Not since Richard Nixon went to China has an intractable foreign policy issue been so ripe for resolution as U.S. relations with Cuba are today.
As with China, bilateral hostility has persisted long after the causes of the initial break have ceased to hold sway, held in place by seemingly implacable domestic opposition to normalizing relations and the policy inertia of official Washington. When Nixon broke the stalemate by announcing his impending trip in 1972, the pro-Taiwan "China lobby" proved to be a paper tiger, and the foreign policy establishment heaved a great sigh of relief that such a manifestly irrational, ineffective and anachronistic policy had finally been put to rest.
U.S. policy toward Cuba today, like policy toward China in 1972, is overdue for change. Relations broke down 50 years ago because Washington was unwilling to countenance a Latin American client state escaping the orbit of U.S. hegemony, and because Fidel Castro was determined to do just that. The Soviet Union's willingness to provide Cuba an essential safety net brought Cold War confrontation to the Western Hemisphere, escalating the U.S.-Cuba skirmish to potential Armageddon.
These original insults to U.S. interests have long since faded. The end of the Cold War ended Havana's pretensions to world power and its threat to U.S. strategic interests. Cuban troops came home from Africa and no longer train aspiring Latin American guerrillas. Castro, who relished tweaking the noses of U.S. presidents and built both his domestic support and international prestige on defying them, has, since his illness, retired to the role of pundit. His more pragmatic younger brother, Raul, abstains from the anti-American rhetoric that made Fidel famous, and on several occasions has offered dialogue.
Long before Nixon went to China, the rest of the world community had acknowledged that China was governed from Beijing, not Taiwan. U.S. allies in Latin America and Europe, which followed Washington's lead half a century ago by breaking ties with Cuba, today have normal economic and diplomatic relations with the island. Last October, the United Nations General Assembly voted for the 17th time in as many years to condemn the U.S. embargo by a vote of 185 to 3. In December, 33 Latin American and Caribbean nations in the Rio Group granted Cuba full membership and called for an end to the U.S. embargo. A policy adopted half a century ago to isolate Cuba today isolates only the U.S.
