"U.S. Squeezes Cuba Travelers: Castro Cited as Target, but Policy Seems Aimed at Florida Voters," by Neil King, Wall Street Journal, 14 April, p. A4.

Old argument about Castro: keep him under tight wraps and enforce as much disconnectedness as possible against his tyrannical and cruel regime, or open the floodgates and let the connectivity pervert his rule from within?

To keep the Cuban exiles/voters in Florida happy, administration after administration goes with the hard line notion of holding out against Castro. I don't really believe in this approach, because I think enforcing such disconnectedness only plays into the hands of dictators in general.

My rules are simple: if the dictator in question is a clear and present danger to own people or to world at large, then take him down and reconnect the society in the aftermath. Of course, we need a military that can do both the front- and back-halves of that game, and the Core as a whole needs an A-to-Z rule set that facilitates such processing. These are jobs to be completed.

Second rule: if the dictator is not the compelling clear and present danger, then you kill him with the kindness afforded by connectivity. If I were running the Cuba policy, I would flood that isolated system with as many American tourists as possible and open every floodgate I could find in terms of business connectivity. I would work through such rising connectivity to marginalize Castro as quickly as possible.

Then as soon as he fell away, completely irrelevant, I would begin floating the idea of Cuba as the 51st state. Tell me that wouldn't guarantee my party the exile vote in Florida from here on out!

And yes, I am being completely serious on that last point. America the closed club does not make sense in a world where the Core needs to open up to the Gap and the EU accepts new members in droves. Time to grow again.