To join the conversation, like us on facebook at cspan history. On wednesday, president obama announced major changes in american policy toward cuba, including restoration of full diplomatic relations and easing of inking restrictions. Coming up next, lars scholes is in the history of u. S. Policy toward cuba and what he deems are the failures of 10 administrations. This program was recorded in 2009. I think there is a little truth in advertising, to begin. Im not a cuba specialist. I study the u. S. Cuba relationship. What i would like to spend about 30 minutes doing now is focusing on what intrigues me most about washingtons policy toward cuba. Thats the mental software we policy andrgird our that is what the book is about. Ist it attempts to explain what everyone agrees is a dysfunctional policy. First, as wolf blitzer says on the situation room, we have some breaking news will stop i want to talk a little bit about what president obama did yesterday. He announced a relaxation of the u. S. Embargo on cuba. This is an embargo that began in october of 1960 and was instituted by president eisenhower just a few days before the election between Richard Nixon and john kennedy. Can dick nixon asked the president to do something to show some spine toward cuba and the embargo was the stuff that was taken. I think there is a little truth in advertising to begin. I am not a cuba specialist will study the u. S. Cuban relationship. What i would like to spend about 30 minutes doing now is focusing upon what intrigues me most about washingtons policy toward and that is the mental software we use to undergird our policy. That is what the book is about what it attempts to explain is what everyone agrees is a dysfunctional policy. First, as will blitzer says on the situation room we have some breaking news. I want to talk a little bit about what president obama did it yesterday. He announced the relaxation of the u. S. Embargo on cuba. This is an embargo that began in october of 1960 and was instituted by president eisenhower just a few days before the election between Richard Nixon and john kennedy. Candidate nixon asked the president to do something to show some spine toward cuba and the embargo was the stuff that was taken. Obama, yesterday, relaxed the embargo. The announcement was the product of several factors. One of them is he promised to do so on the campaign trail. In may of 2008, when he was still trying to get the democratic nomination, he went down to miami and spoke to a group of cubanamericans and said i will relax the embargo to allow for more family visits and unrestricted remittances to families and cuba. Obama, as you know is a very bright man, but he has spent no time studying cuba, so he was told to do this. While you are on the plane, read goingthis is what you are to say to the cubanamerican community when you land in 20 minutes. What is generally believed to be the case is that mr. Obamas pollsters looked at the data from south florida where there are about 833,000 cubanamericans. Familyid they want more visits and want to be able to send money to their families and thats what he promised to do in may. And here, shortly after taking office, he fulfilled his promise to the cubanamerican community. Congress isrue that seizing the initiative on the embargo. I dont know if you saw the black caucus, six of them went down to cuba and they came back talking like senator richard lugar, the Ranking Senate republican set a republican on the Foreign Relations community committee. Jeff flake from arizona, member of the house of representatives there are several bills in tont of congress right now eliminate travel restrictions entirely and a couple of others to take other steps to weaken the embargo. Then there is the problem mr. Obama has with the rest of the hemisphere. Country that has an embargo with cuba. The rest of the hemisphere is adamantly opposed. They look at us as bullying a small neighbor. Mr. Obama on friday has to go to the fifth summit of the americas has alreadyand he been told by the mexicans and especially the brazilian president that he was going to run in to some heavy criticism in trinidad if something cant be done for the embargo. Way toe is still a long go. It could go fast, it could go slow. In his miami speech last may, candidate obama suggested it was going to go slow. He has promised to keep the rest of the embargo because he says the united rates needed to be a relentless advocate of democracy. Slowly or quickly, it is very clear that our current dysfunctional policy is coming to the end of its life. What do i mean by dysfunctional . I mean the United States and cuba have not had normal 3, 1961. Since january that was 11 president s ago. Contrast, the u. S. Estrangement from the soviet union after the bolshevik rebel bolshevik revolution and its this treatment estrangement from the peoples republic of lasted 16 and 22 years respectively, five president s. We are on 11 president s with the case of cuba and the United States has not only declined to have normal diplomatic relations with cuba for 48 years and counting, but it has spent most of the past halfcentury openly and actively attempting to overthrow the government of cuba. There is no similar estrangement and history of u. S. Foreign relations. You can go back to the days of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and you cant find a similar estrangement. Questiony interesting and the one i start out within this book is what are we trying to accomplish . At one level, the explanation is very easy. We have been trying to protect our interests. Thats what we always do in Foreign Relations. If any of you have taken poly , the introduction to poly sigh, we say all nations try to protect their interests. In the case of cuba, washington has been trying to protect economic interests. But second and much more working for more than three decades, the United States was trying to protect its security, its interests in having a secure homeland. We have been, trying to address the electoral concerns of u. S. Politicians who are seeking the support of cuban americans. Its not an accident barack obama flew down and gave a talk to cubanamericans and only cubanamericans in may of 2008. Several hundred thousand of these cubans vote in the crucial state of florida. We dont know how many vote because the registration in categorizes people as hispanic. If they are hispanic, if they say they are, it does not break adjective byanic any other term like cuban or mexican or whatever. Watched president bush snatched the white house knowsrom al gore in 2000 800,000rtant floridas cubanamericans to be. That was the election where al gore lost the state of florida and the white house by 537 votes. Or wouldow what out have done for half of those . It was a real lesson to other politicians. Florida has the fourth largest number of votes in the electoral college. The department of commerce which takes the senses in this country tells us after the 2000 census, they believe florida will move into a tie with new york with 29 electoral votes. But this is how you would explain the forces driving u. S. Policy toward any country. Economicxture of security and political interests. We have a set of tightly, tightly structured believes beliefs that control the way we act when we perceive a threat to our interests from cuba. You will work with computers. You go in in the morning and it boots up the operating system, windows, probably. A group of icons on the screen. One of them says email, another of them says web or word or excel. Think of a foreign policymaker in washington dc doing the same thing mentally. When they go into the room in a chair of the meeting says we have a problem with cuba, in just a second, what everybody in that room does is mentally move them are move the cursor to the cuba icon and click on it. Ist comes into their head distinctly different from what would come into their head of the person sharing person chairing this meeting that we have a problem with the government of france. Then they move it to the french icon and click that will stop what and click that. What i would like to do is focus on the three most important components of our cuba software. Withirst is a believe that occasional bursts of attention, we can safely neglect all of those little countries that live down there beneath the United States. We are big, we are rich, and we are very powerful. Cuba is obviously dwarfed by this continent wide country. Largernomy is 250 times than the economy of cuba. Im six feet tall. And im not a mathematician. Cuba and then think of a 1500 foot giant standing beside me. That is the economic in a comparison, the Empire State Building is 1200 feet high. So here am i and heres the Empire State Building plus a couple of hundred feet. Giantmagine this economic has used a portion of its fabulous wealth to create the most powerful military in the history of the human race. Givenaw strength has politicians such as Richard Nixon during the 1960 campaign the ability to tell voters that the United States has the power and mr. Castro knows this, to throw him out of office. That has given cabinet members like secretary of state Alexander Haig the ability to ask president reagan for a simple green light. What he said, according to nancy reagan, is give me the word and i will turn that bleeping island into a parking lot. What would seem puzzling think of this will stop 16 six feet to 1500 feet relationship, what would seem puzzling to a visitor from another planet is why, when the cubans have refused to behave of way we want them to that the castro government was not thrown out of office and cuba wasnt turned into a parking lot. How did they manage to get away with it . We could squish them easily. How do we manage to get away with it . Its costly, especially in the currency that might matter most in the end, which is global opinion. So unless there is a crisis like the cuban missile crisis of 1962, which i would be happy to talk about, this is a crisis, why bother . We have so many other important things to do. You living right now in a week where more attention has been given to cuba than any time says they shoot down of the brothers to the rescue plane in 1996 this is a very unusual moment. The first goes up to president bush, after the cold war when the soviet union was president go up to a like the first president bush, president clinton, or now president obama and say i would like to talk to you about cuba, i think you will have a hard time getting on his agenda. He has so many other things to think about. Upon unimportance is how you would explain when we finally decided we had to do something about cuba back in 1960 that we decided to do it on , with a little sneaky invasion called the bay of pigs. Give cuba a short first of attention and we can all go back to whats really important. We were convinced it was going to be a cakewalk. On the first week, the and of the first week of John Kennedys presidency in late january of 1961, the cia gave president kennedy and intelligence analysis that said less than 30 of the population is still with fidel. Population are included the negroes who will not fight. It took jfks best and brightest three months to find out they would not fight at the bay of pigs. Certainly, we could subdue them, but we are not going to be able to do it with a couple of thousand cuban exiles we trained in guatemala. We would have to do it ourselves with the marines and they might have to turn the place into a parking lot. So what was plan b . First, we went back to some sneaky ways. President kennedy went his way, but his brother, attorney general Robert Kennedy watched over a program called operation mongoose which was essentially what we would call state sponsored terrorism. Torching sugar fields, arming assassins, blowing up power stations. That slowly petered out. It did not work very well because we dont know how to destroy an economy without bombing it will stop using sabotage was very hard because the cubans are pretty good at intelligence and they were able to protect themselves. So what happened is Lyndon Johnson inherited the white house in 1963. He was very inexperienced in Foreign Affairs. He was a domestic president until he got caught up in vietnam. 10 days before he picked up the telephone and called j william for bright j william fulbright, the widely respected chair of this committee of Foreign Relations come a foreign so a southern gentleman and rhodes scholar. Lyndon johnson says what should i do about cuba . We have been trying to blow them cheap we have this invasion. What do you think i got to do . Senator fulbright began to reply and say lets not get into anything really dramatic. He didnt even get that sentence out of the end of his mouth when Lyndon Johnson interrupted him to agree with him. He said im not getting into any bay of pigs deal. We shouldsking what do to pinch their nuts more than we are doing and that has been u. S. Policy ever since. That was the first week of december, 1963 stop its what we do with insignificant aggravations like cuba. For three decades, the fight to contain communism is what justified this policy. But the cold war ended in the justification for our hostility was really difficult to continue. It was very hard to say were going to keep being angry at you because of what . Anger was with the alliance with the soviet union and it looks bad for a country that claims Global Leadership to be seen as strangling the economy of a small neighbor. And for no good reason. The soviet union disappeared in 1991. Since2 and every year then, the u. N. General assembly has voted fall on a resolution urging the United States to stop the embargo. In september was 2008. The vote was 180 523. 185 23. Israel has a separate problem with cuba and we can talk about that later if you like but the United States, israel and palau. Do you know where palau is . I had to look on a map. As far western pacific. You fly westward toward the philippines and before you get to the philippines, you stop and theres palau. It is a very small country, but it is a country and has a seat in the united nations. It does not have an ambassador. It has a new York Attorney that it hires to be its ambassador. His name is stewart back and his instructions are to vote like the United States. To two. Y its 185 not only does it look bad, but in there a lot of people United States, the left and of the Democratic Party in particular, the part that put all of this is in that campaign they dontust ran, like the embargo in cuba. If you read the nation magazine. I recommend it highly. For a really important part of the Democratic Party. They are not going to leave the party because mr. Obama does this or doesnt do this in the case of cuba, where are they going to go . Are they going to vote republican . They are going to be there but they are not going to do the kind of work for mr. Obama in 2012 that they did in 2008. So you dont want those people to wander off, like you dont want the religious right to wander off from the party if you are john mccain. First of all, it doesnt look tod to be voted down 185 three. That is bad. But second, you got significant people in the Democratic Party who do not like whats going on in our policy toward cuba. Then, you have business interests, particularly agribusiness. The agricultural business is the strongest lobby we have by far. Agriculture will defeat anyone if they are unified, and they want to sell to cuba. Riceconservative groups, farmers from arkansas, pork growers. Have any of you been to cuba . Cuba, every meal is rice and pork. They are importing their rice from thailand. Can you imagine the shipping differential from thailand as opposed to mobile or new orleans . Agribusiness wants that market back. So washington needs a good response to the center comes the second believe belief in the cuba ideology the Firm Conviction that we are responsible for uplifting cuba. I have been able to trace this back to 1901, when Congress Passed the plat amendment will stop it granted the United States the right to take over for whenever felt necessary the protection of life am a property and individual liberty. Amendmentsed the plat giving us the right to come back, we were already in cuba, having takeover taken over from the spanish in 18 8, 1901 comes the plat amendment and in 1902, we leave. In 1906, we go back. There was too much instability in cuba and people asked president theodore roosevelt, the man who charged up San Juan Hill during the spanish cuban american war and asked what are you trying to do . He was particularly a pointedly questioned before a harvard audience and here is what he said. I am seeking the very minimum of interference necessary to make them good. War,velts secretary of the man responsible for the takeover of cuba in 1906 said the same thing to cubans. He presided over the reopening of the university of havana and he gave a speech and said we are here only to help you on with our arm under your arm, lifting you again on the path to wonderful progress. To a more recent time. 1991. The soviet union has just a question while mr. Bush was walking by in the rose garden stop he said are you going to talk to fidel castro now you have been so successful with Mikhail Gorbachev . Mr. Bush paused, turned around and said whats the point . All i would tell him is what im giving you tell them to give the people what they want and you will see what you should go down and lift those people up. President bushs immediate predecessor, ronald reagan, always at first before talking to them, the cubans had to kick out the russians. Now the soviets were gone. What happened is really clear. Soviet one, when the threat disappeared, u. S. Policymakers reached into the cupboard and pulled up the plat amendment.