Before Obama restored ties to Cuba, he ended an inventive U.S. effort to promote freedom.
There was an odd sight over John Kerry’s shoulder as he stood in the Havana sun Friday. At a flagpole in front of him, U.S. Marines were raising the Stars and Stripes to mark the return of a U.S. embassy to Cuba after 54 years. Choreographed and solemn, that was the scene that U.S. and Cuban leaders wanted the world to see.
Behind Secretary of State Kerry, though, was a peculiar sea of other flagpoles, tall and empty, steel spires rising from nowhere. These were visible in photographs splashed across world news but little noted. Which is unfortunate. Because those steel poles are a reminder of an unusually creative and bold chapter in recent U.S. diplomacy—and one the Obama administration ended.
In 2006 the U.S. faced a challenge. For nearly 30 years it had been operating a quasi-embassy in Havana, known as an Interests Section, from the same building that housed the U.S. Embassy before the 1961 break in formal diplomatic ties. The Bush administration wanted to support liberalization by aiding the victims of the Castro regime, including labor activists and journalists and those punished for trying to worship, work or travel freely. But U.S. officials were largely confined to the Interests Section, barred from freely meeting the public or communicating through the state-controlled media.