The Washington Post
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
IN RECENT months, the outlook for the Castro regime in
Cuba was growing steadily darker. The modest reforms it adopted in recent years
to improve abysmal economic conditions had stalled, due to the regime’s refusal
to allow Cubans greater freedoms. Worse, the accelerating economic collapse of
Venezuela meant that the huge subsidies that have kept the Castros afloat for
the past decade were in peril. A growing number of Cubans were demanding basic
human rights, such as freedom of speech and assembly.
On Wednesday, the Castros suddenly obtained a
comprehensive bailout — from the Obama administration. President Obama granted
the regime everything on its wish list that was within his power to grant; a
full lifting of the trade embargo requires congressional action. Full
diplomatic relations will be established, Cuba’s place on the list of terrorism
sponsors reviewed and restrictions lifted on U.S. investment and most travel to
Cuba. That liberalization will provide Havana with a fresh source of
desperately needed hard currency and eliminate U.S. leverage for political
reforms.
As part of the bargain, Havana released Alan Gross, a
U.S. Agency for International Development contractor who was unjustly
imprisoned five years ago for trying to help Cuban Jews. Also freed was an
unidentified U.S. intelligence agent in Cuba — as were three Cuban spies who
had been convicted of operations in Florida that led to Cuba’s 1996 shootdown
of a plane carrying anti-Castro activists. While Mr. Obama sought to portray
Mr. Gross’s release as unrelated to the spy swap, there can be no question that
Cuba’s hard-line intelligence apparatus obtained exactly what it sought when it
made Mr. Gross a de facto hostage.
No wonder Yoani Sánchez, Cuba’s leading dissident
blogger, concluded Wednesday that “Castroism has won” and predicted that for
weeks Cubans will have to endure proclamations by the government that it is the
“winner of its ultimate battle.”
Mr. Obama argued that his sweeping change of policy was
overdue because the strategy of isolating the Communist regime “has had little
effect.” In fact, Cuba has been marginalized in the Americas for decades, and
the regime has been deprived of financial resources it could have used to
spread its malignant influence in the region, as Venezuela has done. That the
embargo has not succeeded in destroying communism does not explain why all
sanctions should be lifted without any meaningful political concessions by
Cuba.
U.S. officials said the regime agreed to release 53
political prisoners and allow more access to the Internet. But Raúl Castro
promised four years ago to release all political prisoners, so the White House
has purchased the same horse already sold to the Vatican and Spain.
The administration says its move will transform relations
with Latin America, but that is naive. Countries that previously demanded an
end to U.S. sanctions on Cuba will not now look to Havana for reforms; instead,
they will press the Obama administration not to sanction Venezuela. Mr. Obama
says normalizing relations will allow the United States to be more effective in
promoting political change in Cuba. That is contrary to U.S. experience with
Communist regimes such as Vietnam, where normalization has led to no
improvements on human rights in two decades. Moreover, nothing in Mr. Obama’s
record of lukewarm and inconstant support for democratic change across the
globe can give Ms. Sánchez and her fellow freedom fighters confidence in this
promise.
The Vietnam outcome is what the Castros are counting on:
a flood of U.S. tourists and business investment that will allow the regime to
maintain its totalitarian system indefinitely. Mr. Obama may claim that he has
dismantled a 50-year-old failed policy; what he has really done is give a
50-year-old failed regime a new lease on life.
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