Stop Shackling America's Interests with Cuba to Fidel and an Anachronistic Cold War Past

When Fidel Castro dies, something fascinating will happen in America. The History Channel will run extensive coverage of Castro's life. CNN will air over and over again profiles of Castro and the many American presidents he outwitted and survived. Every major network, even Fox, will be obligated to remind Americans of how big a personality and player Castro was on the world stage.

We will see replays of the Kennedy-Khrushchev standoff over the Cuban missile crisis. People will learn about Batista and the fact that the pre-Castro Cuba was a playground for gambling, drugs, prostitution, and organized crime. They will learn about the failures of Communism, Castro's battles with intellectual and political dissidents -- but they will also learn than Cuba today is not what Cuba was yesterday.

Today, Cuba exports doctors and not arms. Today, there is a Benetton store in downtown Havana, Venezuela and China are Cuba's largest economic partners, and the Cuban economy grew by approximately 10% last year -- with little of that driven by US economic interests.

They will learn a lot about Fidel Castro -- and whether people find him admirable in some ways or despicable -- most young Americans who have no tangible memory of the hottest parts of the Cold War will sense that one of the last giant personalities of the last century just passed.

And then they will learn how a small cabal of Miami-based Cuban-Americans manipulated laws and our institutions to wage a personal war against Castro and sacrificed core American interests in doing so. It is stranger than fiction when one realizes that a grandson of Batista is now on the Florida Supreme Court and has allegedly helped the most extreme, violent Cuban Americans escape indictment. And that two nephews (by former marriage) of Fidel Castro represent their Florida constituents in the US Congress reflects the oligarchical realities of political power in America and in Cuba.

Almost every assessment of US-Cuban relations feels an obligation to mention Fidel, or to mention the dissidents in jail today, or to start with a discussion of whether the current Cuban government will survive a transition to something beyond Fidel Castro or not.

We need to make judgments about the future course of US-Cuban relations according to our parochial interests today -- and to realize that commerce, travel, the exchange of people, ideas, facebook commentary, and money are powerful empowering forces that cannot make the current situation worse than it is. In fact, there is every indication that ending the travel and economic embargo of the United States would open many new positive and constructive possibilities both within Cuba and between Cuba and the United States.

We have been lousy at trying to script a regime strategy for Cuba. We need to stop it -- and stop thinking about it and let Cubans determine their own course, which I think America can softly and positively influence if we stop trying to demean and humiliate that nation.

The Miami Herald in a lead editorial today, "More Remittances, Travel for a Free Cuba -- Our Opinion: US Can Help Break the Isolation Imposed on Cuban People," speaks to this logic:

The U.S. government should do more to break the regime's imposed isolation of the Cuban people. How will civil society grow without outside resources and contacts? How will Cubans, including government and military officials, overcome their fear of change?

More family travel and cultural and academic exchanges would open a world of information and supportive contacts for Cubans on the island. More remittances would help sustain political prisoners as well as Cuban democrats stripped of jobs. This would allow Cubans to compare democracy and free markets to the regime's alternative.

President Bush should take the advice of experts like Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa, who lived the transition to democracy in Eastern Europe, and most Cuban dissidents including hard-liner Martha Beatriz Roque. All push for more openings, travel and contact with Cuba. It is no accident that Cuba and North Korea are the longest-lasting dictatorships left. Both have used isolation to keep people enslaved.

After Fidel Castro dies, Cubans will have a chance to shape their destiny. Opening up to Cuba now will encourage a transition to freedom.

As much as I generally support the objectives and policy targets of the Miami Herald editorial, I do find it odd that the blame for Cuba's isolation is placed on the Cuban government. It is America that has maintained an ineffective embargo.

Last I looked 184 nations voted at the UN against the embargo -- and are taking advantage of America's absence in Cuba's economic life.

-- Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note

Comments

[dougbob]

the even more dangerous part of this Cuba policy is what it will reap if and when the current government falls from power. Anybody who thinks the anti-Castro forces based in the US will be welcomed back with open arms is drinking the same koolaid that the Neocons were swilling back when Sadam Hussein supposedly had weapons of mass distruction. Send in the Miami Cubans to take over and there will be civil war. Send in troops to "stabilize" the country and you will have an insurgency that could potentially destabilize the entire region.
The only road towards creating a stable post Castro Cuba starts and ends with trade and cultural relations. We have a simple choice: we can bomb them with ipods now or be forced to drop real bombs later.

[Tankan]

It's time the bullying of Cuba came to an end, it's time for the imposed hardship and the double standards to end. The USA happily embraces China for example, yet tries to break the spirit of Cuba, a country who has harmed no one, its only crime is that it dares to be different. There are no mass public protests demanding political change and despite their national poverty they have a welfare system that would shame the wealthy governments of the world, they care about their people. Enough is enough, it's now time for the world to stop behaving like schoolyard bullies, and extend the hand of friendship to their neighbour. Regardless of the political system in place, Cubans will still be Cubans, the excellence of their cigars shall remaain the same, they shall still be the same friendly people they have always been. It's time the USA in particular stopped living in the past!

[IvanJalopkin]

The whole Cuba/Castro thing was mishandled from the very begining in 1959 ... The only reason we agreed to help Castro oust Batista and his band of Marxist Thieves was that we were hoping that Cuba would become the 50th. State, or at least a Protectorate like Puerto Rico, and that because it is a slightly better Communications Window than we ended up with in Aricebo , Puerto Rico ... and it makes a better Base of Operations for our National Defenses around the Gulf of Mexico ... Castro, like so many other Cubans wanted to be free, and NOT another 3rd. World Puppet Regime ... Angry that he didn't run groveling and begging for further assistance and offer to join the united states to get it, the government imposed an unjustified and stupidly short-sighted Embargo on Cuba ... The Russians offered help to make Cuba stronger and better able to feed and provide for the people of Cuba, without Castro's having to sign away the Farm and Cuba's losing it's own National Identity ... Castro is nothing like what he has been made out to be in the Liberal controlled Media in the US ... The Embargo was a stupid, kneejerk reaction that has hurt the Cubans especially and many amerikans as well ... Equally stupid, is the government's idea of giving up the Base at Guantanamo Bay ... Soon as we leave there, it won't be the Russians that move back in, but the Iranians who will come to roost ... We need to end the Embargo, admit we made a stupid mistake, and give up all ideas of moving out of Gitmo ... One idiotically terrible mistake with Cuba was more than enough ... I have always been an ArchConservative, somewhere to the Right of John Wayne, though what I have said here probably doesn't sound that way, but it is a matter it is a matter of what is Fair, Intelligently, and Economically best for all concerned .......

[TekBoss]

See! There you go using BIG words. You know the neo-con right wingers can't understand big words!

Try this. Castro irrelevant. Cuba Good! Cigars good! Soviet Union gone. Let's vacation in Cuba!!!

That might work.

Or better yet, tell them there is cheap labor available there.

[ConcernedAboutRFuture]

I wouldn't mind hitting up those beautiful beaches. I think it would be a great idea... one more tropical island to escape to.

I've met many Cubans in my life, and most of them have been very lovely people.

[Boris]

If trade and capitalism creates democracy in China, why wont it do the same in Cuba?

Jimmy Carter and Kissinger, at two different times, tried to normalize relations with Fidel. Unfortunately, Fidel rented his army out as mercenaries in Africa which ended the Nixon era attempt. Carter's overtures were dumped by the great foreign relations genius, Reagan.

A large percentage of Cubans would love to normalize relations with us, seeing relatives, traveling to visit friends and Walmarts in the US, buying car parts for their old Chevvys and Fords...
But...so long as the Batista Cubans, fascist pigs that they are, hold political power in Florida, everyday Cubans and everyday Americans will pay the price.

The Batistanados want Cuba returned to 1957. They are idiots. As soon as they die, not Castro, relations will be normalized

[peterg76]

Not that there aren't bad points to Castro's rule in Cuba, but the embargo was way out of proportion to the facts on the ground. Particularly since the US had run Cuba as a colony for 60 years and they shouldn't have been surprised.

[ChiMichael]

While it is understandable that the Cuban-American community in South Florida felt betrayed by the US relative to the Bay of Pigs and related attempt to overthrow the Castro government, that small minority of Americans should no longer have the power to influence US policy toward Cuba. This is a prime example of how special interests unduly influence foreign policy to the detriment of all Americans. It is time for them to get over it and move on. It is time for the US to normalize relations with Cuba.

[Poised]

The embargo has mean nothing, as Cuba trades with every other country on earth. Fidel has blamed poverty on what he calls "the blockade" as he personally pillages the economy and keeps the people serf poor. The French hotel chain, Sofitel, for example, paid something like $100 per month to Castro for each hotel employee. The state turned around and paid each employee a munficent sum of $7. At least in Havana, Cubans know they are being raped and who's doing it. Castro was listed in Forbes Magazine's annual list of "wealthiest" with $1billion in personal offshore accounts.

Benetton is a big deal? It's been there for at least eight years in the corner of Havana spiffied up for tourists. One might ask how many Cubans can shop there. A few party bigwigs. The ordinary citizens have nothing, not even freedom to discuss their situations in their own homes as a party official stands on every corner and every doorstep with a handheld computer to report instantly to party central if anyone missteps or mis-thinks.

Can you imagine the frustration of seeing your children go hungry without shoes and not being allowed to start a little enterprise to earn money? If you grow two yams, you cannot sell one, as it belongs to the STATE. You could be prosecuted for engaging in capitalism.

My friend worked for the State Department, having a career in Latin America getting political prisoners of various regimes released from jail. He reported that conditions in Cuban jails are by far the worst he'd encountered.

As I understand it, we've always been willing to drop the embargo in exchange for Castro's changing his policies, guaranteeing human rights and, yes, restoring certain real estate to the owners he stole it from in '59. Not a unique situation. When the Berlin wall fell, thousands and thousands of Germans who'd had lands and buildings confiscated by the Commies received compensation. And the Jews continue to receive compensation for various things heisted from them decades ago. Why should the Cuban people be any different?

[willo]

Leave Cuba for the Cuban's and not our mafia elite. That is what the whole thing is about. Stop this idiot embargo. We should have as good of universal health care as Cubans do.

[CriminallySane]

It's easy to imagine that if we'd engaged with Castro and Cuba back in 1960, it would be a very different place right now.

Hopefully, in positive ways.

[oldpotsmuggler]

Since I did smuggled pot in the Florida area, I worked with any number of Cubans during those years. I also did time in federal prison with too many Cubans to count, including the "Marielitos". Down on my level, and in spite of the fact that these folks all intentionally left "Castro's Cuba" for something else, there was a near universal agreement among them that our embargo was bad for the Cuban people. It was even bad for the Cuban people residing in the U.S. because they all had folks "back home" that they cared about abd wanted to help care for. Our policy was designed to prevent even that, and was very, very effective at doing so.

Here's a challenge to anyone who might be trolling the Huffpo waters. Name even a single positive aspect or outcome from our non engagement with Cuba. Because every piece of evidence I've encountered over the past thirty years says that we have hurt both sides by this patently assinine approach to foreign "relations". In fact, almost as much as Skick Willie disappointed me by not ending the Drug War, his refusal to bite the bullet on Cuba was truly an opportunity missed.

[jmpurser]

I think in many ways you can measure the time over which America has had no useful leadership by looking at our 1960's based Cuba policy.

[bethinCary]

Yes, it was an American govt. and Meyer Lansky that brought corruption and gambling to Cuba (Batiste).

[TommyMcCarthy]

Like so many other aspects of our foreign policy, the U. S. has likely missed the boat on opportunities in the "new Cuba" by remaining stubbornly wedded to a now 50-year old Cuba policy which made little sense in the first place and absolutely NONE for at LEAST 20 years..........tm