The Biden administration is getting something right on foreign policy at the very end:
Less than a week before leaving the White House, President Joe Biden is lifting the state sponsor of terrorism designation for Cuba, nearly four years to the day from when President Donald Trump, in one of his own last acts in office, put Havana back on the list.
Removing Cuba from the state sponsors list is the right decision, but it should have been made years ago. The Trump administration’s designation was wrong on the merits, and everyone could see that it was done at the last minute to box the next administration in. That move succeeded in large part because Biden and Blinken didn’t want to be attacked for being “weak,” and so they kept in place punishing sanctions that hurt the Cuban people out of political cowardice.
This has been the story of Biden’s foreign policy on many issues. The Biden administration failed to reverse Trump policies and decisions that they knew to be wrong, and they left cruel sanctions in place that they should have lifted. Now they are very belatedly doing the right thing on Cuba just days before Trump returns.
It is all but guaranteed that Trump and Rubio will add Cuba back to the list as soon as they can. Rubio will likely promise as much during his confirmation hearing. Biden will still be attacked by hawks, including those in his own party, but the Cuban people will receive no tangible benefit. The hardliners in the Trump administration will probably make a point of increasing sanctions on Cuba once they are in power.
Read the rest of the article at Eunomia
Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.