Cuba

The prospect of Fidel Castro becoming a permanent guest of the Ninth Circle of Hell has started speculation that soon Cuba will be free.

May it be so.

Cuba is a beautiful island blessed with a magnificent climate abundant natural beauty and an industrious population. Its natural advantages should combine to make it a happy and prosperous place.

It is neither.

The brothers Castro (may their end be swift and painful) would have the Cuban people believe that the source of Cuba’s misery lies 90 miles to the north. That is, with the United States. The economic embargo which was placed on Cuba after it became clear that Cuba was going communist and entering the Soviet orbit is the Kennedy administration’s most enduring legacy.

Fidel calls the embargo a “blockade” and finds it a convenient hook on which to hang all the suffering of the Cuban people. The very term “blockade” implies a ring of US Navy ships surrounding the tiny island keeping out the commerce which would lift Cuba out of poverty and into the ranks of affluence. But is it?

It is true that the United States does not trade with Cuba, however the European Union does. The economy of the EU is almost the same size as the US economy. Canada trades with Cuba. Russia and China and India all trade with Cuba. Mexico and all of Central and South America and Africa trade with Cuba. Korea, both North and South, trade with Cuba. In fact all of Asia trades with Cuba. Australia and New Zeeland trade with Cuba.

Have I forgotten anyone who trades with Cuba? I don’t think so, but in case you don’t get the idea let me state it this way:

The entire world, minus the United States of America, trades with Cuba.

That means that 95% of the Earth’s population and more than 70% of the Earth’s wealth are potential suppliers to and customers of Cuba.

Cuba has a contract with Spanish firms to purchase 100% of their cigars every year. You can’t sell more than 100% of something.

Some missionaries were recently at my church. They had just gotten back from Cuba (you can get clearance to go there for humanitarian purposes). They had pictures of the junk cars that the Cubans drive. All of them are US made from the 1940s and ‘50s. Castro tells the people that they have to make due with that because of the “blockade”. But is that true? Is the fact that American car companies are forbidden to sell cars to Cuba the reason that Cubans have to drive 50 year old junk?

Last time I checked Toyota, Nissan, Volkswagen, Honda, Kia and Hyundai were just some of the cars that were made outside of the United States by non-American companies. There is no law against any of those car companies selling cars in Cuba.

Why don’t they?

Because nobody in Cuba has the money to buy them other than a tiny Communist Party elite. The Cuban economy is a basket case, despite the fact that it has most of the world’s people and wealth as a potential marketplace, because it is a COMMUNIST ECONOMY.

Centrally planed economies fail. Always have and always will. That is why the USSR imploded and took Eastern Europe with it. That is why the Pilgrims in Plymouth Colony almost starved to death. That is why China is having to dump communism, in all but rhetoric, in favor of a kind of Asian fascism to be competitive with the West.

If President Bush was to go to congress tomorrow and call for the embargo to be lifted, and congress were to go along with him, it would make little difference to the Cuban people. This assumes that Castro would allow the embargo to be lifted – he wouldn’t (it would take away his excuse for failure).

Think about it. Cuba could sell cigars in America. Cuba already sells all the cigars it can roll. Cuba could sell its sugar to America. America already produces all the sugar it needs and more. We have to prop up the price of domestic sugar to keep our own growers from going belly up. Does Cuba make anything else worth having? If it does I haven’t herd of it.

But, Cuba is beautiful and has great beaches. . . You might have something there. But America has beaches (California, Hawaii, South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi and Virginia to name a few) and France has beaches and Mexico and any number of other nations. Once the novelty wears off how many people will PREFER Cuba to better developed vacation spots? You know places with a tradition of good customer service?

Of course this all applies to Cuba as it is now. When Fidel makes his appointment with eternal damnation things can change. No more communism in Cuba means that foreign investment will be allowed. People who know how it’s done like Hilton and Trump (pause a moment to allow liberal readers to recover from their palpitations) can come in and develop. Genuine opportunity for the average Cuban will follow.

Of course it doesn’t HAVE to happen that way. In Russia former KGB and CPSU operatives took control and are turning Russia into a strong-man dictatorship. When Castro finally ends up sunning himself on the shores of the lake of Fire the US will need to step in quickly.

Vladimir Posner once asked me what I thought should have happened after the fall of the Soviet Union. I told him that I thought that the Soviet people deserved a decommunnization process like the denazification that Germany was put through after WWII. Needless to say he disagreed. But I was correct. If Cuba is to become a free country and enjoy the prosperity which its natural resources entitle it to the DGI and the CPC must be subjected to the same treatment that the victorious Allies meted out to the SS and Nazi Party in Germany.

Just think of it. Reclining on a perfect beach (nickel plated revolver snugly tucked into your Galco shoulder holster), smoking a Romeo y Julieta and sipping a Cuba libre brought to you by a beautiful Flower of the Caribbean. . .

I’ll be in my bunk.