The Foreign Service Journal, May 2013

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2013 51 with an existential threat can be forgiven a certain zeal to avoid defeat. By the end of the Cold War, the major U.S. objectives of democracy and development in the Americas were prospering. As the threat of the Soviet Union wound down, Castro’s violent revolutionary alternative lost its allure, and U.S. policy was able to return to a balanced reflection of our values fostering democ- racy and protecting human rights. An interesting twist to the history of the last decade is that people who were either engaged as allies of Castro in the militant left or openly sympathetic to his approach have succeeded in achieving their aspirations for political power through elections in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador and Uruguay. Perhaps the greatest irony of all is that U.S. Cold War policy had its most glaring failure in Cuba itself. Our attempts to isolate Castro and to thwart or punish him through economic sanctions continue, but they have persistently isolated the United States and given Havana an excuse for the failure that its economic model would have produced without our help. Our policy also strengthens hardliners reinforcing a fortress mentality. On a recent visit to Cuba, I was struck by the contradictory appeal of the Cuban model. A country that has achieved practi- cally universal adult literacy maintains totalitarian controls on what its ordinary citizens are allowed to read, in print or on the Internet. The secret to survival in its tightly regulated economy seems to be adopting a highly entrepreneurial approach to com- bining meager salaries with remittances fromMiami, and earn- ings from such grey-market activities as selling snacks to tourists. Cubans receive admirable health care, but most Havanans crowd into crumbling buildings that look like they have not been improved or even maintained since 1958. Decent highway networks stay uncongested because few Cubans own vehicles. A government in a permanent state of struggle presides over a country populated by people who are friendly to Americans. I even saw one of the ubiquitous pedicabs flying a U.S. flag while working Havana’s streets. Now Fidel has reached his twilight years, and the threat from Cuba requires no obsession. So, like Starbuck, I argue that it is time to desist: Oh! Ahab, not too late it is, even now, the third day, to desist. See! Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest him! Normalization of relations could raise the standing of the United States in the Americas while eroding the siege mentality in the Cuban psyche and exposing more Cubans to an alterna- tive worldview. n