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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Next week, we'll be holding a fascinating event on what Richard Nixon would do on Cuba. I'll post the full description tomorrow.

I mention this, because one of the speakers will be Julia Sweig who was just on the Colbert Report talking about the intersection of Miss Universe and Hugo Chavez. Hillarious.

This event just in from my day job over at the New America Foundation:

Thirty-seven years after Nixon went to China, the next President of the United States has another chance to split a non-threatening communist state away from an aggressive socialist power. Then, like now, there is an opportunity to really change the perception of the United States in the world and shift the conversation.

This event is co-hosted by the New America Foundation and The Nixon Center.

To register for this event, click here.

Start: 07/28/2008 - 12:30pm
End: 07/28/2008 - 2:00pm

New America Foundation
1630 Connecticut Ave, NW 7th Floor
Washington, 20009

Featured speakers

Dimitri K. Simes
President, The Nixon Center
Former Foreign Policy Advisor to Richard Nixon

Flynt Leverett
Senior Fellow, Director, Geopolitics of Energy Initiative, New America Foundation
Former Senior Director for Middle East Affairs, National Security Council

Julia E. Sweig
Rockefeller Senior Fellow & Director Latin America Studies
Council on Foreign Relations

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (ret.)
Former Chief of Staff, Department of State
Pamela C. Harriman Professor, College of William & Mary

Moderator

Steve Clemons
Director New America Foundation/American Strategy Program
Publisher, www.TheWashingtonNote.com

Cozying up to Cuban-American extremists in South Florida has been a part of American political culture for decades. It is an unseemly ritual that has nevertheless persisted because of the dysfunctional peculiarities of our Electoral College that grants Florida 27 votes, exactly 10 percent of the electors needed to win the White House.

Most of the time, would-be candidates simply suspend some abstract principles about the putting the National Interest above the narrow interest of a vocal and well-moneyed minority.

Senator Joe Lieberman, however, has taken it to the next level.

Thanks to the sleuthing of avid Cuba-watcher Phil Peters over at Cuban Triangle, and a bit more digging here at The Havana Note, we can now state the following:

1. Before addressing a pro-McCain event in Florida on July 20, 2008, Senator Joe Lieberman was recorded on video telling Miriam Arocena, wife of Eduardo Arocena, the Federally-convicted leader of the Cuban-American terrorist group Omega 7, that he will carry back to Washington her request for a Presidential pardon for her husband. Arocena is serving a mandatory life sentence and was convicted on 25 Federal counts in New York and 24 counts in New York.

Lieberman said:

"It's my responsibility, it's my responsibility. I will carry it [the pardon request] back. I will carry it back. Yeah. I feel...I think of you like you were my family.... I'll bring it back. I'll do my best."

Here's the video. Lieberman's quote starts around 3:30.

First of all, if you're in DC today, stop by our event today entitled "What Nixon Would Do on Cuba," featuring Dmitri Simes, Julia Sweig, Flynt Leverett and Col. Lawrence Wilkerson.

Now for my post. Last week we showed in living color the continued dysfunction of Washington's dependence on the Embargo as a source of electoral votes.

This past weekend, however, it was Raul Castro's turn to lean on the embargo for political expediency. The occasion was the annual speech at Moncada Barracks, the site of one of the defining battles of the Castro brothers' insurgency. First, he implicitly admits that the embargo is not in any way isolating the island from the global economy, then he raises the spectre of the Imperial enemy to the north to justify unnecessary military spending.

Here's what Raul said:

We must bear in mind that we are living in the midst of a true world crisis which is not only economic but also associated to climate change, the irrational use of energy and a great number of other problems....

I repeat that the revolution has done and will continue to do anything within its power to continue to advance and to reduce to the minimum the unavoidable consequences of the present international crisis for our people. Yet, we should timely explain to our people the difficulties so that we can be better prepared to face them. We must get used to receiving not only good news.

Cuba, in other words, is fully integrated into the global economy. If it were isolated, Raul would not need to set such low expectations for his people. Indeed, according to the Cuban government, the U.S. is even the country's fifth largest trading partner, behind Venezuela, China, Spain, and Germany. Tourism is up 14.8 percent over last year. Yet the economy is in a shambles. Agriculture is a wreck and they are importing billions in produce. Global integration plus poor economic management is a disaster waiting to happen.

Well, that's what Nixon's last national security aide and current president of the Nixon Center, Dimitri K. Simes said yesterday here at the New America Foundation. It was a great event. For the full video and more, click here.

In 1994, with the end of the Cold War and with the end of Cuba's promotion of revolution and communism abroad, Richard Nixon wrote that the policy of isolation and embargo had failed and it was time for engagement:

''... hard as it may be to accept, our policy toward Cuba has failed and it is now time to change our focus from trying to destroy Cuba's government to helping its people.''

Washington has been a little slow on the uptake. A clear, rational calculation of the national interest has been trumped by domestic politics. Nixon was sick about it. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (ret.) couldn't agree more and offered these words about the current state of Cuba policy 14 years after Nixon called for an end to the embargo.

Yesterday, speaking with reporters, Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said a) he is seeking a meeting with Raul Castro, b) he thinks formal relations with Cuba are around the corner, and c) knows that talking with world leaders leads to positive change because he's done it.

It is heartening to see a senior Republican Senator, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, recognize that our policy not only must change, but will be changing shortly. Senators Chris Dodd and Max Baucus should welcome Specter's initiatives and, I would argue, seek to join Sen. Specter in Havana.

Photo Credit: Jim Snapper

Yesterday Al Kamen had an interesting piece in the Washington Post, highlighting Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart’s (R-Fla.) outcry over a planned trip of Vermont and New Hampshire Little Leaguers to Cuba next month. Diaz-Balart, in conjunction with his work as a member of the “Cuba Democracy Caucus,” is trying to undermine the trip. The Congressman hauled Bisa Williams, of the State Department’s Cuban Affairs office, and Barbara Hammerle, from the Office of Foreign Assets Control, to the hill to defend their granting of a travel licenses to the group.

Photo Credit: Savvas Garovis

A New International Monetary Fund paper suggests it just might be.

The working paper, titled “Vacation Over: Implications for the Caribbean of Opening U.S.-Cuba tourism,” is authored by Rafael Romeu. It can be found here.

Romeu projects that normalizing tourism relations between the U.S. and Cuba would lead to a 10% increase in overall travel to the Caribbean at large. The report states that the opening would lead to “seismic shift” in tourism, with U.S. travel quickly out-pacing the Cuban tourism infrastructure, leading to a spill over of travel for other islands. Cuba currently receives 1.38 million tourists per year. The study estimates between 3 and 3.5 million U.S. tourists would travel to Cuba if restrictions were opened.