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Time to Make Nice with Cuba?
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If Obama embraces his popularity in Cuba and abandons the embargo, the Castros will lose an enemy, the region will embrace us—and it will ruin the place.
Fifty years ago, Fidel Castro staged his triumphal New Year’s entry into Havana, Cuba, with a band of bearded guerrillas toting cigars and machine-guns. Not long after, relations between Cuba and the United States began to deteriorate. Things got bad. So bad, there was nearly a nuclear war.
Even after that threat subsided, rancor remained. In 2007, I saw posters and graffiti all over Havana denouncing el bloqueo, the embargo against Cuba. Some accused America of genocide and compared George W. Bush to Hitler.
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So it was a surprise that the first thing I noticed outside Havana airport this month was a mural proclaiming “Sí, se puede.” Just two weeks before, I had seen the same words painted on a wall in Manhattan. It is Obama’s slogan, in Spanish: “Yes, we can.”
Sí, se puede was a rallying cry for American labor unions when Obama was still at high school. Raúl Castro, brother of Fidel and now president of Cuba, has used it for years. But its appearance all over Cuba at this time is no coincidence. Obama is popular in every corner of the world, but remarkably so in Cuba. All across the island, people want to talk about him. The election of a thoughtful, amiable, mixed-race man confounds many assumptions about America.
With Obama preparing to move into the White House, Fidel out of the public eye, and Raúl embarking on reforms, excitement pervades the air. After decades of deadlock, might something be about to change?
Raúl has offered to talk to Obama. At the same time, he has sent signals that Cuba will be no pushover. Both Hu Jintao, China’s leader, and Dmitri Medvedev, president of Russia, were welcomed to Havana in November. Russian warships are currently training in Cuban waters.
Obama has vowed to keep the embargo, but to do so would demonstrate a poor grasp of realpolitik. Ending the embargo would incur no danger to America, but it would present a considerable challenge to the Communist Party of Cuba. Inside Cuban government circles, there is real trepidation about what will happen if Obama opens the gates.
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If we make nice with Cuba...we may have to make nice with other countries we don't like and then who would we be able to go to war with!!!!
Nice idea and overdue, peace across the world would be a better solution and live in harmony with everybody!
I've never understood why we keep the embargo with Cuba, and then trade-heavily-with China. It makes no sense. As for the McDonalds and Starbucks of the world: Cuba shouldn't let them in if they don't want them.
I say Obama ignore the jingoism and bellicosity from his opponents for now. They've had their chance. It's Obama's turn now to run things.
The Cuban embargo should have ended, at the latest, back in the early1990s. There is absolutely no sense or logic to it. We are friends with Vietnam, for crissakes, surely we can make nice with Cuba. It is shameful that American foreign policy has been hijacked by a few psychotic Cuban expatriots in Miami.
Wait, when I clicked on this story, I thought there was actually going to be an argument to leave the embargo in place. I agree with what the author is arguing, but I'm still left wondering--what are the challenges facing Cuba if the embargo comes down?
The only two mentioned in the article are loss of Cuba's unique culture and ambiance and the fact that other island nations in the Caribbean haven't fared well. The first is a real worry, I think. The second seems like a much longer article could be written about it.
I can understand keeping the embargo through 1992 (fall of the USSR), but why keep the embargo in place now? If Obama wants to keep it going, there must be some reason why.
Talk about a decrepit relic of the Cold War! Obama should end the Embargo as soon as he can, especially as the Cuban lobby in Florida seems to have lost its sting.
As a matter of fact, we should have made attempts at rapprochement almost forty years ago about the same time of detente with the Soviet Union and Nixon's trip to China. It would have made sense, and the Cuban lobby be damned!
Okay, how's this for a concept? Obama starts January 21 with a "zero-base" approach to 100% of our foreign policy. Got a blockade? Drop it, then "try" it in a special tribunal to judge the merit of renewal or not. Giving a ton of foreign aide to country 'X'? Reign it in and determine the cost/benefit of every nickel heading offshore. It's time to evaluate all the handouts and failed policies. Time for change? Time for renewal. Let's do it.
I was taken aback by the tone of this piece. Everything will be ruined by capital? Hello? Has the word not reached you yet? American hegmony is OVER.
We could REALLY use Cuban doctors and teachers in America. Hello?!
Buy Cuban sugar and save our own Everglades... or what's left of it. Trade their sugar for our car parts and house paint. They could use pianos and hammers too. Any culture can be smoothered by money, but being smoothered by population is a more likely fate for Cubans.
Dulaurence, there is a difference between an embargo and a
blockade.
Don't take my word for it; you can look it up.
Thank you.
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