U.S.-Cuba relations: a look ahead

(Vatican Radio)  Following the joint announcement by Washington and Havana that they'll resume full diplomatic relations in early July, the next expected Cold War political iceberg to melt will be the total U.S. trade embargo. James Blears reports on the dawn of a new era.

Listen to James Blears’ report:

 
The United States severed diplomatic relations with Cuba on January 3rd 1961. Now 54 years later,  both have announced embassies led by Ambassadors, will be re-opened next month.

The unthawing of this lingering slither of Cold War permafrost paradoxically came last December,  when Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro sat down and talked,  stage left, at the Summit of the Americas in Panama.  

Since  then, Assistant Secretary of State and chief negotiator of the U.S. Mission to Cuba, Roberta Jacobson, has said that U.S. diplomats in Cuba will operate like other embassies in somewhat restricted environments.  While the Cubans are still far from happy with what they insist is cordial and generous support for opposition groups by Washington . But... pragmatism has found a way past these outstanding political splinters erupting from long standing flaws.

The remaining major obstacle is the Total Trade Embargo, which is gradually being relaxed by the United  States...but it is still sticking up like a sore thumb, preventing a fulsome handshake.

The U.S. Congress will be kept fully informed by the White House and the State Department of developments to end a conflict of ideologies - which will continue to diversify and differ for quite some appreciable time to come. But both sides of the previous impervious divide, are slowly learning to live together in less hostile and wary suspicion, with an aim to a moderately tolerable coexistence.