The Havana Obsession.(International Edition)(United States-Cuba relations)

Byline: Moises Naim; Naim is Editor in Chief of Foreign Policy magazine.

Why all eyes are on a bankrupt island.

Bill Clinton and George W. Bush recently had a face-to-face debate in Canada to discuss current affairs. The only Latin American nation mentioned in their conversation? Cuba. In April the heads of state of the Americas met in Trinidad. The central theme? Cuba--the only country not invited to the summit. Last week the Organization of American States (OAS) had a summit in Honduras. What thorny problem dominated the discussions of the -foreign-affairs ministers, including Hillary Clinton, who had to divert her attention from the North Korean nuclear test and the crises in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan to travel to the summit of the OAS? Cuba, of course. A few months ago, the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, convened a meeting to discuss the situation in Cuba. The room was overflowing. A few days later it held a far-less-attended meeting. The subject? Brazil.

The obsession with Cuba is not exclusively American. It is as intense in Europe. It would be natural to conclude, there-fore, that no other Latin American country matters more to the rest of the hemisphere, or indeed to the rest of the world, than Cuba. Unless, of course, one looks at a map--or at some statistics. Brazil occupies almost half of South America's land mass and is the fifth largest country in the world. Its territory is nearly 80 times larger than that of Cuba. More people live in just one Brazilian city, Sao Paolo, than in all of Cuba. Brazil's economy is the ninth largest in the world and one of the most dynamic--it is also 31 times larger than that of Cuba. Trade between Brazil and the rest of the world is 25 times that of Cuba. There are 10 times as many Brazilians in the military as there are Cubans in the island's armed forces. In global negotiations on the environment, trade, nuclear proliferation, financial regulation, energy and poverty alleviation, Brazil is a major player.

Why the Cuba obsession, then? Why is more attention given to this bankrupt Caribbean island than to a continental giant and global player like Brazil?

The usual explanation is that Cuba has a unique symbolic allure. It is the small country that confronted the U.S. empire and has survived despite the attempts by all U.S. presidents since to subdue its communist government. It is the island with iconic leaders like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, and the Latin American country that in the language ...