TYREE: A new look at Cuba

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By Benjamin P. Tyree

COMMENTARY:

Whether John McCain or Barack Obama is elected president, a new administration next year will provide an opportunity to reboot America's relationships with a number of foreign nations, including our near neighbor Cuba.

Mr. Obama has favored engagement with foreign nations, even those with whom we profoundly disagree. Mr. McCain, despite his personal mistreatment by Vietnamese communists as a prisoner of war, was a leader in re-establishing and normalizing our relations with Vietnam. In this, he showed remarkable forbearance and a forward-looking attitude that could serve him well with regard to Cuba.

We doubtless will continue to have profound philosophical and policy differences with the Castro government. But the island nation 90 miles away from Florida seems in a state of flux both because of the altered world climate and the long and serious illness of Fidel Castro and his replacement as president by his brother Raul. These changes may not portend a near-term or sudden collapse of the communist regime but they do provide a once-in-a-generation opportunity to re-evaluate and reset our modus vivendi with regard to Cuba.

Tied as the Cuban government is in economics and political sentiment with other radical Latin American regimes and with communist China, the Castro regime has not lost all opportunity to sow mischief in the Western Hemisphere. But thus far we are in a position to seek a new understanding with our provocative neighbors.

Why should we do so, when we can afford to simply cold-shoulder this small country - with a population and land mass about the size of Pennsylvania? What would make us bend our intransigent attitude toward Cuba as we have in the past toward the vaster and much more formidable and potentially problematic Russia and Communist China?

The lessons of the last eight or more years should have instructed us that it is better to have nontoxic rather than hateful relations with other nations, especially those nearby. It is better still to have good relations. It is also better to have a relationship and a dialogue rather than minimal or no contact at all. This is basic to a rational working of the international system.

It also follows that as much as many of us might wish otherwise, we have not materially weakened the grip of Cuba's rulers but only deepened the economic difficulties of its population. These, after all, are the relatives and friends of the Cuban-American community. And this stiffened policy has split opinion within that community as never before.

Next, the potentially significant development of oil resources in the Cuban straits poses another question for us: Why are we leaving the economic opportunities in Cuba as an open field to other state actors, such as China, when as Cuba's next-door neighbor we are the logical market and source of capital investment and even agricultural exports? We may already have missed the bus in important ways. Canada and Spain are working there on tourism and retirement opportunities. Venezuela and China have replaced the Soviets as sources of economic support.

A step toward normalized relations places America in a better position to mentor political and economic development on the island in the post-Castro era. Such a step would fit seamlessly into an effort to establish more positive relations within our Hemisphere, especially with states to our south that have often bridled at the overshadowing power of their northern neighbor.