The question of Guantanamo

Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations had an excellent piece in today’s Washington Post that detailed the contentious past, present and future of the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay. She presented a controversial but necessary proposition that I’ve mentioned before: the United States should return the property to Cuba.

True, the United States has already made its first steps forward in improving Cuba-U.S. relations, and these have not been reciprocated by Havana. But as Sweig puts it, returning the base:

… is a win for the United States: Aside from the boon to America’s credibility with the Cuban people and throughout Latin America, these first steps would probe the Cuban government’s apparent disposition to use the base as a point of contact with the United States — and gauge the regime’s willingness to move the ball forward even more.

At a global level, the property has been a symbol in the last several years as “Gitmo,” the most physical representation of the previous U.S. administration’s policies that drew criticism domestically and internationally. But for Cuba, Guantánamo has been a symbol for decades of the power dynamics in the relationship between the two countries. The United States forced Cuba to accept its presence there as a precondition for independence, agreeing to pay a measly $4000 per year rent in return. Cuba has not accepted a dime of rent from the United States since 1959, out of principle.

“Giving it back” would open the possibility for expanding the conversations that occur at the border of the base monthly. A transition period as the property readies and begins to switch hands would be the perfect shoulder-rubbing circumstances to discuss issues beyond perimeter security, which has been the main topic between the nations for years at the base. The gate talks could get into how the base will be used in the future, and how the respective militaries could cooperate on hemispheric security issues like drug and human trafficking, for example.

As President Obama now begins to consider continuing some of the military trials at Guantánamo Bay, it is becoming clearer that the general transition process will be a long, gradual one and that turning the base over to Cuba would be similarly so—a good thing for a relationship that will certainly need the time to heal.