Cuba and the Ridiculous State Sponsors of Terrorism List

Removing Cuba from the state sponsors list is the right decision, but it should have been made years ago.

The Biden administration is getting something right on foreign policy at the very end:

Less than a week before leaving the White House, President Joe Biden is lifting the state sponsor of terrorism designation for Cuba, nearly four years to the day from when President Donald Trump, in one of his own last acts in office, put Havana back on the list.

Removing Cuba from the state sponsors list is the right decision, but it should have been made years ago. The Trump administration’s designation was wrong on the merits, and everyone could see that it was done at the last minute to box the next administration in. That move succeeded in large part because Biden and Blinken didn’t want to be attacked for being “weak,” and so they kept in place punishing sanctions that hurt the Cuban people out of political cowardice.

This has been the story of Biden’s foreign policy on many issues. The Biden administration failed to reverse Trump policies and decisions that they knew to be wrong, and they left cruel sanctions in place that they should have lifted. Now they are very belatedly doing the right thing on Cuba just days before Trump returns.

It is all but guaranteed that Trump and Rubio will add Cuba back to the list as soon as they can. Rubio will likely promise as much during his confirmation hearing. Biden will still be attacked by hawks, including those in his own party, but the Cuban people will receive no tangible benefit. The hardliners in the Trump administration will probably make a point of increasing sanctions on Cuba once they are in power.

Cuba doesn’t belong on the state sponsors list. Neither does North Korea, for that matter, but that designation doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. It would be more accurate to think of it as an official enemies list, and some states are included on it simply because they are longtime adversaries. There are more than a few U.S. clients and partners that have deserved to be on the list over the years as well, and we know that will never happen.

Whatever else the Cuban government is guilty of, it has not supported terrorist groups or acts of terrorism for a very long time. The official announcement from the White House certifies that Cuba hasn’t done any of this during the last six months, but the reality is that they haven’t been doing these things for decades. Putting Cuba back on the list was a sop to hawkish extremists in Florida, and then for four years Biden let that bad decision stand. As of late 2023, the administration hadn’t even begun the process of reviewing the designation.

State sponsor designations have always been political, but in the last decade the decisions have been driven entirely by spite and/or pandering to domestic constituencies. Adding North Korea to the list in 2017 was part of Trump’s failed “maximum pressure” campaign. That was a case of looking for anything that could be used to hit North Korea with more sanctions, and it didn’t matter if there was any evidence to support the designation. Putting Cuba on the list in 2021 as Trump and Pompeo were headed out the door was a way to sabotage any possible improvement in U.S.-Cuban relations.

The U.S. ought to get rid of the state sponsors list. The old Syrian government no longer exists, North Korea and Cuba don’t belong on it, and Iran is covered by so many other sanctions that the extra designation is redundant. Keeping these states on this list achieves nothing, and it hurts the people in the targeted countries.

Of course, for supporters of these designations inflicting pain on the people is the point of the exercise. It has nothing to do with advancing the interests of the United States or reducing the threat from terrorist organizations. It is a way for the U.S. to bludgeon countries that it doesn’t like just because it can.