ABSTRACT
Barack H. Obama assumed the presidency at one of the most critical junctures in American history. At home, a financial crisis lashed at the economy in ways unseen since the Great Depression. In most quarters abroad, the reputation of the United States was diminished. After September 11, 2001, George W. Bush had declared a war on terror, a historic challenge that his administration compared to World War II and the Cold War. For the first time since the Cold War ended, the United States harbored no doubts about how to conduct itself in world affairs. The anti-terrorism paradigm brooked neither limits nor uncertainties. By launching preemptive war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the Bush administration surrendered the realism that had been central to U.S. foreign policy since World War II. The White House’s attempt to spread democracy in the Middle East might have been mistaken for Wilsonian but for its dismissal of the international institutions and agreements so cherished by President Woodrow Wilson. Though stepping back from unilateralism in his second term, Bush still considered countries like Iran, Syria and Cuba pariahs and, consequently, pursued confrontational policies without diplomatic respite. Early in his administration, Obama made overtures to Tehran, Damascus and Havana. The difference was that Cuba lacked strategic importance while Iran and Syria held key pieces in the Middle Eastern puzzle; in addition, Iran’s evident if undeclared intention to acquire nuclear weaponry commanded the White House’s attention. In terms of Cuba, Obama changed the tone and some elements of U.S. policy, such as eliminating all restrictions on Cuban-American family travel and remittances; allowing U.S. telecommunications companies to do business with Havana; making it easier for U.S. agricultural interests to sell their goods; opening talks with Havana on immigration and other topics; issuing many more visas for Cubans to travel to the United States; and authorizing
many more Americans to travel to Cuba. Still, the administration was no closer to the fundamental overhaul that a group of Republican luminaries had asked of Bill Clinton in 1998, one based on the assumption that Havana no longer posed a national-security threat. Upon accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Obama-without mentioning Havana-referred to the complexities of dealing with dictatorial regimes:
The promotion of human rights cannot be about exhortation alone. At times, it must be coupled with painstaking diplomacy. I know that engagement with repressive regimes lacks the satisfying purity of indignation. But I also know that sanctions without outreach-condemnation without discussion-can carry forward only a crippling status quo.1
