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What Logic is Driving Joe Biden’s Cuba Policy?
23 February, 2022. 5pm GMT
Professor William M. LeoGrande, American University, Washington DC.
During the 2020 presidential campaign, Joe Biden criticized Donald Trump’s sanctions and promised to re-engage with Cuba. Once in office, however, Biden did nothing for the first six months. It appeared that domestic politics—especially Democratic loses among Latino voters in south Florida in 2020 and the influence of Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ)—were dictating policy. The protests in Cuba on July 11, 2021, pushed Cuba to the top of Biden’s foreign policy agenda, raised the domestic political cost for Biden to take any positive steps to improve relations, and rekindled in some U.S. officials the 62-year old dream of regime change. As Biden begins his second year in office, is his Cuba policy being driven by domestic politics or hopes of finally rolling back the Cuban revolution?
William Leogrande is Professor of Government and a specialist in Latin American politics and U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America. He has been a frequent adviser to government and private sector agencies. He has written five books, including Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977 – 1992. Most recently, he is coauthor of Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana. Previously, he served on the staffs of the Democratic Policy Committee of the US Senate, and the Democratic Caucus Task Force on Central America of the House of Representatives.
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