Opening doors to Cuba

Saturday, April 4, 2009 | 2:07 a.m.

Every so often, a hard-line position taken for years by the U.S. government on a foreign policy issue will soften because of a shift in public attitudes. Trade and travel agreements with China and normalized relations with Vietnam are but two examples.

Evidence is growing that U.S. attitudes have also begun to change about Cuba, the island nation that became a headache for the U.S. after dictator Fidel Castro rose to power in 1959. That tension reached a dangerous peak with the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the U.S. discovered Soviet missiles on the island and successfully demanded that they be removed.

Nearly half a century later, Cuba no longer poses a threat to our national security and can’t count on the former Soviet Union for assistance as it did in the past. Just last year Castro, beset by failing health, handed over political control of the communist nation to his younger brother. These realities have led to changing American attitudes about Cuba.

Change became evident last month when President Barack Obama signed a spending bill that enables Cuban-Americans to visit their relatives on the island once a year instead of once every three years.

A bipartisan group of senators, seizing on that momentum, introduced a bill Tuesday that would allow all Americans to travel to Cuba except in cases of war or threats to travelers. The legislation is backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Farm Bureau and other industry groups that advocate free trade with Cuba.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., a co-sponsor of the bill, said Americans can travel to communist China and Vietnam, but the Cuba policy “punishes Americans by prohibiting their right to travel. Further, this policy has done nothing to weaken the Castro regime.”

Dorgan’s points are difficult to dispute.

Congress and the Obama administration should support Dorgan’s legislation because the travel restrictions have outlived their usefulness. Ending those restrictions could also be an important step toward resuming free trade with Cuba and enhancing the image of the United States in Latin America.