Opinion

Commentary and analysis about U.S.-Cuban relations

Late last month, Cuban President Raul Castro stood before the U.N. General Assembly to berate the U.S. and demand a host of concessions from Washington. 
Topping his list of demands was America returning Guantanamo Bay to Cuban control and paying reparations for its decades-long trade embargo against the regime. 
Neither demand is reasonable, much less in America's national interests. 
Guantanamo rightfully belongs to the U.S. Legally, the terms of America's lease are indisputable. 
At the conclusion of the Spanish-American War, the U.S. Congress passed the Platt Amendment. The legislation required the U.S. to ensure Cuba's freedom and stipulated that, in exchange, Cuba must "sell or lease to the United States the lands necessary for coaling or naval stations." The benefits of this arrangement were not lost on the Cuban government. A 1902 amendment to their constitution reflected as much, and one year later, the U.S. leased the current location of the naval base. 
In 1934, the U.S. and Cuba further solidified the agreement with an updated treaty. It explicitly states, "So long as the United States of America shall not abandon the said naval station of Guantanamo or the two governments shall not agree to a modification of its present limits, the station shall continue to have the territorial area that it has now." Arguments for returning the naval base are grounded more in feel-good optics than considerations of national security. Opponents of the naval base claim it's a vestige of U.S. "imperialism" and that normalized relations between the U.S. and Cuba are impossible until this "blot" is erased. Both points are factually inaccurate. 
A few short years after the Spanish-American War, Cuba emerged not as a colony of Spain but an independent and sovereign republic - a change in status made possible only thanks to U.S. military assistance. 
Granted, Washington didn't fight the Spanish for purely altruistic purposes. At the time, America's grand strategy, the Monroe Doctrine, was predicated on keeping foreign powers from overtaking the U.S. in the Western Hemisphere. 
The strategic value of having a neighbor free from Spanish rule and agreeable to facilitating the regional operations of the U.S. Navy was undeniable. And it remains undeniable today. 
Arguments supporting reparations for the Cuban government are ill-founded as well. The trade embargo was imposed in response to Fidel Castro's illegal nationalization of American assets then worth $1.8 billion. Decades later, the almost 6,000 claims certified by the U.S. Department of Justice are valued at over $7 billion. 
This figure does not include the property confiscated from hundreds of thousands of Cubans before and after they were forced to leave Cuba by the Castro regime. 
The embargo cannot legally be lifted until the claims issue is resolved. Havana's counterclaim for damages suffered as a result of their initial malfeasance is asinine. 
Unfortunately the Obama administration has chosen to unilaterally "normalize" relations with this regime, the last vestige of Cold War communism. 
In the last nine months, the White House has drastically eased sanctions, lobbied Congress to lift the embargo and prematurely removed Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism - all without placing so much as one precondition on Havana. 
The regime remains free to practice its systematic abuse of human rights to punish critics and discourage dissent. 
Yet even with that, Castro insists that "normal" relations are impossible without Guantanamo and reparations. But these issues are red herrings. 
The real reason that normal relations between the U.S. and Cuba are impossible - beyond Havana's ongoing human rights violations - is the Cuban government's unshakable commitment to undermining the U.S. 
The Castro regime continues to forge relationships with our adversaries and support anti-U.S. authoritarians in Latin America at every opportunity. It has no intention of being our friend. 
Ana Quintana is a policy analyst specializing in Latin America and the Western Hemisphere at The Heritage Foundation's Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy. She holds a master's degree in global security studies from Florida International University.

Commentary

OPQU08

Raul Castro's demands for Gitmo plus reparations show Cuba still a prime enemy

Opinion: Why Cuba is still a prime enemy

Cuba -- cropped /ts

While our star-spangled banner flies free over Cuba, Joanne Chesimard, a convicted killer of a New Jersey state trooper and an escaped prisoner, lives unrestrained in that nation. I don't understand resuming relations with Cuba before this most important law enforcement issue is resolved. She is on the FBI's list of "most wanted terrorists." 
President Barack Obama sold out our country for political reasons. These deals always benefit someone else. Doesn't America count anymore? 
Kevin Roberts, Brentwood

Letters

OPLTR19A.WEB

Letter: What about fugitive American in Cuba?

New U.S. and Cuba relations could bring back fugitive

Now that flags have been raised re-establishing embassies in Cuba and the United States, what comes next in the thaw between the two nations is largely unscripted. 
During the ceremony in Havana on Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry asked Congress to lift the trade embargo with Cuba and urged the Castro regime to restore a democratic government. Full restoration of diplomatic relations must take that twin path. The Castro government denies civil and religious freedoms to Cubans. It jails political opponents and censors local and foreign media, ranking among the world's worst nations in the free exchange of ideas. 
This new start was inevitable; enemies become friends. Critics should take a look at travel brochures offering luxury cruises on Vietnam's Mekong River.

Editorials

VPHEADS16

Tough work ahead for U.S.-Cuba relations

Opinion: What's tough about U.S.-Cuba relations

US Cuba Kerry cropped

The flag-raising ceremony at the U.S. Embassy in Havana Friday marks the successful conclusion of what Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez called the "firsts stage" in the process of normalizing relations.
Now comes the hard part.
Myriad other issues still divide Washington and Havana, but none is more consequential that the U.S. economic embargo -- or, as the Cubans call it, el bloqueo, the blockade. 
Since President John F. Kennedy imposed it in 1961, the embargo has been the centerpiece of Washington's policy of hostility and remains today the oldest and most comprehensive set of U.S. economic sanctions against any country in the world. 
The embargo's original purpose was straightforward: to make the Cuban economy scream -- to use Cuba's economic dependence on the United States to plunge it into a crisis so severe that the Cuban people would rise up and overthrow Fidel Castro's revolutionary government. "If they are hungry, they will throw Castro out," President Dwight Eisenhower surmised when first contemplating economic sanctions. 
The idea was not implausible. In 1933, Washington's refusal to recognize an earlier revolutionary government caused U.S. banks to refuse to loan money to Cuba's sugar barons, threatening the harvest. The threat was sufficient to cause the military -- led by Fulgencio Batista -- to mount a coup. By 1959, some 80 percent of Cuba's trade was with the United States and almost all of the island's capital stock -- and its spare parts -- were made in the USA. 
But even in 1959 and 1960, as the first elements of the embargo were being crafted, voices in the U.S. government predicted that economic sanctions would be counter productive. "We cannot expect patriotic and self-respecting Cubans, no matter how distasteful Castro's policies may be to them, to side with the U.S.," warned Assistant Secretary of State R. Richard Rubottom, "if we go so far along the lines of reprisals that the quarrel no longer is between Castro and the real interests of the Cuban people but a quarrel between the U.S. and their country." 
Those doubts would prove prescient, but they were overpowered by the visceral anger U.S. officials felt toward a Cuban population that supported Castro overwhelmingly. Economic sanctions became a form of collective punishment. "The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship," wrote Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lester D. Mallory in 1960. "It follows that every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba . . . to bring about hunger, desperation, and overthrow of the government." 
Thirty years later, when the collapse of the Soviet Union revived hopes in Washington that Castro's government could be overthrown, former Rep. Robert Torricelli sponsored the Cuban Democracy Act to tighten the embargo to "wreak havoc on that island." The new law cut off $700 million in U.S. sales of food and medicine to Cuba at a time when both were in desperately short supply. But regime change remained beyond the horizon of the possible, leaving punishment for punishment's sake as the only real rationale for the embargo. 
Today, there are two fundamental arguments against continuing the embargo: one moral and one practical. Pope John Paul II invoked the moral argument during his 1998 trip to Cuba. "Embargoes," the Holy Father said, "are always deplorable because they hurt the most needy.'" No doubt Pope Francis will say something very similar when he visits Cuba in September. 
Perhaps the cost to the moral standing of the United States could be justified if there was any chance that the embargo might actually bring about positive change in Cuba. But a half century of history argues to the contrary. Economic sanctions can be effective when they are multilateral, target a regime that is economically vulnerable, and have a modest, limited goal. The embargo meets none of these conditions. The United States is alone in adhering to it, the Cuban economy-despite its obvious shortcomings-is far less vulnerable today than it was in the 1990s, and the embargo's objective of fomenting regime change is hardly modest. If anything, by constraining Cuba's economic links with the United States, the embargo is slowing Cuba's transition to a freer, more open economy. 
President Barack Obama's decision to normalize relations is premised on the idea that engagement is more likely to bring about positive change. To that end, he has licensed some exceptions to the embargo, but only Congress can lift it. As the presidential campaign begins, Republican congressional leaders are unlikely to do anything that makes Obama's Cuba policy look like a success. 
Yet among the Republican rank and file in both the House and the Senate, there is a growing sense that the time has come to rethink this remnant of the Cold War. "I believe this is in the best interests of the Cuban people," said Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) as he introduced legislation to lift the embargo two weeks ago. "This isn't about the Cuban government -- it's about people on the street looking for more opportunity and to improve their quality of life." 
President Obama is fond of saying that on Cuba policy, he is not interested in refighting battles that started "before I was born." It's time to lift the embargo and stop punishing the Cuban people for events that happened before most of them were born. 
William M. LeoGrande is professor of government at the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, D.C. He is the co-author of "Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana."

WEBLEOGRANDE14

Stop punishing Cuba's people

Opinion: It's time to lift the Cuban blockade

When a fleet of yachts and schooners from Key West, Fla., sailed into sunny Havana Harbor on May 20, the American flags they flew waved at Cubans lined along the slimy seawall. The Cubans not only waved back but also whistled and flashed two-finger victory signs. 
High above in a powder-blue sky, a man in a motorized parasail continuously circled the watercraft like a bird of prey. Only this winged wonder buzzed along with an American flag trailing in the wind, the ultimate one-man welcoming committee. 
"This is awesome," Rio O'Bryan said, shaking his head from the deck of the After Fish, a 36-foot cruiser carrying a crew of 15. "This is so awesome," the Errol Flynn in "Captain Blood" look-alike repeated. 
For the first time since the early days of the Cuban revolution of 1959, the American flag waved in the harbor in which Christopher Columbus and crew once docked. A lovefest between the Cubans and Americans had erupted. 
However, not everyone loves Americans in Cuba, especially other foreigners. Canadians and Europeans make up the bulk of visitors to the island long forbidden by the government of the United States. And these outsiders would like to keep it that way. 
"There is tremendous resentment toward Americans by foreigners here," said a man in his 60s named George from his perch in the Pasteleria Francesa, a French bakery in central Havana. Somewhat gaunt and with a good head of grayish hair, George preferred to give his opinion rather than his surname. 
The retired educator said he has been speaking with other Canadians, Europeans, and South Americans in Havana over the last 28 years. He sits at his favorite table, from which he surveys everyone at other tables on the patio, and discusses events of the day. The current topic is how President Barack Obama on Dec. 17 announced a plan to restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba and reopen the embassy. This paves the way for Americans to experience that which Canadians, Germans, Italians, Spaniards, Venezuelans, Ecuadorans, Australians, Chinese and Japanese have been enjoying for the last 55 years: heavenly tropical beaches, pristine fishing waters, sublime seafood, original Latin rhythms, sultry senoritas, sweet rum and the best cigars in the world. 
President Dwight D. Eisenhower imposed the first trade embargo in 1960; he broke off diplomatic relations in January 1961. Foreigners visiting Cuba would like to keep it that way. Many fear that McDonald's and Burger King will spring up on every corner if the American economic embargo is lifted. 
"Their resentment is due to American bullyism," the former high school history teacher said. "In Iran, Chile, the Philippines, Nicaragua, and Mexico. Cuba has been benefiting from all of the resentment toward America in the world" in the realm of tourism. 
Hilary Becker, assistant professor of accounting at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, has a doctorate from the University of Havana. He wrote in 2011: "The tourism industry in Cuba is poised for tremendous growth in the next 10 years. The possible impact of the embargo with the U.S. being lifted presents tremendous opportunities. The tourism industry in Cuba has been dominated in recent years by visitors from Canada, followed by Germany, Italy, and Spain; however, there are estimates that if the U.S. embargo is lifted, there could be as many as three million additional U.S. tourists visiting Cuba, with a combined impact of upward of a $5 billion infusion into the Cuban economy." Between Jan. 1 and May 9, visits by Americans to Cuba were up 36 percent, according to the Associated Press. 
That's good news for Hugo Musteliel and Joima, who didn't want to give her last name. Musteliel is a 24-year-old valet at the Restaurant Castropol on the Malecon, Havana's five-mile ocean boulevard. A second-year industrial-engineering student at Cujae University in Boyeros, a suburb of Havana, Musteliel said he was happy to see the American vessels sail into Havana Harbor two days earlier "because it means good relations between the two countries. That is good for the Cuban economy. It brings new opportunity. 
"It is good for social reasons, too." Joima, a 38-year-old entrepreneur, cited economic as well as familial reasons to be happy about the forthcoming American invasion. 
"Eighty percent of Cubans have family in Miami," the blond chauffeur said from her 1956, green-and-white Chevrolet convertible. "It is also "buenissimo for my business" of driving tourists around town in the vintage American car she inherited from her grandfather. 
"I am not afraid of McDonald's and Burger King," she said. "We have a lot of fast-food restaurants here." 
Bill Iezzi is a former Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer who has been writing stories about Cuba since 1997.

OPIZ29

While Cubans ready for American visitors, Canadians in Havana roll their eyes

Opinion: Who's rolling their eyes in Cuba now

8. U.S. Cuba -- cropped /ts

Although President Barack Obama is taking the credit for Wednesday's historic deal to reverse decades of U.S. policy toward Cuba, when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, she was the main architect of the new policy and pushed far harder for a deal than the Obama White House. 
From 2009 until her departure in early 2013, Clinton and her top aides took the lead&nbsp;on the sometimes public, often private interactions with the Cuban government. According to current and former White House and State Department officials and several Cuba policy experts who were involved in the discussions, Clinton was also the top advocate inside the government for ending travel and trade restrictions on Cuba&nbsp;and reversing&nbsp;50 years of U.S. policy to isolate the Communist island nation. 
Repeatedly, she pressed the White House to move faster and faced opposition from cautious high-ranking&nbsp;White House officials. 
After Obama announced the deal Wednesday, which included the release of aid&nbsp;contractor Alan Gross, Clinton issued a supportive statement distributed by the National Security Council press team.&nbsp;"As Secretary of State, I pushed for his release, stayed in touch with Alan's wife Judy and their daughters, and called for a new direction in Cuba," she said. "Despite good intentions, our decades-long policy of isolation has only strengthened the Castro regime's grip on power." Yet&nbsp;Clinton played down her own role in the issue, which will surely become important if she decides to run for president. Top prospective Republican&nbsp;candidates, including Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have all come out against the president's policy shift. 
Clinton's advocacy on behalf of opening a new relationship with Cuba began almost as soon as she came into office. Obama had campaigned on a promise to engage enemies, but the White House initially was slow to make good on that pledge, and on the Cuba front enacted&nbsp;only a modest relaxation of travel rules. From the start, Clinton pushed to hold Obama to his promise with regard to Cuba. 
"Hillary Clinton played a very large role," said Steve Clemons, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation who advocated for changes to U.S.-Cuba policy. "The president, when he ran for office and when he came in, thought that doing something on Cuba front would be smart. But as soon as he got into office, though, every other priority hit him." Obama first met Cuban President Raoul Castro in April 2009 at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago and announced he wanted to discuss changes in U.S. policy toward the Havana government. But the president faced criticism when he got back to Washington, also because he had shaken hands with then- Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. 
"After that experience at the Summit of the Americas, the White House feet had been burned, they basically didn't do much. The National Security Council didn't do anything, but the State Department continued to try hard," Clemons said. 
After the initial easing of the travel ban, the administration had prepared&nbsp;a second batch of measures to expand travel and trade licenses. But shortly&nbsp;before an expected announcement, the White House got cold feet and shelved&nbsp;the initiative, according to people briefed by the White House. Members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee had persuaded White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett to intervene at the last moment. Clinton was displeased but undeterred. 
"Cuba was on her mind. I know that she raised it a number of times. The White House wasn't ready to move but she kept that in play," said Clemons. 
Arturo Valenzuela was assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs and Clinton's point man on Cuba at the&nbsp;time. He worked with Ricardo Zuniga, who was the head of the department's Office of Cuba Affairs, behind the scenes to meet with Cuban officials in 2009, 2010 and 2011 to explore ways to move forward. 
"There was no question that there was strong support in the State Department for liberalizing some of the restrictions and Secretary Clinton was quite clear about that," Valenzuela told me. "I asked Zuniga, with the secretary of state's blessing, to draft some further liberalizations of the travel ban, and that led to a significant shift of the opening up of general licenses." Clinton also directed Valenzuela to talk&nbsp;personally with Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez in New York in October 2010, the highest-level&nbsp;diplomatic meeting&nbsp;of U.S. and Cuban officials ever. But one serious impediment to a grand bargain with the Cuban government remained: the Cubans refused to consider releasing Gross, whom they accused of spying. 
Nevertheless, throughout 2011, Clinton and her team continued to press the White House to take further steps on Cuba. In early 2011, frustrated by what she saw as resistance from the Obama political advisers as well as the NSC staff, Clinton met personally with&nbsp;the president&nbsp;and nudged him to keep going. 
"The pushback was coming from the White House staff. The issue was for Hillary to say to Obama, 'Hey listen, your folks are going too slow on this and we need to move forward on this,' " said a former administration official who was involved in those discussions. "There was a lot of reluctance in the White House to do that at the time because of various kinds of domestic problems. If it hadn't been for the State Department and her leadership, then these reforms might not have happened." Finally, in 2012, Clinton made one more big push for faster movement to overhaul the relationship. At the Summit of the Americas that April in Cartagena, Colombia, Clinton was repeatedly harangued&nbsp;by Latin Americans leaders about Washington's insistence that Cuba not be allowed to participate. Clinton was blindsided by the unanimity of this criticism, including such staunch U.S. allies a&nbsp;Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, who had personally pressed Obama on the issue. 
"It's evident to me that Cartagena was a wake-up call for then-Secretary Clinton," said Julia Sweig, a Cuba scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations. "She had a head-snapping experience there and came to see the unanimity of the Latin American view such that recovery of American standing in the region really ran through Havana." After returning to Washington, Clinton directed her head of policy planning, Jake Sullivan, to work up several options to lay out a policy approach and present it to the president. The result was, in essence, what Obama announced Wednesday,&nbsp;a source close to the process said. &nbsp; In June, 2013, after his re-election, Obama made the personal decision to pursue a grand bargain with the Cubans. Talks moved to Canada and were placed in the hands of &nbsp;White House staffers, including Zuniga, who had moved over to the NSC from the State Department. Clinton was gone, but Obama picked up her ball and ran with it. 
In her book "Hard Choices," Clinton wrote that she asked Obama to "take another look" at the U.S. embargo on Cuba, which she described as ineffective and harmful to America's standing across the region. In that sense, she owned up to the&nbsp;position she held while she was in office, even if she didn't reveal the extent of her involvement.&nbsp; Nobody knows if Cuba will follow the path of countries like Vietnam, where economic engagement has been&nbsp;followed by a degree of&nbsp;political opening, or China, which reaps the benefits of capitalism while maintaining strict domestic repression. Clinton is betting on the former.&nbsp; Either way, if &nbsp;she does run for president in 2016, Republicans can cast the new policy as her policy, not Obama's. She was a major author of the effort and will rightly be the recipient of the credit, or the blame, depending on what happens in Cuba between now and then.

OPHIL18

Hillary Clinton secretly pushed the Obama Cuba deal

Opinion: Secret person pushed Cuba deal

Cuba-U.S. -- cropped/lt

President Obama this week announced that the United States and Cuba have agreed to establish diplomatic relations and ease economic and travel restrictions to the communist island nation. 
"Isolation has not worked," Obama said Wednesday. "It's time for a new approach." The move means the United States will reopen an embassy in Cuba. It also suggests that the U.S. economic embargo of Cuba, established in 1960 after the Castros deposed the pro-America Batista government, may soon come to an end. 
Is it past time the United States re-established ties with Havana? Or would U.S. diplomatic ties with Cuba only strengthen a wobbly anti-American regime? Ben Boychuk and Joel Mathis, the RedBlueAmerica columnists, weigh in. 
BEN BOYCHUK: Re-establishing diplomatic ties with Cuba is a great win for President Obama. He'll go down in history as the man who thawed relations with Raul and Fidel Castro after a half-century standoff. 
That's one way of looking at it anyway. In reality, Obama just abandoned Cuba's struggling pro-democracy movement to burnish his legacy. For captive people across the globe, this move is a decisive setback. 
Obviously, diplomatic relations represent a huge win for the Cuban socialist regime. At long last, the Brothers Castro have the two prizes they long desired but could never obtain from the United States: recognition and legitimacy. Now they can tell their dissident population, "See, even the Americans stand with us now." Don't expect closer U.S.-Cuba economic ties to lead to greater political freedom - any more than economic liberalization has freed any except a small, politically connected class in China. About 1.3 billion Chinese remain under the boot heel of political and economic repression, despite their country's emergence as the second largest economy on earth. 
If anything, expect the Castros to take a page from Beijing's playbook and use expanded trade to shore up their authoritarian regime. Under Cuba's 1976 constitution, all trade must be conducted through government-owned monopolies. That's not going to change. 
Yet for nearly 25 years, American business groups with Cuban ties have made the case for lifting the U.S. trade embargo. Isolating Cuba will only lead to more boat people and maybe even war, they said. Think of the business opportunities were missing, they said. We're losing out to the Germans! The Mexicans! The Spanish! Even the Canadians, for heaven's sake! And the truth is that for nearly 25 years, all of that German, Mexican, Spanish and Canadian investment has done precious little to improve the lives of Cubans. Neither has the increased flow of U.S. dollars into the island nation. 
Despite it all, Cuba continues to persecute its dissidents, sponsor terrorism and foment anti-American sentiment across Latin America. To expect new relations to change that is the height of folly. 
JOEL MATHIS: It's about time. 
If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results, the United States drifted far from its senses decades ago in Cuba. We broke off relations and imposed an embargo after Fidel Castro took over and imposed communism on the island nation. We thought we'd wait him out. 
Folks, Fidel Castro is still alive. His brother runs the country. President Obama wasn't even alive when the embargo was imposed. More than half the presidents who oversaw the U.S. attempts to freeze out Fidel are now dead themselves: Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Reagan have all passed on. U.S. stubbornness outlived them all. 
Put it this way: When Castro took over, the news was delivered on black-and-white televisions. 
Now: The decision to start to normalize relationships with Cuba doesn't mean the Castros are suddenly good guys, nor does it mean that Cuba will suddenly become a capitalist paradise. But it probably does mean that the U.S. will have more, not less, influence over the nation and its future than it did before. Engagement is often better than non-engagement. 
"Today, the United States is taking historic steps to chart a new course in our relations with Cuba and to further engage and empower the Cuban people," the White House said in a written statement. 
That's mostly likely correct. How do we know? Because more than five decades of silence and international cold-shoulderdom never did work, never did produce any kind of reforms or counterrevolution. It seems almost certain at this point that any other approach will work better. 
There will be, of course, unreconstructed Cold Warriors who will complain bitterly about President Obama's decision. Do not listen to them. They've had several generations to be right - and failed utterly. 
A change is coming to U.S.-Cuba relations? Great. It's about time. It's been about time for a long, long time. 
Ben Boychuk (bboychuk@city-journal.org) is associate editor of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal. Joel Mathis (joelmmathis@gmail.com) is associate editor for Philadelphia Magazine.

OPDEBATE18

Is establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba wise?

Debate: Reconnecting with Cuba wise?

Cuba US Senators - cropped

The icy relationship between the United States and Cuba, a staple of our politics and popular culture for decades, melted Wednesday when President Barack Obama re-established diplomatic relations with that Communist enclave just off our shore. 
The historic change -- worked out over 18 months with a little help from Obama's friend in the Vatican -- is long overdue. 
The attempt to isolate Cuba economically and politically began with good intentions in 1961, a simpler time when it seemed that was the way to drive Fidel Castro's Communist regime from power. Five and a half decades later, it's clear the strategy didn't work. 
For decades, the United States has had diplomatic and trade relations with Communist China and even Vietnam, where so many American lives were lost. The drama and romance of the struggle against communism in Cuba, and the political influence of anti-Castro expatriates in Miami, cast the attempt to isolate that island in a singular light. But it's better to encourage orderly change through engagement than to risk Cuba one day becoming a lawless, failed state that would provide a close haven for terrorists. 
So the time is right for a different approach to the tiny nation that has loomed so large in the American psyche -- from the Bay of Pigs invasion to the missile crisis, through pop culture in movies such as "Scarface" and "The Godfather Part II," to the harrowing dramas of desperate Cubans fleeing in leaky boats and skilled athletes such as former Yankee and Met Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez risking it all for a shot at Major League Baseball. 
The initial, almost hysterical, political response in some quarters to Obama's decision to end the Cold War is incomprehensible. 
Re-establishing a U.S. embassy in Havana, relaxing rules for sending money to Cuba, expanding U.S.-Cuban trade, reviewing Cuba's designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, allowing business deals between banks and communication companies, and easing travel restrictions -- including allowing visitors to return with a few Cuban cigars -- will improve the lives of the Cuban people and advance U.S. interests. Now Congress should repeal the trade embargo, the last legal obstacle to normal relations. 
It's fitting that such a dramatic era ended with a prisoner swap reminiscent of the Cold War. Obama traded three Cuban spies imprisoned since 2001 for a U.S. intelligence agent imprisoned for 20 years and American Alan Gross, a former government contractor who spent five years behind bars for bringing satellite communication devices into Cuba. The regime arrested him out of fear that communication with the outside world would loosen its grip on the populace. 
Right now only 1 in 20 people in Cuba has access to the Internet, among the lowest rates in the world. Increasing that number is one of the best ways to promote the kind of change we've sought for so long in one of the world's last bastions of communism. 
It's time to see whether openness and capitalism can accomplish what isolation did not.

VPCUBA18

U.S. re-engagement is best way to change Cuba

Editorial: The best way to change Cuba

Cuba Cropped

The announcement Wednesday that the United States will restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba and open an embassy in Havana for the first time in more than a half-century is a hugely significant move by the U.S. government. 
As a precursor, it was announced that U.S. contractor Alan Gross was released after five years in Cuban captivity. In addition, the United States returned three Cuban spies who were in a U.S. prison since 2001 while Cuba released an American intelligence agent who was in a Cuban prison for nearly 20 years. 
Yes, it may be seen by some as a spy swap, but more than that it is the extraordinary beginning of a change in policy in place since 1961. 
For decades, the United States has used the Swiss embassy to communicate with the Cuban government, and vice versa, but it seems that this time Cuban President Raul Castro spoke directly with White House staff. That is huge in the big scheme of things. Obama and Castro spoke very briefly at Nelson Mandela's funeral in 2013, even exchanging a handshake in view of cameras. 
The White House's argument on this seems credible. Raul Castro has implemented some reforms in Cuba and President Barack Obama sees this as a way to encourage even more, including more commerce and further easing of visitation rules (the United States don't really have that many now, to be honest). It's a similar argument used by past U.S. lawmakers when pushing for most-favored-nation status for the Communist Chinese. 
Since Fidel Castro’s illness and his retirement in 2008, Raul Castro and his cohorts have been moving to ease some rules on commerce and tourism. That's not to say Cuba is where it needs to be, or that the leaders should be congratulated for the little they’ve done. The government is still deeply corrupt, and the violations of human rights sadly continue. Also factoring in the winds of change in the hemisphere are the death of President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 2013 (his successor, Nicolás Maduro, has been a disaster, the country even ran out of bathroom tissue some months ago), and the loss of shine for Evo Morales in Bolivia (the hard-left first native of Indian descent elected to a presidential office in Latin America). The status quo is on life support. 
When I visited Cuba almost 25 years ago as a journalist, the island was a very different place from now. The “special period” — during which everyone had to work the fields unpaid for two weeks out of the year for the state — was demoralizing to professionals (doctors, lawyers, economists) and others just trying to make ends meet. 
At one countryside farm, folks told me when no one was watching how messed up it all was. They said there were roughly 10,000 phone lines on the entire island. 
There are definite signs we should restore relations with Cuba, like these: 
-- Today, young people are driving change — aren't they always? — through resistance, ingenuity and social networks (not particularly widespread on the island, but still influential). 
-- Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI were openly welcomed in a state that refused — still refuses — to recognize religion as integral part of Cuban society. 
-- There’s a not-as-prominent dual economy (one for tourists/visitors, one for Cubans). Although there are still huge food and service shortages and human rights violations, and the country still has the “comite” — neighborhood groups that keep track of visitors and report to the Communist Party apparatus. 
Going into this new agreement, we should expect the older Cuban exile communities in the United States to pan this as Communist-loving liberals swapping spies and embracing Communist terrorists, and as giving in to a former Soviet ally — tantamount to the end of the world as we know it. 
We can expect some members of Congress to push back forcefully: Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), for now the chairman of the Senate committee on foreign relations, Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the incoming chairman of the committee on Western Hemisphere affairs; and Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (anti-Castro) and Mario Diaz-Balart, son of past Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, both Florida Republicans. All of these lawmakers represent large swaths of Cuban-American voters. They'll be right to raise objections: The Cuban government is still deeply corrupt. 
But, as it has been said for decades, what we've done for more than 50 years has clearly not worked. 
The world left two generations of Cubans to know only one form of government, one leader (the longest-serving in the world). Both suppressed not only their dreams but also took away their potential to get this country out of the post-missile crisis mentality. They have been mostly living in a world that doesn't exist for much of the planet, politically, economically and technologically. It's shameful, and America can help change it. 
Eli Reyes is a member of Newsday’s editorial board.

OPREYES17

It's about time the U.S. and Cuba made up

Reyes: 3 signs U.S. and Cuba should make up

With his announcement that the U.S. will open negotiations and try to normalize relations with Cuba, President Barack Obama is trying to break the hold of the Cuba lobby once and for all. 
In historical terms, that's a remarkable undertaking. For decades, U.S. policy toward Cuba has been guided by the smart, effective lobbying of a relatively small group of interested Cuban-Americans, mostly in Miami. The Cuba lobby's success has reflected a deep truth of American politics: where there's a concentrated interest on one side of an issue, and only a diffuse interest on the other, the concentrated interest wins. 
Will it work? If so, why now? And what are the implications for other concentrated lobbying groups, such as the National Rifle Association and the pro-Israel lobby, which have themselves succeeded by following a version of the approach that the Cuba lobby pioneered? 
Begin with an incontrovertible fact: Obama's opening to Raul Castro's regime is precisely what the Cuba lobby has long feared and opposed. Its two leading voices in the Senate, New Jersey Democrat Robert Menendez and Florida Republican Marco Rubio, immediately condemned Obama's apparent swap of three convicted Cuban spies for convicted American Alan Gross and another unnamed American held on espionage charges in Cuba. Rubio told the Associated Press that Obama was playing into the Castros' hands, "providing the economic lift that the Castro regime needs to become permanent fixtures in Cuba for generations to come." 
Since the end of the Cold War, independent foreign policy experts have argued that U.S. interests would be served by opening relations with Cuba. Once communism no longer needed to be contained or combated on a global scale, the reasoning runs, the U.S. would gain in trade with Cuba. Indeed, the infusion of capital and tourism into Cuba that would come with an end to U.S. sanctions would further weaken the socialism that still exists there. 
Yet despite the broad consensus in foreign policy circles, U.S. policy until now hasn't really changed -- and the reason has been the effectiveness of the anti-Castro Cuba lobby. The explanation isn't that there are so many Cuban-Americans: There are about 2 million, of whom some 70 percent live in Florida. To complicate matters further, not all Cuban-Americans support a strong policy of nonengagement with the island. 
The reason for the lobby's success has been the discipline with which it pursued its agenda. A handful of politicians receive extensive support from the lobby, and their views, unsurprisingly, correspond closely to the Cuban-Americans who support them. Other politicians may receive occasional support, but the lobby is not focused on them. The key to the operation is that on the other side, there is no concentrated interest group at all advocating for the normalization of relations with Cuba. Big agriculture corporations like Archer-Daniels-Midland would benefit from opening up trade, but ADM is a global company with lots of fish to fry. Even joined with other big ag actors, it's not realistic to defeat the concentrated interest of the Cuba lobby. 
If this model of advocacy sounds familiar, it should. The same basic structure explains the success of the National Rifle Association and the pro-Israel lobby exemplified by AIPAC. None of these organizations is breaking the rules. To the contrary, their success reflects the basic structure of U.S. politics. 
Those who support gun rights care deeply about the issue: They're the essence of a concentrated lobby. Those who would regulate guns are almost by definition more diffuse. They might be motivated after an event like the Newtown, Connecticut, shooting, but over time, diffuse interests return to their natural state of diffusion. The pro-Israel lobby succeeds not primarily because of its financial capacity or disproportionate cultural influence, but because there is no concentrated pro- Palestinian lobby of any real size in the U.S. Polls suggest that many Americans favor the idea of evenhandedness between Israelis and Palestinians (whatever that might mean to them). But any such impulse is highly diffuse, whereas the small number of Jewish Americans who pay the most attention to promoting Israel's interests as they see them are highly focused and concentrated. 
Why does Obama think he can beat the Cuba lobby now? The accidental political configuration of the moment provides the best explanation. His executive action on immigration reform has given the president -- and probably the Democratic Party -- a big boost among Latinos. He won't be running for re-election, and House Democrats will be vulnerable for another two years. As for Hillary Clinton, if she faces Jeb Bush in the 2016 presidentical campaign, she will probably have to find a path to victory that doesn't involve winning Florida, Bush's home state. This all frees up Obama and the Democrats to take a crack at the Cuba lobby. 
But the game won't be over with the opening of negotiations, which the president can do on his own. Restoring full diplomatic relations and ending the embargo will require Congress's assent. Here the lobby can be expected to go into full concentrated opposition mode -- and it has some chance of success. 
What Obama must be hoping is that groups with a passing interest in the opening to Cuba will get on the bandwagon just long enough to counterbalance the power of the lobby and get the necessary legislation passed. Big ag will still have a diffuse interest, not a concentrated one -- but perhaps the vision of money on the table in the near future will motivate sufficient support. 
The risk that Obama carries in taking on a concentrated lobby isn't totally unfamiliar to him. After all, he tried to take on the NRA by pushing gun control after the Newtown shootings. When he lost, the political cost to him was much less than the cost of doing nothing. With regard to Israel, Obama has tread much more carefully, limiting himself to the unmistakable message that he thinks West Bank settlements are an obstacle to peace and that Benjamin Netanyahu is, too. Many pro-Israel lobbying groups detest him for it, but they haven't yet had the occasion to go to war against him. 
With the end of his presidency in view, Obama has to take risks if he wants to score some legacy points. His gamble on Cuba may not be fully realized. But the results will have implications for the structure of American interest group politics more broadly. 
Feldman is a nationallly syndicated columnist.

OPFELDMAN17

Can Barack Obama beat the Cuba lobby?

Opinion: Can Obama beat the Cuba lobby?

Obama Castro Handshake

President Barack Obama attended Nelson Mandela's funeral this week, where he briefly encountered Cuban leader Raul Castro and shook the dictator's hand. He was immediately criticized at home -- for that, and for a now-infamous "selfie" photograph taken with two other world leaders. "Neville Chamberlain shook hands with Hitler," GOP Sen. John McCain complained. 
 Should American leaders avoid handshakes with dictators? Why? columnists Joel Mathis and Ben Boychuk debate the issue. 
 JOEL MATHIS The conservative insistence that a U.S. president must not shake the hands of certain dictators is deeply silly -- and more than a little inconsistent. 
 Go through the photo archives of any presidential library, and there you'll find image after image of presidents (or their emissaries) gripping palms with some of the more detestable men (always men) of recent world history: There's Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein! John McCain and Moammar Gadhafi! Henry Kissinger and Augusto Pinochet! Richard Nixon and Zhou Enlai! Ronald Reagan and Ferdinand Marcos! George W. Bush and any Saudi prince! Every U.S. president and every Chinese leader since the Tiananmen Square massacre! Of course, some of those detestable dictators were our detestable dictators. In the other cases, handshakes happened because there were deals to be made, sooner or later. 
 When do snubs happen? When the country is a country small enough and weak enough for the United States to treat with disdain. Thus: Cuba. 
 Don't misunderstand: Raul Castro is no secret hero. He can best be understood as a petty dictator. The island will almost certainly be better off when -- if -- the regime he heads ever falls. 
 But the outcry that greeted Obama's shaking of his hand comes from the same corners of American life that insists on continuing a half-century embargo against that island nation and the Castros. That snub -- in essence, 50 years of refusing to shake hands -- has not brought freedom to the Cuban people. Possibly, U.S. intransigence has actually helped keep the regime alive. 
 Yes, Neville Chamberlain shook hands with Adolf Hitler. But that wasn't Neville's sin: It was handing over a chunk of Czechoslovakia to Germany to buy peace. The Nazis claimed the Sudetenland as their trophy, not Chamberlain's grip. 
 Symbolism does matter. But it usually doesn't matter that much. Raul Castro may have touched Obama's hand, but he's returning to a nation still under U.S. embargo. He has no illusions where his country stands with the United States. 
 BEN BOYCHUK Let's not kid ourselves about Cuba, Raul Castro or his brother, Fidel. Cuba remains a strident enemy of the United States. The Castro brothers are thugs who continue to support anti-American causes -- including terrorism -- around the globe, even as their repressive "socialist paradise" slides further into misery. 
 President Obama's handshake with Raul in South Africa matters because dictators love nothing more than the publicity and legitimacy such symbols confer. The leader of the world's greatest democracy warmly shaking hands with one of the last holdout communist regimes on the planet sends an unmistakable message: He's OK. He's one of us. 
 That's the trouble with this president: He sends all the wrong messages to all the wrong people. From his "reset" with Russia and his "pivot to Asia," to his shameful "red line" over chemical weapons in Syria, Obama has squandered U.S. power and prestige with a lot of empty talk and confusing, impotent gestures. 
 Days before Obama's handshake, the Cuban regime rounded up more than 100 activists for the "crime" of demonstrating on behalf of the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights. Pro-Castro rent-a-mobs reportedly pelted the protesters with rocks and feces. 
 At the very moment Obama shook hands with Castro, U.S. State Department employee Alan Gross sat languishing in a Cuban prison, where he's been held illegally since 2009 for distributing radios to dissidents. 
 Americans don't hear much about Gross, or about Havana's repressive tactics against its people. Instead, we hear more and more about reconciliation and ending the embargo. 
 In Miami last month, the president said: "We have to update our policies [on Cuba]. Keep in mind that when Castro came to power, I was just born" -- as if the occasion of this president's birth should be reason to rethink decades of U.S. doctrine. 
 Obama went on to say the United States should be "creative" and "thoughtful" about its posture toward the island dictatorship. 
 After five years of this administration's calamitously "thoughtful and creative" foreign policy, a new approach to Cuba is the last thing anyone needs. 
 Ben Boychuk is associate editor of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal. Joel Mathis is a contributing editor to Philadelphia Magazine.

OPREDBLUE13

Debate: Was Barack Obama-Raul Castro greeting more than a handshake?

APTOPIX South Africa Mandela Memorial

Anyone who can somehow remember way back to the olden days - May 1, 2011, to be exact - knows that President Barack Obama is quite capable of delivering a stand-up routine, dressed in black tie and smiling in front of a bunch of journalists, while at the same time a team of Navy SEALs crosses the Afghanistan-Pakistan border - on his orders - to kill Osama bin Laden. 
 So it's a little mystifying that critics would take his brief, polite handshake and greeting with Cuban President Raúl Castro as some sort of betrayal of Obama's true feelings. After all, if anything's been proved over the past five years, it's that Obama will send a personalized Kwanzaa greeting to somebody one week, then call in a drone strike on their compound the next. 
 The fact is, no one knows what Obama was thinking. 
 It might have been something colorful, like, "We're still loving that rent-controlled Gitmo beachfront, buddy." But it was probably more like a semibored recognition of just how gauche it would have appeared not to shake hands. Folks howl when Obama shakes hands with a Hugo Chávez or talks to Iranian leaders - but talking, and shaking hands, is a pretty big part of his job description. 
 Glenn Beck's The Blaze ran with the headline "Obama Shook Hands With a Communist Dictator," Breitbart's John Nolte called the handshake "more than a little unsettling" and conservative radio talker Michael Graham half-jokingly tweaked President Obama on Fox News with the question, "What is he going to discuss, tips on how the Cubans could improve the Obamacare website?" And there was the predictable Twitter backlash, with antagonists piling on with descriptions of Obama bowing and scraping in front of Castro before heading off to lay a wreath at Lenin's tomb. 
 In the end, though, it's really not much of a controversy - even on the right. But here's why shaking hands shouldn't be controversial at all: 
 - For those unfamiliar with the term, home training is a descriptor for child rearing that teaches the individual being brought up to comport herself with a measure of civility and cultivation. It's a term usually used to connote someone's tackiness, as in, "This guy clearly has no home training," and it's a bad look for how your mama raised you if you have none. 
 If you think POTUS should have snubbed a leader of a sovereign nation at a funeral then you have no home training and no common sense. 
 - For the uninitiated, you've almost surely seen two men of color of a certain age pass each other on the street and subtly nod as they pass. Obama's just old enough to fall into that category, and that's just how it's done. Under that ironclad rule of protocol, not to acknowledge Castro - even though he's an adversary - would have just been bad form on Obama's part. 
 - Plus, since Cuba is still an American adversary, ask yourself this: Why would Obama give the Castro regime any bulletin board motivational material by snubbing their leader? It sure wouldn't make Obama - or Americans - look any better if the headlines tomorrow read, "En Route to Podium, Obama Leaves Castro Hanging." And while it might have just been a subtle attempt at diplomacy, the handshake might just be Obama's way of messing with people. 
 These days, Obama's a pretty sour and dour guy, bogged down by sagging poll numbers and unable to fully enjoy his only form of recreation - golf - because even that gets him in trouble with critics. So after a long flight to South Africa that will be followed by a long flight back, who knows? Maybe all he was thinking was, "Yeah, I'll shake his hand. Let's see what happens." 
 Swerdlick is an associate editor at <a href="http://www.theroot.com/articles/politics/2013/12/obama_shook_castro_s_hand_because_he_s_got_manners.html">The Root</a>.

OPSWERDLICK10

Swerdlick: Why did Barack Obama shake Raul Castro's hand? Home training

As he made his way along the platform at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela, President Obama stopped briefly to shake hands and exchange a few words with Cuba's president Raul Castro. 
 The U.S. State Department says the handshake, one of many Obama did as he headed for his seat, was "unplanned." And if Obama had not, it would have been a very public, very visible snub that detracted from the memorial service for a leader who symbolized reconciliation. 
 But many read much, much more into that brief encounter. Reuters said it was "one of the most memorable images" from the service and asked rhetorically, "could it also prove to be the most significant?" The Cuban government said the handshake may show the "beginning of the end of U.S. aggressions." Obama's critics were less generous. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., compared it to British leader Neville Chamberlain shaking Adolph Hitler's hand at Munich shortly before World War II. 
 Nor did the gesture sit well with the staunchly anti-Castro Cuban-American lobby. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., called shaking "the bloody hand of a ruthless dictator like Raul Castro" a propaganda coup for the tyrant. 
 While the Cuban government has slightly relaxed its grip on the Cuban economy, allowing limited private ownership of land and homes, limited foreign travel and limited access to cell phones and computers, it retains its iron grip on political power. 
 Meanwhile, the U.S. maintains, with a few agricultural exceptions, a near-total embargo on Cuba in effect since 1950. 
 The U.S. cancelled tentative talks on easing the embargo in 2009 after the Castro government imprisoned Alan Gross, a U.S. contractor hired by the island's Jewish community to provide internet services. 
 Cuba has either brushed off U.S. requests that Gross be freed or attached unacceptable conditions to his release. 
 The handshake was a feel-good moment for a crowd gathered more to celebrate Mandela's achievements than solemnly mourn his passing and to accord Obama what the Guardian newspaper called his "political rock-star status." But it is pushing the limited symbolism of that moment to suggest it foreshadows a U.S.-Cuban rapprochement. To paraphrase Sigmund Freud, sometimes a handshake is just a handshake. 
 Dale McFeatters is a nationally syndicated columnist.

OPMCFEATTERS11

McFeatters: Sometimes a handshake is just a handshake

If Cuba's communist regime can't be destroyed by a singer with a frenetic stage presence and an association with the term "Bootylicious" and a rapper who once shot his older brother and did an album called "American Gangster," then it's probably impervious to change from the exceptional American entertainer, let alone the average American. 
 Heaven knows, we've tried everything else for the last 53 years, perhaps even exceeding <a href="/topics//Albert_Einstein">Albert Einstein</a>'s definition of insanity, of doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. 
 Beyonce <a href="/topics//Beyonce_Knowles">Knowles</a> and her husband, rapper/businessman/clothing designer Jay-Z, have just returned from five days in Cuba playing tourist on what was clearly a vacation. And that's illegal for everyday Americans not of Cuban descent. 
 The more heated members of the Cuban-American delegation in <a href="/topics//U.S._Congress">Congress</a> wanted the Knowles-Carters (Z's real name is Shawn Carter) met at the airport and frog-marched off to custody for violating U.S. laws on trade and travel to Cuba -- those are the aforementioned laws with a half-century of proven failure -- laws apparently drawn up by <a href="/topics//Franz_Kafka">Franz Kafka</a> and <a href="/topics//George_Orwell">George Orwell</a> after a heavy night of drinking Cuba Libres. 
 Traveling to Cuba is forbidden for most Americans. Thanks to the Cuban-American lobby, it's the only country that is. The thinking is that the presence of American celebrities confers legitimacy on the regime and provides it much-needed cash to oppress its people, even though this is rather undermined by the fact that Canadians, Europeans and Latin Americans come and go freely. 
 <a href="/topics//Dennis_Rodman">Dennis Rodman</a> went to North Korea, a country infinitely crazier and more dangerous than Cuba, and everybody, including the U.S. government, treated it as a great lark, even though his host, <a href="/topics//Kim_Jong-un">Kim Jong Un</a>, might be certifiably nuts. 
 Americans need a license to travel to Cuba. They're easier to obtain -- "easy" being a relative term -- for journalists, academics and performers whose schedules leave them no leisure time to overthrow the government. 
 The most <a href="/topics//Common_(musician)">common</a> form of permission, as described by one Washington publication reporting on the Knowles-Z controversy, is "a people-to-people license which allows travel to Cuba as long as the trip is structured and filled with meaningful full-time educational activities with Cubans." Or, as it might be described, "Dick and Jane Go to Cuba." 
 Some travelers skip the process altogether and go through a third country, confident that Cuban border officials will leave their passports unstamped, although Treasury, if it thinks the offense egregious enough to be worth pursuing, can impose large fines. 
 Cuban hard-liners in <a href="/topics//U.S._Congress">Congress</a> demanded to know how Jay-Z and Beyonce got permission to go to Havana, although the fact that Beyonce sang the ballad "At Last" for the first couple's first dance at the 2009 <a href="/topics//Obama_Inauguration">inauguration</a> might have told them something. And they are two of <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">President Barack Obama</a>'s biggest supporters and donors in the entertainment industry. 
 In another time-honored dance, inquiries to the <a href="/topics//White_House">White House</a> about the couple's extracurricular trip to Cuba were referred to spokesman Jay Carney, who referred them to Treasury, which referred them to the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which said it would get back to them. 
 With risky countries, the <a href="/topics//US_State_Department">State Department</a> role should be to caution Americans against traveling there, explain that there is little the department can do for them if they get in trouble and otherwise wish them a safe trip. 
 Conservative <a href="/topics//Arizona">Arizona</a> <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">GOP</a> Sen. Jeff Flake tweeted, "So Beyonce and Jay-Z are in Cuba? Fine by me. Every American should have the right to travel there." 
 Dale McFeatters is a syndicated columnist.

OPMCFEATTERS10

McFeatters: Jay-Z, Beyonce fail to overthrow Cuban government

Beyonce jay cuba cropped/Jayme

Cuban President Raul <a href="/topics//Fidel_Castro">Castro</a> made news by announcing on Feb. 24 that he will retire in 2018. His older brother, Fidel, stepped down in 2008, after turning 85. 
 Reflecting the iron control the regime has exercised since early 1959, the designated successor to <a href="/topics//Fidel_Castro">Castro</a> was announced simultaneously. 
 <a href="/topics//Miguel_Diaz">Miguel Diaz</a>-Canel, a protege of Raul, is a loyal functionary who has developed a reputation for bureaucratic effectiveness through administering rural provinces. At age 52, he arguably represents a youthful wave in this geriatric pond. Given the extremely slow pace of change in Cuba, and the remarkable half-century tenure of the brothers Castro, this benchmark event deserves some attention and reflection. 
 Last year marked the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, when the world stood at the edge of nuclear war. This was a singular event but also a punctuation mark in a long history of difficulties between Havana and Washington. 
 Raul Castro, by all accounts, lacks the popular appeal of his older brother. Enemies join with admirers in agreeing that Fidel possessed a unique leadership style before age and illness led him to retire from the presidency. His singular charisma continues to facilitate the regime's half-century in power. 
 After Havana was captured and despised dictator <a href="/topics//Fulgencio_Batista">Fulgencio Batista</a> fled in early 1959, Raul Castro handled bloody mass executions with efficient dispatch, and since has provided effective leadership of the military and a pervasive domestic security apparatus. 
 Soon after taking power, the Castro brothers ended hopes for representative democracy and nationalized major industries, including U.S. corporate assets. <a href="/topics//Fidel_Castro">Fidel Castro</a> highlighted alliance with the <a href="/topics//Soviet_Union">Soviet Union</a> by joining Nikita Khrushchev in a remarkably raucous 1960 visit to the <a href="/topics//United_Nations">United Nations</a>, in session in <a href="/topics//New_York_(state)">New York</a>, punctuated by the Soviet leader publicly pounding a shoe on a desk. 
 President Dwight D. <a href="/topics//Dwight_D._Eisenhower">Eisenhower</a> began a clandestine effort to overthrow the increasingly radical regime. The successor Kennedy administration drastically escalated such efforts. The Cuban missile crisis occurred in this context. 
 In recent years, the evolution of the Americas toward democratic governments has been striking. As a result, Cuba is more isolated than ever. Radical Venezuela provides important but limited aid. 
 When <a href="/topics//Fidel_Castro">Fidel Castro</a> stepped down, then-Secretary of State <a href="/topics//Condoleezza_Rice">Condoleezza Rice</a>, in a formal public statement, endorsed the desirability of "peaceful, democratic change" in Cuba and also suggested that the international community work with the people there. The Bush administration had been pursuing a particularly restrictive hard line toward Cuba. 
 <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">President Barack Obama</a> early in his first term loosened restrictions on interchange with Cuba. Cuban-Americans are now allowed to travel and send financial remittances to relatives still living there. 
 The punitive Helms-Burton Act, passed during the <a href="/topics//Hillary_Rodham_Clinton">Clinton</a> administration in an effort to court the fiercely anti-Castro Cuban population of Florida, does not prohibit these exchanges. 
 Cuba today encourages trade and investment, along with loosening travel restrictions. In this context, the American economy has great advantages. As part of such efforts, we should work to expand cultural and educational as well as family exchanges with the island. 
 Eisenhower initiated comparable programs with the <a href="/topics//Soviet_Union">Soviet Union</a> during the height of the Cold War, to great <a href="/topics//Benefit_(designer)">benefit</a>. As Ike saw, the arts and sciences represent universal languages. 
 The wisest warriors appreciate peace. 
 Arthur I. Cyr is Clausen Distinguished Professor at Carthage College.

OPCYR01

Cyr: The Cold War is finally fading in Cuba

Raul Castro -- cropped

Raul Castro was rubber-stamped Sunday into another term as Cuba's president. He says this term will be his last and that he will retire in 2018. 
 In 54 years, Cubans have had only two presidents -- not that they had much choice in the matter -- Raul, 81, and his ailing older brother, Fidel, 86, the country's long-serving dictator who stepped aside for Raul only when ill health forced him to. 
 Bypassing an entire generation of aging Castroites, Raul named <a href="/topics//Miguel_Diaz">Miguel Diaz</a>-Canel, 52, as his new first vice president and heir apparent. <a href="/topics//Miguel_Diaz">Diaz</a>-Canel replaces Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, 81, who fought alongside the Castros in the Cuban revolution. 
 Raul praised Machado Ventura for his patriotism and selflessness in making way for <a href="/topics//Miguel_Diaz">Diaz</a>-Canel, although voluntarily relinquishing power has not been a hallmark of the Castros' Cuba. 
 Raul told a gathering of legislative leaders that he plans to establish two-term limits for Cuba's top political offices and establish age limits for holding those offices. These may be well-intentioned reforms, but they would also assure that no future leaders challenge the Castro brothers for their place in Cuba's history books. 
 Raul reiterated his commitment "to defend, maintain and continue to perfect socialism," but while in office he nibbled at the edges of Cuba's pervasive state socialism, allowing certain types of private businesses and real estate ownership, and easing travel restrictions. 
 Those steps were small and slow in coming, but at least they were in the right direction if Cuba is ever to gain a modicum of prosperity. 
 Diaz-Canel, an electrical engineer by training, is a former minister of <a href="/topics//Higher_Education">higher education</a> and headed the <a href="/topics//Communist_Party">Communist Party</a> in two provinces. He learned quickly when a charismatic patron of his was dumped by the Castros that the better part of valor was to be neither seen nor heard. He apparently excels in backroom politics, a skill he will need because, while Raul sees him as the heir apparent, it's a safe bet that a lot of Cuban politicians, their ambitions bottled up by the long rule of the Castros, do not. 
 Meanwhile, Raul could celebrate his second term and indicate his desire for friendly relations with the U.S. by releasing Alan <a href="/topics//Alan_Gross">Gross</a>, 63, a <a href="/topics//United_States_Agency_for_International_Development">USAID</a> contractor who was arrested in 2009 and sentenced to 15 years in prison for illegally bringing communications equipment onto the island. 
 Gross' crime was apparently trying to link Cuba's small Jewish community to other Jewish communities by providing Internet connections. Most of the civilized world does not see this as a crime and neither should Cuba. 
 Dale McFeatters is a syndicated columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service.

OPMCFEATTERS25

McFeatters: End of Cuba's Castro era is in sight

Fifty years ago the biggest event in human history almost happened. 
 During a fateful 13-day period in October 1962, the <a href="/topics//Soviet_Union">Soviet Union</a> and the United States balanced at the brink of nuclear war as the Soviets attempted to establish nuclear bases in Cuba. 
 I had just graduated with my degree in nuclear engineering from MIT and reported to the Army nuclear power program at Fort Belvoir in <a href="/topics//Virginia">Virginia</a>. All of us spent the week glued to the TV wondering if the world's first nuclear war was about to begin. I will never forget the relief we felt when we learned that, thanks to the vision and restraint of a handful of people, this point in history would be marked by what did not occur. 
 What President John F. <a href="/topics//John_F._Kennedy">Kennedy</a> and his advisers didn't know as they contemplated an invasion of Cuba was that the Soviets already had tactical nuclear weapons on the island. An invasion could have started a nuclear exchange. Kennedy's advisers gave him two alternatives: an invasion or a naval blockade. Kennedy chose a blockade. Soviet President Nikita Khrushchev chose to remove the bases. Somehow, through all that tension, better sense prevailed. And the rest, as they say, is history. 
 Sadly though, the costs of our nuclear posture are not. We have a Cold War nuclear arsenal built to defend us from "<a href="/topics//Mad_Men">Mad Men</a>"-era threats. But those threats, like the three-martini lunch, are a thing of the past. And the over half a trillion dollars we're going to spend on maintaining that bloated arsenal over the next decade will be a half trillion less we can spend on the training and equipment our troops need to face 21st-century threats. 
 Today, <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">President Barack Obama</a> has the opportunity to bring a Cold-War era policy into the 21st century and is readying a presidential policy review for our thousands-strong nuclear arsenal. What the president decides to do has an impact on everything from where and how the weapons are targeted to whether we reshape our stockpile to reflect modern needs. 
 For example, for the cost of one new ballistic nuclear submarine, we could provide body armor and bomb-resistant Humvees to all our troops overseas, house and treat every homeless veteran, and still have $2.2 billion left over to pay down the debt. 
 And that is just the cost of one of the 13 new subs <a href="/topics//U.S._Congress">Congress</a> is trying to force on the <a href="/topics//The_Pentagon">Pentagon</a>. Our troops and security should come before pork-barrel nuclear programs. 
 Reshaping our nuclear force is an issue of vision and conscience. We need the vision to recognize our world has changed, and we can't allow pork-barrel spending and bureaucratic inertia to shape our national security priorities. 
 As a matter of conscience, we should remember that weapons are still pointed at civilian targets, and we haven't even adopted appropriate safe guards that would reduce the chance of accidental launch. A single strike on a city can kill millions of people. And if the United States remains mired in Cold War attitudes, it makes it harder for us to lead in the effort to reduce and lock up nuclear stockpiles in other countries, which increases the risk of a nuclear weapon falling into the hands of terrorists. 
 It's up to the president to buck bureaucratic inertia and have the vision to confront the threats and costs our bloated stockpile has created. More than a hundred political and faith leaders have signed a joint letter asking the president to do just that. They join military leaders who have long pushed policy-makers to reduce the role of weapons in security strategy, trim stockpiles and shave millions from the budget. I hope the president and <a href="/topics//U.S._Congress">Congress</a> listen. 
 Retired Maj. Gen. Roger R. Blunt commanded the 97th Army Reserve Command and has been awarded the Distinguished Service Medal. He served with the U.S. <a href="/topics//Army_Corps_of_Engineers">Army Corps of Engineers</a> and held the career designator of <a href="/topics//Atomic_(musician)">Atomic</a> Energy Officer. This is from the McClatchy-Tribune News Service.

OPBLU22

Blunt: 50 years after Cuban Missile Crisis, we're still arming to fight Cold War

Cuban Crisis - cropped

The resignation of <a href="/topics/Fidel_Castro">Fidel Castro</a> as president of Cuba after&nbsp;nearly 50 years in power was hailed across the world yesterday as an event of&nbsp;historic importance. 
That may be its proper context. But the 81-year-old dictator's abdication,&nbsp;the inevitable result of his illness, isn't likely to make much difference in&nbsp;the near future to the lives of Cubans, the conduct of their government, or its&nbsp;relations with the <a href="/topics/United_States" style="line-height: 1.6em;">United States</a>. 
What it does offer, however, is an opportunity for the next U.S. president&nbsp;- if not necessarily the current one - to thaw the absurd and counterproductive&nbsp;diplomatic freeze between Washington and <a href="/topics/Havana" style="line-height: 1.6em;">Havana</a>. The new president should&nbsp;loosen up commercial and travel restrictions between the two nations and&nbsp;eventually lift entirely the economic embargo imposed on the communist regime&nbsp;48 years ago. 
The sanctions have had no effect on altering Cuba's behavior or bringing it&nbsp;closer to democracy. Allowing commercial, cultural and personal contacts with&nbsp;the island would give Cubans a glimpse of new economic and political&nbsp;possibilities. Opening up to Cuba also would lessen the risk that Havana would&nbsp;draw closer to <a href="/topics/Venezuela" style="line-height: 1.6em;">Venezuela</a> and <a href="/topics/China" style="line-height: 1.6em;">China</a>, competitors and potential adversaries of&nbsp;the U.S. 
For now, nothing is likely to change on either side of the <a href="/topics/Florida">Florida</a> Strait. 
The <a href="/topics/George_W._Bush">Bush</a> administration already has shut off any possibility of lifting the&nbsp;embargo because of Fidel Castro's decision to step down. And Raul Castro, who&nbsp;has been acting president since his brother's severe intestinal illness a year&nbsp;and a half ago, has vowed to keep Cuba on the same staunchly communist,&nbsp;dictatorial course. 
Raul, 76, who may very well be anointed as the next president by a&nbsp;compliant national assembly, could raise to a higher level of power a cadre of&nbsp;younger party leaders, including technocrats better able to deal with the&nbsp;global economy. Raul is more open than his brother to economic reform and is&nbsp;credited with persuading Fidel to accept agricultural market reforms. 
But Fidel, even behind the scenes, will remain an iconic figure. It's&nbsp;telling that the fiercely anti-Castro Cuban community in <a href="/topics/Miami" style="line-height: 1.6em;">Miami</a> greeted the news&nbsp;of Fidel's resignation not with cheers but with muted skepticism. They know&nbsp;Fidel will be a formidable presence until his death.

VPLED20

Fidel resigns, Cuba goes on

Fidel Castro (Oct. 12, 1979) cropped/fdd

Somebody ought to inform the U.S. Treasury Department that&nbsp;the Cold War is over. The decision to bar a Cuban team from playing next year&nbsp;in the inaugural World Baseball Classic is, in a word, ridiculous. 
This editorial page has long maintained that the <a href="/topics/United_States">United States</a>'&nbsp;head-in-the-sand policy toward Cuba is counterproductive. If the United States&nbsp;could open up its diplomacy during the Cold War with Russia and <a href="/topics/China" style="line-height: 1.6em;">China</a>, it could&nbsp;do the same with Cuba - then or now. Some might recall what was called&nbsp;"ping-pong diplomacy" during the Nixon administration, back in the early 1970s. 
If the U.S. government really wanted to undermine <a href="/topics/Fidel_Castro">Fidel Castro</a>'s regime in&nbsp;Cuba, it would allow American citizens to travel there, American businesses to&nbsp;operate there and Cubans to come to this country. Instead, our policy is&nbsp;dictated by narrow partisan motives, namely not offending the anti-Castro crowd&nbsp;in Florida. 
Besides, some of the best baseball players in the world deserve a chance to&nbsp;display their skills here.

VPCUB17

Let Cubans play ball

Editorial: Let Cubans play ball

Newsday

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