For America's New Kennedy, A Detente With the Castros.(International Edition; Latin America)

Byline: Mac Margolis; Mac Margolis

Barack Obama's inauguration is still nearly two months away, but you can already hear the thawing sound over the Florida Strait. Latin America experts anticipate that Obama will quickly make good on his campaign promise to "immediately" revoke the restrictions imposed by George W. Bush in 2004 that severely limit Cuban-American travel and remittances home. Obama has also vowed to shut the Guantanamo Bay prison, long a gringo thumb in the eye to Cubans (and all Latin Americans).

Such moves would be a diplomatic milestone and could herald the end of a stale ideological feud. They'd also buoy Washington's poor image in Latin America at a time when foreign powers are cozying up to the hemisphere. China's Hu Jintao recently toured several Latin American states to strengthen trade relations. Moscow dispatched warships to the Caribbean for joint naval exercises with Venezuela (already a prized customer of Russian arms) and is exploring investment opportunities in the region. Both are making inroads with certain left-wing governments that have cast Bush as a bete noire. While Obama's diplomacy won't completely tilt the global scales Washington's way, it could turn the last page on the Cold War and "be of tremendous symbolic value," says Shannon O'Neil of the Council on Foreign Relations. "This would take the wind out of the sails ...