A message of reconciliation has gone out from Washington, albeit a confusing one. On the eve of this weekend's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad, the White House announced that it will no longer be a crime for Americans to make gifts of fishing tackle, dog medicine or soap-making equipment to a citizen of Cuba, provided he is not a member of the Communist party. Visits to Cuba are unlimited and so are remittances "“ provided you have a relative there who is a second cousin or closer, or live with a person who has such a relative. You are free to lay fibre-optic cable in Cuba, and engage in most kinds of telecommunications work, but other forms of business contact remain off-limits.
President Barack Obama claims the new regulations do not mean a revocation of the US trade-and-travel embargo against Cuba, which has been in place since John F. Kennedy imposed it in 1962. But in fact, the new policy is forcing Americans to confront the possibility that they have been going about the liberation of Cuba in the wrong way.
The case for the embargo remains what it always was "“ making communist Cuba pay a price for the autocratic rule of Fidel (and now his brother Raúl) Castro. The case against it is that it is a relic of the cold war that hurts Cuba's citizens more than its government. The embargo remains because most Florida Cubans want it to remain. Most Americans are indifferent. Republicans have tended to tighten the embargo, Democrats to loosen it. Bill Clinton permitted Cubans to visit the island once a year. George W. Bush cut it to once every three.
Mr Obama's plan has some bizarre elements, such as the granting of travel rights on ethnic grounds. We know why Americans of Cuban ethnicity would want to go to Cuba more than other Americans. That they should be allowed to go to Cuba more than other Americans is an outrage against republican principles.
It is true that the Obama administration inherited a biased policy. Messrs Clinton and Bush both offered special travel privileges to ethnic Cubans and certain occupational classes (journalists, academics, human rights activists). But the new administration's lifting of all limits on Cuban-Americans makes the injustice more glaring, and expanding the definition of "family"� makes it more profound. It changes a privilege based on sentimental ties into a privilege based on ethnicity. It is another sign (along with affirmative action and the widespread use of undocumented labour) that Americans are now quite comfortable having different classes of citizenship.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs has claimed the policy is effective in practice. He quoted the president as saying: "There are no better ambassadors for freedom than Cuban Americans."� But is the superiority of American-style freedom over Cuban communism such a close call that it requires the best ambassadors to argue it?
When it comes to sanctions and embargoes, the central issue is how often they hurt the regime (almost never) and how often they hurt the people (almost always). The White House has made clear that its opening is directed at the Cuban people. Unfortunately, they can be reached only through the regime. The Castro government skims 20 per cent off the top of all remittances sent home, a rate that White House aide Dan Restrepo described as "usurious"� and Mel Martinez, Florida's Cuban-American senator, called "despicable"�.
It still might be a price worth paying. East Germany's currency-starved communist rulers hastened their end through their willingness to grant their citizens some freedom of movement in exchange for Deutschemarks. So when the White House says, on the one hand, that it aims to strengthen foes of the regime and, on the other, that it will demand new gestures from Castro, it is not being illogical. In fact, it is being sensible.
In its first quarter-century, the embargo against Cuba was a powerful means of expressing America's enmity, at a time when Cuba had done plenty to earn it. It was a way of satisfying voters' sense of justice, showing the high price of crossing the US and demonstrating that, for Washington, profits took a back seat to strategy. It provided a useful example to countries choosing sides in the cold war. But it was not an effective tool for change within Cuba, because the cost of US enmity was not particularly high. Subsidies from the USSR replaced trade with the US.
Like a lot of things in life, alas, the embargo got stronger as its raison d'être got weaker. Its golden age came in the decade after the threat of communism receded. Between the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act and the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, both of which really tightened the screws, the advanced economies were developing the internet while Havana professionals were bused off to cut cane in the countryside as part of the "special period in a time of peace"�. Whether or not one joined the new economy really mattered, economically and politically.
It matters less now. China and Russia prove the embargo's enemies wrong "“ trade does not provide the impetus to democratic reform that we once thought. But the continuing financial crisis proves the embargo's defenders wrong, too "“ imposing autarky looks almost like doing Cuba a favour. Cuba may have few assets but they are 100 per cent non-toxic.
If Mr Obama is defending the embargo, he is defending it in a way that makes manifest its obsolescence and illogic. His policy is open to the accusation that it is a tangled mess. But it also shows signs of having been designed that way, so that unravelling it will mean unravelling the embargo, too.
The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard. His book, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West, is published in May
More columns at www.ft.com/caldwell
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
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