It's another incremental reform that is becoming the Raul era's hallmark. Add them all up, and there is a change going on, but the economy is still not on a good trajectory. Taxis? Cell phones? Hotel rooms? The big one so far really is pegging wages to productivity, but even that is still set by the government, not by a more agile market mechanism.

Contrast that with the real, massive innovation coming out of Cuba, in health care. At home Cuba boasts an incredibly comprehensive and accessible community-based health care system. Abroad, Cuba is exporting both the community-based approach and the doctors and trained medical personnel to make it work for low-income countries. That's revolutionary.

As I've written recently, I think Cuba has a chance to be a real role model for Latin America, as the region tries to figure out how to survive the coming global economic transition from high waste to high efficiency. Indeed, Vice President Machado recently called for much faster changes in this area at the Global Food Crisis Summit in Rome last month.

Global dysfunction is no excuse not to move faster at home. U.S. policy, however, is the dominant reason Cuba cites for not moving faster.

Let's say the U.S. lifts our embargo and guarantees not to invade Cuba. If Cuba were then to reduce its military spending down to British levels, 2.4% of GDP, it would have $715 million extra per year to spend on the next big Cuban revolution. If the Cuban Government were smart, that $715 million could be a down payment for an island-wide renaissance. I'd spend it on a major, national, participatory economic re-development plan.

This would be, in essence, a second, deeper round of his economic dialogues. This time, however, the objective would be to unleash the Cuban economic tiger. South Korea, China and Vietnam have navigated these same waters successfully, but in the context of much more favorable global and domestic economic conditions.

How can Cuba open up private enterprise while regulating markets to ensure social equity? Allow wages to incentivize performance and innovation while maintaining a just and livable minimum wage? Re-develop Cuban cities, towns, and resort communities using the principles of participatory smart growth--making sure communities are developed to fit the needs and aspirations of the community--not the central government? Use progressive taxes on this new economic activity to pay for a new generation of mobility and energy infrastructure? Make Cuban universities and research organizations the envy of Latin America, working on real problems encountered in the second Cuban revolution?

I know it sounds fanciful, given the anachronistic mode in which Havana debates policy. But Raul himself says all reforms must respect Cuban socialism yet Raul just this week re-defined the concept:

Socialism means social justice and equality but equality of rights and opportunities, not salaries. Equality does not mean egalitarism. This is, in the end, another form of exploitation, that of the exploitation of the responsible worker by the one who is not, or even worse, by the slothful.

Raul understands that the economy has to change, but he does not yet seem to have a vision for the next era of the revolution. Regardless, economic change has to come faster than Raul is presently orchestrating. With global commodity prices, as Raul himself noted, threatening his economic reforms, Cuba needs more innovation, not less.

As I wrote yesterday, we have have a real strategic interest in getting Cuba on our side. To do that, we should be having these kinds of blue-sky conversations with the Cuban leadership. We won't until the next president changes our failed policy.

There is a great game playing out in Latin America and the United States is sitting on the sidelines. On one side is Venezuela's Chavez, Bolivia's Morales, and Ecuador' Correa. On the other is Brazil's Lula, Colombia's Uribe, and Mexico's Calderon. The game is, at its heart, about the future of Latin America and its role in the world. But the road to decisive regional influence leads through Cuba and the U.S. embargo is tying Washington's hands.

Cuba is, essentially, up for grabs. Both sides in this contest are wooing the island nation of 11 million people with economic packages. Chavez continues to sweeten his grand barter of oil for doctors with deals like today's oil refinery announcement and internet access deals.

For now, the Andean Axis is being balanced, serviceably, by Lula's billion dollar trip in February, and Calderon's warming of relations with Havana. Uribe, of course, is balancing the Bolivarian surge by his own more effective FARC counterinsurgency.

Like Yugoslavia in the Cold War, Cuba does not have to choose sides and may be able to continue playing both sides off each other in an effort to diversify its aid portfolio in anticipation of continued and expanded Chinese interest in the island nation and its mineral resources. As long as Chavez needs the doctors and nurses of the Cuban medical corps to deliver his social program, Chavez will have ability to use the oil weapon against Havana.

America has a real interest in the outcome of this contest. At present, more than 30% of U.S. oil imports come from Latin America. U.S. exports to this region are almost five times what we send to China. How these emerging markets evolve will have a large impact on U.S. economic health. Combined with 15% of Americans being of Latino ancestry, Congress should be more and more up in arms about a policy that is emperiling the region.

In the long-term, however, we need Latin America aligned with the United States in the coming contest of economic visions. China is in the midst of the largest urbanization program ever undertaken and to succeed it will need all the natural resources Latin America can exploit. Left alone, a business as usual urbanization scenario will, as McKinsey says, put unprecedented stress on global energy and resource commodities. I think it could crash the system.

The United States is the only country that can effectively re-direct China's growth path toward sustainability, but only if we commit to it in a grand strategy supported by the great majority of the international community. Latin America has to be part of that alliance and, even more important it will have to put its own, sustainable economic growth ahead of exports.

Given the track record of the region, however, it seems likely that Latin American countries, lacking a clear pathway to sustainable growth, will take the commodity cash and fork over their patrimony. That, of course, is a recipe for more of the resource curse, more economic refugees, and more immigration problems here.

Cuba is pivotal. It has the regional respect and the education and scientific capacity to be a powerful role model. It could, as I wrote before, take bold steps to leap frog to the next economy. It could align with Brazil and Mexico and end the dalliance with authoritarian socialism. But if Havana is stuck in Yugoslavia mode, surviving not though economic vitality but through taking strategic rents, as it is today, or if Cuba reverts back to its revolutionary glory days and subordinates itself to Chavez, China will be able to continue its ravenous commodity extraction of the region.

Let's hope the next President of the United States understands just what is at stake and makes Cuba more than just a South Florida thing.

My New America colleague, Andres Martinez, former op-ed editor at the LA Times, is the author of the blog, Stumped, the Washington Post's advice column on all things political. It's a great creature that is part blog, part Dear Abby.

Earlier this week, he picked up a question from a reader who just could not make sense of U.S. Cuba Policy. Check it out:

Dear Stumped,

Why do we have an embargo against communist Cuba, while we outsource our manufacturing base to communist China?

Signed,

"Dez"

Dear Dez,

Here's the short answer: No sound reasoning explains Washington's schizophrenia in dealing with Havana and Beijing.

When it comes to China, the foreign policy of the United States is predicated on a belief that the more you engage a totalitarian communist nation -- through trade, regional diplomacy, investment, tourism, educational exchanges and simply by smothering it with American culture -- the more likely it is that democracy and individual rights will take hold in that nation. The theory is that the regime's tight-fisted control of everyday life will be eroded by outside influences.

When it comes to Cuba, however, the foreign policy of the United States is predicated on a belief that the more you isolate a totalitarian communist nation -- cutting it off diplomatically, imposing a trade embargo and preventing people from traveling back and forth -- the more likely it is that democracy and individual rights will develop in that nation. The theory is that the regime's tight-fisted control of everyday life will decay because of the lack of outside influences.

Got that?

And it just gets better. Read the whole column here.

Fifty years of what is now a failed policy is enough. It's time to get a new policy for Cuba and with it a new vision for U.S. relations with Latin America. Check out our own Col. Lawrence Wilkerson as he describes what the next President should do about Cuba.

Could Cuba do to developing world sustainability what it has already done to developing world health care?

That question struck me as I read my colleague Phil Peters' recent post on the latest economic reform by the government of Raul Castro, the issuing of licenses for private transportation services in rural areas. The article says the Cuban government is recognizing that there is, in essence a gap in public services--rural transportation--that a market mechanism can effectively fill.

Odds are, however, that the grey market will deliver a variety of low-efficiency cars and vans just like I've used a thousand times while working in Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans. They are typically pollution-spewing, pedestrian-threatening, and economically addictive, given the current pricing of transportation options.

But with gas prices soaring, notwithstanding the supplementary assistance of Hugo Chavez, Cuba could do a lot better for itself and for its image abroad, if it took a bolder move.

If Cuba is looking for a big goal, I'd recommend ending the use of oil as a transportation fuel in 10 years and converting the country to fully electric transportation, public and private. To do this, Cuba would have to integrate urban planning, infrastructure investment, and renewable generation, but Cuba already has the community-level organization, the access to international trade and, most importantly, the Caribbean sun and wind to be able to deliver the goods.

The effect would be a boon for the Cuban people. Besides the wave of jobs that would be created, and the improved mobility and reduction in pollution, the sense of pride in leading the world in how to address sustainability questions would be a shot in the arm. If the government really does believe its revolutionary rhetoric, community-based participation in urban redevelopment could demonstrate to the developing world that local priorities can supersede and perhaps harness foreign investment when it comes to infrastructure planning. It would also be, in effect, a real form of local democracy.

Just like community-based health-care, a sustainable Cuba would be a beacon to a developing world reeling from high oil prices and a desperate need for good-paying jobs and thriving domestic economies. There is a lot of interest in the four-billion person market at the bottom of the global economic pyramid, and Cuba could really take a leadership role in giving those 4 billion people the opportunity to take more control over their economic futures.

After the U.S. embargo comes down, it will be much harder for Castro or any Cuban government to think really big. But while the pace of reform has been surprising given past performance, it has not inspired the nation or set it on a sustainable path. A bold national initiative, started now, would do these things. It would also stimulate the economy and provide cover for bigger economic reforms, like breaking up the Cuban military's internal economic empires.

Helene Cooper, writing in this Sunday’s New York Times Week In Review, looks at the question of past presidents talking to our international adversaries. In short, Cooper concludes that “The U.S. didn’t talk to Castro, but it did talk to Mao, and that is the path most taken.”

I actually find this article a bit misleading, at least as far as the Cuba policy implications go. My program at the New America Foundation is making the case that it is time to change U.S. policy on Cuba. That’s because once Cuba stabilized and reoriented itself to the post-Cold War world, the embargo ceased being an effective tool of policy, and instead has been a net positive for the Castro governments.

Unlike the situation with Iran, to get a better Cuba policy the next President of the United States really does not need a summit with Raul Castro. The argument for changing Cuba policy is independent of Havana’s action. Our existing policy is the biggest obstacle we face to a better outcome in Cuba.

Sure, it would be a good thing to re-establish diplomatic relations, but to change our policy, end the embargo and ease the severe and unconstitutional restrictions on the travel of American citizens, the White House just needs to talk to the folks at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

This is not rocket science. Changing the dysfunctional set of statutes, executive orders and administrative rules that comprise our current Cuba policy would, I believe, make life harder for Havana. By removing the embargo -- and our tacit support for anti-Castro paramilitaries in South Florida -- from the Castro government’s list of excuses why their economy is underperforming, or why Cubans need to maintain solidarity with the Revolution, the United States would be presenting Havana with a major internal challenge.

Of course, for that same reason, a full, unilateral policy change could end badly for U.S.-Cuban relations. This I want to avoid. But to establish a new diplomatic channel or normalize diplomatic relations does not require a summit.

Summitry is used as leverage or to celebrate and punctuate diplomatic breakthroughs. The obstacles to our Cuba policy, however, require no leverage over Havana and no diplomatic exchanges. There may be a time for a Cuban-U.S. Summit, but not until we implement a policy that actually serves our interests.

Colonel Wilkerson's post, below, sums up my thinking on the rationale for changing policy on Cuba perfectly. That is, Cuba policy is an easy-to-change symbol of Washington's dysfunctional foreign policy and change offers a unparalleled opportunity to re-shape our Hemispheric relations.

The bi-lateral issues with Cuba will work themselves out, once we get our policy aligned with a more sound global and hemispheric strategy.

But one of those bi-lateral issues that really highlights how strategically short-sighted our Cuba policy has become is the case of Luis Posada Carriles. I won't go into the back story, but suffice it to say that Posada is a Cuban-born, U.S.-trained, regional terrorist whose illustrious career included running Venezuelan intelligence, attempting the assassination of Henry Kissinger, arming the Contras as part of Iran-Contra, and bombing an airliner bound for Cuba.

In November of 2000, Posada was caught in Panama City with 200 pounds of explosives while preparing to blow up Fidel Castro at the Ibero-American Summit. In 2004, the out-going Panamanian President, Mireya Moscoso, pardoned Posada and 140 others. On Monday, those pardons were overturned by Panama's Supreme Court.

Extraditing Posada to Panama will have to be part of the package of policy changes that the next president should implement. But until this week, Posada was a bit of a conundrum. Extradition to Cuba's notorious prisons was a non-starter, but sending him back to Panama is a different story altogether.

Obviously, the major elements of any shift in U.S. policy will be the embargo, travel, and normalization. But problems like Posada only get in the way of the right kind of strategy for dealing with Cuba.

That strategy has to be, in short, sink or swim on your own. Cuba must stand on its own two feet in the global economy. With investment and trade opportunities now from around the world, they already do not need U.S. trade to meet the needs of their people. Yet the Cuban economy is still a wreck, and their government knows it, as evidenced by Raul's feverish pace of reform. As long as our embargo is in place, however, Havana will continue to blame economic failure on el colosso del norte.

The next Cuba policy needs to give Havana no excuse. If you want U.S. investment and trade, Washington is not stopping you. You will, however, need to create the market conditions around property, labor, tax, and profits that companies need to do business. If you fail, you fail on your own. Not because the United States has a worthless embargo...or is a training ground for anti-Castro terrorists.

(President Nixon with Premier Enlai during his famous visit to China in 1972)

In 1972, President Richard Nixon, in responding to the toast of Premier Chou En-Lai at the now-famous banquet that highlighted the beginning of a new U.S. policy toward China, made these remarks:

So, let us, in these next five days, start a long march together, not in lockstep, but on different roads leading to the same goal, the goal of building a world structure of peace and justice in which all may stand together with equal dignity and in which each nation, large or small, has a right to determine its own form of government, free of outside interference or domination. (my emphasis)

On 26 June 2008, Senator Chuck Hagel, in a speech at the Brookings Institution, said:

This American presidential election presents unparalleled opportunities for our country and our two candidates. They must not squander the magnitude of this moment. The next president and his team will have a unique opportunity to capture domestic and international support unlike any time since September 11, 2001. I believe that America and the world will follow an honest, competent and accountable American president. To seize this moment, the next president will not have the luxury of extra time to prepare to govern. The candidates must begin that work now as they earn the trust of the people over the next four months. (my emphasis)

One of the "unparalleled opportunities" that confronts America is a new policy with respect to Cuba, that island nation of 11 million souls just 90 miles off the coast of Florida. But unlike Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan/Pakistan, China, Russia, India, global warming, the need for a rational energy policy, infrastructure refurbishment, tax reform and a host of other international and domestic issues, reshaping Cuba policy is not at the top, or even near the top, of either presidential candidate's agenda. But it should be.

Our own hemisphere is changing as rapidly as the power changes that are rocking the United States from Beijing to Baghdad, from New Delhi to Dubai. In Brazil, one of the best leaders in the world, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, charts an increasingly positive course for a nation almost as large as the U.S., while in Argentina -- once the world's tenth most wealthy country -- the potential is there to recapture economic success. In Mexico, historic changes are underway that in a decade or two may propel that country into the economic limelight as well and, if not, send millions more immigrants into the United States. Wherever one looks in Latin America, change is underway. But the U.S. is either not involved or only marginally. Worse, in the one country where its aid money speaks volumes -- Colombia -- the U.S. focus on narcotics looks to South Americans more like pure self-interest than anything else. This neglect and single-issue policy must cease.

Moreover, in some countries such as Venezuela and Bolivia, the U.S. is increasingly seen as unimportant or, worse, antagonistic to the wishes of the majority of the people and supportive still of wealthy elites and rapacious corporations. This damaging image needs to be erased as well.

The best way to begin reshaping our Latin America policy is an opening to that little island off the coast of Florida, Cuba.

Such an opening would signal immediately to the entire region that the U.S. has regained its collective senses, has rethought its foreign policy and, most importantly, will act accordingly. Such an opening would also begin to dispel the apprehension, now shared around the world, that neither global interests nor even national interests drive U.S. foreign policy anymore. Instead, that policy is driven exclusively by U.S. domestic interests -- and usually and most dangerously by narrow and extremist domestic interests pandered to increasingly by politicians of both political parties desperate to please their respective bases.

Such a rational foreign policy opening to Cuba would be welcomed by all of our friends and allies in the world, not least of which is our very best friend, ally and trade partner in the hemisphere, Canada.

Whoever is president in January 2009 should make a commitment to review U.S.-Cuba policy in the first 100 days. A review of that policy based strictly on national interests cannot help but lead to a lifting of the embargo on Cuba and, thus, a whole new policy for Latin America.

-- Lawrence Wilkerson

In the May issue of the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, arguably the most prestigious magazine in the realm of military affairs, appears an article entitled "Castro's Passing: Time for Engagement, Continued Confrontation, or Punitive Action?" by Colonel John C. McKay, USMC (Retired). Colonel McKay possesses the necessary bona fides—not only is he a veteran of combat, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy with an advanced degree from Georgetown University, and a former Olmsted Scholar in Spain, he grew up in Latin America, served as naval attaché in El Salvador, and commanded Joint Task Force 160, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Colonel McKay's argument with respect to U.S. policy toward Cuba centers in comments such as this:

The next step would be to start the process of correction, both of perception and of reality, of past indifferences toward and neglect of Latin America. The first order of business is to formulate a new national policy toward Cuba….

Colonel McKay adds:

…U.S. policy must demonstrate to Cuba, starting now, receptivity to engagement rather than continued confrontation, or worse, punitive action.

Why is it that with respect to Cuba—and for that matter so many other critical parts of American foreign policy—the military seems more attuned to potentially successful policy initiatives than the civilian side of our government? Could it possibly be that the military thinks, plans, and acts on the basis of realities in the world rather than ideologies, pipe dreams, and other phantasmagoria? You betcha' sweet bippies they do.

As a military man myself for 31 years, I know this to be the case. When you and your fellow soldiers, Marines, airmen, sailors and coastguardsmen and women know that your lives may be placed on the line to ensure U.S. policies are carried out, you spend a great deal of time contemplating those policies. Those who say such thinking isn't a military man or woman's responsibility or purview should get a life: all of the military's senior educational processes have been aimed at that purpose since Alfred Thayer Mahan first raised his hand and President Theodore Roosevelt recognized it. And thank God for that development since the only really sane thought about foreign policy these days seems to emanate from the military.

Whether Iraq, Iran (see the General Petraeus confirmation hearings on his selection to be the new commander of U.S. Central Command), Syria, Cuba, Latin America in general, or a host of other foreign policy issues, the military's take on realistic options is far sounder than that of the current administration's civilian members, with the possible exception of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Perhaps in that latter case, exposure to the military has affected Mr. Gates.

Presidential possibilities Obama and McCain need to listen not only to the better angels of their nature but to the sanest minds in their midst once either man attains the Oval Office. With regard to Cuba, Colonel McKay's advice is an excellent starting place.

- Lawrence Wilkerson

It was quite a week. It started on Sunday with dueling teasers from Havana and Washington that saw Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez talk to Wolf Blitzer about the upcoming Day of Solidarity while Havana announced it had evidence of bad behavior by the Chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. Three speeches would be given, one by President Bush, one by Senator McCain and one by Senator Obama.

At the end of the week, however, what can we say really happened? Perhaps the most lasting event was the Cuban government’s release of intercepted communications between Cuban American extremists. To release sensitive intelligence seems to indicate that the Cubans are rather aggravated. They assert that the U.S. government allowed its most senior representative in Cuba to, allegedly, funnel money from radical individuals in the U.S. to dissidents in Cuba. In terms of U.S.-Cuban relations—official relations—this is the news that will last beyond the November elections and make some kind of gradual rapprochement more difficult.

The speeches, on the other hand, were interesting only for the news that the once solid Cuban-American Bloc has collapsed. While President Bush and John McCain echoed the hallowed nostrums of the hard-liners, Senator Obama took a chance, read the latest polling, and decided that he could safely argue that if he were elected, he would immediately end the restrictions on family travel and remittances. And he did that in front of the Cuban American National Foundation. Even the president of CANF called Bush’s new policy of licensing cell phone care packages, “absurd” when families are separated by U.S. travel restrictions and are risking poverty because of limitations on family remittances.

Unfortunately, none of the three speeches addressed America’s real strategic interest regarding Cuba. General Brent Scowcroft thinks we need a new Cuba policy, but none of the Presidential campaigns are willing to admit that the national interest should trump the pipe dreams of a small but vocal minority in Florida.

In reality, the details of the bi-lateral U.S.-Cuba relationship matters much less than the symbolic and strategic obstacles it presents. Our unprincipled and feckless Cuba policy is a symbol of Washington’s continued fascination with military force. The same twisted extremism that led our nation into a tragic war in Iraq is guiding our policy towards Cuba today. America’s true power in the world comes from the attractiveness of our economy and political system, while our coercive power is effective only when the international community stands with us. Reliance on coercive power alone, whether economic or military, is a sign of both weakness and a lack of faith in the founding principles of the Republic.

The Cuba embargo, like all unilateral embargoes, has failed and serves only to support the regime of Raul Castro. It is a gift to the Cuban security services and propagandists, who know that progress can be avoided as long as they can blame los Norte Americanos.

Beyond the symbolic, the failed embargo traps the Western Hemisphere in a backwards relationship with the United States. With so much energy going to this one small island nation, Venezuela is leading a resurgence of the old left and China is locking in long-term contracts for the unsustainable consumption of the Hemisphere’s natural resources.

Changing Cuba policy, dramatically, and in the first 100 days of a new administration, would shake up our strategic outlook. Letting tourism, trade and investment be America’s Ambassadors will do more in five years than in all the 50 years of embargo. Freed of the illogic of embargo and powered by a vision of economic inclusion and sustainability, American leadership in the region could asphyxiate the resurgence of Hugo Chavez’s old left with real, durable, and sustainable development in the region. Cuba would have little need for Chavez’ patronage and China’s oil rigs. Indeed, one Spring Break will do more for free enterprise in Cuba than any reform Raul could authorize.

Sadly, this week did not see any kind of vision. Just more pandering.