It is long overdue - President Obama's announcement of an historic, major shift in policy toward Cuba. It's not that everything will change by this announcement. The long-standing trade embargo with Cuba can only be changed by the Congress. It remains to be seen whether the Congress will act rationally and do this, or whether the Republicans, along with a few recalcitrant Democrats, will insist on retaining the embargo that serves neither Americans nor Cubans well.
As the rest of the world is openly trading and interacting with Cuba, It makes absolutely no sense on economic, cultural, or political grounds to cut ourselves off from Cubans who identify with America in every sense - sports, fashion, desire for American consumer goods, and desire for greater political freedoms.
Predictably, some Republicans, and a few recalcitrant Democrats, have expressed outrage that President Obama would restore normal diplomatic relations with Cuba. Some resistance is doubtlessly from the Republican strategy that everything the president does must be opposed. Some opposition is by politicians siding with Cuban exiles who still favor isolating Castro's Cuba.
It doesn't seem to matter that American policy toward Cuba is a decades old relic of the Cold War, has done nothing to weaken the hold of Fidel Castro, and has done nothing to increase freedom and human rights of average Cubans. It can more logically be argued that our policy toward Cuba has been counterproductive on both these fronts - in addition to cutting off markets from American agricultural and other business enterprises.
This whole foreign policy exercise in futility goes back to the 1959 Cuban revolution that ousted the corrupt regime of Fulgencio Batista. The leader of the revolution, Fidel Castro, expropriated property, and declared a socialist state. Opponents of the revolution escaped to Florida, hoping for a counter-revolution in which they could regain control.
This being during the Cold War era, Cuba was seen as an enemy, a socialist state "only 90 miles from our shores." Some of the same people who went into a panic over this were the same people who couldn't understand why the Chinese Communists, a few years earlier in 1950 during the Korean War, reacted as they did when United Nations forces pushed toward the Yalu River in North Korea.
Cuba, as a socialist state, was seen as an ally of the Soviet Union. Our reaction toward Cuba virtually assured that this would be the case. It all led up to the ill-fated "Bay of Pigs" invasion of 1960, and the Missile Crisis of 1962, an event that led us much closer to nuclear war with the Soviet Union than most people realize.
In any case, the Cold War ended with tearing down the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Any threat to America by Cuba has been non-existent for a long time. But continued hostility has existed, led by aging Cuban exiles, mainly in Florida. The policy of attempting to isolate Cuba has been justified as an attempt to weaken the Castro regime, or at least pressuring the Cuban government for human rights.
The old saws of "We shouldn't recognize dictatorships," and "We shouldn't reward repressive governments by trading with them," are constantly repeated and used as rationale for continued non-relations.
These reasons for attempting to isolate Cuba are totally ridiculous. We have not restricted trade or diplomatic relations with other dictatorships and repressive regimes. And our attempts to isolate Cuba have, if anything, worked to the disadvantage of Cuban citizens by depriving them of consumer goods they would otherwise have.
In this modern information-oriented world, greater freedoms are enhanced by doing everything possible to give ordinary citizens access to information and consumer goods s that people the world over desire. It has been argued persuasively that it was more due to Reebok and Levi Strauss than to Ronald Reagan that the Soviet Union collapsed. The Soviet system failed to produce the western-type consumer goods that their citizens desired.
This argument is particularly relevant to Cubans who in so many ways identify with America. The way to pressure the Cuban regime is to open up relations with the country, allow and promote more trade and tourism, both ways. This is not to say that everything will change overnight. But once the Cubans get a taste of the benefits of trade, freedom to travel, and access to information, the trend will be impossible to reverse.
Attitudes of younger generations of the hard-line Cuban exiles are changing, and welcome more open relations with Cuba than the older generations.
This trend puts some ostensibly serious Republican candidates for the presidency in an interesting dilemma. As Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, Florida Republicans who have long sided with hard-line Cuban exiles, have opposed President Obama on this issue, they have a fine line to tread. Not only are the younger Cuban Americans changing their positions, but a majority of Americans favor opening relations with Cuba.
Readers of this column know that I'm no fan of Richard Nixon. But one must give him credit where it is due. The president who built his career on Red-baiting was instrumental in opening up American relations with Red China in 1970. For this he should be applauded. Had Hubert Humphrey won that election of 1868, he could never have gotten away with it.
This is not to suggest that Republicans who dislike President Obama will change their minds on him. But surely, many, including Republican business interests who will profit from trade with Cuba, must applaud Obama for this policy change.
And for Republican candidates for the presidency - it's one thing to be on the wrong side of practically every issue of importance. But it's ludicrous to be on the wrong side of an issue on which history has decades ago passed them by.
- John Waelti's column appears every Friday in the Times. He can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net.
As the rest of the world is openly trading and interacting with Cuba, It makes absolutely no sense on economic, cultural, or political grounds to cut ourselves off from Cubans who identify with America in every sense - sports, fashion, desire for American consumer goods, and desire for greater political freedoms.
Predictably, some Republicans, and a few recalcitrant Democrats, have expressed outrage that President Obama would restore normal diplomatic relations with Cuba. Some resistance is doubtlessly from the Republican strategy that everything the president does must be opposed. Some opposition is by politicians siding with Cuban exiles who still favor isolating Castro's Cuba.
It doesn't seem to matter that American policy toward Cuba is a decades old relic of the Cold War, has done nothing to weaken the hold of Fidel Castro, and has done nothing to increase freedom and human rights of average Cubans. It can more logically be argued that our policy toward Cuba has been counterproductive on both these fronts - in addition to cutting off markets from American agricultural and other business enterprises.
This whole foreign policy exercise in futility goes back to the 1959 Cuban revolution that ousted the corrupt regime of Fulgencio Batista. The leader of the revolution, Fidel Castro, expropriated property, and declared a socialist state. Opponents of the revolution escaped to Florida, hoping for a counter-revolution in which they could regain control.
This being during the Cold War era, Cuba was seen as an enemy, a socialist state "only 90 miles from our shores." Some of the same people who went into a panic over this were the same people who couldn't understand why the Chinese Communists, a few years earlier in 1950 during the Korean War, reacted as they did when United Nations forces pushed toward the Yalu River in North Korea.
Cuba, as a socialist state, was seen as an ally of the Soviet Union. Our reaction toward Cuba virtually assured that this would be the case. It all led up to the ill-fated "Bay of Pigs" invasion of 1960, and the Missile Crisis of 1962, an event that led us much closer to nuclear war with the Soviet Union than most people realize.
In any case, the Cold War ended with tearing down the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Any threat to America by Cuba has been non-existent for a long time. But continued hostility has existed, led by aging Cuban exiles, mainly in Florida. The policy of attempting to isolate Cuba has been justified as an attempt to weaken the Castro regime, or at least pressuring the Cuban government for human rights.
The old saws of "We shouldn't recognize dictatorships," and "We shouldn't reward repressive governments by trading with them," are constantly repeated and used as rationale for continued non-relations.
These reasons for attempting to isolate Cuba are totally ridiculous. We have not restricted trade or diplomatic relations with other dictatorships and repressive regimes. And our attempts to isolate Cuba have, if anything, worked to the disadvantage of Cuban citizens by depriving them of consumer goods they would otherwise have.
In this modern information-oriented world, greater freedoms are enhanced by doing everything possible to give ordinary citizens access to information and consumer goods s that people the world over desire. It has been argued persuasively that it was more due to Reebok and Levi Strauss than to Ronald Reagan that the Soviet Union collapsed. The Soviet system failed to produce the western-type consumer goods that their citizens desired.
This argument is particularly relevant to Cubans who in so many ways identify with America. The way to pressure the Cuban regime is to open up relations with the country, allow and promote more trade and tourism, both ways. This is not to say that everything will change overnight. But once the Cubans get a taste of the benefits of trade, freedom to travel, and access to information, the trend will be impossible to reverse.
Attitudes of younger generations of the hard-line Cuban exiles are changing, and welcome more open relations with Cuba than the older generations.
This trend puts some ostensibly serious Republican candidates for the presidency in an interesting dilemma. As Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, Florida Republicans who have long sided with hard-line Cuban exiles, have opposed President Obama on this issue, they have a fine line to tread. Not only are the younger Cuban Americans changing their positions, but a majority of Americans favor opening relations with Cuba.
Readers of this column know that I'm no fan of Richard Nixon. But one must give him credit where it is due. The president who built his career on Red-baiting was instrumental in opening up American relations with Red China in 1970. For this he should be applauded. Had Hubert Humphrey won that election of 1868, he could never have gotten away with it.
This is not to suggest that Republicans who dislike President Obama will change their minds on him. But surely, many, including Republican business interests who will profit from trade with Cuba, must applaud Obama for this policy change.
And for Republican candidates for the presidency - it's one thing to be on the wrong side of practically every issue of importance. But it's ludicrous to be on the wrong side of an issue on which history has decades ago passed them by.
- John Waelti's column appears every Friday in the Times. He can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net.
