[W]ASHINGTON — Sen. Patrick Leahy says the United States has been hasty in retaliation against Cuba for mysterious symptoms that nearly two dozen American diplomats have experienced.
Leahy, long an advocate for improving relations with Cuba and an active player in the Obama-era effort to normalize ties between the two countries, has cautioned there is not evidence to suggest Cuba is behind apparent attacks on State Department staff.
However, Leahy argues the United States is essentially punishing Cuba.
Relations between Washington and Havana, already chilling under the Trump administration, further crumbled in recent weeks as the United States pulled diplomatic staff from Cuba and severely cut back on consular services after personnel had a wide range of health problems.
Twenty-one employees at the U.S. Embassy in Havana have experienced symptoms ranging from hearing loss to cognitive issues and difficulty sleeping as a result of “attacks of an unknown nature,” according to a statement from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson late last month.
The United States removed all non-emergency personnel from Havana and issued a travel warning to American citizens on Sept. 29.
Tillerson said the move was based on securing the safety of diplomatic staff and noted that the country maintains diplomatic relations with Cuba.
Just days later, Tillerson announced the U.S. would expel 15 Cuban diplomats from the embassy in Washington, D.C.
“The decision was made due to Cuba’s failure to take appropriate steps to protect our diplomats in accordance with its obligations under the Vienna Convention,” Tillerson said.
“I don’t know who it is,” Leahy said. “We don’t know what’s even causing it.”
He is skeptical that the Cuban government is behind the attacks. Cuba has allowed the United States to bring in substantial resources to investigate the situation, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he said.
While he is dubious of Cuban officials’ motivations to attack U.S. Embassy staff, other actors might have an interest in sabotaging the relationship between the two countries, he said.
“Other people might have a motive in driving a wedge between the U.S. and Cuba, but I don’t see where Cuba gains anything from doing this,” Leahy said.
Overall, Leahy sees relations between the U.S. and Cuba deteriorating under the new presidential administration, which he called “unfortunate.”
“There’s no advantage for the United States to go back to the old days,” Leahy said.
Leahy asserted that the Trump administration plan to return to restrictions on travel and trade between the two countries is reactionary against the former Democratic administration.
“If the normalization was begun by anybody other than Barack Obama, they
probably wouldn’t do it that way,” Leahy said.
However, there are many prominent critics of the tack the Obama administration took with regards to Cuba, including Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio.
Rubio on Friday wrote a letter to Trump requesting that the United States vote against a resolution expected to come before the United Nations General Assembly next month that would, symbolically, demand the end of the U.S. embargo against Cuba.
In his letter, Rubio lauded Trump’s June announcement to pivot away from the policies of the previous administration with regard to Cuba.
“President Barack Obama unilaterally changed U.S.-Cuba policy, providing many concessions to the Castro regime while failing the island’s many human rights defenders and pro-democracy dissidents who continue to suffer under this repressive regime,” he wrote.
The more restricted policy toward Cuba Trump announced in June has not yet been formalized.
However, the pending changes and the chilling diplomatic ties have cast into uncertainty people with ties between the United States and Cuba, according to Margarita Fernandez, executive director of the Vermont Caribbean Institute.
The organization, formed a decade and a half ago by a Vermonter and a Cuban touring with the musical group Buena Vista Social Club, builds connections between Cuban and American people through cultural exchanges, academic research, professional workshops and more, particularly around environmental and agricultural issues.
Fernandez described the work as “a citizen diplomacy effort.”
So far, the Trump administration vow to dial back normalization efforts has not been implemented in ways that interrupt the organization’s work, Fernandez said.
However, the restriction of U.S. State Department activities in Cuba has had an impact on issuing visas to Cubans, she said. One Cuban academic who the organization planned to bring to the United States for a visiting position at a university will now likely go to a placement in Mexico.
Fernandez said the shifting relationship between the two countries has an impact on families, too, who may have relatives living in the other country.
“The infusion of the Cold War rhetoric from the Trump administration is now bringing us back decades and so it does create this emotion blow to all of us from both sides,” Fernandez said.
The situation creates uncertainty for the future of the institute’s work.
“There was forward movement, and now we’re moving backwards,” Fernandez said. “Now it’s an uphill battle again and we’re entering this nebulous political landscape where we’re unsure when what we’re doing is not going to be allowable anymore.”
