Cuba Si, North Korea No

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What this means is that Cuba, at least to some extent, is on our wavelength, as the Hermit Kingdom never could be. Castro has eaten hot dogs at Yankee Stadium, been carried by cheering students around the Princeton campus and appeared on the Tonight Show. Though none of that ensures affection and all those memories are distant, someone who spent his honeymoon in New York City knows at least a little of America. Kim Jong Il, by comparison, is famous as the one leader who may never have met an American. And, being unable to put a face to his enemy, seems much more liable to set his cross hairs on him.

It will never be easy to talk, or deal, with North Korea, an almost cultish hall of mirrors ruled by a neophyte whose only qualification for power is his patrimony. Cuba, to be sure, has many Potemkin surfaces, plus all the brutality of a police state, but its people are worldly enough at least to know how much salt to sprinkle on their slogans, and its leader, up against his ninth American President, is canny enough to adapt a little to the times. While Cuban official billboards occasionally note how "Pride" in the Revolution has led to "Upset" and "Disenchantment," North Korean propaganda manuals are still churning out sentences like "Korea has large amounts of slime in Lake Sijung and other places, which is very effective against diseases."

We are right, then, to fear North Korea, a country so far removed from us that it does not know, or seem to care about, the assumptions of the world. Yet Cuba, whose destiny has been entwined with ours for almost a century, is deserving of our respect and our sympathy. For three decades now, the U.S. has been Castro's greatest ally, allowing him to turn each bungled assault into a propaganda victory and to present himself, with some justification, as a resolute David standing up to a bullying Goliath. Now Washington has the rare chance to do with Havana what it could scarcely do with Pyongyang, which is to go the master mischiefmaker one step better -- and help 11 million hungry people -- by offering them (surprise!) a helping hand.