POST-COLD WAR American policy on Cuba has been hung up in a
                  stalemate between those favoring the 37-year embargo and those believing
                  it obsolete and inhumane. Sen. John Warner proposed a rescue in the form
                  of a national bipartisan policy-review commission; he delivered the
                  moderate Republicans. But the administration, cautious to a fault, cut its
                  own deal. To accommodate hard-line opinion in Miami and the Senate, it
                  backed away from the policy-review commission. For the rest, it now
                  proposes to modestly extend modest earlier steps to widen humanitarian,
                  economic and cultural contacts with the Cuban people and while continuing
                  to deny relief to the communist government.

                  These steps go not far but in the sensible direction taken by a more
                  ambitious new report from the Council on Foreign Relations. Led by
                  former Democratic and Republican Latin-policy hands Bernard Aronson
                  and William D. Rogers, this report addresses the same stalemate that
                  stirred Sen. Warner.

                  The premise of all but the hardest-liners is that the Cold War is over and
                  that the part of American policy calling for containment of Cuba worked
                  and needs to be replaced by engagement. The United States no longer
                  harbors aggressive intentions toward Cuba and, in Washington's eyes,
                  Cuba no longer poses a strategic or political threat.

                  But that leaves unresolved whether Fidel Castro can be compelled to yield
                  power in exchange for the lifting of the embargo -- unlikely; or whether the
                  prior lifting will itself loosen his grip -- likelier but hardly a sure thing. The
                  administration's own tactic, one supported by the Council on Foreign
                  Relations report, is to finesse the embargo issue in favor of a more realistic
                  step-by-step opening.

                  The council draws attention to the models of de-communization provided
                  by Soviet collapse. One lesson is that the bottom-up civil society built by
                  citizens promises the smoothest transition from top-down communist rule.
                  A second is to make a place for former (non-criminal) officials prepared to
                  turn from communist allegiance to cooperation with democrats. But of all
                  the questions pending about Cuba and America in the 21st century, the
                  sharpest goes to the future connection between Cubans who stayed on
                  under communism and those who fled and may wish to return when Fidel
                  Castro, 73, goes.