President Biden has many difficult problems to address but has said that he wants to pursue a collegiate strategy with partners around the world. By any measure, a unilateral policy that has failed for over 60 years, and which has demonstrably not helped the Cuban people requires urgent review.
In the dying days of the Trump Presidency, the US State Department designated Cuba a ‘State Sponsor of Terrorism’. Regrettably, the measure will slow efforts by the Biden administration to take a calibrated approach to gradually improving US-Cuba relations.
The decision to do so was made by the outgoing US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, with little external consultation and after months of legal review. It is, by any measure, hard to justify as anything other than a throw of the political dice by someone who believes himself to be in the running as the next Republican Presidential candidate.