The Havana Note is a group blog covering various corners of the cultural, political, military and economic dimensions of US-Cuba relations. The US-Cuba field has one big dividing line down the middle making it nearly oxymoronic to talk about "US-Cuba relations" -- except as a relationship where two parties closely related historically, culturally, and geographically nonetheless have archaic, Cold War-fashioned rules of engagement with each other.
his site will provide researchers and journalists who travel to Cuba an outlet to disseminate information and perspectives learned while there. The Havana Note, which will be regularly featured on The Washington Note, will probe the current state of US-Cuba policy and whether political realities justify revising America's approach to the eleven million person island-nation.
The Havana Note is a project of the "21st Century US-Cuba Policy Initiative" based at the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program. The initiative’s objective is to take advantage of recent developments in Cuba and the United States to redirect US-Cuba policy and relations toward a more sensible, mutually beneficial direction and forge a new consensus of national stakeholders in favor of engagement with Cuba rather than the decades-old, tried and failed strategy of isolating Cuba and its citizens.
