With Brussels under attack by Islamic terrorists, it takes a truly self-regarding president to believe that he, not the Islamic terrorists, was orchestrating a world-historic event. If you missed the news while following the doings of terrorists in Belgium or our presidential wannabees scrambling for votes, you might not have noticed that Barack Obama brought the Cold War to an end, which enabled him to relax from his toils by attending a baseball game in Havana and, later, celebrate by taking a tango-whirl around the floor, performing a series of rather stylish caminadas in the arms of an Argentine bailarina. The death of scores of people, including at least two Americans, has to be weighed against the number who slipped and died in bathtubs last night.
You might have thought that the Cold War ended, or at least the frost began to melt, in 1987. That's when Margaret Thatcher travelled 1,600 miles to Moscow to meet with Mikhail Gorbachev and Russian dissidents, wowed the nation with her television performances, and refused to back down on retaining the nuclear deterrent. And when Ronald Reagan, who a year earlier has held fast on developing an anti-missile system with which the Soviet Union could not afford to cope, and then travelled 4,200 miles to Berlin's Brandenburg Gate to demand that Mr. Gorbachev tear down the wall that imprisoned millions of Germans, among them one Angela Merkel. Wrong. It ended, or at least its last remnants did, when Barack Obama travelled fewer than 1,000 miles to Havana, posed in front of a portrait of the murderous Che Guevara, the idol of the left in the President's university days; laid a wreath at the tomb of poet Jose Martí, famous for his attacks on the American "monster … its excessive worship of wealth … [and its] inequality, injustice and violence…"; promised to consider dictator Raul Castro's criticisms of America's education and health care systems; and attended a baseball game alongside a smiling Castro, who had thoughtfully rounded up hundreds of dissidents lest they cast a pall over the President's visit, and then denied to reporters that any such existed in Cuba's workers' paradise. Indeed, he was offended by the question, "It is not correct to ask me about political prisoners," he told an inquiring reporter.
One has to admire Castro's, well, chutzpah: He sought to embarrass his guest by pointing out that, unlike some other countries, Cuba has equal pay for equal work for women. Obama did not think to respond that Winston Churchill had long ago pointed out, "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." But Obama, anyhow no admirer of Churchill, whose bust he had removed from the White House, might have been wise to avoid quoting a man who, as a young military officer on leave, fought on the side of Spain against Cuban rebels seeking independence.
To be fair to the president, his visit to Cuba was about more than consigning the Cold War to the ash heap of history. It included an eloquent plea to the regime to open its economy and political system. "If you can't access information online, if you cannot be exposed to different points of view, you will not reach your full potential…". And a long meeting with dissidents, which no head of state, note even the Pope, had dared. The visit was also about opening opportunities to American investors – never mind that Congress has yet to repeal the embargo, and is unlikely to do so even if those who see a buck or two to be made pressure it to clear the path to profits. Obama believes that a Cuba made more prosperous by trade with America will produce a middle class that will grow restive under communist repression and force political reform. When that theory, held by many well-meaning liberals here, clashes with reality, reality loses. The fact is that Russia became richer when the Soviet Union collapsed, the material quality of life improved and foreign travel boomed. And we got Vladimir Putin, the most relentlessly authoritarian ruler since the death of Stalin. In China, the opening of markets brought millions out of poverty, many moving from poor to very rich indeed, and we got Xi Jinping, the most oppressive ruler since Mao. Both of these dictators have taken dead aim on the post-World War II settlement by expanding their military presence in Russia's "near abroad" and in the South China Sea, respectively.
In fact, Cuba has been wide open to trade from countries other than the U.S., yet we still see pictures of those exotic 1950s automobile kept running around Havana by the ingenuity of Cuban mechanics. No fleets of modern Japanese or German vehicles. It would seem likely that there is something about Cuba's centrally directed economy that is not conducive to rising living standards, and that lack of opportunities to trade is not the culprit.
Still, the relaxation of U.S. restrictions brought some benefits to our businesses, to the Cuban regime and perhaps, but only perhaps, to the Cuban people. Netflix had come to the island following the removal of some controls even before the Obama visit, and Airbnb had already announced the expansion of access to its Cuban listings. Executives of the Starwood Hotel chain accompanied Obama, and landed a multi-million dollar contract to manage three hotels in Cuba. Google is in the early stage of expanding broadband access on the island, although it is not clear that uncontrolled access will be countenanced by the regime, which regards its telecom network as a key part of its national security infrastructure and Google as "an extension of the US State Department" according to a state-run publication. Only 4 percent of Cuban households are allowed internet access, and there are only five "hot spots" at which Havana's 2.2 million people can access the island's Chinese-built Wi-Fi system.
Moreover, it is not clear that what is good for American business, and for the regime, will be good for the Cuban people. Cuban employees of U.S. companies will not be paid directly by their employer. Dollars earned by hotel and other workers will be paid to the government, which will then issue pesos to the workers, with no special reward for extra-meritorious service permitted, although no doubt a few tips will find their way into Cuban pockets from grateful American tourists. Nor is it clear that these deals will turn out as hoped. Several skeptical American businessmen are hanging back, noting that they cannot rely on any semblance of a rule of law should they become engaged in a dispute with the regime, which remains suspicious of capitalist exploitation, which it equates with profit.
Perhaps the biggest plus for Americans, or at least for those of us who became acquainted with Cuban cigars while prowling the humidors of such London shops as J.J. Fox, Churchill's supplier, would be the lifting of the ban on the importation of Cuban cigars. When the embargo was first introduced, President Kennedy attempted to have cigars exempted, but lobbyists in Tampa foiled his plan. So before signing the embargo order, JFK sent his press secretary, Pierre Salinger to Cuba to buy 1,000 H. Upmann Petite Coronas.
In less than a month Obama will be making a state visit to the UK to dine at Buckingham Palace and to support the anti-Brexit effort of his buddiest buddy, the prime minister, the man he recently accused of being so "distracted" that he botched the post-Gaddafi organization of Libya. With Obama for a friend…