On Cuba, Obama abandons a clear position for a vague project
To be sure, President Raúl Castro is in a world of trouble, what with his failing economy and the likelihood that declining oil prices will force Havana's Venezuelan sponsors to reduce their subsidies.
The one thing he does have is a clear goal: keeping himself and Cuba's Communist elite in power, and a time-tested approach for doing so: permitting the minimum economic and political liberalization consistent with total control, and nothing more.
Greater engagement with the United States does indeed pose risks to the regime, not the least of which is that incoming tourists and businessmen will start to erode a pervasive system of social and political control.
But Cuba's authorities have years of experience manipulating foreign investors from Latin America, Canada and Europe, and with controlling Cubans' interactions with foreign visitors, who tend to be more interested in exploiting the local population than liberating it.
And on the plus side for Havana, Obama's measures, particularly greater remittances from U.S.-based Cubans, promise to bring much-needed hard currency to the perennially cash-strapped island.
By contrast, Obama not only abandoned long-standing U.S. policy, he also denounced it, giving the regime a huge propaganda victory. "Long weeks of cheers and victory cries await us," dissident journalist Yoani Sánchez observed ruefully.
The president traded these valuables for the wrongly imprisoned American Alan Gross — but no verifiable, irreversible democratic reform on Cuba's part. To the contrary, Obama came dangerously close to endorsing the argument by Raúl Castro and his brother, Fidel, that there's a binary choice between the status quo and chaos...Also read:
Rubio warns Obama on Cuba: Good luck getting an ambassador confirmed or an embassy funded
Castro, 1; Obama, big zero!
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