President Barack Obama may not be credited with eradicating racism in the United States, which has witnessed increasing race-related protests in recent weeks, but he will definitely go down in history as the US leader who finally ended an insane 54-year trade embargo against the last bastion of communism in the Western hemisphere.

On Wednesday, Obama ordered the restoration of full diplomatic ties with Cuba and the lifting of the embargo imposed in 1960 shortly after Fidel Castro, his brother Raul, the legendary Che Guevara and a rag-tag group of guerrilla fighters ousted the pro-US General Fulgencio Batista from power. This surprise historic announcement will dramatically alter relations between the two countries, which have been cold at best and outright hostile at worst for decades.

Obama stated that the lifting of the embargo and the renewal of diplomatic ties, including the establishment of a US embassy in Havana, will “begin a new chapter among the nations of the Americas,” noting that the most Americans (including himself) were not even born when the embargo was imposed.

This diplomatic coup was aided by none other than Pope Francis, who has in the past year been quietly facilitating bilateral talks between both countries. There was a hint of a thawing of relations between the two countries last December when Obama briefly shook hands with Cuban President Raul Castro during Nelson Mandela’s funeral.

The new policy towards Cuba will ease restrictions on remittances by Cuban Americans and reduce travel restrictions for family visits, public performances and professional and religious activities. It will now also be possible to use American credit and debit cards in Cuba.

In the long term, US companies that were nationalised after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 may once again be able to invest in the country.

The new deal also involves a prisoner exchange. The United States sent back three Cuban spies and Cuba released a Cuban who had worked for US intelligence and had been held in a Cuban prison for nearly 20 years.

The lifting of the trade embargo against Cuba is viewed by analysts as Obama’s attemptsto leave a lasting legacy during his last term in office.

Michael Shear of the New York Times described the new policy as the return of Obama to the original case he made as a presidential candidate, “casting himself as a transformational leader who is eager to discard old conventions of politics and policy in ways that appeal to the sensibilities of younger people.”

However, the US president’s move could also be part of a charm offensive or “soft power’ approach to woo communist Cuba to open its markets and embrace Western-style democracy. The greater presence of American goods and people in this Caribbean nation may induce a desire among Cubans for a more open, market-friendly society.

However, there is a danger that liberalisation — which I assume is the ultimate goal that the Obama administration hopes to achieve in Cuba, along with democratic elections — will bring with it the problems that have plagued Western capitalist societies for decades, such as rising inequality and crime.

Cuba has managed to remain among the most egalitarian societies on earth for the past six decades. Free health and education for all, high literacy rates, superior health care facilities and government-controlled social protection programmes have made Cuba the envy of other Latin American countries that have been struggling with extremely high levels of inequality and crime since at least the 1980s.

In many ways, Cuba symbolises the conscience of the world, a nation dedicated to the idea that it is possible to live in this world with dignity and as equals. Cuba has for more than six decades resisted Western-style capitalism even after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which led Russia, Cuba’s lifeline, to pull out of the country in 1992.

The collapse of the former Soviet Union led to severe austerity measures in Cuba, including rationing of essential goods and services. Power blackouts and food shortages during what Cubans call “The Special Period” threatened to kill Castro’s socialist dream. However, Cuba survived the period, as did its revolutionary leadership, which has seen 10 US presidents come and go.

Not everyone is happy with the renewal of ties between the United States and Cuba. Republicans, such as Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a stronghold of anti-Castro Cubans, have denounced the new policy as “disgraceful” and “another concession to tyranny.” Others have said that Cuba’s human-rights violations, particularly against political dissidents, disqualify it for any kind of concessions.

What the opponents of the new policy fail to mention is that Guantanamo Bay, the US military base on the southeastern tip of Cuba, which the US has claimed as its territory for more than a century, has been the site of gross human-rights violations by American intelligence officers and military personnel since the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, as confirmed by the CIA report on torture released by the US administration this month.

Obama may not have succeeded in closing down the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, but the lifting of the trade embargo has redeemed his country’s damaged reputation somewhat and ended Cuba’s lengthy isolation.

Rasna Warah writes a weekly column for the Daily Nation