US (rhetorical) attention to Cuba continues to increase

Previous posts in this blog detail the attention that think tanks, Congress and other policy-makers and opinion-shapers have given to Cuba in the past several weeks, despite the current economic and financial crisis, continuing conflict in Iraq and the large number of other challenges facing the Obama administration. Most recently, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee released a report calling for several changes in policy toward the island, the House of Representatives approved a bill loosening travel and other restrictions regarding Cuba, and Brookings Institution in Washington, DC published a report recommending, among other things, that Cuba be removed from the US list of terrorist countries.

Another interested party has added his comment to the lot: Dennis C. Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, presented this week the Annual Threat Assessment to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which included an examination of Cuba. His argument, essentially, is that the main potential threat to the United States from Cuba would be unsustainable levels of migration, but that even in the global economic downturn, Raul Castro’s regime will be able to prevent a mass exodus. Migration, then, will remain at current levels (approximately 14,000 illegally across Mexican and Canadian borders and landing on the Florida coastline; 20,000 legally through the US Embassy’s visa system). Venezuela is given much more attention and concern in the report, as are Colombia and Bolivia.

The general trend, it seems, is toward recognizing the error (made for years) of calling Cuba a threat. Yet to be seen what will come beyond the plethora of reports and rhetorical acknowledgments of the error.