Learning to Salsa: New Steps in U.S.-Cuba Relations

(Paperback)

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As longtime U.S. diplomats Vicki Huddleston and Carlos Pascual make painfully clear in their introduction, the United States is long overdue in rethinking its policy toward Cuba. This is a propitious time for such an undertakingthe combination of change within Cuba and in the Cuban-American community creates the most significant opening for a reassessment of U.S. policy since Fidel Castro took control in 1959. To that end, Huddleston and Pascual convened opinion leaders in the Cuban American community, leading scholars, and international diplomats from diverse backgrounds and political orientations to seek common ground on U.S. policy toward Cuba. This pithy yet authoritative analysis is the result.

Reviews

"Through this project, Huddleston and Pascual present a pragmatic policy strategy
for U.S. relations with Cuba. They put forth a well-grounded road map for effective
engagement that would improve our ability to broadly advance U.S. interests, from
human rights to security and commercial opportunities. This book is excellent
reading for policymakers, analysts, practitioners, and students of U.S.-Cuba affairs." Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations

"A thought-provoking, timely, and original contribution from two of America's
most impressive public servants and foreign policy practitioners. Our nation has
an opportunity to reassess and reshape our policy toward Cuba. In this engaging,
forward-looking book, Vicki Huddleston and Carlos Pascual show us how." Thomas "Mack" McLarty, White House Special Envoy for the Americas, 199698

"Stemming from a highly creative, original and yet rigorous methodology, this
book provides a practical blueprint for a new U.S. policy of engagement toward
Cuba. If adopted on the terms suggested by Pascual and Huddleston, that policy
would serve both the interests of the Cuban people and American diplomacy; as
a bonus it would also remove a traditional cause of uneasiness in the relationship
between the U.S. and many of the other Latin American republics." Ernesto Zedillo, Director, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization,
and President of Mexico, 19942000

"Somehow, to the amazement of all involved, the Right, the Left, and the Center
came to the Brookings table to forge a road map out of the fifty-year quicksand
bog of U.S.-Cuba relations. Just how Carlos Pascual and Vicki Huddleston
assembled us all remains a mystery, but the result is an undeniable breakthrough:
a concrete, pragmatic blueprint for a future with Cuba in which the United States
recuses itself from its role as the Castros' Goliath, while averting an even worse
outcome: irrelevancy. Hallelulah.... Adelante!" Annie Bardach, University of CaliforniaBerkeley and author of Without Fidel:
A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana, and Washington

Author Bio

Vicki Huddleston is U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for Africa. Before taking this post, she was codirector of the Brookings Project on U.S. Policy toward Cuba in Transition, 2007-09. A veteran diplomat, she was head of the U.S. mission in Cuba from 1999 to 2002.Carlos Pascual, now U.S. ambassador to Mexico, was vice president and director of foreign policy at Brookings Institution, 2006-09. He also has served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and is coauthor of Power and Responsibility: Building International Order in an Era of Transnational Threat (Brookings, 2009).