Despite the tensions associated with the upcoming 2012 election campaign in the US, a dialogue between Washington and Havana, as proposed by the Cuban Foreign Relations Minister Bruno Rodriguez, is also in the interest of the Obama Administration, which has nothing to gain from more conflicts in its relationship with Cuba. President Barack Obama's positions favoring dialogue without preconditions, increasing people to people contacts, and reaching mutually beneficial agreements on bilateral issues were never predicated on sympathy for Fidel or Raul Castro, but rather on the conviction that diplomacy and contacts between societies are the best ways to promote US national interests.

By that standard, the balance of the first three years of the Obama administration's relationship with Cuba is positive. The increase in cultural, family, humanitarian and religious travel to Cuba accelerates current reforms in Cuba, improves the image of the US in the hemisphere, and strengthens domestic political trends favoring an engagement policy that is less dependent on the Miami right and more consistent with democratic values and US strategic and economic interests.

This progress is now hampered by the demands of the 2012 election cycle. With President Obama focused on winning votes in South Florida, no one should expect dramatic changes in the White House's policy toward Cuba in the absence of a crisis. While the president would gain nothing from reversing the relaxations on policy already adopted, he has no significant financial or voters incentives to risk taking substantive steps toward rapprochement with Cuba before the election.

One issue where the likelihood for short-term progress seems to be minimal is the negotiation of reciprocal humanitarian gestures for the parallel releases of subcontractor Alan Gross and the five Cubans arrested in Florida in 1998. Washington and Havana disagree on what is implied by the principle of “reciprocity” invoked by Josefina Vidal, director of the North American Department of the Cuban Foreign Relations Ministry. According to Cuba –and I will be very glad if Director Vidal corrects my interpretation- reciprocity means what some people have called “gesture for gesture”.

Havana is ready to release Mr. Gross, an American who violated Cuban laws at the service of the U.S. government, with the understanding that Washington will reciprocate with a humanitarian gesture of its own, releasing five Cubans who were serving the Cuban government in Florida, thus violating US laws. The precedent in Havana’s mind is the parallel unilateral prisoners’ releases Cuba and the United States did during James Carter’s administration. In 1979, Havana released several CIA agents and Washington released a group of Puerto Rican independence fighters who had engaged in terrorist activities, including an attempt on President Truman’s life and a machine gun attack on the US House of Representatives.

The Obama Administration has never opposed the principle of reciprocity. According to the press reports about former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson’s visit to Cuba, if Cuba had released Mr. Gross, Washington was ready to waive probation for one of the five who will be released in October 7 and to begin a process to remove Cuba from the list of terrorism sponsoring countries.  Cuba’s response to Richardson’s visit seems to make clear that Raul Castro’s government does not consider this offer a beginning for a negotiation. Havana has denounced Cuba's inclusion in the list of terrorism sponsoring countries as a Washington's deliberate distortion of reality and a pretext to discredit its genuine anti-terrorist efforts.

Although neither government views the Five and Gross cases as equivalent, their opposing views about why their respective citizens were arrested should not be an impediment to empathizing with one another and understanding why each side's proposals are currently unacceptable to the other. Is there a way to bridge the two positions? Yes, in a context of a general improvement of the bilateral relationships between the two countries.

The problem is that today neither Washington nor Havana are willing to accept the other’s demands for the sake of a bilateral relationship free from the burdens of fifty years of conflict. For Havana, a presidential pardon of the five Cubans is not a precondition for negotiating other issues, but it is an essential humanitarian gesture. To the White House, such a pardon, and the type of relationship with Cuba that would arise from it, is unthinkable by the current electoral calculation. There is little hope for a change in these postures before November 2012.

The situation is tragic because the political incentives to resolve either the case of Gross or of the five Cubans, when taken separately from the bilateral relations, are scant. What's worse is that there is no guarantee that these differences will become more manageable in November 2012, particularly if there is a Republican victory. All the weight of fifty years of hostility between Cuba and the US has been placed upon the detainees and their families in accordance with the respective governments' political calculations.

No prisoner will be released by obfuscation. A positive convergence has emerged with Ricardo Alarcon and Judi Gross both referring to Alan Gross as a "victim" of the fifty year conflicts between the two countries. President Carter, while emphasizing that the cases are different, spoke in similar terms regarding the situation of the Cuban five. The emergence of these empathetic messages might prevent a deterioration of the situation and leave the door open to a solution when those obstacles currently standing in the way are removed or when the stakes for a general improvement in US-Cuba relations are raised.

There are opportunities for progress. President Obama’s recent statements about Cuba to Hispanic journalists could be read in a more positive light than Fidel Castro's take on it. According to Obama- “it is very hard to separate liberty from some economic reforms”. From this premise, Obama looked at economic reform as a source of freedom, mentioning the right of Cuban people “to start” their own business as a positive development that the United States could respond to.

What President Obama asked for it is already happening in Cuba. The number of self employed workers in Cuba jumped from 157, 000 in September 2010 to 333,216 this past August. President Obama could “send a signal”-to “show flexibility”. For Obama, the private sector is a source of freedom; For Raul Castro it is a development tool, part of his new economic model. Why does the American government consider selling agricultural machinery or cafeteria equipment to the Cuban private sector “trading with the enemy”? Why can’t Washington and Havana allow this emerging sector access to the US market?

The governments in Washington and Havana should think creatively about opportunities for mutually beneficial negotiations. Progress generated by goodwill in trade, travel, and fighting common enemies such as drug trafficking, terrorism, or potential environmental disasters, could create conditions for comprehensive solutions to even the most difficult problems, including the prisoner issue. 

Dawn Gable edited this article.