David Kaplowitz

Richard Nuccio used to have a recurring nightmare. At a party in Washington, the whole room of people with beer and wine in their hands would suddenly freeze and everybody would be saying "policy" at the same moment.

Richard Nuccio

In a talk at CLAS, Nuccio, a special advisor to the Clinton administration on US-Cuba policy from May 1995 to April 1996, used the policy nightmare as a segue into a sharp criticism of the administration's ever-changing Cuban policy - a schizophrenic divide that tried to both ignore and please the powerful Cuban American community.

During the two-hour talk, the former state department official provided a rare inside look at US-Cuba policy decisions over the past decade.

"If I can make any contribution to people's thinking about Cuba," said Nuccio, who is now Director of the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy in Newport, Rhode Island, "it's to try and take you inside the way Cuba policy is made in Washington."

Nuccio succinctly outlined his views on Cuba policy today, how the United States arrived at this policy over the last decade, and where he thinks the policy should be headed.

"Cuba policy today is internally inconsistent and divided against itself," Nuccio said, defining three approaches to Cuba policy that are inherently contradictory.

Within the goal of a "Peaceful Democratic Transition," exist fears that such a transition might come too quickly or that Cubans simply aren't ready for a transition, he said.

He then defined the "pressure cooker" model of Cuba policy, as advocated by Jesse Helms. "You screw down the lid of the pressure cooker. You turn up the fire underneath the pressure cooker. And when the lid of the pressure cooker blows off and the contents of the pressure cooker spray around the room, what you scrape off the ceiling will be better for Cuba than what Cuba has now."

Nuccio asked the audience to contrast the Peaceful Democratic Transition approach to the pressure cooker model, and added another variable to the mix: migration accords. "What do migration accords in Cuba require? A stable efficient government in Cuba," he said. "The same government that Jesse Helms wants to explode."

Nuccio then wrapped up his explanation of the schizophrenic nature of U.S. policy. "These two parts of the policy are at war with each other. If our Peaceful Democratic Transition policies are working, it's helping to control illegal migration between the US and Cuba. If our pressure cooker approach to Cuba is working, it will help to undermine our migration policy with Cuba."

Nuccio said that the majority of the U.S. Congress believes in the pressure cooker approach, but that during the Clinton administration, the executive branch favored the Peaceful Democratic Transition approach.

"So you have a war between different branches of the US government, as well as a war within the policy itself," he said.

Nuccio cited a "hijacking" by the U.S. Congress of US-Cuba policy in the early 1990s as the first factor leading to the policy's current state.

According to Nuccio, the beginning of the 1990s was a major turning point because after the fall of the Berlin wall, "there was a qualitative change to the mix of ethnicity and politics."

Amidst prevailing attitudes that nobody cared about foreign policy after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Nuccio said, members of Congress realized that there were indeed constituencies that would vote and contribute money based on foreign policy. And the Cuban American community was at the top of that list.

He said that although the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) - the main Cuban American lobbying group - had discovered the value of campaign contributions in the 1980s, the group's efforts to get legislation passed during the Bush (Sr.) administration were largely unsuccessful.

"It [wasn't] until they [were] found by new members eager to raise campaign funds to support themselves and their interest in foreign affairs that CANF [had] some success, passing with little opposition the Cuban Democracy Act in 1992," Nuccio said.

"The consequence of this influence was that Congress sold Cuba policy - auctioned off Cuba policy," he said, citing the Torricelli Bill (Cuba Democracy Act) of 1992 and the Helms-Burton bill of 1996.

Nuccio leaned into the Clinton administration for its lack of position on issues in general and on Cuba policy in particular. "[The Clinton administration] doesn't have a position on anything. It just had a bid, like an opening bid: 'OK, let's try this and then we'll see where we are.'"

The administration would take a stance on an issue, according to Nuccio, and constantly adjust that stance based on pressures from Congress, the media, political contributors, special interest groups, and other governmental agencies.

Primarily critical in his description of US-Cuba policy, Nuccio moved to an analysis of a more positive development.

"After ethnic politics, after the chaos of the Clinton administration, the final piece is the visit of the Pope to Cuba in 1998," he said. "That has really set in motion a set of forces that are transforming US-Cuba relations."

Nuccio said the visit demonstrated that one could oppose Castro, while still negotiating directly with the Cuban government.

"[The Pope] talked about individual freedom, the sanctity of human life, the need for democracy in Cuba. He said things in Cuba that no one had been allowed to say, and survived saying, for 40 years," Nuccio said. "And a lot of people had to acknowledge that fact."

Nuccio said the Pope's visit broke down psychological barriers to dealing with Cuba and mobilized new constituencies in the United States. And the mobilization of new constituencies is what he sees as a major factor for which US-Cuba policy needs to strive.

"The best example would be the vote last year to permit sales of food to Cuba," said Nuccio. "This is an idea that had been around for decades. It's true that it took an unusual alliance of conservative business types - farm state politicians like John Ashcroft - and liberals such as the Church. But this lobby only came together after the Pope's visit and the way in which the visit legitimized this sort of humanitarian criticism of the embargo."

Indeed, as Clinton's Cuba advisor, Nuccio tried - in vain - to push for new constituencies of businesses, church groups, NGOs, foundations, and the left. He tried all the way up to the shootdown of two American civilian planes by Cuba on February 24, 1996.

But "that's still the constituency that's waiting to be mobilized by a political leader," he said.

Nuccio thinks Cuba policy should be a top priority for the United States, although he says the "early signs" are that it won't be a priority in the first part of the Bush administration. But he does think that there is a major U.S./Cuba crisis waiting to happen, and that such a crisis will put Cuba back at the center of U.S. attention.

He said U.S. policymakers should be thinking and working on three levels in regard to Cuba: what's happening inside of Cuba, which he says has been largely ignored; happenings in the international community around Cuba; and views within the Cuban American community.

The Cuban American community shouldn't be overplayed, he said. "It's entitled to be one component of Cuba policy, but not the only one. It should be one of three."

Nuccio advocates new negotiations with the Cuban government, the support of new constituencies, and preliminary economic analyses of Cuba by the IMF and World Bank as steps to take in a new Cuba policy.

He was careful not to predict what the Bush administration might be able to accomplish, but did say that "it's way too early in the administration for something that has as low a priority as Cuba to be taken very seriously by a new administration."