Revealing Foreign-Policy Blunder

By Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

... the Cuba reversal is in many ways the most revealing of Trump’s moves ... It brings together .. the worst attributes of the administration’s foreign policy: pandering to a narrow and aging but fervent slice of the Republican base; exhibiting a shameless hypocrisy with seedy criminal undertones; and, in its fixation on deal-making, confusing weakness with strength ...

In December of 2014, Obama ... made it easier for Americans to travel to Cuba and do business ... He announced that America would .. have an embassy in Havana. And he called on Congress to end the economic embargo. He had previously lifted restrictions on the ability of Cuban-Americans to visit and financially support friends and family ...

What looked like a political risk when Obama first considered it soon looked a political no-brainer ...

... Trump is embracing the same failed logic that governed U.S. policy for decades. For those in Havana most opposed to democratic change and human rights, U.S.-Cuban engagement is not a reward but a threat. The more the Cuban people can survive without being beholden to the government, the more they can communicate with the outside world (and especially the United States, where many have friends and family), the more deeply connected they are to other societies — the more hard-liners in the government will be under pressure to change ...

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/06/cuba-is-trumps-most-revealing-foreign-policy-blunder.html