by Patrick J. Buchanan – May 14, 2002

“The commonest error in politics is sticking to the carcasses of dead policies,” observed Lord Salisbury, the prime minister who presided over Britain’s rapprochement with the United States. Lord Salisbury was right. It is time the United States reviewed its policy of total estrangement from and isolation of Cuba.

This is not to say, as some argue, that our Cuban policy has failed. The reverse is true. From the late Eisenhower years through the Reagan Decade, the policy succeeded. By embargoing Cuba, the United States forced Moscow to divert $5 billion yearly to keep Castro’s regime afloat. Maintaining their Cuban colony on the doorstep of the United States was imperial overstretch for the Soviet Empire, and the endless bleeding helped to bring that empire down.