Political Spinner

It has been said that the United States of America is not run by logic, it is run by Congress. America’s comatose Cuba policy is one glaring indication of America ’s glorious absence of common sense in foreign (and domestic) policy. Obama’s administration is showing some signs of actually shifting gears to a more rational Cuba policy, but the signs are weak, and inconsistent.

There is no denial that America’s captains have their hands full right now: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel-Palestine, the economy, Russia, and Africa, just to name a few. All of the above are real problems; they will require a rational, calculated, multi-dimensional approach, and the penalties for failure will be severe.

Cuba is none of the above; Cuba is not, nor has it never been a problem or a potential trouble spot for the U.S. Of course, many in America get all hot and bothered when the name Cuba is mentioned, and America ’s spies and right-wing policy makers are spending much time and resources keeping the Cuba balloon inflated, but it’s still nothing short of hot air. Cuba is a tiny, impoverished island that poses no threat whatsoever to America or to American interests, and should consequently attract proportionally heavy consideration and attention. None of Cuba’s gambits in its relations with the U.S. ever mounted to much more than trying to poke a giant in the eye, and America’s response – a half century embargo – has been one colossal failure, and a mistake, that should be repudiated as soon as possible.

The embargo is a failure because it has achieved nothing, and because nobody in the world, including many in America, collaborates in enforcing it – a necessary condition for such a policy to have even a chance of succeeding.

A completely opposite policy, that of hugging Cuba, flooding it with American tourists, business people, goods, technologies, and ex-patriots, would have achieved America’s goals long ago, and with much less pain and rancor on all sides. But that would have required logic and common sense, a commodity that’s in very short supply anywhere a bruised national ego is on the line.

President Obama took the first tentative steps recently by removing the penalizing restrictions on ex-pats’ travel to Cuba , and by relaxing remittance regulations. He should have done much more. He should have scrapped the entire silly confrontation and moved on to a constructive engagement policy; but such a move would have galvanized the already steaming right, and Obama, rightly, probably decided not to divert attention from serious problems into this non-issue. It would be proper and smart to use the first opportunity (if/when things on the real fronts start looking better) to do away with the whole silly American obsession with Cuba, and move on with life. It would be a small, but important, test of America’s ability to behave sanely in its own back yard.