I have been dreadfully busy the last few weeks. The dayjob has hit it peak crush and OT is plentiful. There are stirrings in the writing the department that may herald good news, but it is too early to tell more than that. So my poor blog has been a wee bit neglected. However the news on Cuba is so big I just have to comment.
I confess to being torn on the issue. On one hand Cuba is a brutal, murdering dictatorship.The less we have to do with such beasties the better. That island is no workers paradise. It pretty much flows from the definition of paradise that people would claw to get into one, not out.
One the other hand out five decade policy simply is not working. We have not crushed Castor’s government, and for fifty years the people of Cuba have suffered. The pragmatist in me is repelled that the thought of continuing a policy that doesn’t work.
We engaged with the Soviets, while keeping a strong commitment against their totalitarian rule and in the end they fell. In part because of the seduction presented by the engagement, the people could experience a better life, they could suffer McDonalds and want more. So engagement is not always appeasement and it can help us spread freedom to people who need it.
Yet we have also seen that engagement appears to the failing in China. Those brutal rulers seems to be navigating their way out of communism and into Fascism. this transformation is being fuel my American enterprise utilizing the cheap labor, but the price in the end may turn out to be quite high.
So engagements can work and it can fail. Did the Administration do the right thing?
I don’t know.
I have a feeling the policy change is more about Obama than it is about Cuba. More about presidential legacy and the desire to be remembered as the ‘anti-Reagan’, than it is about the welfare of the Cuban people.
And I that’s why I suspect whatever deal was made, settled on terms most favorable to the current dictatorship of Cuba. As opposed to hard nosed negotiating leading to a fair compromise.