From any angle, it’s hard to see a downside to opening up relations with Cuba. IT WON’T happen tomorrow, but gradually both countries should continue efforts to normalize relations. For Cuba, the biggest hurdle is for the United States to remove it as a country that sponsors terrorism — along with Syria, Iran and Sudan. Only then will it be able to make U.S. banks feel secure enough to allow U.S. companies to invest in the island nation.
The small nation is hungry for U.S. exports. It’s a relatively virgin country ripe for U.S. investments. And mending the frayed relationship between our two countries will go a long ways toward establishing a more fruitful relationship between the U.S. and Latin America as a whole.
Opponents contend the United States should have nothing to do with a country that oppresses its people and rejects the values “we as Americans hold sacred,” according to Rep. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, a leader of the effort to maintain the U.S. blockade on trade with Cuba.
If that’s truly the case, then the United States should not be doing business with a host of countries, foremost China.
Instead of looking at the past, Congress should be looking at the possibilities that opening relations with Cuba would bring.
Only 90 miles off the tip of Florida, Cuba is a beautiful island stuck in a 55-year-old time warp.
It was in 1959 that Fidel Castro and his revolutionaries took power. Less than two years later U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower imposed a trade embargo all but severing U.S. ties with Cuba. That embargo — coupled with a repressive government — has helped stall development in Cuba, keeping its people in the dark ages.
Still today, Cuban technology is in its infancy keeping industry, including agriculture, far behind the competitive curve.
On Saturday, 54 years later, President Barack Obama and Raul Castro, Cuba’s leader, exchanged handshakes and words that intimated they were ready to forge a new relationship.
Obama predicted Cuba has the most to overcome if relations are normalized. In truth, Cuba has its back to the wall now that it can no longer rely on Venezuela, facing its own internal struggles, to bankroll its economy. Without Venezuelan oil, Cuba is being forced to look elsewhere for energy, which will mandate its easing trade regulations.
For the United States, Cuba needs to allow U.S. diplomats to travel and operate freely to earn its trust.
For more than 50 years the economic embargo has worked only to dull what could be a gem of a nation. For both the United States and Cuba, renewing relations will burnish both our images.
— Susan Lynn
Renewing relations with Cuba a win-win
