Cuba Si Saudi Arabia No

How Diplomacy - Not Denial - Can Make Cuba Our New Saudi Arabia

OhioNews Bureau: Special Feature

PARIS, FRANCE: Having recently returned from Paris, France, where Cuban cigars can be purchased, unlike in Columbus, Ohio, or any other state in the nation, such freedom to good from other countries, especially ones we have been waging a trade war against for a half century provides another small but telling sign of what a travesty our foreign policy with the island nation in the Caribbean has been and how engaging its new leaders could turn into a win-win situation for both nations.

While living for a time in Miami, Florida, during my young years, I soon learned that while Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale were Sunshine State Meccas made possible by retirees from New York and other east coast metro areas drifting southward to chase the sun into their golden years, the real rhythm and beat of the new Miami reflected the culture and movement of Cubans, many of whom had fled the harsh socialist regime of Fidel Castro for the freedom and opportunities that were a short but harrowing ninety miles away to the north.

Over the decades since Castro came to power in 1959 when he overthrew yet another dictator, Fulgencio Batista, each US president had worshipped at the anti-Castro alter of the Cuban exiles who have come to dominate the many facets that make Miami the vibrant city it is today.

But now that Fidel is watching the sun set on his life and the style of government that was indistinguishable from his own life that was both hostile to some and compassionate to others, a new dawn is rising on an opportunity for America and Cuba to be friends and trading partners again. But this new friendship will need to use an old staple to create a new life and lifestyle for each country.

Within a few months of Fidel turning the reins of power to his brother Raul, we have already seen a crack in the 50-year build up of the glacier that was Fidel’s dogma of anti-Americanism that could spread wider, giving America’s next president a golden opportunity to entreat the island nation to turn the page on the past by looking to a future that promises both nations a chance to heal old wounds while building new muscle as one turns to energy alternatives no longer tied to the dry, expensive, unsustainable sands of Saudi Arabia and the other recasts its principal income crop of sugar cane as supply-side economics to provide affordable, renewable fields of ethanol that will in turn bring jobs and wealth back to an island paradise that could and should be America’s Saudi Arabia of ethanol fuel. 

But for this to happen, the next president needs to put down the Reagan/Bush babble of “evil empires” and “axis of evil” countries that played well among their faithful bases but has done little to turn former enemies into new trading partners.

Eugene Robinson wrote correctly in the Washington Post recently that “stubbornly sticking with a policy that has achieved nothing in 50 years is a pretty good definition of insanity”

“The United States can attempt to influence any changes that eventually take place in Cuba, or it can harrumph from the sidelines. Several of Cuba's leading dissidents have urged the White Houseto end the decades-old trade embargo and the draconian restrictions on travel to the island. Bush pays no attention to those on the front lines of this struggle.” [Eugene Robinson, Washington Post]

For his part, Sen. John Sydney McCain of Arizona is mimicking the failed rhetoric of former presidents who, to win the votes of the anti-Castro politicos in south Florida, played rough and tough with Castro by listing Cuba as a dictatorship and keeping American dollars and citizens from entering the island’s economy.

But with the potential for Barack Obama, and maybe his running mate of Hillary Clinton, teaming up to take over the White House, also comes a new day for a new dialogue with Cuba over how that country’s sugar cane crop can be harnessed to produce a steady stream of ethanol that can fuel new hybrid cars and replace the dry, brown underground oil fields of Saudi Arabia with the lush green fields of sugar cane waving in the wine than can turn Cuba in our Saudi Arabia.

SUGAR NATION

For most of the 20th Century the saying of “how goes General Motors so goes the country” was a statement of fact and legend that was hard to deny. During these same years, “sin azucar no hay pais” was the Cuban equivalent of the Motown slogan. But as much as Fidel wanted to industrialize Cuba, sugar cane has remained the sugar daddy of the economy, creating jobs for one-sixth of the population but constituting nearly 80 percent of its exports, resulting in an equally high percentage of income.

In the good old days, when Batista let American companies run wild on the island, sugar was bountiful and cheap. When Cuban relations with Russia went sour, so did the sweet taste of its sugar revenue, which dropped, causing a contraction in the size of sugar cane production.

Enter the rising price of oil and gas into the picture. American is desperate for new, reliable and hopefully renewable sources of energy. Cuba is looking to boost its buyers of its staple crop. As oil climbs to precipitous levels and American drivers find themselves out of pocket on rising fuel costs and out of their car looking at taking the bus or the train or the subway, which only exist in limited supply because the country has paid homage to the car by becoming car-centric to its detriment, it seems a natural match exists between a close-by island that can grown vast quantities of sugar cane – much the same way Brazil has done to make it energy independent – and a drive-at-all-costs nation that needs lower cost fuel.

CUBAN SUGAR BETTER THAN IOWA CORN

Moreover, the fact that sugar produces seven-times as much ethanol as does corn should spur dialogue and discussions along between the US and Cuba. Corn growers in Ohio and Iowa may not like the sound of this fact, but their lobby needs to be overcome as does that of the south Florida anti-Castro if such a new era of cooperative capitalism is to move forward.

It’s high time that America turn its foreign policy cheek and endeavor to reconcile its long-standing problems with Cuba so the island nation and the world’s greatest super power can forge a new win-win relationship about energy that can both bring jobs and income to a nation starved of both and turn its bounty of sweetness into a renewable source of ethanol fuel that can hasten our weaning off of Middle East oil and provide a new lease on life for hybrid vehicles that Detroit should start to make if a larger supply of adaptive fuel could be in the pipeline.