US-Cuban Détente is China’s Loss? Ludicrous in the Extreme

On Dec. 17, President Obama announced the normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba, stating that the U.S. policy of isolating Cuba over the last half century had not achieved the desired effect. Obama's new policy includes negotiating the reestablishment of relations with Cuba and expanding U.S.-Cuban business and tourist exchanges, among other conditions. Prior to Obama’s speech, the two nations also exchanged prisoners held by each side.

As a small nation of 11.16 million people situated just beyond the U.S. border, Cuba's perseverance in the face of the prolonged embargo imposed by its larger neighbor could well be called a miracle. Obama has declared that the methods previously exercised by his nation have “not worked” and that Cuba's successful safeguarding of its political independence and autonomy now prescribe a more delicate approach.

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Cuba quickly found itself by the wayside, and for decades was subjected to heavy political and economic pressure from the United States. As regimes throughout Latin America were toppled in the following years, many expected that Castro's final days were approaching as well.

The United States’ change in tune toward Cuba is a microcosm of the larger limits of U.S. power. It also demonstrates that even a small nation, when united within, can become a fortress against all else.

Latin America is the traditional backyard of the United States, and few states are nearer to the U.S. than Cuba. The ultimate failure of the U.S. embargo against Cuba will alter the rest of the world's assessment of the true bite that remaining U.S. sanctions have. After all, if the United States is unable to best a nation on its very doorstep with an embargo, it begins to appear less certain whether sanctions will fare any better against North Korea, Iran or Russia.

The global community generally frowns upon sanctions, and for the past 22 years, the United Nations General Assembly has passed resolutions seeking an end to the U.S. isolation of Cuba, evincing the overall lack of support for such an unjust cause.

China's persistence in walking the path of socialism and its successful reform and opening to the world have obviously inspired Cuba. The myriad adjustments to Havana's internal policy in recent years, as well as the work toward easing U.S.-Cuban relations have both been implemented following in China’s footsteps. It would seem that the process of switching the course of development for the country will soon reach a successful conclusion.

There are some on the Chinese Internet who regard the thaw in U.S.-Cuban relations as “China's failure.” Bias has left these individuals bereft of the most basic ability to comprehend the world. With only a mind set on “opposing China at every turn,” they happily serve as the peanut gallery of the global forum.

A Cuba that walks the path of reform and openness will come to have a deeper understanding of China's own path, a power of understanding that will spread throughout all of Latin America, and even perhaps the entire third world. The record shows that the vast majority of developing countries, regardless of what manner their transformation may take, highly regards and admires China's experience. Meanwhile, they have maintained limited relations with Washington as a result of the many cautionary examples where interior reform has led to revolutionary change. To this day, Serbia, Egypt, Iraq and South Sudan all remain friends of China.

The Soviet Union has collapsed, but Cuba lives on. Many saw the influence of the Chinese example at work within Vietnam's drive for reform and openness, while Cuba out in far-away Latin America stood alone, given up by some as a lost cause. By making these naysayers eat their words, it proves that this is a world meant to support diversity, and not a world in which one system rules everything under the sun.

The normalization of U.S.-Cuban relations has caused yet another flower of ideology within foreign relations to wither away. Nations all over the world have gained new data to factor into the calculus of their interests. And while there are yet several powers that doggedly steep themselves in the Cold War psyche, the bitter grays of the past have now become the last shades remaining on their ideological palette. From Washington's Capitol Hill to the Chinese Internet, there are voices that never cease to prove this point.