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Wickham: Obama action on Cuba burnishes legacy

President has long sought to undo a failed policy and also get Gross freed.

DeWayne Wickham
USATODAY
President Obama announces the changes to the United States' relationship with Cuba.

In announcing the most sweeping changes in relations between the United States and Cuba since the U.S. imposed a political and economic embargo against the Caribbean Island nation more than a half century ago, President Obama kept a campaign promise that finally ends the Cold War.

While what Obama did surprised many, his unexpected action was not knee jerk. The changes were the realization of something he hinted at six years ago when he said during a Jan. 21, 2008, presidential primary debate: "I will meet not just with our friends, but with our enemies because I remember what (President John F.) Kennedy said, that 'we should never negotiate out of fear.' But we should 'never fear to negotiate'." Then, as he reminded us in his televised addressed on Cuba earlier Wednesday, he had "promised to re-examine" U.S. policy towards the Caribbean nation shortly after he moved into the Oval Office.

The 45-minute telephone conversation Obama had Wednesday with Cuban President Raul Castro was the culmination of Obama's efforts to normalize this nation's relations with the communist government in Cuba — just as his predecessors have done with the communist regimes in Vietnam and China.

"We think the best way to bring Cuba into the 21st century is through openness, not isolation," National Security Adviser Susan Rice told me moments after Obama announced his decision to gut the embargo, which can only be formally ended by a vote of Congress.

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The president said the U.S. and Cuba will reopen their long-closed embassies and exchange ambassadors. Under the agreement reached between the two old adversaries, Americans also will have increased opportunities to travel to Cuba and U.S. businesses will have greater chances to do business in the island marketplace of over 11 million people.

This breakthrough came after months of secret negotiations and Obama's extended conversation with Raul Castro, which capped the talks to free AlanGross — a State Department subcontractor who has been imprisoned since 2009 for illegally carrying telecommunications equipment into Cuba — came to a head.

The negotiations, which were led by Secretary of State John Kerry resulted in the prisoner swap agreement that got Gross and a Cuban agent released in return for the freeing of the three Cuban spies jailed in the U.S. for over 15 years. The so-called "Cuba Five" were sent to the U.S. to spy on Cuban exiles who were plotting to overthrow Cuba's government. Two of these Cubans had already been released from prison.

While Obama had been prepared to take significant steps to tear down many of the embargo's pillars much earlier in his presidency, Gross' imprisonment — and the jailing of an unnamed Cuban intelligence agent who worked for the U.S. — was the "major obstacle" that stood in the way of him acting sooner to strip the embargo of most of its teeth.

When historians write about this chapter of American history, there should be no doubt that this is Obama's victory, one that was culled from his determination to snuff out this last vestige of the Cold War. This impasse that he has all but dismantled is the last brick of the Berlin Wall. It's the final pole of the Bamboo Curtain; the armistice that never came after the Bay of Pigs debacle.

"Change is hard — in our own lives, and in the lives of nations," the president said as he informed the nation of his actions. "And change is even harder when we carry the heavy weight of history on our shoulders. But today we are making these changes because it is the right thing to do. Today, America chooses to cut loose the shackles of the past so as to reach for a better future — for the Cuban people, for the American people, for our entire hemisphere, and for the world."

And this is a change that was long overdue.

DeWayne Wickham, dean of Morgan State University's School of Global Journalism and Communication, writes on Tuesdays for USA TODAY.

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