When Will Cuba Wake Up to Reality? : Needed: A Miami-Havana-Washington trialogue

Washington and Havana have been at each other’s throats so long that it’s hard to even imagine relations getting better. And perhaps as long as Fidel Castro is around, they won’t. But there are signs of a warming movement in Washington, Havana and Miami, where many Cuban-Americans live. The hope is that the end of the Cold War might some day even benefit those woebegone Cubans who have had to struggle to survive under an oppressive communist system that has failed at almost every turn.

IN MIAMI: Cuban-Americans continue to have great influence, both in Miami and Washington. But their leadership is changing in ways that could benefit normalization with Cuba. Relatively moderate organizations, like Platforma Democratica , are challenging traditional right-wing groups. The traditionalists live, and in part died, for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. The new groups favor improved relations and want to talk to Castro and anyone he will let them talk to. They take a more forgiving approach and would tear down the walls that--for the 30-plus years of Castro’s failed revolution and Washington’s belligerent opposition--haven’t done either country much good.

IN HAVANA: Castro will not be in power forever. The question is whether this aging patriarch can be convinced to cool his ardor for posing as the transcendent Third World statesman and leading anti-American caudillo long enough to talk civilly with the United States. That may be asking too much. But a younger generation of Cuban leaders, increasingly aware of their island’s problems and of the gradual withdrawal of the Soviet aid line, are more receptive. It just may be that Castro will give them a bit of maneuvering room.

Veteran diplomats who have recently visited Cuba report that Castro would in fact allow some kind of trialogue to take place between Havana, Miami and Washington. Such a concession would require a political relaxation in a society long hooked on a sustained war psychosis. But continued harping about the threat of a U.S. invasion is less and less credible.

IN WASHINGTON: The State Department reportedly wants to move such a trialogue forward, but in the White House the staunch Cold War perspective of the most hard-line Cuban-Americans, who generously supported President Bush’s presidential campaign, is inhibiting that instinct. This won’t change unless President Bush is lobbied hard to pursue normalization as aggressively as the United States once tried to overthrow Castro. Pressure must come from moderate Cuban-Americans and Latin American leaders whom the President is known to respect, like Mexico’s President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

Current U.S. foreign policy takes a forgiving attitude toward the Soviet Union, not to mention China. Cuba, increasingly bereft of Moscow’s financial backing, is scarcely a serious strategic threat to America. Cuban-Americans long deeply for a relationship that permits travel and even commercial relations. A wise and farsighted American foreign policy would move in that direction.