Michael Landweber has rebutted my rebuttal using three basic arguments. They are:

1. If granted access, American business interests could coax the Castro regime into making incremental changes that benefit the Cuban people.
2. That leaving the embargo in place means doing nothing.
3. That Cuba is not the Soviet Union and we don’t even know if a Cuban Gorbachev exists.

Let’s take them in order. I’m a firm believer in the principle that the best indicator of future performance is past performance. Based on this line of thinking, I expect that American businesses operating in Cuba will no more coax the regime into moving toward its demise (that’s what we’re really asking of them isn’t it?) than Spanish businesses, Canadian businesses, British businesses, etc. For example, Spanish hoteliers happily assisted the Castro brothers by enforcing tourist apartheid at Cuba’s hotels and resorts for almost two decades. Cubans were not permitted to stay at such hotels, even if they had the money to do so.

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Maybe Henry Luis Gomez is right. My original post is probably no more than wishful thinking. Maybe there really is absolutely nothing that the U.S. can do to influence change in our neighbor a mere ninety miles away. Maybe we have to just sit by idly and wait.

But contrary to what Mr. Gomez says, I’m not a believer in the mystical power of free trade to topple dictatorships.  I don’t think that ending the embargo would lead to an instant dissolution of the regime.  Everything Mr. Gomez says could be true.  We could open the floodgates and get totally fleeced by the Cuban government.  A huge influx of U.S. dollars probably could help the regime survive. American businesses might be willing to invest on Cuba’s terms to get a foothold in the market, even if it means participating in a corrupt system. Perhaps nothing would change.

But I also believe that U.S. engagement in Cuba, through private business interests and public diplomatic efforts, might actually influence how the government behaves.  American businesses might actually create incentives through investment for the government to alter its economic policies. If we lift the embargo, even in stages, given our proximity and the certain demand that would arise for American goods and investment, it is possible that we could quickly become indispensable to the Cuban economy. And once you become indispensable, you have influence – something that we completely lack now. Perhaps there would be change.

There I go again with my wishful thinking.

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What a wonderful world it would be if we could only wish our troubles away as Michael Landweber thinks we can.  He wants the United States to declare victory over Cuba’s Castro regime while at the same time making concessions to it and bestowing the legitimacy that the dictatorship has craved for the better part of fifty years.

Mr. Landweber mistakenly characterizes U.S government’s policy toward Cuba as one based on animus toward a single person, Fidel Castro, rather than on a thorough understanding of the system that he has forced upon his countrymen.  Though it’s now Raul Castro and not Fidel at the helm, the dictatorship remains unchanged.  Just ask Cuban dissident punk rocker Gorki Aguila who was arrested on Monday for “precriminal dangerousness.”  The repression continues despite the fact that Cuba is free to trade with every other country in the world.  Apparently Landwber thinks that American trade has some mystical power to do what trade from other countries hasn’t been able to, bring down an intransigent totalitarian dictatorship, but he doesn’t explain exactly how that would happen.  He can’t.

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Apparently, Fidel Castro is not dead.

He watched the Olympics and he’s not happy about what he saw. Castro said that Cuban boxers were “robbed” by corrupt officials and he defended the Cuban Tae Kwon Do athlete who kicked a referee in the face.

We’ve been listening to this kind of blather from Castro for five decades now. Maybe it is finally time for the U.S. to stop paying attention to the incoherent ramblings of an ailing former dictator. Granted, the comments about the Olympics lend themselves to ridicule. But unlike the speeches and proclamations that Castro has spouted throughout the years, we now have the luxury of ignoring his words completely.

Maybe it is time to stop basing our Cuba policy on Castro altogether.

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