For fifty years the policy with respect to Cuba has been little more than “give us your poor, your political dissidents,” together with imposing an embargo. Is it not wiser to generate an openness in a closed society by trade, tourism and sports? Imagine the mutual excitement by admitting a Cuban baseball team to the major leagues, or by inviting each year a thousand Cuban children to visit Disney World? The tiresome argument that we would be rewarding a communistic dictator has no logic in face of our relations with China which nonetheless knows only too clearly that the US always keeps human rights warm though on the back burner in the event a serving is requested. Imposing human rights never works; in opening up a society, human rights takes on its own indigenous dynamic.

How long are we going to tolerate Mexico’s obvious inability to help itself, thereby driving its poor to cross our border? Is it not time for a Marshal Plan to get it moving toward prosperity for all its people, rather than the trade agreement that primarily is for the benefit of US corporations and a handful of Mexican aristocrats?

North Korea is a menace to humanity — mainly its own — yet we cannot continue to allow the leaders to starve their people. If North Korea can sell nuclear material to terrorist countries, then we should put in our bid to buy it out and the proceeds earmarked for its people’s benefit, such as was done in the “oil for food” UN stipulation in Iraq — granted there was corruption, but few Iraqis lacked nutrition.

In short, we should revive the art of diplomacy, rather than settle for the stressful art of militarism. It would be far less of a drain on our resources so we can place more emphasis on guarding our home defense.

Copyright © 2004 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: May 24, 2004.