Our special treatment of Cuba is simply motivated by the "special interest" in Miami, and for no other reason.
Thanks to communism, Cuba - once one of the wealthiest Caribbean countries - is now one of its poorest. Cuban society is ruthlessly regimented by a police state modeled on those of Stalin and Mao. Much of the Cuban population has been forced to flee in successive expulsions since the 1960s.
The response proposed by American liberals? The United States should be nicer to Fidel Castro. Today almost all liberal politicians, pundits and journalists, joined by many in the American business community, claim that ending U.S. economic sanctions on Cuba will promote political freedom and ultimately democracy in Castro's bankrupt police state.
Curiously, the American left made the opposite claim in the 1980s, when it backed the economic sanctions that played a role in ending apartheid in South Africa. And few liberals show interest in easing sanctions on Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Will ending sanctions bring democracy to Cuba? Many European and Latin American nations have been trading for years with Cuba without weakening Castro's control, which, like any tyranny, bases its power on controlling the police and the military, not the economy.
Why, then, would trade with the United States bring Castro down? Trade with China has not weakened the grip on power of the Chinese communist party. Indeed, foreign trade and investment may strengthen the power of dictatorships such as Castro's and China's, by easing the economic pain that communist elites have inflicted on their captive subjects. In any event, new infusions of cash are likely to end up in the bank accounts of well-connected Cuban officials.
The illogic and inconsistency of the American left can be seen in the equally disturbing double standard in the contrast between liberal perceptions of the former Yugoslav dictator Slobodan Milosevic and Castro.***