Jorge Piñón, whose business experience spans time with Royal Dutch Shell, Amoco, British Petroleum and other oil giants, recently wrote: “The Deepwater Horizon incident experience taught the United States very important hands-on lessons on how to manage such a catastrophe, lessons which would benefit us in the future by sharing them with neighbors.”

One of those neighbors to whom Mr. Piñón refers is Cuba.  He writes: “Obviously, the establishment of working relations between the U.S., Cuba, and The Bahamas in marine environmental protection would assist enormously in the contingency planning and cooperation necessary to an early and truly effective response to an oil spill.”

Of course, the creation of such working relations between Washington and Havana is not so obvious to all of Washington’s decision-makers, particularly that tiny group of hardcore Cuban-Americans in Dade County, Florida and elsewhere.  But as Cuba prepares to drill in an offshore area proximate to Florida—and to do so at depths exceeding the depth of the Deepwater Horizon well—it should be.

Recent earthquakes in Haiti and Japan not only highlight the unprecedented nature of such natural events as the world’s population heads for 7 billion and is increasingly concentrated near the oceans, such events also underscore dramatically the need for international cooperation in responding to their aftermath.  Yet the U.S. insists on dealing with Cuba as it has for the past fifty-plus years of failure: embargo, embargo, embargo.  It is as if the ghost of Jesse Helms, never a man whose photo was on the piano of any reasonable person, still gripped Washington in its incomprehensible vise.

We are not simply talking of response here either—though in cases of natural events, that is about all one can accomplish (though, as Japan vis-à-vis Haiti clearly demonstrates,  prior efforts to prevent maximum damage can be ameliorative).  We are also talking of prevention.

What better way to ensure that Cuba uses best practices in its oil exploration and extraction efforts than to put the best possible technology and experts to the task of advising the Cubans, or even assisting them?  Yet because of the embargo, the U.S. cannot do this.  Nor can other western countries do it safely, i.e., the embargo threatens them for dealing with Cuba also because the U.S. can retaliate. 

When will national security, economic and cultural opportunity, openness, a serious interest in the future of eleven million Cubans and a respect for the sovereignty of nations, and more, finally trump an insidious group of hardcore Cuban-Americans in the United States and usher in a fresh and positive policy with respect to Cuba?