Jac VerSteegThe headline in the South Florida Sun Sentinel was, “Putin: ‘External factors’ led to economic woes” and continued, “Russian President…blasts West’s moves.”
The Miami Herald’s Web site headlined the story, “Putin: West wants to defang, declaw Russian bear.”
In the Tampa Bay Times, it was: “Putin blames West for Russia’s economic woes.”
They – and news organizations around the country and the world – all were reporting the story that, in the Los Angeles Times version run by the Tampa Bay Times, began, “Sternly warning the West it cannot defang the metaphorical Russian bear, a confident-looking President Vladimir Putin promised Thursday to shore up the plummeting ruble and revive the economy within two years.”
This holiday season the Castros have “re-gifted” the blame-America excuse to Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.
Taking that excuse away from the repressive Cuban regime (and any that might follow) is one of the most-cited reasons for supporting President Barack Obama’s decision to begin the process of normalizing relations with Cuba.
In that sense critics such as Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fl., who lambaste the president for giving the two-headed Castro regime a gift, get things exactly backwards. Obama took something away.
Further, what he did give them – the eventual promise of more economic prosperity – likely will come too late to benefit either Castro.
Whether a taste of capitalism and consumerism will result in a rapid move toward democracy is not such a sure prediction.
Consider Russia and Putin. While the Cuban embargo has failed for half a century, the expectation that capitalization will turn Russia into a good world citizen has been failing in the quarter century since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The fact Russians have been electing (and reelecting and reelecting) a thug like Putin hardly provides reassurance that Cuba will have a swifter, better path.
And Obama’s policies on Cuba and Russia raise this question: Should economic sanctions be canceled just because they don’t work?
What if Putin is right and Russia can climb out from under Western sanctions within two years, does that mean the West should drop the sanctions imposed in part to punish Russia for its adventures in Ukraine? Or do we have to wait 50 years, as in Cuba?
For South Florida’s older Cuban exiles, the length of time never mattered. The test for success was: Has Fidel Castro been hanged from a lamp post yet? The younger generation born in America has lost that personal hatred.
Certainly the test for ending sanctions is not whether the regime being punished by has begun respecting human rights. Otherwise the U.S. would not have such intense economic ties with China and Vietnam.
There is a chance the West’s recent sanctions will mute Putin’s aggression. Or, as with the Castros, they might just give him an annual excuse for a rotten economy.
Do the Russian people believe that excuse? Did the Cubans? Hard to say. For many of those unwilling to swallow the excuse, fear of brutal repression does the trick. That’s a “gift” Russia’s dictators gave to Cuba, way back when.
Jac Wilder VerSteeg is editor of Context Florida. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
