This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, December 17, 2014.

I'm Caleb Brown.

President Obama has announced plans to normalize relations with Cuba following a decades long failed embargo. The historic move would mean

greater trade, travel and cultural ties for Cubans and Americans and a chance to end the

crushing poverty and oppression there. Ian Vasquez, director of the Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity,

offers his thoughts.

In thinking about the policy changes that Obama announced,

it would be good to put it in context, the long context of U.S. relations

towards Cuba.

And from the very beginning of its independence, the United States has had a heavy hand

with its relations with Cuba, beginning with its independence

and the establishment of the Cuban Republic in 1992.

Remember that that's the time of Teddy Roosevelt's imperialistic policies

the United States was able to implement in the United States in Cuba, the

famous Platt Amendment that basically gave it the right to intervene in Cuban affairs and set Cuban foreign policy

This created a lot of resentment among Cubans and especially among revolutionaries and radicals of which during the first half of the 20th century there were many

one of them was Fidel Castro and when he came to power he was very popular among other reasons

because he overthrew a US-backed dictator.

Now, his hatred toward America quickly morphed into or mutated into a full-blown communism that the United States has had

trouble dealing with ever since and which led to the US embargo and many failed attempts to

dislodge the regime including the the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion which in

turn led to the Cuban Missile Crisis one of the big crises of the Cold War.

...