THE HANDSHAKE WITH CASTRO
President Barack Obama took a historic step toward normalizing relations with Cuba at the biannual Summit of the Americas in Panama on Saturday when he sat down with Cuban President Raul Castro for the first face-to-face meeting between the leaders of the two countries in a half century. The two men didn’t agree on everything, which was only to be expected. But the mere fact that they could sit in the same room and discuss their differences — and shake hands afterward — offered hope that 50 years of unremitting enmity and distrust between the two nations may be nearing an end. A change in direction in the U.S. strategy toward Cuba is long overdue.
It’s been clear for a long time that the U.S. trade embargo and its effort to isolate Cuba diplomatically were unlikely to succeed in either toppling that country’s communist government or bringing greater economic and political freedom to ordinary Cubans. Yet as Mr. Obama noted at the summit’s conclusion, the U.S.-Cuba relationship has been stuck in a time-warp from the 1950s. The mutual hostility has outlived both the Cold War and the collapse of communism in the former Soviet Union; it no longer serves any useful purpose. Mr. Obama had the courage to finally say enough is enough.
A rapprochement with Cuba has immediate benefit for the U.S. as well as Cuba. Most importantly, it removes a perennial wedge in U.S. relations with its Latin American neighbors, who have long complained of Cuba’s exclusion from meetings on hemispheric affairs and who already refuse to enforce the U.S. trade ban with Cuba — as do Canada, the European Union and most of the rest of the world. By insisting on isolating Cuba politically and economically, the U.S. has mostly succeeded only in isolating itself. In Panama, Mr. Obama went out of his way to emphasize he won’t be bound by antiquated policies that work against U.S. interests and that were put into place before he was born.
For Cubans, the renewed diplomatic and trade ties with the U.S. promise a shot in the arm for the island’s faltering economy in the form of increased tourism and greater access to U.S. markets for Cuban products. The country never recovered from the loss of Russian subsidies for Cuban sugar and other commodities after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, and more recently it took another big hit when falling oil prices forced Venezuela, its most important regional ally, to cut back on energy supplies to the island. Cuba’s leaders evidently have concluded that the risks of engaging with the U.S. are outweighed by the threat of an eventual economic collapse.
Critics argue that Mr. Obama’s opening to Cuba is ill-timed for that very reason: Instead of easing trade barriers against the island, they say, the U.S. should be doubling down on economic pressure against the Castro regime at a time when it is most vulnerable. But the Cuban regime has proved remarkably durable. Moreover, we’ve established normal diplomatic and trade ties to other former enemies such as China and Vietnam — with whom, unlike Cuba, we’ve actually fought long and bloody wars. Those countries are hardly liberal democracies today, yet we no longer treat them like pariah states. Why should Cuba, which poses virtually no serious national security threat to the U.S., be any different?
Still, Mr. Obama can expect the usual reflexive opposition from a Republican- controlled Congress that seems determined to block any foreign policy initiative he proposes. The GOP’s distaste for an opening to Cuba is as much a result of its more general distrust of the president’s overall strategy of engagement — especially as it applies to Iran — as it is a reflection of the party’s unwillingness to abandon a policy that clearly has failed. The new U.S.-Cuba relationship Mr. Obama is seeking to forge is admittedly still a work in progress, with many important details yet to be negotiated between the two parties, but to his credit the president at least is looking forward to the future rather than back to the past.