President Barack Obama declined Friday to say where he expects Cuba to be by the end of his presidency, after his decision to open formal relations with the country, but he did assert that the new policy will result in change.
“It would be unrealistic for me to map out exactly where Cuba will be. But change is going to come to Cuba,” Obama said at his end-of-the-year press conference. “It has to.”
“They’ve been reliant for years on subsidies from the Soviet Union and then on subsidies from Venezuela. Those can’t be sustained,” he continued. “And the more the Cuban people see what’s possible, the more interested they are going to be in change.”
“It could happen fast. It could happen slower than I would like,” he concluded. “It’s going to happen and this change in policy is going to advance that.”