FOLLOWING months of secret negotiations, very much in fashion in current diplomatic deals, with the Cuban government, the US President Barack Obama on Wednesday announced sweeping changes for normalizing relations with Cuba. It is surely a bold move that ends one of the most stained chapters in American foreign policy since 1960. The following day-Friday– Cuba’s parliament also unanimously ratified the deal reached between Havana and Washington in normalizing the relations.The US decision to restore full diplomatic ties, taking steps to delist Cuba from the US State Department’s list of countries that sponsor terrorism and roll back restrictions on travel and trade is a change in direction that has been strongly praised both inside and outside Washington. The Obama administration is ushering in a transformational era for millions of Cubans who have suffered over the decades due to hostility between the two nations.President Obama could have taken modest, gradual steps toward a thaw. Instead, he has courageously gone as far as he can. The President said, “These 50 years have shown that isolation has not worked”. Cuba’s President, Raúl Castro, also deserves the credit for his pragmatism. While Cuba remains a repressive police state with a failed economy, under his leadership since 2008, the country has begun a process of economic reforms that has empowered ordinary Cubans. He also lifted travel restrictions that the government imposed on its citizens. Despite Castro’s tentative steps toward reform since taking over from his older brother Fidel Castro in 2006, the Cuban economy is still at odds. However, Raul Castro reform drives are working and the economy is expected to achieve just 1.3 percent growth for 2014.The proposed changes Obama administration announced have the potential to empower Cuba’s growing entrepreneurial class by permitting commercial and financial transactions with the US. The White House also intends to make it easier for American technology companies to upgrade the island’s primitive Internet systems, a step that could go a long way towards strengthening civil society.The US can press Cuban government for greater personal freedoms and democratic change. But its earlier punitive approach has been overwhelmingly counterproductive. Going forward, American support for Cuba’s civil society and dissidents is likely to become more effective, because other governments will no longer be able to treat Cuba as a victim of the United States’ pointlessly harsh policy.Though the US Congress, dominated by the conservative Republicans, is unlikely to take complementary steps toward a healthier relationship with Cuba anytime soon but in all likelihood, history will prove Obama’s courageous decision is right. The new era of US-Cuba relations is another sign that communist dictatorship destroys the hopes and aspirations of the people from within.
