"Placations," or just overlapping timelines?

The Cuban government indicated yesterday—through Cuban Interests Section head Jorge Bolaños—that it was willing to open high level talks on migration, as proposed last week by the Obama administration. Bolaños formally accepted the U.S. offer and also expressed interest in (eventually) resuming direct U.S. mail service to the island and initiating additional bilateral dialogue on counter-narcotics efforts, anti-terrorism, and disaster response.

Unfortunately, the significance of these steps is being overshadowed and undermined by a false parallel drawn by at least four significant media sources—and probably scores more will follow in their prominent footsteps as reporting continues. The timing of this announcement is rather close to Secretary of State Clinton’s trip to Honduras for the Organization of American States (OAS) meeting, they point out. She did leave today, after all, and Cuba’s re-entry into the OAS will be reviewed at the meetings she will attend. And the United States is generally expected to face criticism from the rest of the countries present for its policies toward Cuba. Therefore, this is another attempt by Washington to placate the countries of the Americas by showing that it is making steps forward in relations with Havana—much like the lowering of family travel and remittance restrictions announced just before the Summit of the Americas.

The Washington Post, the New York Times and the BBC imply that this is the reasoning behind the Obama administration’s move; the Christian Science Monitor states it overtly.

Why bother drawing this connection? The Obama administration is dealing with the issue of Cuba early in its tenure; both the Summit of the Americas and this meeting of the OAS have also fallen on the administration’s schedule early on (within 150 days of Barack Obama’s inauguration). Even if the administration is making changes at certain times to coincide with these events, it does not mean the changes themselves are to placate hemispheric neighbors rather than to make adjustments to a policy that the administration recognizes has “failed.” The policy shift has been a continuous process: discussions began weeks ago between State Department and Cuban officials to see whether it might make sense to re-initiate substantive dialogue. Then the U.S. administration made a formal proposal to Cuban officials to open such talks. Yesterday, Cuban officials agreed. Yet because today is the day that Clinton left on her OAS trip, the media suggests that the step is a mere placation of the OAS. This cheapens the act itself, and detracts attention from the ways in which such dialogue benefits migrants and advances U.S. interests in controlled and coordinated migration, counter-terrorism, anti-drug trafficking efforts, and, of course, getting assistance directly to the Cuban people.