Last week the Obama administration proposed a modest expansion of offshore oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico in its first concessions on offshore production since last year’s Deepwater Horizon spill. The five-year plan would, however, keep Atlantic and Pacific sites off-limits in order to avoid a controversial decision before the 2012 election.

As we continue our endless debate on whether we should have more Outer Continental Shelf development and where, all our neighbors have chosen to proceed. Cuba, Mexico, the Bahamas, Canada and Russia are all moving ahead on offshore development adjacent to our borders.

Each of those nations has weighed the economic benefits of offshore production against the potential environmental risks. All five have decided it is in their best interest to proceed. This means two things for our nation.

First, we fail to boost our offshore production at our own expense. America’s neighbors are not drilling for fun or for sport; they’ve chosen to proceed to create new jobs, generate new revenues, and increase the energy supply and prosperity of their citizens. (more…)

U.S. officials are trying to make sure the American coastline will be protected as Cuba begins drilling a deep water oil well later this year about 60 miles off the Florida Keys.

Administration officials will tell nervous congressmen this week that the U.S. will inspect the China-made drilling rig before the Spanish energy company in charge of the project, Repsol YPF SA, moves the rig into Cuban territory.

But it remains unclear whether the U.S. government or American companies could respond if there were a disaster like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion, which fouled beaches along the Gulf Coast, government and industry experts say.

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For more than three and a half decades the world’s most famous peanut farmer has toiled to get the island’s repressive military dictatorship more respect from the U.S. This trip was no different. Agence France Press reported that it was undertaken at “Havana’s invitation” and “aimed at improving U.S.-Cuba relations.” Fidel praised Mr. Carter as “brave and serious.”

It is obvious why the dictatorship sought out Mr. Carter. The list of individuals—no fair counting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il or Chris Dodd—who are willing to lend legitimacy to one of the 20th century’s most disastrous revolutionary experiments is shrinking fast. The former president is, as they say, useful.

We may never know why Mr. Carter agreed to be used. But we do know how he was used: On Wednesday, before he left Havana he went on Cuban television to argue for the release of the five Cuban spies known as “the wasp network,” who are now serving time in U.S. prisons.

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Yet there is a case to be made for going—to Brazil anyway. Arguably Santiago and San Salvador could have been postponed. Chile is already a stable ally and the stop in El Salvador, to mouth platitudes about hemispheric security while Central America is going up in narco-trafficking flames, only highlights the futility of the U.S. war on drugs.

Going to Brasilia to meet with Workers’ Party President Dilma Rousseff on Saturday, on the other hand, was important.

Unfortunately, Mr. Obama discredited his trip even before it began by peddling it as a trade mission to create jobs and boost the U.S. economy. With those goals in mind, he would have been better off staying home and lobbying Congress to drop the 54 cents per gallon tariff on Brazilian sugar ethanol, and to end all U.S. subsidies on cotton, which have been ruled illegal by the World Trade Organization in a case brought by Brazil. Or he could have sent the Colombia and Panama free trade agreements to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, where they would be easily ratified.

Let’s face it: Mr. Obama’s reputation as a protectionist precedes him. If he believes otherwise, our silver-tongued president has a tin ear.

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Developments in Egypt over the last two weeks brought Cuba to my mind. Why does a similar rebellion against five decades of repression there still appear to be a far-off dream? Part of the answer is in the relationship between the Castro brothers—Fidel and Raúl—and the generals. The rest is explained by the regime’s significantly more repressive model. In the art of dictatorship, Hosni Mubarak is a piker.

That so many Egyptians have raised their voices in Tahrir Square is a testament to the universal human yearning for liberty. But it is a mistake to ignore the pivotal role of the military. I’d wager that when the history of the uprising is written, we will learn that Egypt’s top brass did not approve of the old man’s succession plan to anoint his son in the next election.

Castro has bought loyalty from the secret police and military by giving them control of the three most profitable sectors of the economy—retail, travel and services. Hundreds of millions of dollars flow to them every year. If the system collapses, so does that income. Of course the Egyptian military also owns businesses. But it doesn’t depend on a purely state-owned economy. And as a recipient of significant U.S. aid and training for many years, the Egyptian military has cultivated a culture of professionalism and commitment to the nation over any single individual.

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With his characteristic intellectual wit, Cuban writer Carlos Alberto Montaner defines communism as “the time countries waste between capitalism and capitalism.” By this account, the Cuban government is now in its 52nd year of wasted time waiting for prosperity.

Much has been made of economic reforms promised by Raúl Castro, including by the Cuban president himself. “We can either rectify the situation,” Gen. Castro recently stated, “or we will run out of time walking on the edge of the abyss, and we will sink.” But one look at the economic platform for the VI Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, now scheduled for April 2011, and it’s clear nothing much will change.

The “Draft Guidelines for Economic and Social Policy”—a 32-page document that proposes to chart Cuba’s economic future—affirms that “the new economic policy will correspond with the principle that only socialism [i.e., Cuban communism] is capable of conquering the difficulties.”

The document persistently emphasizes Gen. Castro’s militaristic themes of increased efficiency, discipline and control. It insists, for example, on setting prices according to the dictates of central planning. It also insists that any new “nonstate” (private sector) economic activities not be allowed to lead to the “concentration of property” (that is, the accumulation of wealth). There is no interest in introducing the market socialism of a Deng Xiaoping, who famously told China’s people in 1984 that “to get rich is glorious.”

It is not surprising that Raúl and his fellow generals are more comfortable with the chain of command of a centrally planned economy than with the vicissitudes of a market economy. More baffling is their failure to understand core principles of economic development.

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