The surprise decision to re-establish relations with communist Cuba after half a century is another inexplicable U.S. course change that sheds no new light on the Obama administration's haphazard foreign policy, former House Intelligence Chairman Pete Hoekstra tells
Newsmax TV.
"I'm still trying to grasp exactly what the Obama foreign policy is," Hoekstra, a Republican from Michigan who served in Congress from 1993 to 2011, told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner on Wednesday in a segment also featuring Alina Hernandez, a Newsmax editor, veteran South Florida journalist and Cuba native.
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Under a deal announced by President Barack Obama on Wednesday, the two estranged countries will
exchange prisoners and re-open their respective embassies — shuttered since not long after communists led by Fidel Castro overthrew Cuba's U.S. backed-government in 1959 and allied with the Soviet Union.
The longtime U.S. economic embargo against the island remains in place, but Obama said he hopes to see Congress begin talks to lift it.
Some in Congress are already
attacking the deal — negotiated in secret over the past 18 months — as a giveaway to the country's regime for few, if any, tangible concessions on political liberties, freedom of the press and human rights.
"There are many in Congress, on a bipartisan basis — whether it's [Florida Republican] Sen. [Marco] Rubio, [New Jersey Democratic] Sen. [Robert] Menendez — who believe that this was the right policy that we've been engaged in, and that it should be continued and ultimately it will work," said Hoekstra.
"Consistently this president has made dramatic shifts in our foreign policy — foreign policy that has effectively worked, and his new policies have not worked out that well," said Hoekstra.
"Whether it's in Libya, whether it's in Egypt, whether it's in Iraq, whether it's Syria, Russia, Ukraine, the president's sharp shifts seem rather random. They are hodgepodge, and now this new curve ball comes in with a rapprochement to Cuba."
"We've got to take a look at this, we've got to digest it," said Hoekstra, "but right now I'm just concerned that this president is … looking for an American success in foreign policy and he's grasping for straws without any real strategy."
"The question now will be, where will this policy lead, and will it actually strengthen the dictatorship … and the brutal regime that we have in Cuba, or will it lead to more openness?" said Hoekstra.
He said he hopes to see in Cuba the flourishing of democracy that transformed eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
"But we're going to have to dig deeper, peel back the layers, and see exactly what types of conditions the president put on this opening-up with Cuba," said Hoekstra. "How much openness will the Cuban regime allow its people to have? Will it foster an environment where we really can have change on the island?"
Hoekstra said that in "too many cases," the Obama administration has "engaged with people who were our enemies, and in exchange for that engagement we've received nothing in return."
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