Cuba notwithstanding: could this summer's hurricanes blow away the trade embargo?

• Author: Doherty, Patrick C.
• Position: TEN MILES SQUARE

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. diplomatic efforts on a host of fronts because it is so widely disliked by other countries, especially in the Western Hemisphere. (It is one of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's most successful talking points.) Human rights groups like Amnesty International have long pointed out that the embargo is an obstacle to improving human rights conditions, not an aid. Meanwhile, greater trade with the United States has led to better lives and greater--if not necessarily complete--freedoms for the citizens of other countries with Communist governments, such as China and Vietnam. And yet, thanks to intransigent conservative ideology and the outsized electoral influence of Florida's Cuban American voters, the policy of near-complete isolation has endured.

For the last several months, however, the Obama administration has moved slowly, step by incremental step, away from the policy. In March, the president signed a budget bill easing Bush-era restrictions on how often Cuban Americans can visit the island and how much remittance money they can send to relatives there. In April, he eliminated such restrictions altogether, and also gave U.S. telecom firms permission to pursue licensing deals with Cuba to expand cell phone, broadband, and other communications services. Then, in May, his administration offered to resume direct mail service to the island for the first time in decades, and to begin negotiations on issues involving migration--offers the Cuban government readily accepted. Finally, in June, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton brokered a deal to allow Cuba to rejoin the Organization of American States if it meets key benchmarks of democratic reform. (Cuba was not so quick to take up that offer.) Meanwhile, the White House has been watching with interest efforts on Capitol Hill to repeal the law that bans American tourists from visiting the island--efforts that stand a surprisingly decent chance of garnering majority support in both the House and Senate by this fall.

The next logical...