| Summary/Abstract |
Following President Obama’s announcement of a rapprochement with the Cuban regime, US government officials have offered three basic avenues to the economic reforms they say will ultimately result in greater personal freedom for the island’s citizens: fostering the small-enterprise sector in Cuba, encouraging US investments, and boosting US tourism to the island. These efforts to produce prosperity, together with the reestablishment of diplomatic relations, they believe, will advance US security and democratic governance in Cuba. Critics of the initiative, however, believe that this new policy is, as Samuel Johnson said of second marriages, a triumph of hope over experience, and that in the long run it will harm US national interests almost as much as it disappoints the Cuban people.
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