THE GREAT SURVIVOR CAN'T NOW SURVIVE

Secretary of State Warren Christopher states, The policy of isolating Castro and Cuba is 30 years old. Yet Fidel Castro still survives. From Castros earliest days (actually more than thirty years ago), nothing new has been tried in our relationship with Havana and the time-honored policy continues to fail. Castro still survives.

Castro is a lousy economist and a terrible central planner, but hes a skillful maneuverer and a clever propagandist. Most of all, hes a classic survivor. After taking a stab at electoral politics (the elections were canceled by the dictator, Fulgencio Batisto), Castro switched to revolution.

On July 26, 1953, (a date that he later made a national holiday) Castro led a strikingly unsuccessful attack on a military barracks in Santiago. Most of the 160 revolutionaries in his group were killed, but he and his brother Raul survived. They were convicted, sentenced, later paroled and ended up in Mexico.

In December 1956, Castro returned to Cuba, landing with an armed expedition of 81 men on the southwestern coast of the island. All but 12 of his followers were killed, but Castro survived. From an isolated base, Castro, aided by other young revolutionaries around the island, was able to engage in both a guerrilla war and a propaganda campaign that successfully played on the growing unpopularity of the Batista regime.

Batista fled the country on New Years Eve 1958. Although the dictators ouster was supported by a multitude of Cubans of varying political persuasions, Castro was recognized as the successful commander of the Cuban armed forces and hence was the person to reckon with in the new Cuba. He more than survived.

Castro seized more and more property owned by American enterprises. While the Soviet Union was his protector and financier, he could thumb his nose at American presidents.

Dwight Eisenhower found Castro increasingly despicable. Ike grumbled about doing something to get rid of the loud-mouthed radical just a few miles from our shores and begins the trade embargo against Cuba in 1960.

In the early years of John Kennedy came the ill-fated Bay of Pigs landing (planning for which began under Eisenhower) in 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Castro survived. The CIA had formulated and organized various plots for Castros extermination. Castro survived. As part of the missile settlement, the United States promised that it would neither invade Cuba nor otherwise seek the overthrow of the Castro government.

Ostensibly to protect against aggression by the United States, Castro used Soviet money and arms to go on a series of military escapades in Africa. He believed that his people were more united if he could focus their attention on clearly defined enemies, close or far away.

The American presidents after Kennedy all had to cope in one way or another with Castro. The word is cope, not deal. It continued to be an article of rigid faith that America could never negotiate with Castro.

American diplomacy often becomes immobilized by the chains of dogmatic absolutes. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles said we must never deal with the Peoples Republic of China. Until recent months, the United States was never to deal with North Korea. Because Israel had sworn never to talk with the PLO, the United States had to swear to the same total abstinence. Now, decades later, these absolutes have melted away but not the absolute of pretending that Castro doesnt even exist.

Every president since Kennedy has realized that you had to talk with Havana. All of these presidents have had issues especially immigration that they wanted to talk about in Americas own interest as well as Cubas. Pandering to the zealotry of the Cuban-American community in Miami, a succession of presidents have put themselves into a diplomatic state of self-inflicted paralysis.

For decades, Castro has wanted the embargo lifted. Cuba is so destitute that it doesnt really have the wherewithal to buy much of anything. The embargo arguably meant something years back, but now it could be traded away for political reforms and more openness in Cuban life.

Castro has survived his running of his countrys economy into the ground. He has survived economic isolation for more than thirty years. Richard Nixon, shortly before he died, wrote we should build pressure from within by actively stimulating Cubas contacts with the free world. The lessons of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union teach us that its the winds of change that the great survivor cant survive.

Tom Eagleton is a former U.S. senator from Missouri and a columnist for the Pulitzer Publishing Co.