Over the weekend, Julia Sweig, Cuba expert at the Council on Foreign Relations had a terrific piece in the Washington Post, laying out the case for the U.S. to 1. Incorporate Guantánamo Bay into its calculus for a new U.S. Cuba policy and 2. Have that inclusion of Guantánamo be based on handing back the entire U.S. naval base at Guantánamo to its rightful owner, Cuba. I wholeheartedly agree with Dr. Sweig’s assessment, but I (along with Dr. Peter Hotez, President of the Sabin Vaccine Institute) add one more idea to mix in today’s Post (by way of an LTE): working with the Cubans to turn the base (and the closed detention centers) into a state-of-the art health research and treatment center. (Sweig alludes to this idea in her article, mentioning a 1961 Kennedy White House discussion). Sure, it would take some skillful and creative diplomacy but as Fidel biographer and former health adviser to President Jimmy Carter says, the idea had the support of Fidel himself in the early 1980s. It’s one more option for both a bridge to diplomacy with Cuba – and one whose benefits would produce not just goodwill but tangible results for the poorest in Latin America and the Caribbean. (For today’s Letter to the Editor in the Post, click here and for an article I wrote on the matter with Marcus Raskin in The Nation, click here.)
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