A Bold Strategy for Cuba and Latin America

[My latest entry on The Havana Note...]

The Havana Note talks a lot about the need for a new policy towards Cuba. Fifty years of failure is a shameful, bi-partisan indictment of how policy is made in Washington. Luckily, as we have been and will continue to show, more people recognize that change is on the way. But change for change's sake is foolish, and could easily backfire on the United States.

Fortunately, the emerging consensus on changing Cuba policy happens to coincide with another consensus, here in Washington, that America needs a major overhaul of all our relations with Latin America -- and with the rising influence of Hispanic voters.

But both movements lack strategic coherence.

Today I want to propose some ideas on tying these two efforts together in light of the great strategic challenges facing the United States over the next 30-40 years.

Unlike the Cold War or World War II, when ideological foes bent on global aggression defined the central strategic challenges to the United States -- and when a policy of isolation against Cuba made sense -- I argue that the central challenge facing the United States today and for decades to come is the need to create the economic space for the entrance of up to 4.5 billion people into the formal sector of the global economy.

This challenge is presented in stark relief by China. By 2030, 700 million Chinese will leave the countryside and move into the cities, entering the formal sector of the global economy. This alone is the largest rural-urban migration the planet has ever encountered and in the short term it will put incredible global stress on energy, resources, and transportation while requiring new approaches to land use that we have never encountered.

But that same narrative is happening all over the developing world.

Continue reading on the Havana Note...