Cuba

There is little question that in the field of foreign policy, Latin America is far from being a priority for the Obama administration. Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are more pressing. The problem is that the situation in Latin America is getting complicated, and it is intersecting with crises in other parts of the world that are far more important right now for the United States. Two key issues, which by themselves could be minor, are demanding Washington's attention because they are part of a broader picture that includes Latin America but is not restricted to the region.

Last week, President Barack Obama delivered his first address before the United Nations General Assembly. "Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world's problems alone," he insisted. "We have sought in word and deed a new era of engagement with the world."

Yet, there remains one obvious exception to this new era of engagement with the world: our continuing embargo of Cuba.

Please join Tom Gjelten as he discusses his new book Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause.

For half a century, the United States has pursued a policy of isolating Cuba in the vain hope that doing so would lead to the downfall of the island's Communist regime. Today that policy is one of the last great historical anachronisms of the Cold War, outliving the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, despite the fact that it has never accomplished what it was supposed to do. Political realists such as Henry Kissinger have argued for years that the policy undercuts U.S.

The images were decidedly retro and jarring in their distant familiarity, as if a grainy old family film long left in the attic had been brought out for a screening. In defense of la patriala patria, army troops overpowered el palacio at dawn and placed el presidente on an airplane to be flown into exile, still wearing his pajamas. Sunday's coup in Honduras followed a script once so familiar it acquired cliche status, material even for a Woody Allen sendup.

In 1962, at a special meeting of the Organization of American States, the Uruguayan resort of Punta del Este became famous for something more than just luxury condos, restaurants and hotels, and catering to the Argentine aristocracy during the holiday season. At that meeting, Cuba was suspended from the regional body, with the Cold War pretext that its espousal of "Marxism-Leninism" and an alliance with the Soviet Union were incompatible with membership in the hemispheric club and its organizations.

The May Conflict Prevention and Resolution Forum (CPRF) was held at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) on May 12th, 2009. Over 50 individuals from government agencies, think-tanks, non-profits and local universities attended the event.

Despite the rhetoric and the photo-ops, the Trinidad Summit of the Americas postponed any real discussion of U.S. policy toward Cuba. In the U.S., the extremist embargo has been a sop to the right-wing and Florida electorate. But in countries like Mexico, Chile and Brazil, the Latin policy of never taking Havana to task for its atrocious human-rights record is a sop to the domestic left.

JORGE CASTAÑEDA AND ANDRÉS MARTINEZ, Fellows at the New America Foundation: For once Barack Obama can't be accused of pushing for ambitious change. The minor adjustments he has made to American policy towards Cuba simply take us back to the days of the Clinton administration, a time when the trade embargo and the travel ban had already proven to be counterproductive anachronisms. They still are.

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