Washington-Miami-Havana 1999-2009: Towards the End of a Ménage à Trois?

Abstract

Although comparatively recent immigrants and a very small group of hardly more than 1.3 million, Cuban Americans have been very influential in Washington’s confrontational policy toward Cuba over the past thirty years. While the end of the Cold War should have undermined the rationale for the embargo, they maintained a hard line on Cuba and proved quite convincing in their arguments with both the Clinton and the George W. Bush Administrations. This piece focuses on the past decade and will explore Washington’s continuing hard line toward Cuba as well as the serious challenges this posture is facing today. Increasing pressure from competing powerful lobbies to end the embargo, a growing uneasiness in Congress with the policy’s failure, a severe split within the Republican party over the issue, and a declining radicalism among younger Cuban Americans and more recent Cuban immigrants, all tend to signal a change in Washington’s Cuban policy in the near future, and with it a redefinition of Cuban American influence