A Hard Line on Cuba

By Tim Padgett

You would think a major policy shift was imminent, given the way the White House touted President Bush's Oct. 24 speech on Cuban-American relations. Yet, backed on a State Department stage by the emotional relatives of jailed Cuban dissidents, Bush simply gussied up some of the same old bromides--"The socialist paradise is a tropical gulag"--that have marked U.S.-Cuban relations for decades. Bush reiterated his hard stance against lifting the 45-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, and Fidel Castro was predictable as well, writing beforehand that Bush's speech reflected the U.S.'s desire to "reconquer" Cuba.

Who benefits most from this war of words? Fidel and his brother Raul Castro, who is likely to succeed him. With plenty of material support from Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, the embargo is not so painful as it once was, and heated U.S. rhetoric only bolsters their image at home as the island's anti-Yanqui defenders.

Critics of Bush's Cuba policy are again urging Washington to consider stepped up contact with Raul--widely regarded as more pragmatic and flexible than Fidel--as a more effective means of jump-starting a democratic transition. "President Bush is right when he says this is a unique moment in Cuba, but he's missing that moment," says Jake Colvin, director of USA Engage in Washington, which favors moves like lifting the ban on U.S. travel to Cuba--something that even most Cuban Americans in Miami favor and many Cuba watchers suggest the Castros actually fear. Bush insisted that engaging Cuba now would just give "oxygen to a criminal regime." But, argues Colvin, "American citizens have always proven the best ambassadors of freedom and democracy."