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The terrible events of September 11, 2001 have arguably served as a watershed for reframing U.S. foreign policy. The Global War on Terrorism, launched with bipartisan congressional support and the institutional reorganization of national security functions, seemed to reorient foreign policy priorities within a fear-informed vision of a world in deep and dichotomous conflict. The United States, according to President George W. Bush and his administration, would be responsible for defending “good” against “evil” in this rescripting of Cold War bi-polarity for the post 9/11 world. To assess change and continuity in U.S. national security strategies, the official security frame must be understood in terms of vision, scripts, and the institutional realities of implementing U.S. foreign policy at home and abroad. Current U.S. policy toward Cuba provides the opportunity for such scrutiny. Indeed, against the backdrop of the Global War on Terrorism, subject now to doubts and criticisms from both right and left, Bush’s Cuba policy is both perplexing and instructive.

The puzzles of U.S. policy toward Cuba in 2006 are striking. A few examples illustrate the questionable coherence of policy that may, in fact, be surprisingly consistent.

In mid-December 2005, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) denied Cuba’s participation in the World Baseball Classic, scheduled for Puerto Rico in March 2006. Responding to the pressures of the Puerto Rican government, the International Baseball Federation, and the International Olympic Committee, the reapplication for the OFAC license needed to allow Cuba into the Classic was granted in January (“Treasury Department,” 2006; LeoGrande, 2006b). The Trading with the Enemy Act (1917) still centers U.S. economic sanctions against Cuba, and negotiations limited the financial transactions that would occur. The Cuban government volunteered that any potential prize income would be donated to victims of Hurricane Katrina, the same victims whom Castro had hoped to help he offered in September 2005 to send more than 1,500 doctors and many tons of supplies—without official response from the U.S. government.

In early January 2006, a group of 15 Cubans fleeing to Florida landed on a decaying bridge with no connection to land; they were returned to Cuba following the Coast Guard’s interpretation of current “wet foot, dry foot” standards for determining acceptable and unacceptable illegal immigrants from Cuba, based in the Cuban Adjustment Act (1966) and the U.S.-Cuba Migration accords (“Migration Policy,” 2006). In early March, a federal judge in Miami ruled that the Cubans had been wrongfully repatriated; in mid-March an agreement was reached that the Cubans would receive appropriate papers if the U.S. District Judge vacated his order against the U.S. government; and by late March, 14 of the 15 now-legal immigrants had Cuban passports and official word that they would receive humanitarian visas (“Cubans Who Landed,” 2006; “Judge Approves,” 2006).

On February 3, 2006 the María Isabel Sheraton, a subsidiary of a U.S. corporate entity, expelled a group of 16 Cuban businessmen who were meeting with U.S. oil company representatives to discuss possibilities for off shore drilling. The meeting was relocated to another hotel to finish its work. OFAC’s zealous pursuit of potential violations of the prohibitions against knowingly providing goods and services to Cuban nationals, based in the Cuban Democracy Act (1992) and the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act (1996) that asserted the extraterritoriality of economic sanctions against Cuba, prompted responses from the U.S. Congress and Mexican authorities (Bachelet, 2006a, 2006c).

In late February 2006, the U.S. Interests Section in Havana formally communicated the State Department’s denial of 54 of the 58 pending applications for visas for Cuban scholars scheduled to participate in the XXVI International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) in San Juan, Puerto Rico in March, invoking Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Law which permits exclusion of those deemed “detrimental to the interests of the United States." Three more applications were subsequently denied, producing a replay of the denial of all 65 visas for Cubans for the LASA Congress in Las Vegas in October 2004. The Bush administration’s use of Section 212(f)--and by implication, Reagan’s Presidential Proclamation 5377 of 1985 that specified that members of the Communist Party and state employees could be excluded—contrasts sharply with the Clinton era and a flourishing academic exchange between the U.S. and Cuba (Bollag, 2006). There were 99 Cuban scholars at the 2000 LASA Congress in Miami, 87 at the Washington, D.C. Congress in September 2001, and 64 Cubans at the Dallas Congress in March 2003 (though many visas were also denied).

These episodes in U.S.-Cuban bilateral relations raise serious questions about the logic, meaning, and menace of the U.S. security frame in the post 9/11 period. Why, exactly, has the Bush administration meddled in the World Baseball Classic, assisted Cuban immigrants, chased Cubans from their lodgings in Mexico City, and denied visas to Cuban academics interested in intellectual exchange, many of whom had traveled often to the U.S.? In this issue of Latin American Perspectives, Cuba policy is used to engage old and newer issues of national security--and insecurities, focusing specifically on academic relations between Cuba and United States, the institutional realities of the Homeland Security state, and the needed rethinking of the frame with which Cuba is viewed. The essays published here invite attention to vital concerns about the state, the redefinition of U.S. internal and international security through the War on Terror, and the historical motives of Cuban foreign policy. They suggest, separately and together, that scholars may have an important role to play in changing the way security is framed in the post 9/11 world.

Building Homeland Security

Not all agree that the Global War on Terror signals a major shift in the underpinnings of U.S. foreign policy. Some see that major change has occurred, but locate it differently in time, scope, and significance. The National Security Strategy formalized in 2002 marks a change in post-1945 practices, according to Hurst, who notes “key elements of what is, in fact a conservative radicalism—unilateralism, contempt for international institutions and law, an open embrace of hegemonic ambition, readiness to ignore traditional allies and to use force in a pre-emptive fashion…” (Hurst, 2006: 53). Gill observes that since 1989, U.S. global strategy has had two components: “efforts to mobilize and to lock in new constitutional governance frameworks” and “threatened/actual use of US military power to police, discipline and extend a globalizing world order” (2003: 208). He also sees the rise of the “new American imperialist perspective” within the U.S. state (the “democratic imperialists,” 2003: 219), one that measures danger and security threats by a state’s degree of integration into the globalization project (219-220). Stokes argues, as do others, that the “U.S. state has long been imperial,” and he redirects the debate toward the reading of “national” and “transnational” logics of the state (2005).

The recasting of national security in terms of terrorism has altered the institutional framework of the national security state. President Bush created the Homeland Security Office by Executive Order on October 8, 2001, appointing Tom Ridge to head it. The USA Patriot Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, Public Law 107-56) was enacted in late October 2001 with overwhelming bi-partisan support (and in March 2006 Bush signed the USA Patriot Improvement and Reauthorization Act). The Patriot Act granted the government “broad new powers to investigate and detain potential terrorists” (Kettl, 2004: 96), including new standards for gathering information with advanced technologies, fewer controls on how and why surveillance is undertaken, and stronger authority to prevent terrorists from entering—or staying in--the U.S. Patriot Act standards permit “sneak and peek searches” and “roving surveillance”; library, bookstore, and other third party records, email, and voice messages are all accessible under Section 215. Money laundering and computer hacking were targeted, and a broad list of activities have been criminalized as terrorist (Kettl, 2004: 96-97). Secrecy prevails in the objectives and implementation of the Patriot Act, contributing to what is called a “surveillance industrial complex.”

Further reorganization for security occurred with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in November 2002, a grouping of 22 federal agencies with homeland security functions, an initial budget of $37.5 billion, and 160,000 employees (Kettl, 2004: 49). The CIA, FBI, NSA, and DIA were not included in DHS, though part of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (which was dismantled) was passed to DHS, as was the Treasury Department’s Customs Service; two new DHS bureaus were created to enforce immigration and entry rules. The Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002 strengthened control over the entry of foreign visitors, authorizing the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System that was to register all new and continuing students and exchange visitors in its database by August 1, 2003. International students who were male, Muslim, and between the age of 16 and 45 were required to report for processing. The Act directed the Secretary of State to implement enhanced security measures in the review of visa applicant; a Security Advisory Opinion is required for some visa requests, including those for citizens of countries on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. A Biometric Identification System (finger printing and digital photographing) was also to be implemented.

The exclusionary dynamics of security practices suggest that tensions inhere in the national security state and a globalization project that promulgates freedom, democracy, and free enterprise militarily. The closing of borders to students, scholars, and the “others” identified with new terrorism standards has been criticized, especially when international student enrollments declined for the first time in many decades in 2002-03. While the motives pushing for “more open doors” are varied, the traditional public diplomacy of educational and cultural exchange is invoked as part of national security. “Our country is stronger when we welcome young people here. And we must balance security needs with our historic openness to others,” said the Assistant Secretary of State for Consular affairs in remarks to the Education Summit in early January 2006 (Harty, 2006). Kennedy and Lucas contend that the use of public diplomacy in the post 9/11 period “functions not simply as a tool of national security, but also as a component of U.S. efforts to manage the emerging formation of a neoliberal empire.” In place of the containment pursued during the Cold War, efforts now aim “to draw publics into an American designed ‘zone of peace’” (2005: 310).

Academic life has been affected by the laws, regulations, and rhetoric that support the Global War on Terrorism and the surveillance industrial complex. The negative effects on research, freedoms of speech and association, and the flow of international scholars and students, among others problems (see AAUP Special Committee, 2003), raise important issues about a troubling global strategy that isolates the United States, motivates decision making with little accountability, and denies the positive elements of globalizing trends in education, technology, and culture.

U.S.-Cuba Relations

How Cuba figures in the insecurities and hegemonic aspirations of the post 9/11 period is important, though the question is not easily answered. Unilateralism has long been pronounced in U.S. policy with regard to Cuba. For example, the United Nations General Assembly has voted against U.S. economic sanctions on Cuba since 1992, yet the sanctions continue. The demand for market capitalism and liberal democracy in Cuba also preceded the War on Terror; the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act and 1996 Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act called explicitly for regime change in Cuba. Yet Clinton’s Cuba policy was characterized, too, by the post-Cold War context, by his concession of congressional authority over sanctions regulations, and by his faith in a Track II of people-to-people exchange as the means to bring change to Cuba. In addition to the groups and institutions with a stake in ending economic sanctions and the travel ban, business interests benefited from the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act (TSRA) passed in 2000 to allow agricultural and medical exports to sanctioned countries (see Brenner, Haney, and Vanderbrush, 2002). The small and disproportionately powerful Cuban-American lobby continued to claim special access to policy making, in part associated with its place in Bush electoral strategies of 2000 and 2004.

By 2003, Bush’s Cuba policy more clearly expressed the anachronistic preoccupations of hard line ideological positioning (see Anderson, 2005). In the early 2000s, Congress made strong attempts to relax or even eliminate the sanctions on Cuba (see LeoGrande, 2006a), only to be thwarted by Bush administration purposes at odds with U.S. public opinion, Congressional intentions, and the inclusionary rhetoric of empire. As Noam Chomsky explained in 2003, the “venomous hostility” of U.S. policy over time is because “Cuba is the symbol for successful defiance” (Dwyer, 2003). With an unexpected wave of Latin America leaders who are perceived as similar threats to U.S. regional domination, Brenner and Jimenez conclude that “Cuba has once again emerged as a foreign policy concern of U.S. national security managers, and they have turned to an old strategy of containment and isolation to address the perceived problem” (2006: 15). Subversion and destabilization are also pursued, as demonstrated in the work of the U.S. Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba created by Bush in late 2003.

Charged with preparing a study to recommend measures for hastening change in Cuba, and chaired by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Housing and Urban Affairs Mel Martínez, the Commission presented its 400-plus-page report to the President on May 6, 2004. The report provides a blueprint for a post-Castro Cuba and despite criticism and opposition, its recommendations for promoting transition became regulations on June 30, 2004. The new regulations establish strict limits on travel to Cuba by Cuban Americans, students, academics, and humanitarian and religious groups. Officials stress ending the access of the Cuban government to U.S. dollars, and OFAC has aggressively pursued perceived violations of the prohibitions against travel and financial transactions with Cuba and Cubans. At the same time, the recommendations called for $59 million for the work of subversion and public diplomacy, focusing on anti-government projects and groups in both Cuba and the U.S. and the cultivation of third-country support for the Bush Initiative.

Cuba doesn’t fit neatly into the U.S. global strategy and a war on terror. Cuba remains on the U.S. government’s list of states that sponsor terrorism, perhaps as a matter of convenience and despite evidence that it doesn’t support terrorism. Indeed, Cuba has its own historically specific, national understanding of security (Alzugaray, 1995; Morales, 2004), and Cuban actions, positions, and policies—including its restrained concern over the presence of terrorist Posada Carriles in the U.S. or the detention center mounted by the U.S. at Guantánamo--are important in considering how the U.S. has framed Cuba. The incongruencies of the time-worn logic of hard line Cuba policy include the neglect of areas of cooperation and potential understanding and the devotion of excess energy and resources to isolating Cuba, in good part by scaring, confusing, and punishing U.S. citizens who wish to maintain academic, humanitarian, or business relations that are the defining features of global society. The danger that the destabilization desired but not achieved in Cuba might be more aggressively pursued may be a real one. Indeed, in fall 2005, the CIA included Cuba on a list of countries where instability might require U.S. intervention (Bachelet, 2006c).

Reframing Cuba

Creative refocusing of the U.S. pursuit of empire in the 21^st century is surely needed if the goal of human security is to supplant the traditional quest for military and economic dominance in the post-9/11 world. Critical rethinking of political economy and global politics has sometimes included Cuba and U.S.-Cuban relations, though not often (see Weber, 1999 and Kaplan, 2005). The inspection of the security frame offered here is practical, historical, and heuristic.

Little has been written about the development and significance of Cuban-U.S. academic relations after 1959.¹ A careful review of the regulatory changes that followed from the recommendations of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, and specifically the control of academic relations, can clear away some of the confusions created by Bush’s policy toward Cuba. In “The Administration of George W. Bush and United States-Cuba Academic and Educational Exchanges,” Soraya Castro provides a clear picture of what has changed and why, including the failed attempt to ban collaboration in the area of scholarly publishing. Travel to Cuba has diminished sharply and the lack of knowledge about what authorizations for travel still exist may prevent their use. According to Bob Guild of Marazul Charters, one of the licensed agencies that arranges travel to Cuba, while an estimated 210,000 U.S. travelers went to Cuba in 2003, in 2005 only an estimated 40,000 did (Guild, 2006). The number of religious and humanitarian aid groups fell from 160 to 20 (Marx, 2005). The specifics of the new regulations also provide insight into the Bush administration’s calculations of the political costs associated with foreclosing travel, as well as its substantial insulation from both domestic and international public opinion.

The burgeoning academic and educational exchanges of the late 1990s and early 2000s have been purposefully curtailed under the Bush administration. As Milagros Martínez describes in “A Brief Review of Academic Exchanges between Cuba and the United States,” cooperation between scholarly communities in Cuba and the United States has a long history and academic relations since 1959 have reflected the general state of bi-lateral relations. By the end of the 1990s, educational exchanges included study abroad programs in Cuba. The new regulations have limited academic travel to Cuba, and student travel has been severely affected by the changing rules for study-abroad programs and related licensing procedures. Marazul Charter’s New Jersey office organized travel for 60 groups with academic licenses (1,200 participants) in January-March 2003, while in January-March 2006, they report only nine groups (112 participants) (Guild, 2006).

The article by Carlos Alzugaray, “Academic Exchanges and Transnational Relations: The Case of Cuba and the United States,” addresses the problematic of public diplomacy in broader perspective. The role of academics in defining and realizing foreign policy may be more consequential than has been traditionally recognized, and as Alzguaray explains, the non-state actors that have become an important part of global politics may be especially critical for normalizing of Cuban-U.S. relations. Given the policy predicaments of the 2000s, including the U.S. government’s intended elimination of student and other educational exchanges, the real and potential responsibility and influence of academics and intellectuals merit more attention.

Despite the irrationalities of current Cuba policy, it has been hard to effectively challenge the security frame that maintains it. Looking at the issues of academic relations from the perspective of the Homeland Security state, the essay by Sheryl L. Lutjens demonstrates how power has been exercised against educational exchange and with what results. Where national “insecurities” drive a Cuba policy bent on eliminating ongoing academic relationships and the understanding they promote, there may still be ways to defend the rights and responsibilities associated with education and the production of knowledge in a globalized world.

If the Cuba policy of the Bush administration is neither dramatically new nor simply old, an understanding of the official frame of U.S. national security in the post 9/11 world may benefit from an historical look at Cuba’s foreign policy in a different era. In “African Stalingrad: The Cuban Revolution, Internationalism and the End of Apartheid,” Isaac Saney examines the historical record, memories, and meanings of Cuba’s internationalist foreign policy during the Cold War, focusing specifically on military assistance to Angola and the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale in 1988. Describing Cuba’s internationalist record and with the objective of showing the agency of a Third World state with little other than the moral motivation to send more than 300,000 volunteers to Angola (2,000 Cubans died there), Saney assesses Cuba’s presence in Angola from 1975 through 1991, including the contributions of the battle of Cuito Cuanavale to the end of apartheid in South Africa and the independence of Nambia. Challenging the silences surrounding Cuba’s contributions to southern African politics, Saney suggests that distinct national narratives render quite different histories. Recognizing the discursive framing of foreign policy, whether in the past or today, may well be the first step in rescuing motives of human security from the ravages of preemptive wars and imperial designs.

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