"When U.S. President Barack Obama announced his decision this month to ease restrictions on Americans traveling and sending money to Cuba, he did it late on a Friday afternoon before a long holiday weekend -- a old trick from the White House playbook, used by presidents hoping to make controversial policy changes with as little uproar as possible from the U.S. Congress and the media. But Obama shouldn't have been so quiet about the move -- it is the best Cuba policy decision the United States has made in years."

That is an excerpt from my article “Strait Talk” published by Foreign Policy about President Obama’s recent decision to ease restrictions on Americans traveling and sending money to Cuba. The article examines the White House decision, and its positive consequences for American relations with Cuban civil society.  To read the whole piece, click here.

The new policy has significant limitations. It doesn’t end the counterproductive fifty years embargo and continues some of the process of licensing for religious leaders, scholars, cultural personalities and professors. Why not simply allow every American educator, college student, scholar, artist, and religious leader to travel to Cuba in the same way most Cuban Americans go?

Yet this opening is potentially the start of a broader improvement of the bilateral relationship. The relevance of President Obama's decision goes beyond the mere restoration of the levels of people to people contacts betwen Cuba and the United States reached during the last years of the Clinton Administration. By multiplying the number of Americans travelers to Cuba, the White House opened opportunities for energizing new efforts against the travel ban during and after the Presidential and congressional campaigns of 2012.

President Obama also showed the Cuban-American community that he is not taking advice from politicians such as Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Marco Rubio. As Sarah Stephens demonstrated in her article in Politico; Cuban American members of Congress’ opposition to Obama’s dismantlement of the travel barriers is a clear evidence of their own isolation; everybody else is welcoming the White House’s action. Opening non tourist travel to Cuba will not cost President Obama a single democratic vote and it may produce dividends among the youngest generation of the Cuban American exile.

By licensing more travel to Cuba by organized religious, educational, and cultural groups, President Obama expands a “virtuous cycle” of travelers whose contacts benefit both the Cuban people and – when they return demanding total freedom to travel, which so many often do - the cause of ending the travel ban to Cuba.

Nothing will help more a constructive discussion about Cuba in the 2012 elections than a million Americans going annually to the island in 2011 and 2012. That is difficult but possible. After eight years of the Bush Administration building walls to academic, religious, family and humanitarian travel to Cuba, Obama has opened gates and bridges. It is up to the forces opposed to the embargo to incentivize the eligible travelers.  And it is up to Cuban diplomats in Washington and Havana to speed up the visa processes in friendly ways to American society and standards.

So, let’s bring the good news from the White House to every American community, to friends, relatives, members of our religious and educational communities, current and former professors, priests, pastors, rabbis, students and classmates. The more people go to Cuba under licensed travel, the more Americans would inform their communities about the real situation in the island.  It will expose the flaws of Cuban communism but also the dishonesty of those in Washington who say American travelers cannot interact with the Cuban people.   Businesspeople, religious leaders, scholars, students, local officials and American of multiple faiths would see directly the many opportunity costs the embargo is causing to American Foreign Policy.  Issues such as the illegitimate inclusion of Cuba in the list of terrorist countries would be more salient in the American public debate.

Let me give you an example of the political potential for engagement with Cuba under the new rules: only one-in-five American men and roughly 13 % of American women say they don't have a formal religious affiliation. The rest  is eligible to legally travel to Cuba and meet with their Cuban brothers and sisters in faith.  This time should be easier than in the early 2000’s. There are now more chartered flights and soon there will be more airports to flight to Cuba. And please, when you come back; don’t forget to show your pictures. Your friends, coworkers and neighbors might be interested.