Normalizing relations with Cuba could mean the end of the U.S. naval base and post 9/11 detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, according to one former Reagan administration official.
Lawrence Korb, a senior adviser with the Center for Defense Information and a former senior Department of Defense official during the Reagan administration,
told Military.com the controversial decision announced Wednesday by President Barack Obama "will probably open [the lease] up to negotiations.
The United States has maintained the 45-square-mile naval station at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba’s southeastern tip since 1903, but the communist government long complained it was a land grab,
The Washington Post notes.
According to the lease, the United States got the right to build and operate a naval base with sole jurisdiction over the area, and in return, Cuba got about $2,000 in gold per year
— up to more than $4,000 annually now, Military.com reports. The Cuban government has not accepted the money since its revolution in 1959, the website reports.
"We probably should be out of there," Korb told Military.com. "It's caused us lots of problems. It was a way for us to get around U.S. laws and traditions, which came back to hurt us with this torture thing."
Jeffrey Engel, an expert on American presidents and U.S. diplomatic history at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said it's possible "the two sides will agree to discuss this at some future date ... "
"I have no doubt whatsoever that the Cubans would like to see the Americans leave their island," Engel told Military.com. "It's been a sore point in the national psyche for the Cubans."
That said, "It seems very unlikely to me that the U.S. government will totally give up its lease on Guantanamo," Engel said. "Even with the political quandaries over the future of the prison
— no matter what one thinks of that policy
— it demonstrates there is utility to having the flexibility that goes with having an offshore site, entirely subject to American regulation and jurisdiction."
Outside the detention center, thousands of U.S. troops and some of their families live at Guantanamo Bay, the Post notes, adding the base is used regularly for training by Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard units, and has a hospital and a few restaurants.