Cuba sí, embargo no

History is expected Saturday when President Obama meets with Cuban President Raúl Castro in Panama — the first time the nations’ respective leaders will talk directly to one another since the Cuban revolution. View this and other moves not as a triumph for the island nation’s repressive Communist dictatorship — but as an opportunity for smartly liberalizing American policy to bring long-denied freedom and prosperity to Cuba’s 11 million people.

To this day, Cuba remains ruled by a dastardly regime that silences dissidents, strangles the press, tramples property rights and imprisons trumped-up enemies of the state at will — and harbors American fugitives to boot.

Those are realities that must be challenged consistently by American diplomats and Presidents, including by Obama this weekend.

The purpose of the President’s December decision to normalize diplomatic relations was to give engagement a chance to change what a half-century of systematic isolation had not.

Diplomatic ties were severed in early 1961, when Cuba was a Soviet satellite and a direct military threat.

Then came America’s victory in the Cold War, and the collapse of the USSR. The Castros remained in power, denying their citizens basic rights — and gaining strength from the bogeyman of a hostile United States just 90 miles to the north.

The Soviet Union’s demise and the diminishment of Cuba’s reach will place Obama on solid footing if, as anticipated, he accepts a State Department recommendation to remove Cuba from the list of states that support terror.

The Cuban government is many dishonorable things; it is not a security threat to America.

Since the President’s historic December policy shift, planes have flown there directly from America, and American companies are beginning to feel out the market.

But a President can only go so far down the path toward real normalcy on his own.

To let in not only the sunshine of ideas but the oxygen of commerce, the United States must end its economic blockade, a Cold War relic that has, completely contrary to its objectives, helped the Castro brothers maintain their grip on power.

Only Congress can end the embargo, enshrined in federal law for a half century, and it must.

Make no mistake, Cuba remains a hellish place. The question is not whether that immoral status quo should end, but how.

Ostracization has failed. Direct pressure and, sooner rather than later, trade, have far better odds of succeeding.