He writes that Obama’s action has “endangered Americans,” but offers no credible argument for how this is true. Such an action would have endangered America during the Cold War, when Cuba was aligned with the Soviet Union and offered that mortal enemy of the West opportunities to thrust the United States into a defensive posture in its own hemisphere, even as it sought to protect Western Europe from 1.3 million Soviet and Soviet-client troops poised menacingly on Europe’s Western frontier.
Those days are gone, thanks to the resolve mustered by America and the West when it really mattered. But now the Soviet successor, today’s Russian Federation, possesses no global reach, no ability to overrun Europe, and no threatening ties to any nations in America’s near abroad, including Cuba. So why should the United States maintain a Cold War stance toward Cuba when there are no Cold War threats?
Rubio says it is because the Cuban regime is repressive, and “the Cuban people have the same rights that God bestowed on every other man, woman and child that has ever lived.” This is language so grandiose as to be silly. God may have bestowed such rights on every man, woman and child that has ever lived, but, if so, He has had a funny way of showing it. Many men, women and children who have ever lived have lived in misery born of man’s inherent weakness, folly and harshness. And no nation, movement or army has been able to alter that reality, except in rare and isolated circumstances.
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