Cuba and baseball

Something happened this week that has only happened once in the past 25 years: an American baseball team played a game in Cuba.  The last time was in 1991, and the event is easily forgotten today.  This time is different, as an American President accompanied the team and met with the leader of Cuba.

Not everyone is happy about this.  Dan LeBatard, who is usually ESPN designated buffoon, wrote an eloquent piece on the pain felt by many Cuban immigrants—exiles, not immigrants, as he points out—at the sight of anything resembling regular relations between the United States of America and the island nation 90 miles away that we have refused to acknowledge for 60 years.  There may be changes in US/Cuban relations, he points out, but there are no assurances of changes in Cuban domestic policy.  How does this thawing of international relations help the Cuban people?

The pain felt by Cuban emigres is real and sincere.  However, it is important to remember one thing; the relationship of Cuban with the United States is not normal.  Other countries are run by cruel despots who inflict punishment on their populations for nothing more than their own enrichment, and we recognize them.  China commits atrocities on a population far, far greater than Cuba’s, and yet we import low cost consumer goods manufactured by forced labor.  About the only other nation on Earth that we do not recognize is North Korea, and that is by their decision.  And they are not 90 miles away across a narrow strip of water.

The Cuban exiles who speak out against the normalizing of relations between our country and Cuba want to remind us of the pain they, and other Cuban have felt.  But that pain isn’t going away, so we should normalize relations . . . never?  A hundred years ago the Ottoman Empire tried (unsuccessfully) to exterminate all Armenians, and today the descendants of Armenian immigrants have tried to mark the 100^th anniversary by urging public pension systems to divest of investments in Turkey, the nation that was left after the Ottoman Empire was no longer an empire.  After 100 years, would an apology really help?  “Sorry we tried to wipe out your family, please invest in Turkish bonds.” 

Relations between America and Cuba should be normalized.  Note the word—derived from the adjective normal.  The current situation is abnormal.  Cuba is in a time warp circa 1955, and opening Cuba up to American trade and tourism would bring them into the last half of the 20^th century while the rest of us are in the 21^st.  A small state like Cuba would find it difficult to do what a large nation like China does to keep the forces of liberty at bay.  Cuba would get more freedom; the US would get more baseball players like Yasiel Puig, without him having to deal with underworld smugglers to come here.

Cuba’s proximity to the United States, and the vestiges of the Cuban Missile Crisis (and the Bay of Pigs fiasco) have left us with a foreign policy aberration that should be fixed.  Cuba will not go away if we plug our ears and yell “La la la la la la” very loudly.  If baseball, the one American import that Cuba has embraced, can help the process along, so be it.  The pain suffered by those people whose families were torn apart by the Castro regime, and whose family members were tortured and imprisoned, should not be forgotten.

But they should also not drive US foreign policy after 60 years.