Outdated terror list

President Obama’s decision to notify Congress last week that the United States intends to remove Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism List is yet another positive step towards normalizing this country’s relationship with Cuba. This step is a good moment to pause and reflect on both the rationale for the Cuba decision as well as on the purpose and legitimacy of this antiquated foreign policy tool.    

Until now, Cuba sat on this list with only three other countries; Sudan, Iran, and Syria.  Is this the extent of what we know about how terrorism and extremism grows and spreads in the 21^st century?  Anyone who has opened a newspaper in the last month, year, or decade knows that there is something terribly wrong with that picture.  As the United States joins the rest of the world in developing strategies to combat ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Houthi insurgents, Al-Shabab, the Taliban, North Korea’s unpredictable missile launches, and Russian separatists operating in eastern Ukraine, shouldn’t we refine our national approach to the highly publicized and symbolic State Sponsor of Terrorism List?  Or, even more importantly, we should ask ourselves whether it has any meaning at all in its current form.   

{mosads}The State Sponsors of Terrorism List is at best incomplete; at worst, it is irrelevant in a world revolutionized by technology and seized by ideological divisions. The nation-state is no longer the only source of terrorism sponsorship worthy of concern. Radical clerics, wealthy extremist individuals, and movements such as Boko Haram and ISIS that even control territory have been the most common sources of terror in the last decade.  

This is to say nothing of those countries not on the list; we have diplomatic relations with Russia, a country that sponsors private and semi-private militias to destabilize Ukraine, a sovereign nation state.  These militias have committed acts of terrorism against Ukrainian civilians and transiting jetliners.   China sponsors private and semi-private cyber hackers to exfiltrate data and infiltrate our national security networks. Further, we have just completed a series of long negotiations with Iran, a nation that has made proven efforts to develop nuclear weapons and is a sponsor of sectarian militias that threaten regional stability. What does the State Sponsor of Terrorism List say about any of this?  

So what exactly is the justification for being on this list? The State Department defines a sponsor country as one that has “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism.” Cuba was designated a State Sponsor of Terror in 1982 because of its support of armed movements such as Colombia’s FARC and Spain’s ETA, the Basque country separatist guerilla movement.  In the 1970s and 1980s, Cuba also provided troops and training for rebel forces in Angola and other parts of western Africa.  

Yet over the last decade, there has been no indication that Cuba provides meaningful, long-term assistance to illegal revolutionary or terrorist groups. Today, its involvement in the domestic disputes of another country centers on hosting the Colombia-FARC peace negotiations, with observers from Norway, the Red Cross and, most recently, the United States. Cuba’s supportive role in talks to end five decades of guerilla warfare in Colombia receives applause worldwide.  

Change in behavior—even without a change of government—has historically served as rationale for removing a country from the list. Libya’s commitment to halting its program to develop weapons of mass destruction did exactly that in 2006 at the request of President Bush. Similarly, a removal from the list can be used as a bargaining chip, as was the case with the (now questionable) decision to take North Korea off the list.

The list is important to countries. Indeed, Cuba’s status on the list loomed large in recent negotiations with the United States because it was one of the principal impediments to Cuba’s access to international institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank as well as to many non-American sources of private capital.  Cuba’s reintegration into the international financial system is in our interest.  The faster this reintegration happens, the greater the possibilities to expand and empower Cuba’s private sector and to strengthen its civil society.  

Bottom line: taking Cuba off the list is the right decision.  But that is not where the discussion of the terrorism list should stop.  We need a serious review of the usefulness of the list in a world of a thousand points of terrorism.  We live in a time in which the characterization of “terrorist or not” is no longer so cut and dry. 

If the United States intends this list to continue as an important tool to combat devastating violence, it will need an overhaul to regain legitimacy. With Cuba’s removal from the state sponsors list, the United States should seize this moment to update how it conceives of the nexus between nation-states and terrorism. The answer may well be that it is time to retire this symbol of a bygone time.

Schechter is the director of the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center. Pavel is the vice president & director of the Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security.