started the discussion in another thread, and thought it deserved its own...

So, we've had the same basic policy towards cuba since the days of Che and Fidel. We got rid of 'ol Ernesto, but Castro still seems to get the administration's goat. His longevity seems now to have emboldened a new generation of Che-styled revolutionaries whose nationalistic rhetoric is being met with warm embrace in latin america.

With Cuba, it seems to me that current policy is incongruent with the policies we use with other nations we hope to influence. China is granted "Most Favored Nation" status and given the Olympics in the hopes that exposure to democracy will create internal change. The administration clearly believes in the democratic influence of free trade (another thread in and of itself). But then, when a threat is percieved, we will strike with force. Cuba is no threat, but we continue to conduct economic warfare by withholding the spoils of our society from the Cubans. Who thinks that a Cuba exposed to american toys/ auto parts/ American Idol would be more likely to come around to our way of thinking?

Any thoughts on the other "hard-line" leaders emerging south of the border? (Chavez in particular)

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Why should we change our policy towards them?
So we can ship our jobs and factories over there too?

DAnny

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There is no USSR so there is no chance of these guys being a catspaw for totalitarian hegemony (or worldwide communism, take your pick), the stated purpose of the USSR since ints iception.

None of them are of significant strategic importance (well, maybe Chavez because of the oil thingy).

No reason to mess with them. Remove trade and political restrictions on all of them. In the long run it's better that way.

B

wow, my first sticky thread ever... *snif* thought I was a thread-killah

It seems likely to me that the only reason Castro is still in power is ironically due to our Cuba policy. With a little import/export pressure and trade I think he'd have been doomed years ago. Instead, he gets his nemesis to demonize and rally against. Chavez is smart to use the same ideas. He's a bit more charismatic, and gaining influence in the region. And, he's actually got some chips on the table with which to play.

shipping our jobs and factories overseas? yep, that's called free trade. It's attendant with our brand of capitalism, and likely has some unforseen consequences. I'm sure we'd have plenty of US investment in Cuba were it legal. It is so close, and the labor rates would be very inexpensive compared to the Floridians 90 miles away. Would you prefer making it illegal to send jobs/factories overseas? What other consequences might that have?

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I can't help but agree with most of what you say, though I take exception to (what I consider) the xenophobic fear of domestic companies opening for businesses offshore.

To me, it's the same argument that agriculture uses to maintain sugar or rice subsidies. We buy cheaper overseas and it destroys our local sugarcane (sugarbeets) and rice and farmers. Can't compete in sugar or rice? Grow something that will compete. Can't compete? Get nimble or die.

I like cheap products from overseas. It saves me money that I can either invest or spend on something else. Additionally, it enriches the producers overseas, increasing their local std of living. That's also a good thing. People who see an improvement in their std of living usually feel hope for the future. People who have hope raise children in hope for a better future. The reverse is misery and death.

The history of teh world over the past 500 years or so is a dramatic increase in free trade, wealth, education and freedom. It is not coincidental that these factors work together.

Bot

xenophobic fear not intended, at all. (I might have some Zeno-phobic fears, but that's for another thread... I cant move!!!) I think it's the inconsistency of our free trade policy that creates so many bad expectations and entitlements here at home. You're exactly right- get nimble or die. Adapt. Innovate. I have no problem with US companies investing, building buisinesses, etc. overseas! I think you read sarcasm into my paragraph, which, for once, was not intended... ha ha. The consequences about which I speak are something like this:

I heard an NPR story about the US automakers' Jobs Bank. Yikes. No wonder these companies cannot compete. Dear autoworker: Once you get a job, you get to keep it, full pay, even if we are going bankrupt and have nothing for you to do! You might have to sit in a strip mall for months on end watching Dr. Phil, but we'll still pay you! What? If we send jobs overseas? Oh, don't worry, that saves us SO much money we can STILL pay your full salary for you to not work.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5185887

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My bad, I misread your post. I wish I could promise it would never happen again.

Here's an interesting thought on international relations and the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Bot

In John They Trust
South Pacific villagers worship a mysterious American they call John Frum - believing he'll one day shower their remote island with riches
By*Paul Raffaele
Photographs by Paul Raffaele
Related links
*
In the morning heat on a tropical island halfway across the world from the United States, several dark-skinned men—clad in what look to be U.S. Army uniforms—appear on a mound overlooking a bamboo-hut village. One reverently carries Old Glory, precisely folded to reveal only the stars. On the command of a bearded “drill sergeant,” the flag is raised on a pole hacked from a tall tree trunk. As the huge banner billows in the wind, hundreds of watching villagers clap and cheer.

Chief Isaac Wan, a slight, bearded man in a blue suit and ceremonial sash, leads the uniformed men down to open ground in the middle of the village. Some 40 barefoot "G.I.’s" suddenly emerge from behind the huts to more cheering, marching in perfect step and ranks of two past Chief Isaac. They tote bamboo “rifles” on their shoulders, the scarlet tips sharpened to represent bloody bayonets, and sport the letters “USA,” painted in red on their bare chests and backs.
This is February 15, John Frum Day, on the remote island of Tanna in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu. On this holiest of days, devotees have descended on the village of Lamakara from all over the island to honor a ghostly American messiah, John Frum. “John promised he’ll bring planeloads and shiploads of cargo to us from America if we pray to him,” a village elder tells me as he salutes the Stars and Stripes. “Radios, TVs, trucks, boats, watches, iceboxes, medicine, Coca-Cola and many other wonderful things.”

The island’s John Frum movement is a classic example of what anthropologists have called a “cargo cult”—many of which sprang up in villages in the South Pacific during World War II, when hundreds of thousands of American troops poured into the islands from the skies and seas. As anthropologist Kirk Huffman, who spent 17 years in Vanuatu, explains: “You get cargo cults when the outside world, with all its material wealth, suddenly descends on remote, indigenous tribes.” The locals don’t know where the foreigners’ endless supplies come from and so suspect they were summoned by magic, sent from the spirit world. To entice the Americans back after the war, islanders throughout the region constructed piers and carved airstrips from their fields. They prayed for ships and planes to once again come out of nowhere, bearing all kinds of treasures: jeeps and washing machines, radios and motorcycles, canned meat and candy.
But the venerated Americans never came back, except as a dribble of tourists and veterans eager to revisit the faraway islands where they went to war in their youth. And although* almost all the cargo cults have disappeared over the decades, the John Frum movement has endured, based on the worship of an American god no sober man has ever seen.

Many Americans know Vanuatu from the reality TV series “Survivor,” though the episodes shot there hardly touched on the Melanesian island nation’s spectacular natural wonders and fascinating, age-old cultures. Set between Fiji and New Guinea, Vanuatu is a Y-shaped scattering of more than 80 islands, several of which include active volcanoes. The islands were once home to fierce warriors, among them cannibals. Many inhabitants still revere village sorcerers, who use spirit-possessed stones in magic rituals that can lure a new lover, fatten a pig or kill an enemy.
Americans with longer memories remember Vanuatu as the New Hebrides—its name until its independence from joint British and French colonial rule in 1980. James Michener’s book Tales of the South Pacific, which spawned the musical South Pacific, grew out of his experiences as an American sailor in the New Hebrides in World War II.

My own South Pacific experience, in search of John Frum and his devotees, begins when I board a small plane in Vanuatu’s capital, Port-Vila. Forty minutes later, coral reefs, sandy beaches and green hills announce Tanna Island, about 20 miles long and 16 miles at its widest point, with a population of around 28,000. Climbing into an ancient jeep for the drive to Lamakara, which overlooks Sulphur Bay, I wait while Jessel Niavia, the driver, starts the vehicle by touching together two wires sticking out from a hole under the dashboard.

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As the jeep rattles up a steep slope, the narrow trail slicing through the jungle’s dense green weave of trees and bushes, Jessel tells me that he is the brother-in-law of one of the cult’s most important leaders, Prophet Fred—who, he adds proudly, “raised his wife from the dead two weeks ago.”
When we reach the crest of a hill, the land ahead falls away to reveal Yasur, Tanna’s sacred volcano, a few miles to the south, its ash-coated slopes nudging the shoreline at Sulphur Bay. Dark smoke belches from its cone. “‘Yasur’ means God in our language,” Jessel murmurs. “It’s the house of John Frum.”

Copied from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/issues/2006/february/john.php?page=1 5 more pages at the website.

You have arrived. Welcome.

Well put. I rail against the heavy hand of US imperialism precisely because it eventually creates borderline whack jobs with charm and a big ax to grind like Chavez or Castro before him. We think (or some in power do) that we're cutting a fat hog in the a$$ when we arrange really friendly terms for American bid-ness in 3rd world countries, as was done in Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala (where to stop?). But uhhh, paybacks are a mutha******.

As for the get nimble or die thought, that has some merit but there are plenty of examples where a good part of the reason overseas competitors' prices beat ours is owed to dumping waste willy nilly; using massive doses of pesticides that we've outlawed here and dumped on them; and slave labor conditions onna account that the people are so poor they have to take what they can get and then have no power to ***** when they are chewed up and spit out. Health care?!? Haw!! I don't want to see that kind of crime ressurected in out country and I don't think it's wise to subsidize it elsewhere. Pollution knows no borders and dumbing down towards China style society is not my idea of progress.

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Being of Cuban heritage, you would think I might be more adamant in my feelings, but I am disconnected to a point.

Having never been there, it's hard for me to relate except for my fathers typical "Cuba in the 40's and 50's. was (fillin the blank)

I only wish they would abandon that ridiculous "wet-foot-dryfoot " policy.

Make immigration laws the same for everyone.

I felt bad a few years ago when a boatlaod of haitions made it to Key Biscayne, got out and ran around, and were quickly deported. Had they been Cubans, they would have been allowed to stay.

Hypocrites!

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I agree that Immigration policy should be the same for everyone. I will go one step further, KICK ALL illegal AKA "undocumented" people out ASAP whether they are from South of the border or north or from overseas. Let them come here to work and live legally.

I agree.

I am certainly no fan of Castro... But under current conditions, it is not Castro who is suffering... It is the Cuban people.

Mike

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Castro is a total dick, although his people seem to be doing better than many in that part of the world. Apparently, they've got reasonably good schools and health care, and even better baseball. I'm not much of a traveler, but I would love to be able to visit Cuba. It seems like a fascinating place. Major League Baseball should have a team in Havana.

I agree!

Aren't 45-60% of Cuban people positive for HIV in Cuba? I recall reading that somewhere. Does anyone know? Did anyone else read that?

Cuba is well known for having free, universal health care. Their educational system is the best in all of Latin America, and literacy rates are just under 100%.

About 85% of the US populace is liiterate.