ISBN : 9782296051171
WASHINGTON-LA HAVANE : UNE RELATION SOUS INFLUENCE
Isabelle Vagnoux
Although comparatively recent immigrants and a very small group of hardly more than 1.5 million, Cuban Americans have controled most of u.s. policy toward Cuba over the past thirty years. This paper attempts to explore how this lobby has managed to wield such considerable power in Washington's foreign policy circles and how it deftly played on domestic politics to protect its own foreign policy interests. While the end of the Cold War should have ushered in the end of the very rationale of the embargo, they maintained a hard line on Cuba. However, serious challenges are now looming on the horizon. Increasing pressure from competing power fui lobbies to end the embargo, growing uneasi- ness in Congress with the failed embargo policy, together with a severe split within the Republican party over the issue, as well as less radical views among younger Cuban Americans and recent Cuban immigrants, all tend to signal a change in Washington's policy in the near future and a redefinition of Cuban American influence and the "Cuban lobby".