With the step down of Fidel Castro it definitely feels like the end of an era. One horrible and excruciating era. Who could forget the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Cuban Missile Crisis? Oh, and dear old Elian Gonzalez. To put it bluntly, we don’t get along with Cuba and they don’t get along with us.

And now Fidel’s little Brother Raul Castro has taken the helm of Cuba possibly leading to a new dawn of positive U.S. – Cuban relations. But probably not.

Just the same as Russia’s Vladamir Putin stepped down so did Fidel Castro. He now only has symbolic power. And in a nation where there is a dynamic cult of personality, sometimes that’s all you need. Just as the rest of the world suspects Putin is pulling the strings from his symbolic position, Fidel is going to do the same. The act of “stepping down” in communist countries is simply a play of humility furthering their cult of personality.

While there is a minority of dissents in Cuba, the vast majority prefer their state of isolation like most other communist countries. In order to better our relations with Cuba both Cuba and the United States need to work together. The Cold War ended for us in 1991, but Cuba is still stuck in that mindset as a result of Fidel’s regime. If Raul Castro does decide to open up and his older brother agrees to go along with it, the process will take at least another generation for Cubans to ease out of the Cold War and fully accept the rest of the world.