Bush squeezes Cuba to keep Miami's 'Little Havana' sweet

Former president Jimmy Carter has just paid an unprecedented visit to Cuba. A majority of Americans think sanctions against the island are a waste of time. Yet tomorrow, the current occupant of the White House, George Bush, will announce moves not to ease, but to intensify, pressure against the Castro regime.

The reasons for this paradox are twofold. One is America's enduring frustration at this obstinate relic of global Communism, which has defied the efforts of nine US presidents to remove it. The second is even more important -- the Cuban vote in Florida, make-or-break for Republicans in general and for the Bush family in particular.

Without waiting for a report by Mr Carter on his week-long trip, which drew intriguing new concessions from Fidel Castro, President Bush will go to Miami's Little Havana, stronghold of the Cuban exile community, to outline his plans to tighten the US economic embargo against the island 200 miles to the south, and to step up aid to the small Cuban dissident movement.

By any normal standards, these moves are perverse. Scarcely any neutral student of Cuba does not believe that US pressure is counterproductive, strengthening Mr Castro as a nationalist who stands up to Yanqui bullying, and diverting attention from his dismal economic and human rights record.

But in US political terms, they make perfect sense. Not only was support from Cuban-Americans crucial for Mr Bush's hair's-breadth victory in Florida, whose 25 (soon to be 27) electoral college votes gave him the presidency in December 2000. It will be no less crucial for younger brother Jeb, Florida's Governor, as he faces a tough re-election battle this autumn.

No matter that, probably thanks to America's very hostility, Mr Castro has been in power longer than any national ruler in the world – it's more than 43 years since he overthrew the dictator Fulgencio Batista on 1 January 1959. The Cuban exile community still cannot stand him, and woe betide anyone who thinks otherwise.

Yet the visit of Mr Carter, the first current or former US president to set foot in Cuba since "Silent" Calvin Coolidge in 1928, suggests a real chance of a thaw is possible. Undoubtedly, Mr Carter's call that it was up to America to make the first move by relaxing the embargo, was a propaganda coup for President Castro.

And at a press conference ending his week-long trip, Mr Carter was under no illusion that El Jefe was about to loosen his grip: "He wants to retain complete control over the system and not to take any chance that dissident groups could endanger his position as undisputed leader of the Cuban government." Socialism, in short, is not about to vanish from the Caribbean.

But in return, the 75-year-old dictator made unprecedented concessions of his own – allowing Mr Carter to visit dissidents, broadcasting live the former president's call at Havana University for human rights and the restoration of democracy, and then reprinting it in its entirety in the state-controlled newspaper, Granma.

But even this modest overture will be brushed aside by the White House. At the State Department, Otto Reich, a hardline Cuban-American and veteran of Reagan-era meddling in Central America, is in charge of Cuba policy. Earlier this month, his superior, Under-Secretary of State John Bolton, ratcheted up the propaganda war, accusing Mr Castro of developing biological weapons, and adding Cuba to the "axis of evil" of countries sponsoring terrorism.

But such sabre-rattling strains credulity. The net result will almost certainly be a more intransigent Castro, and a greater readiness by his people to put up with the shortcomings of his regime. As for helping dissidents, this too will be counterproductive. The dissidents did not want to be "stigmatised" by contact with the US, Mr Carter said as he left for home.

And so the bleak little farce will continue, hurting both Cubans and American individuals and companies who want to invest there. At least, however, Mr Carter's visit has forced Americans (with the exception of those who live in southern Florida) to look the absurdity squarely in the eye.