As a caveat: The following profile of Donald Trump rests on just two speeches. The simple reason for this is that those two speeches were the only ones that I could identify that President Trump gave during this tenure in office specifically on Cuba (Trump, 2017, 2020). Since political beliefs are held to be issue-specific, additional speeches in which Trump discussed, for example, Venezuela (at times with only occasional references to Cuba) or Latin America more generally were not included. The two speeches at hand comprise a total of some 5,400 words. As a result, the text source for the profile does not meet Operational Code Analysis convention, which must be taken into account in the interpretation of the results. See Chapter Three for details on Obama's profile.

In December 2014, U.S. president Barack Obama presented his ideas for a “Cuba policy détente.” His underlying goal was “to cut loose the shackles of the past so as to reach for a better future” (Obama, 2014a). The president used the remainder of this second term to implement this policy. True, Obama's Cuba policy did share certain assumptions with the policies pursued by his predecessors, including emphasizing the necessity of both domestic reform in Cuba and reciprocity in terms of actions aimed at reducing tensions (LeoGrande and Kornbluh, 2014: 400). Having said that, Obama's “adventurous” (The Economist, 2016b) Cuba policy turned out to be fundamentally different from those of his predecessors. Indeed, terminating “one of the most misguided chapters in American foreign policy,” Obama's “historic move” ushered in “sweeping changes to normalize relations with Cuba” and possibly even a “transformational era for millions of Cubans who have suffered as a result of more than 50 years of hostility between the two nations” (NYT, 2014a). LeoGrande (2020: 449) similarly refers to a “historic reversal” on par with Nixon's policy toward China.

This chapter opens with a discussion of whether U.S.–Cuba policy during the Obama administration actually qualifies as an instance of major policy change. It suggests that this is indeed the case as per Charles Hermann's typology. The chapter then explores whether President Obama had a systematic and predictable effect on the redirection of U.S. policy toward Cuba. To that end, following the “leader- centered theory of foreign policy change” with its three- step analytical framework introduced in Chapter Two of this volume, the chapter first examines whether Obama considered the Cuba policy of his predecessors as a major policy failure, which is considered as main trigger for the initiation of policy change (“triggering change”).

This book introduced a leader- centered theory of foreign policy change and applied said theory to examine changes in U.S.–Cuba policy during the Obama administration. This concluding section proceeds in three steps. It first summarizes the argument of the book. It then briefly explores the extent to which the proposed theory can account for additional changes, in the form of reversals of Obama's policy changes, that were introduced by his successor Donald Trump. The discussion concludes with avenues for future research.

Summary of the argument

Leaders are commonly associated with and held responsible for fundamental changes in the foreign policy of their countries. In this sense, George W. Bush started the war in Iraq, Chinese foreign policy became much more coercive under Xi Jinping, and Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine. However, and somewhat surprisingly, the academic literature on foreign policy change has so far placed limited emphasis on the role of leaders as key agents of policy change. This is not to say that leaders have been ignored altogether. However, as outlined in Chapter One of this volume, analytical frameworks typically combine a host of both structural and actor- oriented factors in their explanations of episodes of major foreign policy change. What is largely missing are frameworks that would allow to discern any independent, systematic, and predictable effect of individual leaders on such processes.

To that end, this volume has introduced a “leader- centered theory of foreign policy change” in Chapter Two which seeks to account for major changes in a country's foreign policy. Following the definition of Charles Hermann (1990), such kinds of changes do not come in one- off decisions nor are they confined to a specific issue area but rather comprise substantial changes in both rhetoric and actions, include a succession of decisions, and span multiple issue areas. The theory suggests that leaders have a systematic, independent, and predictable effect on the substance and the direction of such processes. Those effects concern the “why,” “what,” and “how” of foreign policy change.

The “why” relates to the reasons why leaders seek to fundamentally reorient their countries’ foreign policy (“triggering change”), which the theory connects to leaders’ diagnosis of failure of existing policies.

What a difference a president makes. For decades, the United States’ relationship with neighboring Cuba had been mired in an antagonism that dated back to the late 1950s and included the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban missile crisis, and several failed attempts to murder the Cuban leader Fidel Castro, among other things (for example, Schoultz, 2009). Then, during the presidency of Barack Obama U.S.–Cuban relations experienced a fundamental shift. Often times referred to as “Cuban thaw” especially by the media (for example, BBC, 2015; Hirschfeld Davis, 2015c; Phillips, 2015; The Economist, 2016a), the turnaround was actually much more far- reaching than the thawing metaphor suggests. Indeed, the president “ventured into diplomatic territory where the last 10 presidents refused to go” (Baker, 2014), culminating in the reestablishment of diplomatic relations after more than 50 years and the first visit to Cuba of a sitting U.S. president in Cuba in more than 85 years. One commentator even opined that those actions “finally ended the Cold War” (DeYoung, 2016). The question that this book seeks to explore concerns the role that President Obama played in this fundamental reorientation of U.S.–Cuba policy.

To some, this question might seem striking, if not outright puzzling. After all, why would policy changes ushered in by the Obama administration not be tied to the president? Indeed, episodes of major reorientations of countries’ foreign policies are often times associated with the leaders during whose tenure those changes occurred, including Richard Nixon in terms of U.S. foreign policy toward China, Willy Brandt for Western German policy toward the Soviet Bloc, or Yitzhak Rabin for Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. However, Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) scholarship, which refers to theory-driven explanations of foreign policy processes and outcomes (for example, Brummer and Oppermann, 2024; Kaarbo and Thies, 2024), is surprisingly indeterminate when it comes to accounting for the specific and distinct role of individual leaders in bringing about major redirections of foreign policy.

The previous chapter showed that President Obama played a key role for bringing about fundamental changes in U.S.– Cuba policy. By extension, it suggested that said change was the result of individual agency and leadership. However, as the literature review in Chapter One of this volume has highlighted, the Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) scholarship on foreign policy change generally places a premium on structural factors as representing the main drivers or causes of change. In a similar vein, in his specific discussion of U.S.– Cuba policy under Obama, LeoGrande (2015b: 488) refers to a set of structural factors, and changes therein, that opened up a policy window for far- reaching changes in U.S. policy. From those vantage points, Obama was not the driver of change but was rather being driven by structural factors to usher in policy change. In the final analysis, a structural perspective would suggest that any person who held the presidency from 2009 onward would have introduced far- reaching changes since it was not agent- related but structural factors that underpinned the process of change.

Against this background, the following discussion zooms in on three structural factors located on different levels of analysis that are frequently emphasized in the FPA literature as important for bringing about policy change. Those are:

• • international pressure;

• • bureaucratic pressure; and

• • societal pressure.

The discussion explores the extent to which those factors offer similar or even better explanations of the fundamental changes in U.S.–Cuba policy during the Obama administration than the one based on the leader- centered theory of foreign policy change presented in the previous chapter.

International pressure

One explanatory factor for foreign policy change frequently mentioned in the literature concerns external pressure on a country to change course (for example, Gustavsson, 1999). More often than not, external pressure is exerted by more powerful states against less powerful ones. In such hierarchical contexts, the powerful states demand that the less powerful states redirect their policies in order to align them with their own goals and interests. Another source for changing course could be external shocks. Yet there is little evidence that U.S.– Cuba policy under Obama changed for any of those reasons.

A graph superimposes the growth–decline curves of major Stirrup Rider Empires, from 600 to 1200. While being a major advance in horse riding, the stirrup just offers a short term for the intermediary phase of Rider Empires. Expansion of Islamic Caliphate was the towering event. It surpassed the Xiongnu area record. Apart from Tang, Tufan in Tibet, Liao, and Seljuk, all other medieval empires remained of modest size. In population, Song in 1125 briefly reached 38% of the world population – the largest percentage any empire has ever reached. The Caliphate altered the language mix throughout North Africa, introducing the Arabic. The Seljuks did so from Central Asia to Anatolia, introducing Turkic. The Caliphate clashed with Tang in Central Asia in 751. The forces of an empire reaching to the Atlantic Ocean confronted for the first time those of an empire that reached to the Pacific. Neither realized the momentousness of this skirmish. Western Europe developed feudalism, a maddeningly complex multistranded hierarchical order, which does away with single territorial authority.

We designate as an empire a state that stands out by area and population, as compared to most neighbors. The same population–technology interaction that enables world population to grow also enables states and then empires to form and expand, mostly by brutal force. Empires form where people are. The joint population share of the top five empires reached 50% of the world population by the year +1, and it did so on just 10% of the dry land area. The areas of top empires expanded in three phases, dependent on message speeds but also skills in delegation of power: Runner, Rider and Engineer Empires. The Rider age produced a new type of nomadic “area empires,” with low population density, in contrast with standard high-density “people empires.” The areas and populations of people empires tend to follow a square root relationship: Their share of world population is the square root of their share of dry land area.

World population growth has proceeded in two steeper-than-exponential phases, with an intervening standstill from 1– 400 CE. Our interaction model of population, technology, and Earth’s carrying capacity projects to a peak of 11 billion people by 2100. Yet, our impact on Earth’s biosphere may undo our very existence. Then projections in this book, such as a single world state by 4600 CE, become moot. Over 5000 years, the number of states has fallen and top empire sizes have increased exponentially but also in three phases triggered by breakthroughs in message speed: Runner, Rider and Engineer Empires. This approach can lead to a non-Eurocentric periodization of history, with cut-off dates at 3000 BCE, 600 BCE, 600, 1200, and 1800. Various relationships connect world population and top empire and major city sizes, but they have tended to fail since 1800, as the world becomes a single, rapidly interacting system. A distinction of Talkers, Doers, Regulators, and Followers serves to characterize the internal structure of empires. An initial human self-domestication (slavery) seems to be later followed by self-taming. Lists of world history events put the midpoint of history around 1500 CE.

What is the midpoint date in a chronological list of major events in world history? At what rate does the coverage of more distant times diminish? Analysis of five lists published from 1876 to 2016 shows that the number of entries matters: Shorter lists have earlier midpoints. Normalized to 1000 entries, the midpoint of history is around 1500 CE. All lists show fewer events per century as we move to more distant past, in a coarsely exponential way. But some periods stand out. Frequency of events shows a peak from 400 to 200 BCE and a trough from 100 BCE to 1000 CE. Inclusion of less Eurocentric lists may alter this picture. But the pattern of more entries in more recent times also fits the world population explosion: More people create more memorable events. Combining this population-induced expansion of history with fading of history over time is complicated.