As President Barack Obama seeks to ease the trade restrictions between the United States and Cuba, we asked alumnus Piero Gleijeses (PhD in Political Science, 1972), Professor of American Foreign Policy at Johns Hopkins University and long-time scholar of Cuban foreign policy, how the upcoming US elections might influence US-Cuban economic relations.

“Obama is doing everything he can. He is nibbling at the edges of the embargo but he can’t lift it. There is a majority in Congress for lifting sanctions, just as there is a majority of US public opinion, but things are bottle-necked by the Republican leadership.”

“A lot will depend on the US elections. With the possible exception of Kasich, if a Republican wins the presidency, rapprochement will be put on ice. Hillary Clinton would largely continue Obama’s policies, although she would proceed even more cautiously.”

“The Cuban embargo is a policy that has completely failed, and which has become counter-productive for the US government. My hope is that when Raoul Castro steps down, there will be a transition to a political democracy designed by the Cuban people, and which retains the achievements of the Cuban Revolution, notably in health and education.”
 

Piero Gleijeses’ Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991 (Chapel Hill, 2013), won the 2014 Friedrich Katz Prize from the American Historical Association.