away. A dissident group of communist Singaporeans was agitating for the overthrow of his government. He needed a strong America, a united America, if only to project strength into an unstable region. Today, Singapore is a model of enlightened capitalism that has catapulted the tiny nation into unimaginable wealth in Kew’s time. His government held and thrived. It is not a model of American democracy, but it is a constitutional form of government.
During Kew’s transition to power, European powers were withdrawing from a significant number of African and Middle Eastern colonies. New and fragile government after government collapsed. Slaughter ruled Africa and the Middle East for decades as military coups smashed the institutions fostered however badly by the European powers. Mr. Tristam’s Lebanon, with Beirut as the Paris of the Mediterranean splintered into sectarian violence, in part because of restive displaced Palestinians destabilizing the post-colonial government. The Nakba of 1948 transformed into the Lebanese plague of the 1970s. Lebanon may never return to a land of safety and wealth.
My younger son talked to me on Father’s Day of a professor’s comments in his Constitutional government class at USF. A young student challenged the professor, claiming that American government institutions need to be dismantled. The professor, an African immigrant who moved to Canada as a youth where he earned an education, including a doctoral degree, sadly addressed the class. My son recounted the professor saying that there was no way he could teach any student of the horrors he experienced as hundreds of thousands of his countrymen were slaughtered when his nation’s government fell apart. But he told the class that no one should ever attempt to dissolve a constitutionally conceived government. The risk of chaos spiraling into slaughter was too great.
For those who fantasize of their dreamlike America gently gliding into a post-Constitutional society in which all power presides in the executive branch led by only their president; it is not likely to be gentle at all. Not when a local Republican leader asks when can people begin beheading Democrats; when presidential candidates speak of slitting throats or crushing vermin; when a former president promises a bloodbath if he is not elected; when a Senator tells followers to throw protestors off bridges; when a Senate candidate tells people to strap on Glocks before leaving home to vote; when avid followers send death threats to elections officials, to judges, to prosecutors, to law enforcement officers; when (thankfully) only a few FlaglerLive commenters promised violence if a “stolen” election was not restored; when civility is distorted in lies, mistruths, disinformation; and on and on.
The gullible among us have not learned the lessons of the Nakba, the fall of Lebanon, the destruction of dozens of badly crafted post-colonial African and Middle Eastern nation-states.
After the Soviet Union fell in a relatively bloodless coup, I recall reading an article about a precipitous drop in the life expectancy for men. Prior to the fall, a son born into the Soviet world could be expected to live 68 years. A few years late, life expectancy for boys born into the world was 47 years. Rates of suicide and alcohol-related deaths skyrocketed. Pension funds disappeared or evaporated. The economy collapsed and unemployment rates exploded. When Putin claims that the fall of the Soviet Empire was the greatest catastrophe in the recent history of the world, he is not exaggerating what he saw and felt. Hundreds of millions of people either endured or died. Only a few thrived.
No one knows the outcome if our liberal democratic Constitutional republic were to be overthrown, if the checks and balances designed to preserve a three-branch model of government were to transform into a primacy of one branch over the other two branches of government. Would the Singaporean model prevail? The Russian Federation model?
Jim says
I hope that the US will adopt a more friendly approach to Cuba in the future. Yes, they are a communist country but how much of a threat are they to us? I just don’t see it. And from everything I have seen and read, most Cubans are friendly towards the US and would like to have more interaction. You can argue that they just want our dollars but who doesn’t? And I believe that if we did open relations with Cuba and more Americans visited that country and spent US dollars with the people, we’d all see more desire for more freedom from Cubans. All most people want in life is to have a decent standard of living and not be oppressed. If Cubans got a taste of what Americans have and what we can do, it can not help but increase their interest in our lifestyles and our freedom. I think the Cuban government would have to relent over time and give the people more freedoms and a more open society that includes the opportunities to make more money and provide a better life for themselves and their family. That can not help but cause those same people to have a much higher opinion of our way of life vs. communism. I don’t see what good has come of 60+ years of ignoring each other!
NJ says
Communist Cuba will Always a be Very Serious Threat to America’s National Security because it receives Support from Communist China, Russia, and N. Korea. Biden removed sanctions from Russia and they thanked Biden for INVADING Ukraine! An Appeasement Policy always leads to War! Appeasement did NOT Stop Hilter from Invading Poland and starting WWII.
Ray W. says
Intrigued by NJ’s claim that the Biden administration’s removal of sanctions against two Russian pipeline laying ships and their owners is the equivalent of Chamberlain appeasing Hitler by allowing the entire nation of Czechoslovakia to be absorbed by Germany, I decided to look it up.
According to a 2021 European Union brief prepared on the subject of the building of the Nord 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany, purportedly to increase the sale by Gazprom of natural gas to German commercial and residential consumers, the subject of the brief was whether the additional capacity to sell natural gas would violate European Union laws against having too much reliance on energy products from Russia. The brief lacks clarity on a few of the relevant dates for the below-described activities, but it is a position paper, not a legal brief.
At an undescribed date in 2017, then-President Trump signed into law a bipartisan act known as Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which extended the scope of possible U.S. sanctions to apply to pipelines. The U.S. State Department issued a rule interpreting the act as applying to pipelines that were under contract after August 2017. Since the Nord 2 pipeline had been under contract prior to that date, the Trump administration decided against imposing sanctions. Their game, their call. They could have interpreted the act differently. In 2018, pipeline construction began, using specialized pipeline laying ships. In October 2019, Denmark granted a permit for the final leg of the pipeline. Only 160 km remained to be built.
In December 2019, then-President Trump signed into law a bipartisan act with the acronym “PEESA”, or the Protecting Europe’s Energy Security Act. If any company used ships to lay natural gas pipelines at a depth greater than 100′, the act permitted the imposition of sanctions on the ships and the shipowners, if the administration decided the act applied to the pipeline. After some clarifications to PEESA and a different statute, it was decided that Nord Stream 2 fit the act’s parameters. At the time, one ship, the Fortuna, meet the definition of a sanctionable pipe-laying ship. A second pipelaying ship, the Akademik Cherskiy, had been dispatched from Russia’s Far East to join the Fortuna. The Trump administration declined to act.
In January 2021, some 13 months after PEESA became law and two months after Trump lost reelection, the Trump administration decided to impose sanctions against the Fortuna and its owners and a second ship and its owners. The primary EU nation that was to benefit from the pipeline’s completion, Germany, vehemently opposed the sanctions, accusing the Trump administration of meddling with European energy policy. In February 2021, pipelaying activities resumed. After all, sanctions do not prohibit pipelaying; they are designed to punish the offender if it continued to lay pipe. Later in 2021, the Biden administration signaled that it would back away from the sanctions because they had become counterproductive to “trans-Atlantic relations.” He also declared that, despite his objections to the pipeline, it was too late to stop it as approximately 50 km remained unbuilt.
Yes, Europe didn’t need the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, because the pipeline infrastructure already in existence was sufficient to flow enough natural gas to meet Europe’s needs. Yes, the Ukraine opposed the pipeline, because if it were built, Russian natural gas would no longer have to travel through Ukrainian pipelines, which would deprive that government of much needed transit funds.
If I am reading the EU brief correctly, despite it being against the law known as PEESA for some 13 months, the Trump administration declined to enforce the law until a few days before he left office. During the entire time that CAATSA was the law, the Trump administration declined to enforce it. The entire length of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, sans 50 km, was built during the Trump years and his administration imposed sanctions as it exhaled its last breaths. When Biden acquiesced to the inevitable completion of the pipeline by withdrawing the sanctions, in an effort to maintain trans-Atlantic relations with Germany, NJ howls with disgust and calls the decision appeasement with the entire Russian Federation akin to Nazi Germany taking vast swaths of Europe by threat; he claims that this is what prompted Putin to go to war against the Ukraine.
Many times, I have pointed out that people like NJ can be right and wrong at the same time. Yes, NJ is barely right. Biden withdrew sanctions from two pipelaying ships and their owners. But NJ is massively wrong, too. Releasing two pipelaying ships from sanctions does not even remotely compare to France failing to march when the Nazis militarized the Rhineland, to France and Great Britan failing to march when the Nazis occupied Austria, and to when Chamberlain gave away Czechoslovakia. Perhaps we should all allow NJ his or her fantasies. After all, what harm can come from engaging in delusional, yet barely right, thinking?
From a different perspective, can it be argued that when the Trump administration was interpreting CAATSA as applying to pipelines approved after a certain date, thereby exempting Nord Stream 2 from its sanctions, was the Trump administration appeasing Russia, using NJ’s distorted form of reason? When PEESA was signed into law and not implemented for 13 months, was the Trump administration appeasing Russia, using NJ’s distorted form of reason? When the Trump administration acted when only 50 km of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline remain incomplete, with only days to go in the Trump term in office, is it reasonable to infer that the Trump administration knew it had lost the election and it wanted to erect any barrier it could against the proper new administration, i.e., a parting “gift”?