Following the Cuban revolution in 1959 which brought the brutal communist dictator Fidel Castro to power, Canada and Mexico were the
only two countries in the hemisphere not to break relations with Cuba. Canada's foreign policy is generally incoherent and often works at cross-purposes to that of our strongest ally, the United States, but with Cuba it achieves new lows.
This is not a favorable foreign policy history for a full democracy such as Canada. Strong and positive diplomatic statements can be made by breaking off relations with rogue nations such as Cuba. Indeed, as a counterfactual, one wonders if Castro's grip on power in the years following the start of his dictatorship could have been lessened had Canada stood by other nations in the western hemisphere and vigorously opposed the regime change. As is too often the case, Canada sometimes acts incorrectly merely to oppose other nations (particularly the United States), and thus sometimes displays irrationally contrarian foreign policy tendencies.
In January 1997, then Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy
paid the "highest level Canadian visit to Cuba since 1976." During his post-trip interview with PBS Newshour, Axworthy stated that the purpose of his trip was "to follow through on an engagement to see if we could help assist in changes taking place in that country, to open up a dialogue on human rights issues ... it was primarily to open up a dialogue to see if we can support and produce changes that would open the system up." Of note, American President Clinton and Senator Helms expressed serious doubts about the utility of Axworthy's trip.
Axworthy went on to state that the process leading up to his trip "started with an invitation from the Cubans to hold a series of discussions. And during those discussions over the past several months we put on the table that they would have to take into account human rights questions. They agreed to do that. We have now established some very concrete measures ... I believe that there are some changes taking place ... at least we're making an effort, and I would say we believe that it's a more effective way of doing it than isolating Cuba totally from the rest of the community." The interviewer -- Margaret Warner -- was apparently not convinced by Axworthy, and replied: "Do you think there's any chance that Canada is perhaps being naive here? I mean, you're going to give Cuba a great deal in the way of additional investment and other kinds of assistance, I think some medical assistance. Are you convinced that this is in good faith on the Cubans' part?"
So the question is whether Canada's foreign policy towards Cuba has been naive, and more likely incoherent and ineffective? Have any substantial governance and freedom improvements occurred in Cuba over the past 15 years, or since the transition of power from Fidel Castro to his brother Raul in 2006. Some believed that Raul Castro was a more moderate leader, and would move towards freeing the Cuban people. While there are mild economic reforms
taking place (Cuba's
per capita GDP grew by almost 60% between 2001 and 2010 in constant dollar terms), there has been
no substantial improvement in the quality of governance or on human rights issues. In this sense, Cuba is following the well-established Chinese model of wealth creation without democratization. And as poor as Cuba is, its per capita GDP is still 70% higher than that of China.
The danger to the West is that the ruling powers in Cuba become increasingly enriched through these economic reforms that do not correspondingly threaten their hold on authority, making longer term governance and human rights reforms even harder to make. Increasing the wealth of authoritarian regimes with a history of negative geopolitical activism, as Cuba has routinely displayed in Angola and elsewhere, is also a military threat to western democracies and their allies. We've seen this before
in China, where the West dutifully followed the politically correct line of promoting and contributing to economic reforms with the vague hopes that other -- more important -- democratic reforms would naturally follow. Foreign policy realists were rightfully skeptical, while the utopian geopolitical dreamers and opportunistic corporatists clapped their hands in glee.
As expected, the foreign policy realists were right. If we examine the
World BankWorldwide Governance Indicators since 1996, we see no general evidence of any substantive improvements in Cuba's governance over this period. Cuba's government effectiveness remains in the 45th percentile compared to all other nations, rule of law is in the 35th percentile, while its regulatory quality rank has fallen by about half down to the 5th percentile. Similarly, this island nation's voice and accountability rank is below the 10th percentile.
The
Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International tells a similar story. Cuba is corrupt and has not become less corrupt since 2004. Cuba has one of the least free press systems, ranked 167th by the
Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Indices, and it is not improving. Of course, Cuba is an authoritarian regime, ranked 126th on the
Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index behind nations such as Russia and Nigeria, and barely ahead of Rwanda and Angola.
In particular, one notes just how poor Cuba's freedom and governance indicators are compared to those of the United States and Canada. When coupled to
recent revelations of arms shipments between Cuba and North Korea, the data indicates clearly that Canada's more liberal foreign policy towards Cuba over the previous 15 years has had no positive effect on the status of basic human rights or governance indicators in this country -- nor has it improved Cuba's continuing role as an irresponsible geopolitical actor, attesting to the naivety and ineffectiveness of Axworthy's foreign policy initiatives. Rather than continue on this immature path with Cuba, Canada not only needs to align its stance towards Cuba with the United States, but also work convincing the Americans to re-adopt a tougher stance, especially with regard to travel and economic sanctions.
