U.S. President Barack Obama has announced that he will visit Cuba in March. The historical visit will continue the steady process of normalizing relations between the United States and the communist island 150 km to the south. It is more symbolic than substantive, but that has not stopped opponents of rapprochement with Havana from protesting the trip. Their objections, like their preferred policy of continued isolation, are mistaken. Only engagement will bring about change in Cuba.
Calvin Coolidge was the last U.S. president to visit Cuba — in 1928. He traveled there aboard a U.S. battleship, an appropriate symbol given the gunboat diplomacy that Washington then wielded in its relations with Latin America. The U.S. was first supportive when rebels overthrew the ruling dictatorship in Havana in 1959, but the new government's close relations to Moscow and its increasingly authoritarian tendencies pushed the U.S. to sever ties in 1961. Since then, a hard core of Cuban refugees that opposes the government in Havana has steadfastly fought any normalization of relations, preferring isolation, condemnation and attempts at regime change.
The fact that such a policy has had no discernible impact on the Havana government has not affected the hard-liners' thinking. They still insist that Cuba should democratize before the U.S. "rewards" it with relations. The size of the Cuban exile community in Florida, an important state in the U.S. electoral process, has ensured that politicians gave their views considerable weight in Washington's policy toward the island.