Are we ready to open the door to Cuba?

With Bush now out of office, it looks like our relations with Cuba could finally get some attention. Cuba, which sits ninety miles off the coast of Florida, is one of the world’s last communist strongholds.

Sadly, George W. Bush did nothing in eight years to improve our relations with Cuba or the lives of its people. Fortunately, there is bipartisan recognition in Congress of the failure of our current approach, and it appears that even Republicans are ready to make changes.

In a report issued Monday, minority members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee stated that the U.S. needs a new approach in its dealings with the island. From the report’s highest ranking committee member, Senator Dick Lugar (R-IN):

After 47 years, however, the unilateral embargo on Cuba has failed to achieve its stated purpose of 'bringing democracy to the Cuban people’...we must recognize the ineffectiveness of our current policy, and deal with the Cuban regime in a way that enhances U.S. interests.

Recommendations in the report line up with President Obama’s campaign promises to ease family travel and remittance restrictions, but stop short of proposing lifting the trade embargo - which must be a goal on the way to improved international relations.

In his book The J Curve, political scientist Ian Bremmer theorizes that in order to democratize nations, we must open them to new things and ideas:

...as the energies of globalization open up the least politically and economically developed areas of the world, as the citizens of closed states learn more about life beyond their borders and discover that they don't have to live as they do, tyrants must expend more and more effort to isolate their societies.

Bremmer believes that repressive governments don’t dislike but actually want and need policies such as our Cuban trade embargo in order to keep their populations hungry and dependent on them.

People in closed societies don’t know what they are missing and are more likely to accept the status quo (think North Korea).

Trading with Cuba has the potential to expose Cubans to new products and ideas: sporting goods, women's rights, and helpfully, new auto parts.

(Imagine how much free time a Cuban would have if they could just buy a new belt for their '57 Chevy instead of having to fashion it themselves.)

With autocratic Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez cozying up to both Cuban President Raul Castro, and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, it's time for the United States to show it's ready to leave behind the failed policies of the past.

Relaxing travel and remittance restrictions is a good start. Dialogue and trade between the two nations could put Cuba on a path to greater openness and democratic freedoms. If Republicans are ready to start down this path, Obama can surely step in line beside them or better yet, move ahead and lead the way.