http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/invade-cuba-with-tourists/?8ty&emc=ty
It’s great that President Obama is easing curbs on family travel to Cuba, so that Cuban-Americans can visit Cuba freely and remit money to their relatives freely. That’s long overdue.
But Obama should go much further and lift all travel restrictions on Cuba, and lift the trade embargo as well. Isolating Cuba has failed catastrophically — it has simply impoverished ordinary Cubans and prevented the normal processes that erode dictatorship. We’ve also given the Castro brothers a nationalist excuse for their own repression and economic incompetence.
Think for a moment which are the countries that we have isolated the most in recent decades. That’s right — North Korea and Cuba. Those are exactly the same countries that have been most successful in preserving Communist dictatorships; we’ve inadvertently done a favor to Kim Jong Il and the Castros. It’s always the most isolated countries — you can add Turkmenistan to the list — that are most successful at resisting international pressure for pluralism, human rights and democracy, so it’s mystifying that we somehow think that isolating a bad regime is punishing it.
It’s hard to think of an initiative toward Cuba that backfired more than the Bay of Pigs invasion. But suppose we invaded Cuba not with gunmen but with tourists — American tourists who reacted to Havana not with threats but with mirth (and outrage at the scratchy toilet paper). Unleash hordes of Americans complaining bitterly about the lack of wifi connections, or asking pointedly why the cars are so old and the buildings so dilapidated, and the Castros are in trouble. We need more interaction between Cubans and Americans, not less.
So let’s hope that the relaxation on curbs toward Cuba is just a first step. For too many decades, we’ve simply been helping to keep Fidel in power. You agree?