I posted the fox news snippet that gave a public example of what I was talking about: that Raul has long voiced about reform and making the government "not as hardline" as Fidel. Any more details than what is in open source media is classified.
Fidel is like Kim Jong Ill, I.E. ideology and principles over logic and reason. He would put his country (and has) into poverty and misery for the sake of saying "Look, we can survive on this communist idea" rather than deviating some and creating a better situation, a higher stature in the world and probably one of the most powerful latin american states. The amount of income from pure natural resources they can have is pretty high. Add to that a lot of military equipment (old, but none the less alot) and you got a pretty stout state. NK would be the same if they did what they had to do to get more income.
Raul knows much more $$$ is to be had if they play nice with the rest of the world and not just Chavez and Ahmenjenidad (sp). Will that translate directly into more freedoms for the people? Yes. How much more is in question. Other nations would see to it that more humane treatments of citizens and living conditions improvements were made before opening up more trade access and such.
What I can say without too much fan fare is that the estimate (Intel) believes that a governmental reform in the image of China is what is expected to occur, I.E. A communist society socially, but a capitalistic society economically. Time table is uncertain due to Cuba basically starting from scratch at that point, but that's the model the intel community sees cuba going after to please both crowds :The ones that believe in Socialsm and Communism but also realze that power = money and money in this day and age with a scarce ammount of hardline governments around will only come through "playing nice."
The biggest immedate impact upon such conditions being met would be a flood of cash from the embargo and travel restrictions being lifted. Also, American companies would be first to jump and lock down good territories for business. They know this, we know this.
Economically the situation would eventually mirror that of Puerto Rico. Not poor, but not rich either. Plenty of American enterprises and major business keeping the economy flowing
