So now we have to contemplate the possibility of a diminishing of "tensions", such as they were, between official Cuba and the official U.S. How ever will our moral compasses deal with that one?
I've never been to Cuba and known very few people who have. I'm old enough to remember a joke on a 1959ish-era TV show where the riddle was something about a U.S. space rocket, and the answer was "Batista's getaway car", which was funny when the old miserable dictator Fulgencio Batista was driven from office and the new, even worse dictator Fidel Castro was grabbing power.
So now the president has tried to open doors to end the 50-year-old embargo and establish diplomatic relationships with the Castros. Naturally, I am suspicious; it is really hard to think that anything Obama does -- especially when this has apparently been in the works for a year without a hint to Congress -- is being done for good reason. Right now we are in the "Barry's Legacy" years, meaning that we assume first that any action taken by the White House is to give the future Obama canonizers something to work with when they rewrite history.
But what could happen as a result? Better yet, what do we want to happen as the result of any particular action toward Cuba? I think the answer is pretty widely agreed-upon. We want a successful, democratically-governed Cuba with a free (i.e., capitalistic) economy and a thriving people not victim to human-rights violations and a repressive dictatorship. We want an ally to our south.
I'm always looking at the end state. As it's often said, all roads are equally valid if you don't know where you're going. The above is the end state I'd like to see and I think the USA does as well. So how do we get there?
There's an old Aesop fable where the Sun and the Wind bet that they can each get the coat off a man. The Wind goes first, but the more it blows, the tighter the man wraps the coat, until finally the Wind gives up. Then the Sun takes over, shining brightly until the man finally takes off the coat and throws it over his shoulder and the Sun wins.
The metaphor applies here, of course. One could easily argue that the Soviet empire fell when the metaphorical Sun started shining on it, the blinds lifted by Pope John Paul II and the Polish movement Solidarity, Ronald Reagan's promotion of the Strategic Defense Initiative which forced the Soviets to try to respond and ultimately bankrupt itself doing so, and the network of walls ultimately falling. Eventually even the Russians, at least for a time, were a westernized economy.
So could it be here. The global marketplace is so electronic, so, well, "global", that it would take very little time for the Cuban economy to start sprouting pockets of success. Word spreads, entrepreneurship spreads, and before long the economy outstrips the dictatorship's ability to control it by force. The USA happily smiles and subsidizes Cuban start-ups, vesting American entrepreneurs in opposing any local Cuban governmental opposition to growth. We are, after all, only 90 miles away. The USA, not Venezuela, starts selling energy to Cuba. Before long, we're their big trading partner.
If the end is a successful economy that demands a democratically-elected government, then I have to say, the Sun and not the Wind would be the successful path. I've no idea what Obama is thinking -- or if he is thinking -- and I do believe we need to work diplomatically with leaders in the Cuban-American community somehow (actual Cuban-American leaders like Senators Rubio and Menendez, not some Cuban Al Sharpton). But I have to think some kind of Cuban glasnost, followed by a huge economic assault of American capitalism, would lead to the desired Cuba faster than anything else.
Desi Arnaz would be proud. We could rebuild those clubs in Havana again.
Copyright 2014 by Robert Sutton
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