Tear Down This Wall

Dayana Mendoza, the delightful Miss Universe 2008, took a tour of Guantánamo Bay Naval Station recently. After seeing the detainee camps, the showers and a dog-handling demonstration, she called the 45-square-mile U.S. base on Cuba's eastern flank a "calm and beautiful" destination. Guantánamo was "really enjoyable," Mendoza said; she "didn't want to leave."

Is Miss Universe onto something? Guantánamo Bay has been a problem in search of a solution almost since its establishment in 1903 as a U.S. naval coaling station. Today an American-built fence separates the U.S. facility from Cuba. Its only gate has been effectively closed since 1959. Abroad, "Gitmo" has became a synonym for the excesses of America's war on terrorism, like "Abu Ghraib" or "black sites." President Obama has promised to remove the remaining detainees from Gitmo to theUnited States or their home countries by the end of January 2010. Separately, he has taken small steps toward reducing U.S. restrictions on trade with Cuba, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has hinted at an eventual end to the U.S. trade embargo. At the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago next week, Obama has a chance to resolve both issues with one step: tear down this wall.

The Cuban revolution's many failures have left a regime weakened and vulnerable, yet capable of sustaining itself for years thanks to isolation and a monopoly grip on every aspect of life. The sea keeps Cubans trapped inside the Castro system, and I well remember on my first visit to Havana in 1992 noting its seeming openness and tranquility. I saw no barbed wire, no machine guns or snarling dogs. Cuba didn't look like East Berlin.

But there is a wall. It is 17.4 miles long, and topped with razor wire. It is the wall—a fence, really—that separates Gitmo from the rest of Cuba. Opening up Guantánamo Bay to free trade with Cuba—effectively lifting the trade embargo, but only here—could transform a symbolic sore spot for America into a free-trade zone where Cubans and Cuban-Americans could leverage trade into a better society.

The way to bring radical change to Cuba is to return Guantánamo Bay to the Cubans—but not to the Castros. The Miami-based diaspora of some 1.6 million Cuban-born people and their offspring could turn the base into something many of them love dearly: a business opportunity. As a tax-free, duty-free, open-trade zone run by Cuban-Americans for the benefit of their brethren on the island, Guantánamo Bay could become a model for a new Cuba, a place where fair dealing, the rule of law and free speech are the norm. By starting businesses catering to Cubans, and later opening factories to employ them, Cuban-Americans would bring normal rights onto Cuban soil. Open the border at Gitmo, initiate trade and the Castro regime's stranglehold would start to crumble.

Pent-up demand for goods is huge in Cuba. The population has been deprived for decades of everything from shoes and bluejeans to auto parts and chicken sandwiches. Cubans would empty a Wal-Mart in hours if they had the chance. But they don't. Private shops were shut in the 1960s, self-employment is tightly restricted (under Raúl Castro, working as a birthday-party clown has been banned) and it is still illegal to employ even one other person. Only the state can run a business: more than 90 percent of Cubans earn a government paycheck, often worth as little as $12 a month, and are dependent on a rice-and-beans rationing system that can't deliver much else.