Taking the long view on U.S.-Cuba relations isn't easy. In my two most recent columns, I laid out in broad strokes the long historical arc as I see it. My basic point is simple: The United States and Cuba have never had normal relations. To make an eventual rapprochement possible, both need to think outside the box.
During the Cold War, the United States was of two minds regarding the Third World. Did the new nations in Africa and Asia provide fodder for Soviet expansionism? Were Iran under the reformist Mohammed Mosaddeq or Guatemala under Jacobo Arbenz on the brink of becoming Soviet outposts? Should Washington welcome the Cuban revolution?
U.S. POLICY ON CUBA
Great powers have rarely tempered their actions out of respect for their weaker neighbors. U.S.-Mexican relations are a case in point. By 1850, Mexico had lost half of its territory to U.S. expansionism, a loss that suffused Mexican political culture with a mistrust of the United States that lingers still.
CHILE
Chile is Latin America's success story. Per capita income has grown from $4,720 in 1990 to $13,936 in 2007. By leaving unperturbed market-based economic policies instituted in the 1980s, the Concertación, the center-left coalition in power since 1990, led Chile to where it is today. The next frontier is breaking the $20,000 mark in per capita income, which would denote the country's full passage to development.
CUBA
''Global growth is the big story of our times,'' says Fareed Zakaria in his must-read book, The Post-American World. His subtitle -- The Rise of the Rest -- tells the story of why we're at the cusp of a truly global order. Countries all over are growing, a trend that started in Asia but has spread to Central Europe, Latin America and Africa. Why ''the rest'' are rising is a no-brainer: They are expanding the reach of markets at home while increasing exports.
VENEZUELA
Hugo Chávez again overreached. On May 28, a spine-chilling intelligence decree went into effect. After a week of public uproar and the prospect of mass demonstrations, he withdrew the decree.
Ostensibly issued to deflect national-security threats, the decree threatened Venezuelans who refused to act as informants with up to four years in prison, its most egregious assault on civil liberties. Warrantless wiretapping and other forms of surveillance were green-lighted. A community-based network of spies was in the works.
