This past week has been one of great progress for U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration. Having come out against LGBT conversion therapy on April 8, Obama has now turned over a new leaf in foreign policy.
On Tuesday, the White House announced that Obama intends to remove Cuba from the U.S. State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism. The decision came after a recommendation from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and a weekend meeting between Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro.
While Cuba has remained on the State Department’s list since 1982, the State Department determined that the nation has not participated in or initiated terrorist activity in the past six months, which is a requirement for a country to qualify as a state sponsor of terrorism. The only other countries that currently hold a spot on the list are Iran, Sudan and Syria.
“We will continue to have differences with the Cuban government, but our concerns over a wide range of Cuba’s policies and actions fall outside the criteria that is relevant to whether to rescind Cuba’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told The New York Times.
But what criteria determine which countries are placed on the State Department’s list in the first place? The White House’s arbitrary definition of these countries as “perennial sponsors of terrorism” is vague and ultimately uninformative. If Iran, Sudan and Syria are considered threats to homeland security, other countries that harbor ideals of terrorism, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, should be considered such as well. The same goes for nations that aren’t located in the Middle East, such as North Korea, who threatened retribution against the United States after the production of Sony Pictures’ “The Interview” in 2014.
Obama’s primary goal in removing Cuba from the State Department’s list may be to dissolve long-lasting Cold War tensions between the United States and Cuba. The removal of Cuba from the list, therefore, is less of an action that will make a significant change in U.S. foreign policy, and more of a message that the United States no longer applies Cold War constructs and fear of communism to its relationships with other nations.
However, while demolishing Cold War ideals may be the Obama administration’s motive in removing sanctions from Cuba, the list itself speaks to how arbitrary the State Department’s system is in the first place. This classification of nations is simply another way to push our overbearing thumbs onto countries we don’t particularly like, once again making the United States seem like a sort of domineering superpower.
It can be argued, then, that Obama’s move is pure public relations. After all, the United States spent years fighting former U.S. President George W. Bush’s War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Obama administration may want to establish the image that all of the government’s efforts were worth it and that the list is indeed shrinking. However, this list of sponsors of terrorism may actually work against the United States’ reputation among foreign nations. By asserting its discretion as a world superpower, the United States may actually be exposing itself to an even greater number of threats.
Additionally, while Obama calls the evaluation of Cuba “straightforward,” many Republicans in the U.S. Congress argue that this decision to remove Cuba from the list amounts to giving in to Castro’s demands. This accusation is one of little fervor — it seems as though the Republican-dominated Congress is just looking for more ways to get under the Obama administration’s skin.
While the removal of Cuba from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism may seem trivial, the action has been 30 years in the making. Whether or not the list should exist in the first place is a question for the next 30 years.
