Changing Course on Cuba

What do you call a US policy that allows a notorious international terrorist to walk free on bail? A policy that detains and fines a class of New York high school students for taking a study trip over spring break? A policy that has been repudiated at the United Nations by virtually every other country in the world? A policy that, after forty-eight years of abject failure, is still based on the false assumption that success--in the form of "regime change"--is just around the corner? Imperial. Illogical. Irrational. Insane.

As Wayne Smith, former chief of the US interest section in Havana, has observed, Cuba seems to have "the same effect on American administrations that the full moon has on werewolves." For almost five decades this small Caribbean nation has inspired some of the most rabid US policies, from economic embargoes and diplomatic sanctions to covert ops, paramilitary invasions and assassination attempts. Fidel Castro has survived such aggression from nine US Presidents, and it now appears he may outlast a tenth.

The next occupant of the White House will have an unusual opportunity to bring US policy toward Cuba into the twenty-first century. Slowly but surely, the political actors are realigning. Castro's illness opened up unprecedented possibilities for change on the island, and the stable transition of power to his brother Raul exposed as a fallacy Washington's prediction that the regime would disintegrate without its founder. Recent opinion polls reflect more moderate attitudes among Cuban-Americans, a shift that could ease the vise-like grip hard-line exiles have held over the crucial swing state of Florida. The Democratic takeover of Congress has placed limits on the power of right-wing Cuban-American legislators. Finally, the Administration has drained the blood from its global crusade for regime change with the self-inflicted wound known as the Iraq War.

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