Nearly three decades ago, a Cuban deputy minister for tourism put the issue this way: The Fidel Castro regime, he said, was not losing a battle of ideology; "We are not winning the battle of the blue jeans."
Indeed, Cubans, if they could afford it - and very few could - would buy or swop a pair of American-made blue jeans off foreigners. And substitute blue jeans for almost any Western consumer good, most of which were unavailable in Cuba.
The moral of the story is that short of a military invasion - and we know the outcome of the Bay of Pigs incursion - perhaps the best way to undermine and weaken Cuba's communist regime is by trading with it and allowing Cubans to enjoy some of the basic consumer durables that most of their neighbours take for granted. Soon, Cubans will be demanding more than blue jeans of their leaders, which, given the stifled market, they will be unable to deliver.
Burnishes credentials
It is this lesson, the possibility of nicely corroding the system from within, that America's new president, Barack Obama, appears to have absorbed. At the same time, if you lead the most powerful country in the world, which has maintained an embargo on a small neighbour, it burnishes your humanitarian credentials, if by easing those sanctions you improve the quality of people's lives.
Very important also, Mr Obama has a clear grasp of geopolitics. He understands that it is not in America's interest to leave itself without any leverage to influence change in Cuba in the post-Castro period. And Fidel Castro, who remains the spiritual leader of the revolution, is now 82, and his brother Raśl, who succeeded him as president, is 77.
In other words, President Obama appreciates the futility of maintaining the harsher edges of a near-50-year embargo as the tool of choice to handle issues in a 21st-century environment. And especially, when your neighbours and allies are agreed that such an instrument is vulgarly blunt.
Hence his move this week to end the restrictions on travel by Americans to Cuba and on the amount of money Cuban-Americans can send to family in Cuba. He will also allow American firms to establish telecommunications links with Cuba.
Policy change
It is perhaps significant that Mr Obama announced his policy change ahead of this weekend's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, which he is scheduled to attend. He, thereby, removed a contentious issue with which he was likely to have been confronted by other hemispheric leaders in the margins of the conference. The lessening of Cuba as a potential political issue in Port-of-Spain will leave more time to the leaders to concentrate on the big issue on their agenda: the global economic crisis.
That, however, does not, and ought not to mean, that Cuba has passed as a political or human-rights matter for the United States or anyone else in this hemisphere. Many political prisoners remain in Cuban jails and the country's press is not free.
President Obama must place these matters squarely before Cuba's leaders as he contemplates how far to proceed with the dismantling of the embargo. Having shown good faith, he might insist that further action on America's part would be dependent on good behaviour by Havana, such as the freeing up of the press and political prisoners.
Cuba's leaders will then face the dilemma of saying no in the face of its people's demand for more.
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