For over a decade, the Atlantic Council’s project on “Reversing Relations with Adversaries” has produced studies to assist the U.S. government with the restructuring of relations with longtime adversaries. The first study was the 1995 “Road Map for Restructuring Future U.S. Relations with Cuba.” While that study’s timing proved to be premature, a dozen years later the transition to a post-Fidel Castro government is underway.Thus, the Council has prepared this guide on how to begin to restructure U.S.-Cuban relations. It builds upon the Council’s 2005 analytic compendium of U.S. laws, policies and regulations that govern relations with Cuba.

On July 31, 2006, after more than 47 years in power in Cuba, Fidel Castro ceded his government, Communist Party, and military responsabilities to his brother Raul. As of late April 2007, the 80-year-old Fidel had not appeared in public since ceding power, even at events designed to revere him.

El documento, difundido por la Unión Europea bajo el título "Conclusiones sobre Cuba", contiene una propuesta de "diálogo político integral y abierto con las autoridades cubanas¼ sobre bases recíprocas e interés mutuo" de la cual el Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba ha tomado nota y considera que se trata de una rectificación necesaria. Sin embargo, dicho documento no menciona las llamadas sanciones que la Unión Europea trató de aplicar a Cuba, injusta e irreflexivamente, en el 2003 y que desde hace dos años, por soberbia, mantiene sólo "suspendidas".

The United States, particularly the Army, has a long history of involvement with Cuba. It has included, among others, the Spanish-American War of 1898, military interventions in 1906 and 1912, the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion, the 1962 Missile Crisis, counterinsurgency, and low intensity warfare in Latin America and Africa against Cuban supported guerrilla movements. After almost 5 decades of authoritarian one-man rule, Fidel Castro remains firmly in power. On July 31, his brother, Raul Castro, assumed provisional presidential power after an official announcement that Fidel was ill and would undergo surgery. What would be the strategic and political implications attendant to Castro’s eventual demise or incapacitation? The author suggests some possible transition or succession scenarios and examines the consequences that might follow and the role that the United States might be called to play.

Cuba has remained a hard-line communist state under Fidel Castro for more than 47 years, but Fidel’s July 31, 2006, announcement that he was ceding political power to his brother Raúl “for several weeks” in order to recover from surgery could be the beginning of a political transition, whether Fidel returns to power or not. Since the early 1960s, U.S. policy toward Cuba has consisted largely of isolating the island nation through comprehensive economic sanctions, which have been significantly tightened by the Bush Administration.

Fidel Castro's depredations inside Cuba are by now well known. But less widely appreciated is how Fidel sometimes manages to imprison Cubans in other domiciles even once they've escaped his government's clutches.

Lamenta que no se hayan producido por parte de las autoridades cubanas las señales significativas que la Unión Europea viene reclamando en lo que se refiere al respeto pleno a las libertades fundamentales y, en especial, a la libertad de expresión y de asociación política, y condena el recrudecimiento de la represión así como el aumento del número de presos de conciencia.

Por primera vez sale a la luz pública lo que sienten y piensan los cubanos sobre temas controvertidos. El primer estudio de opinión pública científico que se realiza en Cuba muestra también que la mayoría de los cubanos apoyan el Proyecto Varela y las Damas de Blanco.

Es patético el papel jugado por la Unión Europea. Su actitud ha sido claudicante y servil; su actuación ha sido hipócrita y su alineamiento con Estados Unidos contra los pequeños países como Cuba es una vergüenza. Demuestra la incapacidad de la Unión Europea para articular una política propia e independiente hacia nuestro país.