“The Castro generation is slowly handing power over to the next generation of party and military leaders who will determine the pace and scope of the reform process.”

—    “Cuba Expert” Ted Piccone of the Brookings Institution, giving one reason why the United States should unilaterally change U.S. policy towards Cuba.

The Cold War had its “Sovietologists;” today we have the “Cuba expert” — and anyone seeking to understand the true nature of the Castro regime and the reality of events in Cuba is worse off for it.

Sovietologists, those presumed subject matter experts who were relied upon by the media for insight to the opaque politics and motivations of the former Soviet Union, are now pretty much a discredited lot.  Not because they couldn’t predict the collapse of the USSR, but because for years they grossly underestimated the moral bankruptcy of tyranny and the power of individuals who simply wanted ... Read More

BY JOHN F. DI LEO

Raul Castro, dictator of Cuba and brother of dictator emeritus Fidel Castro, is in the news.   He took advantage of a Cuban national holiday on July 26, 2012 (a national holiday in a communist country — now that sounds like fun, doesn’t it?), to announce his desire to reopen relations with the United States.

Castro seems reasonable; he says that anything can be on the table, as long as it is a conversation between “equals” — he emphasizes that Cuba is nobody’s puppet, after all.

The Castros seem discouraged that the USA never “forgave and forgot” with Cuba, the way that the USA did with so many other countries two decades ago.  We patched things up with East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, even Russia!   Why not with Cuba too?

Remembering the Cold War

Many today have forgotten — or were never taught at all — the history of the Cold War.  ... Read More

BY JAY HALLEN

When the going gets tough, the tough apply the thinnest veneers of window dressing—or so one would assume of Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan strongman running for his third six-year presidential term this October.

Venezuela has led the world in inflation for every year since 2007, thanks to the expansionary fiscal policy of his “Bolivarian Revolution,” with consumer price index growth topping 26 percent in January 2012. Last year CPI growth outpaced that of wages by 40 percent, leaving people unable to afford basic goods. Chavez reacted as any good economist, and effectively “banned inflation.” When his Fair Prices and Costs Law took effect in November 2011, the government acquired authority to pre-approve all retail prices in the country. Predictably, this has created shortages of food and other consumer staples, as producers and retailers have no incentive to bring products to market that they cannot profitably sell. The Bolivarian Revolution ... Read More

BY ERIC FARNSWORTH

Democracy is not a fragile flower, as Ronald Reagan told the British Parliament 30 years ago, but it does require tending. What was true in Eastern Europe in the 1980’s and also the Middle East in the aftermath of the Arab Spring is equally true in the Americas, where democracy has been the norm for a generation.

Despite this, leaders of countries including Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua are working to have Cuba’s Raúl Castro invited to the next Summit of the Americas in Colombia. If he is not, they are threatening to boycott the summit.

Now is when the steady voice of the United States in conjunction with other like-minded hemispheric nations is critically needed to tend the democratic garden in the Americas. Washington should embrace this manufactured crisis in order to stand for the fundamental point — enshrined by the Inter-American Democratic Charter signed by all hemispheric governments ... Read More