Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (ret.), Co-Chair of New America's U.S.-Cuba Policy Initiative comments on the ease with which Cuba's leaders can ignore America's unilateral trade embargo. From the Havana Note:

LET'S look at what Cuba is doing with regard to diversification. It’s darned smart.

Having experienced the Soviet withdrawal from their island—a move that impacted nearly every Cuban in some way—and the concomitant epiphany of the tragic downside of sole-source support, the Cuban leadership vowed never to repeat. As a result, today that leadership is diversifying its support by state and function. Spain, China, Germany Canada, Israel, Venezuela, Brazil, and others fill the former role and nickel, tobacco, oil, rum, tourism, and other trade the latter. Cuba will never be trapped again into reliance on one state or on one or two commodities or trade functions.

The latest move in this regard was executed by the man about whom Ricardo Alarcón, President of Cuba’s National Assembly, said in 2007: “Give me ten Lula’s and I will rule the world.” I tend to agree with Alarcón, particularly when I cast Brazil’s wise leader against our own feckless leader, George W. Bush. In fact, Bush calls to mind most poignantly Shakespeare’s words, as uttered by the Fool in King Lear: “Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.” How very apt.

Lula has just quietly visited Cuba and left a one billion dollar line of credit in his wake. Moreover, Brazil is working to assist Cuba in exploring its offshore oil potential, along with China and Venezuela (another smart form of diversification by Cuba).

The missing "state" in all of this is, of course, the United States. Its embargo looks like something from the dark ages; its policies don’t even have the rationale of “impassioned brotherhood” of a 1962 Bobby Kennedy intent on offsetting his brother’s Bay of Pigs image by eliminating Castro. In fact, there is no longer any reason for the embargo except the hardline Cuban-American lobby whose members increasingly act more like Batista clones than freedom fighters.

Moreover, as the U.S. embargo continues, our relations with all of Latin America suffer. Lately, as Brazil and Mexico in particular have recently highlighted, the U.S. is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the entire region. And as this kind of U.S. negligence usually generates in the relations of nations, other powers—such as China—are making hay while the U.S. sun refuses to shine. In short, their power is flowing into the vacuum we have purposefully and even spitefully created.

This has to cease.

Whoever is the new president in January 2009, two things need to happen with regard to Latin America and Cuba. First, Cuba, never on the front burner, needs at least to be put on the stove. Second, U.S. relations with Latin America should be completely refurbished. And there is the connection: no more effective and swifter way exists to signal a new approach to Latin America than to effect a rapprochement with Cuba as the opening gambit.

Mr./Madam President, over to you.

--Lawrence Wilkerson