Word: erikson
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...democratic norms like multiparty elections and free speech. OAS officials say privately that even human-rights groups that deplore the embargo have warned the organization not to betray the 2001 charter. "This time, the U.S. position is actually much closer to the default position of the OAS," says Daniel Erikson, a senior associate at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington and the author of The Cuba Wars, "while it's countries like Nicaragua and Honduras that look like they're trying to paint outside the lines." (Read TIME's brief history of U.S.-Cuba relations...
...region as a whole. "To have in place a Cuba travel policy that privileges just one small segment of the population," says Birns, "suggests you're still catering to politics in Miami," where the powerful Cuban exile lobby has long dictated the U.S.'s Cuba policy. Says Daniel Erikson, a senior analyst at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington and author of The Cuba Wars: "Rather than letting Obama look as though he's seizing the initiative on Cuba, it makes him look as if he's reacting to a political landscape set up by others." (See a young Cuban...
...that the embargo gives Obama and the U.S. as much leverage as they might think. What Obama will find in Trinidad is that the embargo is "the single most unpopular policy in the hemisphere," says Erikson. And with or without democratic reform, Cuba is being brought back into the Latin American fold; last year it was invited into the Rio Group, one of the region's major organizations. Still, Erikson adds, most of Latin America has a positive impression of Obama, which will make it harder for the Castros to ignore or even rebuff his overtures. "They recognize that Obama...
Experts like Erikson acknowledge that Obama has domestic political constraints, including the staunch opposition of Cuban-American pols like New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez and Florida Senator Mel Martinez to the bill that would end the travel ban. But even they know momentum is building inside the Beltway, as prominent Senators like Indiana's Richard Lugar now argue that the Cuban embargo has been a failure. Obama didn't need the once indispensable Cuban-American vote to win Florida's critical electoral votes in last year's presidential race, and the Cuban-American Foundation - a once hard-line exile group...
More important, getting Cuba right could resonate for Obama well beyond the Florida Straits. "Obama has made it very clear to the world that he cares about how U.S. foreign policy is perceived around the globe," says Erikson. "Given that the embargo is one of the most unpopular policies the U.S. practices in the world, with the United Nations voting 185 to 3 last year to condemn it, he risks making his Administration look a lot like the Bush Administration if he hangs on to it." That may not be the conclusion Obama comes to this week...