Click here to view this article in Enter your e-mail address to receive news about the magazine. When Countries Go Crazy U.S. taxpayers will pay for the failure of policymakers to apply the lessons of recent post-communist transitions to the case of Cuba.
Some countries can drive other countries crazy.
When people have this effect on one another, it is because of imbalances in the brain's neurotransmitters. With countries, it often happens because of the disproportionate influence of special interests. Cuba, for example, has long driven the United States crazy. Just think of the Bay of Pigs invasion or the outsourcing of Castro's assassination to the Mafia. The problem is that Cuba not only drives the United States crazy but also seems to induce some acute form of learning disability among U.S. politicians.