The Gulf of Trumpico

And what about Cuba?

I’ll not fall for the bait. I watched Trump’s press conference. I will take him seriously, but not literally. He’s negotiating. He’s sending messages. And I don’t think the messages are all that terrible. He is haggling for better rates for American ships in the Canal (and perhaps a MAGA project of widening that too-skinny thing). He’s sending a larger message to the Chinese: we’re watching every move you make, especially in the western hemisphere. He is haggling with Denmark: Greenland wants independence, at least a majority of its minuscule (57,000) population does and we’re a more plausible big brother than you. He is poking Canada, provocatively, for better trade deals and more defense spending. He is sending us a message, too: I’m Back and More Vehement Than Ever. All of which conveys three things: confidence, the appearance of strength and a certain crafty craziness.

Strength is important to Americans, according to the polls. Democrats don’t do it well. In the real world, the projection of strength—even with a trumped-up 19th century tinge of imperialism—is a weapon in any righteous superpower’s arsenal. And we are a superpower, perhaps the most benign in history, even if the hate-America left refuses to acknowledge that. Superpowerdom has its advantages. Smaller, somewhat implausible “countries” like Panama should respect and, yes, fear us. (Panama was part of Colombia till we intervened and created it a century ago). In retrospect, Jimmy Carter’s decision to give back the canal, rather than maintain it as an free international zone controlled by the US (paying generous user fees to the local government), seems a consequence of another time, a time when we were competing against the Soviet Union for the favor of tinpot dictators like Torrijos and Noriega and trying to present a friendly image to the Third World.

Those days are over. There are few illusions about ideological conflict anymore; this is a mercantile world of power politics and national neuroses. The Russians are muddling through their historic strategy of masochistic machismo; they bleed themselves dry and then sulk over the ashes. The Chinese have had a consistent strategy overseas that has nothing to do with Marx. They practice bribery followed by exploitation. They’ll build a port or dig a mine in Africa or South America, then insist on running it for their own benefit. They’ll stay away from costly military ventures (except, perhaps, in their perceived sphere of influence)—and then swoop in with infrastructure emoluments in order to harvest rare earth minerals, after we’ve bombed a place to smithereens. This will certainly be the case if the dust ever settles in Afghanistan, which has lots of fabulous stuff in the ground.

There is nothing high-minded about the Chinese way. There is no yammer about liberty and democracy; there is no fantasy of a “free” world. There is only the brute exercise of economic power. I suspect that this is the sort of foreign policy that Trump is aiming for: entirely transactional. He would be the last person to sign up for a Carteresque humanitarian policy toward all nations; he has ridiculed George W. Bush’s “forward freedom agenda,” which attempted a Neo-conservative idealism in its effort to remake the Middle East.

Unfortunately, however, idealism is how we roll. It is in our nature; it is our national neurosis. The defense of “freedom” is a shriveled fig leaf covering our real interests, but it thrives when the collective vitality of NATO is at stake. Trump will have none of that, though; he is not a romantic about democracy, or anything else, for that matter. He doesn’t mind the use of force if there are commercial benefits (he thought the Iraq war might have been ok if we’d kept the oil). He represents a profound, drastic change in the way that America faces the world—if you take him literally or seriously. But perhaps it is time for a course correction toward realpolitik. The theory that the promotion of democracy will lead to a more peaceful world—a theory I fell in love with when John F. Kennedy announced the Peace Corps—hasn’t quite played out the way we’d hoped. It is absolutely Core Trump to believe that our foreign policy should have only one goal: the growth of our financial and national security power. In truth, there should always be a balance of idealism and cruder interests in foreign policy. It may be prudent now to recalibrate a bit toward making America fearsomely transactional in a world where the illusions are gone and commerce rules.

It will be interesting to see what Trump does in the areas where real kinetic force may be required. He seems to be a bragger not a fighter. It is easy to say, as he did repeatedly at his press conference, that Hamas will have “hell to pay” if it doesn’t release the hostages…now that Israel has reduced Gaza to rubble. But he hasn’t had much to offer about Ukraine and Taiwan, which he senses are in Russia’s and China’s spheres of interest respectively. Indeed, Trump may be calculating: We can play the spheres of influence game, too. If Putin can covet Ukraine, we can exploit Greenland; if Xi wants Taiwan, we really can’t stop him short of cataclysm, so we’ll concentrate on the Canal and quietly augment our influence over Canada. There would be a method to that sort of madness.

It is curious, in all this, that Trump has not raised the ripest fruit for American plucking: Cuba. Back in 1975, I visited the island with Senator George McGovern and decided to hunt for some dissidents, having balked at the Castro propaganda ladled thick—along with cigars and rum (talk about emoluments!)—by the Cubans. The logical place to find dissidents was the nearest church, which happened to be Havana’s grand cathedral. And sure enough, I quickly found a guy who’d been jailed both by Castro and his authoritarian predecessor Fulgencio Batista. “The best way to defeat Castro is to recognize us!” He pleaded. “End the embargo. Flood us with American goods and culture. Castro would never survive that. He needs you as an enemy if he’s going to remain a tyrant here.” (That was the gist of the message, if not the exact words.)

It was true then. It is truer now. Not a shot need be fired. The Cubans are near collapse. Their economy is, well, socialist. Their electric grid is intermittent at best. The government—can you name the leader?—is springing leaks, including national security leaks, like a recent report that the military has a major stash of ill-gotten gains from the island’s tourist industry. (Such leaks rarely happened in the past.)

Now, I suspect that troglo-Trumpers will not want Cuba to become the 51st state. Too many mestizos. But simply by lifting the boycott, there would be a liberating rush of economic activity—tourism would explode, the sugar harvest would have a buyer, the nickel mines would thrive. The Cubans would soon be back in our orbit, and there are worse places to be. I’d love to see a revival of the old Havana Sugar Kings as a Major League Baseball franchise, though the revival of an actual Cuban democracry—which never really lived there—might be a bridge too far. The wheezing government, such as it is, would be overwhelmed by commerce. There would be a bonanza for the Cuban people—their lives would be materially better, even when gorged on American junk food—and it would be an ideological victory for us (and a Syria-style loss for the Russians, only bigger).

The vestigial rationale, propounded mostly by the older generation of Cuban exiles in Florida, was that the embargo would cripple the Castro government—and that if we recognized the Castro government, it would empower the commies. The commies managed to limp along unrecognized, but who really cares nowadays? Trump has the power to liberate Cuba, destroy its communist remnants—with things. Love bomb them with Snickers and Spanx and Tito’s Vodka and Netflix. (I am told the younger generation of Cubans in Miami already are angling for dibs on the franchises for the Havana Four Seasons and Sandals Varadero Beach and all the other resort brands. They might have to outbid the Cuban military for those.) Havana might not be so exotic. All the wonderful old cars would be replaced by Toyotas made in Tennessee, but progress has a price.

And Trump has the perfect Secretary of State to do it: Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American hardliner, to the point of foolishness in the past…but who knows what a Rubio liberated by transactional Trumpism would favor? He might go down in Cuban history as El Gran Liberador! We could send Gloria Estefan as the new ambassador. This might be an easy win, and fun, too.