Here’s the deal.
Joe Biden should promise not to invade Cuba if Xi Jinping promises not to invade Taiwan.
Taiwan is a thriving democracy and an economic powerhouse of 24 million people. Cuba is a communist police state and an economic basket case of 11 million people, half of whom wish they lived in Florida.
Taiwan, supported by the US, is 100 miles off the coast of mainland China. Cuba, now supported by China, is 100 miles off the coast of the US.
But given the cool reception the Chinese Communist Party Leader provided for U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken — our appeasing Neville Chamberlain — in Beijing, XI most likely would turn down the deal.
Blinken could not even get Xi to agree to resume military to military communications — a top US priority — that were cut off after the Chinese spy balloon gathering military intelligence was shot down after traversing the US for a week.
President Biden, at a fundraiser Tuesday night, said Xi was embarrassed by recent tensions over the incident.
“That’s a great embarrassment for dictators. When they didn’t know what happened,” Biden said.
China took umbrage at the term “dictator,” so Blinken’s visit could be a wash.
At any rate, China doesn’t need an island deal because the US under Biden has become so subservient to China, that Xi could end up getting both, Taiwan through invasion and Cuba through persuasion.
And besides, the US tried a Cuban invasion once before with the abortive CIA-produced 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion that did not work out so well.
That was when 1,500 Cuban exiles trained and armed by the CIA sought to overthrow Communist leader Fidel Castro. Without US military support on the beaches, the invasion turned into a miserable failure.
Not only did Castro survive, but he turned the event into an economic windfall when he released the captured Cubans to the US in exchange for $53 million worth of food and medicine.
Castro is gone, but his anti-American communist policies remain. Like in all communist countries, the party leaders do well while the people suffer.
Meanwhile, while the Chinese Communist Party leaders continue to threaten to take over Taiwan one way or another, they are also planning to send troops to Cuba in still another international aggressive military move.
It is also another stick in the eye of the US.
According to the Wall Street Journal, negotiations are already underway to allow Chinese People’s Liberation Army troops to establish a joint military training facility on the island.
The landing of Chinese soldiers will add to the several intelligence eavesdropping facilities the Chinese have already established there.
Chinese military presence in Cuba would be a major economic benefit to the cash-strapped Cuban government.
It would also be the first time Chinese troops would be stationed so close to the US mainland. While Chinese influence has grown in South America, there are reportedly no Chinese combat troops stationed there.
The insertion of the Chinese military into Cuba could be in response to the presence of some 200 US troops in Taiwan there to train Taiwan’s defenses.
More likely, though, it is Cuba’s way of responding to the irksome presence — at least in Cuba’s mind — of the US Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (GITMO) at the Southeastern tip of Cuba.
It was at GITMO where hundreds of prisoners from the War on Terror were held captive for years. Now there are only a handful who have not been released.
There are some 8,500 US Marines and Navy personnel stationed at the base, which has been in US hands since 1903 when it was permanently leased to the US.
That leasing came about following the US victory over Spain in the1898 Spanish American War that freed Cuba from Spanish colonial rule.
Now it needs to be set free from Communist Party rule and turned into a vibrant democracy, like Taiwan.
But there is no one around to do it.
Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.