By Diony Sanabia
Washington, D.C. (PL) U.S. President Donald Trump’s coming into power ushered in a new weakening phase for the U.S. Department of State and, in that context, Senator Marco Rubio secured a leading role to redesign the Cuba policy.
The style of the former CEO of ExxonMobil as chief of the American diplomacy, Rex Tillerson, provoked an exodus of seasoned officials and increased the acting responsibilities of a large number of ranking officials holding direction-level positions within the federal entity.
According to diplomats and analysts, said Department ceased to be a more or less active institution that proposed foreign policy initiatives in countless affairs.
Little by little, the White House begun to impose its supremacy through the National Security Council in items on the foreign agenda.
The time that Trump did not spend defending himself from the accusations of the alleged collusion of his election campaign, he used to demanding greater responsibilities from European countries in NATO.
Likewise, he focused on denouncing the nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers, including the United States, which he finally decided to abandon in last May, while he also focused on securing tangible success with respect to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
All of which was the Republican president’s doing, according to different sources, without asking subordinates for draft documents or listening to the opinion of experts.
He devoted little attention to Latin America during the first months of his tenure, only to further the sanctions against Venezuela and to worry about the state of democracy in Nicaragua based on Washington’s wicked criteria.
Then, Rubio started to gain access to the president’s office, who gave Rubio all the space to, in principle, make changes in the position set toward Cuba after the bilateral rapprochement with the previous administration, to which the legislator opposed.
What were the reasons to act like this? And, what could the President ask in return?
Rubio could mean a vote in support of Trump within the Senate Intelligence Committee, something useful in the face of the possible outcomes of the investigation being conducted by the special counsel Robert Mueller against the President on the alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 elections and the mentioned results.
Although perhaps the head of state did not know at the time that Rubio ranked 88 among the 100 members of the Senate based on members’ assistance to vote and that he would probably not be present to support him when the president would need it.
This senator, who made all his political career from Miami to Tallahassee, in Florida, and later to Washington, D.C. based on his being the son of poor Cuban immigrants that fled ‘the dictatorship of Fidel Castro', was seen among his peers as an expert in issues related to the Caribbean country.
However, Rubio was not born in Cuba, had never visited the island and had to change in his web page, a piece of information related to his parents’ travel to the United States from the island, after The Washington Post made it clear that they had fled Cuba in 1956 during the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and that his parents visited Cuba on several occasions after the triumph of the Revolution on January 1st, 1959, without facing any problems.
A man of no success in the business circle, Rubio quickly discovered, as described in years past by the online outlet Politico and other media, the value of politics to increase his personal income rapidly.
That he has done, either through the confused practice of being both a legislator and a lobbyist, or by throwing himself to the arms of a sole multimillion contributor, Norman Braman, who has been present to bail him and his family out of every economic crisis, as exposed by the The New York Times in 2015.
As part of his first effort to change the Cuba policy in the first semester of 2017, Rubio faced the bitter resistance of American companies with businesses already established in the Greater of the Antilles.
These efforts were joined by the secretaries of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, Agriculture, Sonny Perdue, and by former National Security Adviser, Herbert R. McMaster.
Finally, all of them were invited to applaud around Trump in a theater in Miami, from where the president announced the new measures against Cuba on June 16th, 2017.
Several images showed Rubio upset for not being able to make the front line of camera shots and later, in the halls of the Senate, he expressed that the Cuba policy agreed did not include everything he expected.
At the time, the White House stated that, that was the policy of the Administration toward Cuba and that similar reviews of the policy will not take place in the future.
During 2017 and thereafter, Senator Marco Rubio was the leading instigator in Congress of the health incidents reported by U.S. diplomats in Havana.
Such stance was taken up by the legislator on what Washington and the American media called 'sonic attacks’ despite among his colleages from both parties there was and is doubt about the arguments of the CIA and the Department of State in this regard.
No credible or consistent evidence about what may have happened was presented in any of the closed-door hearings held.
No weapon, motive or apparent culprit was found. However, Rubio practically dictated to that department what to do with respect to the staff drawdown in the respective embassies in Washington and Havana, and how to effect a travel warning to decrease the level of visits by Americans to Cuba.
After the unceremonious dismissal of Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State through a twit by President Donald Trump, and the replacement of the National Security Adviser, Herbert R. McMaster, by the controversial John Bolton, in March and April of 2018, respectively, Rubio seemed to take a breath of fresh air.
According to different voiced opinions, he had his reasons, since it was Bolton who in 2002 voiced to the world, against the opinion of the U.S. intelligence community, an accusation against Cuba for an alleged possession of biological weapons, which was proved to be false.
Rubio, the main person responsible for Trump’s public ridicule statement saying that he won in Florida during the presidential elections of 2016 with 84 percent of the Cuban American vote, saw in Bolton a soul mate to advance his anti-Cuba crusade.
Thus, he took advantage of the changes in the leadership of the National Security Council to introduce in the staff of that body his unconditional Mauricio Claver-Carone, a man seen as short-sighted and not very articulate.
To the date of his appointment, Claver-Carone focused only on raising funds among credulous contributors to pay those politicians who still bet on overthrowing the Cuban government.
In the Department of State, Rubio would have to adapt to the leadership of a new Secretary like Mike Pompeo, who expressed ever since he was appointed to that position that he will give a greater preeminence to the federal entity.
When he was appointed to lead the CIA, Pompeo had the same years experience than Rubio had in Congress, although in different houses, and both had the support of the conservative Tea Party movement.
Pompeo is Presbyterian and known to be a man of faith. He has a military training and moved up the ranks to become an officer. Rubio has been catholic, Mormon and Baptist as he saw it convenient, circulated CNN in 2012, and knows weapons for recreational use only.
The former represented the State of Kansas, with a large number of farmers who have seen in the Cuban market a good trade opportunity, as proved by the active role in this matter by Senator Jerry Moran and Congressman Roger Marshall, both republicans.
The latter, Rubio represents the State of Florida, from where the main political figures demand to the rest of the Union the application of the economic, commercial embargo against Cuba.
At the same time, it is the State which benefits the most from charging taxes assessed to mount to millions of dollars, to those companies with resources to operate businesses in the island country.
Florida is also the State receiving the largest financing from the federal budget, through declared and undeclared funding, for the purpose of regime change in Cuba, from Radio and TV Marti to projects under the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Part of that money goes back to the reelection campaigns of the same politicians who propose and approve them in Washington.
Rubio discovered a long time ago that his activism in the affairs of Venezuela and Nicaragua could generate similar personal income.
In fact, he and those closest to him have benefitted from private funds of Venezuelan, Colombian and Nicaraguan groups and individuals who, like their Cuban American predecessors, finance the war against third parties from afar, but without taking part in it.
With the victory of Jair Bolsonaro in the Brazilian elections, Rubio made haste to invite to Miami relatives and friends of the current President of the South American giant to forge alliances in the struggle against Cuba.
Beyond ideological coincidence, maybe the senator has a great responsibility in bringing about an alliance between Trump and the Department of State with one of the politicians with a greater tendency to fascism in Latin America today.
That, to the judgment of many, adds on the image crisis previously earned by the current U.S. administration among Latin American and Caribbean people.
After the appointment of Pompeo to lead the U.S. diplomacy, Rubio continued to directly besiege officers of the State Department to effect new actions against Cuba, until the unthinkable happened.
The Cuban Americans in Florida lost two seats in the Federal Congress during the midterm elections of last November 6, which they had secured for years.
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who once had Rubio as a trainee in her office, retired and her political heiress was not elected; while Carlos Curbelo, after posing as the most democrat of Republicans, lost the elections to a fresh candidate who utter no word against Cuba during the campaign.
Suddenly, the former spokes person of Florida House of Representatives and former presidential candidate who was about to become ex senator, felt that his time to damage further the bilateral relationship with Cuba was drawing to an end.
Ever since, Rubio has transitioned from previously making recommendations to the Secretary of State to currently speaking on Pompeo’s behalf, sometimes anticipating to what Pompeo and those serving under him could propose or decide with respect to Cuba.
He has done so with regard to the application of every provision in the Helms-Burton Act that increases the embargo and with respect to the legal aspects of the recent agreement between the MLB and the Cuban Federation of Baseball, among other issues