Reuters photo

Yesterday in Havana, Juanes and more than a dozen other artists from within and outside Cuba played to an audience of hundreds of thousands of Cubans gathered in the Plaza de la Revolucion (not to mention those throughout Cuba who watched the concert live on television) for a daylong Peace Without Borders concert. The popular Colombian singer just wanted to advance the cause of peace, he said.

True to form, there were some in Miami who criticized the concert - but there were quite a few who supported it. One anti-Juanes group, Vigilia Mambisa, brought out a steamroller with which to crush CDs with Juanes' name on them. In Miami and Washington, the media rushed to cover the concert “controversy”. And it got so whipped up that Univision's Jorge Ramos asked in his one-on-one interview with the President this weekend if the concert had his "blessing."

Juanes is a good musician, the President demurred, but the United States is not a concert promoter.

And then he said this: "I think what's gonna be more important is, as we have now opened up travel restrictions and remittance restrictions to Cuba. What I'd really like to see is Cuba starting to show that it wants to move away from some of the anti-democratic practices of the past."

That statement was shockingly out of touch with the reality of U.S.-Cuban relations today.

First, a technicality – and a big one. The President said we have “opened up” travel and remittances restrictions to Cuba. That of course is only a true statement for Cuban Americans, who make up less than half of one percent of Americans across this country. You can’t exactly call that “opening up” travel and remittances to Cuba.

But the President’s remark suggests he either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that the Cuban government considers the loosening of travel and remittance restrictions for Cuban Americans to be a gesture aimed not for diplomatic engagement with Havana, but to score political points in Little Havana. Raul Castro has also made it clear he’ll talk about anything with the United States; but that Cuba’s internal affairs are not negotiable.

So what exactly, if anything, does the President really expect to gain by calling on Cuba to reciprocate –with democratic reforms – a non-gesture from the United States?

The United States can and should try to dialogue with Cuba about opening greater economic and political freedom and opportunity for the Cuban people. But let’s not harbor illusions about how to advance the cause. Dialogue starts with really listening to the other actor – not making public demands we know won’t be met under present circumstances. The more the President sets lofty expectations for Cuba, the more he undermines them.

Frankly, it’s foolish to expect that the Cuban government will take any real risk it doesn’t need to without a real shift in U.S. policy on the line. Where’s the shift? Current restrictions on Cuba are still tougher than they were when Mr. Obama’s predecessor took office eight years ago.

What possible incentive does Raul Castro have to respond to a President who hasn’t even rolled back most of President Bush’s new restrictions – whether it’s the ongoing ban on people-to-people exchanges, continued harassment of third country banks that accept Cuban dollars, or this Administration’s gratuitous adherence to the single strictest U.S. agriculture export policy toward any other country on earth?

After fifty years, Cuba has learned to live without us. At the rate this Administration is going, we might just be here another fifty.