'Trump's Cuba policy to ease pressure over Russia'

US President Donald Trump says he is canceling Washington’s “one-sided” deal with Cuba by re-imposing travel and trade restrictions on the island nation, claiming that former President Barack Obama’s policy has only benefited the Cuban side. Press TV has spoken to Dennis Small, a Latin America expert, and Brent Budowsky, a columnist of The Hill, to shed more light on the reasons which have forced Trump to make that decision at this particular point in time. 

Brent Budowsky maintains that by abolishing Obama’s deal with Cuba, Trump intends to assure his conservative base and ease the pressure he feels over his relations with Russia.

“President Trump is feeling a lot of pressure on the Russia scandal and the investigations that are almost dominating American news and American politics. He has been unable to get any legislation through the House and the Senate,” Budowsky said.

“So he is looking for things to do basically to appease his more conservative base. I think it is really that simple. This was something he could do for now without Congress,” he added.

Budowsky also described the measure as a great mistake which could hurt, contrary to what Trump claims, both the people in Cuba and the Cuban community in America.  

“I think he [Trump] did it for political reasons. I hope it won’t last long. There are a lot of Americans, myself included, including many in business, including some Republicans not all Republicans, who want the opening to continue. It was very helpful to Cuban people and the American people and generally the cores of democracy when after the agreement, there was major freedom of internet increased in Cuba,” the analyst noted.   

However, the other panelist Dennis Small noted that even though Trump has made certain mistakes in his administration’s foreign policy dealings, he deserves some credit for his efforts to terminate the disastrous regime change policy on the US agenda.

“I would agree with Brent on the question of the mistake in policy. That is to say that sanctions never worked. They never have worked. They are a totally mistaken and misguided way of approach in policy. But that may be the beginning of the end of our point of agreement,” Small said.

"Trump came into office making a number of commitments. He said that he was against the era of the regime change and overthrowing governments, which had been the US foreign policy pretty much consistently for the last 16 years under [George W.] Bush and [Barack] Obama as well," the analyst underlined. 

He further reiterated that a brief look at the history of Washington-Havana relations shows that the sanctions have always hurt the US interests more than those of Cuba.  

“I think it will be very detrimental to the United States and our foreign policy. It will probably have some economic impact on Cuba which would not be good for them. But the effect on the United States in terms of maintaining the approach which has not functioned for 50 years or 60 years now is very bad. I think that President Trump is going to have to switch gears very seriously,” Small concluded.

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