"What will happen to Cuba after Castro? And what will happen if the system Castro created survives him? What will post-Castro Cuba mean for the United States?" "These are the questions Mark Falcoff addresses in Cuba the Morning After, a comprehensive study of the issues facing the island and its relations with the United States after more than four decades of Communist rule."

"In 1958, Cuba ranked near the top in Latin America in most indices of development - urbanization, services, health, and literacy. Today, Cuba is poorer than at any time in its modern history, unable to feed its people. The country's antiquated sugar industry is near collapse. The $6 billion annual subsidy Cuba received from the Soviet Union for three decades is gone. Like most Caribbean islands, Cuba survives today on tourism and remittances from former citizens living abroad, but neither source of income can replace the once thriving sugar industry or even the Soviet subsidy."

"Since the collapse of the Soviet empire, media attention has focused on the controversy lifting the U.S. trade embargo. This debate, Mr. Falcoff argues, is largely irrelevant. Far more important are the formidable problems the United States is certain to face in dealing with Castro's legacy. Communism has wrought enormous destruction on the island - a failing economy; widespread poverty; environmental degradation; political repression; and an impoverished population with expectations of free housing, free education, and free health care."

"Many assume that after Castro, the island will readily return to dynamic enterprise, driven by the return of a successful and prosperous exile community in the United States. This book argues that Cuba and the world have changed far too much during the past four decades. Cuba's revolutionary past cannot be unlived; it occupies too large a space in its modern history. But Communism, with the U.S. trade embargo or without it - cannot sustain the expectations and needs of 1.1 million Cubans.

Cuba the Morning After shifts U.S. policy discussion from the dispute over the trade embargo to the urgent need to consider and address the long-term consequences - for both the island and its northern neighbor - of the widespread economic devastation wrought by more than forty years of Communist rule."--Jacket.