President Barack Obama's decision to normalize United States ties with communist Cuba carries with it great opportunity for American businesses but little upside for the 11 million people who live on the Caribbean island 90 miles off the Florida coast.
The country, ruled by socialist dictators for 55 years, has streets riddled with potholes, crumbling buildings in its capital of Havana and cars that would be deemed "classics" in the U.S. because they're so old. Its citizens have few possessions and even less political freedom.
President Obama, regrettably, as much as blamed the United States for the island country's poverty Wednesday, saying the U.S. decision to sever ties with the country was "an outdated approach that ... has failed to advance our interests."
Elsewhere, a former presidential water carrier made a similar statement.
"Our decades-long policy of isolation," said former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was said to be an early author of the normalization plan, "has only strengthened the Castro regime's grip on power."
What was missing in Obama's remarks was any condemnation of the socialist governing system in the country that actually has caused the problems and kept its people isolated and poor.
Instead, he said, the restoration of diplomatic relations would move the countries beyond a "rigid policy that is rooted in events that took place before most of us were born."
Obama's remarks fit nicely with those of the Cuban government, which trades with 99 percent of other nations but has blamed the 1962 trade embargo put in place by a Democratic president and left in place by presidents of both parties as the root of its economic problems.
Indeed, President Raul Castro, the country's dictator, said the two countries now could resolve their differences "without renouncing a single one of our principles."
In other words, he is saying, we can remain Communist and continue to depress our people but get the benefits of whatever additional trade can be had with the Great Satan of the United States. But those benefits no doubt will flow directly into the hands of the government, as they do now in trade with foreign nations, rather than into those of the people, who need it so desperately.
Castro and his brother, longtime dictator Fidel Castro, are close allies of Syria and Iran, and the country is an avowed enemy of Israel and has supplied troops to Marxist revolutionaries in Africa and Latin America. It is difficult to see how those alliances will change if Cuba refuses to renounce its current principles.
Fortunately, the official trade embargo cannot be lifted without the approval on Congress, but Obama's agreement eases restrictions of some exports, remittances, travel and banking relations. But strictly tourist travel is not permitted yet.
The deal, like the one the president made with the Taliban in Afghanistan for the release of American Bowe Bergdahl, also included a more than one-for-one exchange of prisoners. Where Bergdahl was traded for five high-ranking Taliban terrorists, three Cuban spies who had been in a U.S. prison since 2001 were traded for a U.S. intelligence agent who had been in a Cuban prison for nearly 20 years. Cuba is also supposed to release 53 political prisoners from a list provided by the U.S., but time will tell if that happens.
The release of innocent American contractor Alan P. Gross, who had been arrested in 2009 and sentenced to 15 years in a Cuban prison, was termed not part of the agreement but was said to have been done on "humanitarian grounds."
The potential new market of the island nation, with limited or complete trade restrictions lifted, is no doubt making American businesses salivate. And no one would blame them for taking advantage of it if they have an opportunity.
But, just as occurred with China, trade won't make the country change its autocratic stripes. More than 40 years after President Richard Nixon's groundbreaking decision to open ties to China, the country presides over the world's second biggest economy but its people are not free.
In a similar approach, Obama said before his presidency began that he would sit down with Iranian officials and convince them not to build nuclear weapons. Nearly six years later, the country is still working on such weapons.
If the Cuba deal is looked at as a whole, it makes sense to ease some restrictions -- others already have been loosened over several presidential administrations -- and see what happens. Without other human rights assurances and measurable changes on the front end that benefit the Cuba people, though, the trade embargo shouldn't be lifted because it wouldn't change their lot in the totalitarian country in which they've been held as virtual prisoners for 55 years.