After a long illness and absence from public life, former Cuban President Fidel Castro is back in the spotlight and engaged in what looks like serious legacy building. In a wide-ranging interview with journalist Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic, Castro apologizes for his regime's treatment of gay people, condemns anti-Semitism and owns up to the failures of Cuba's economic system. Goldberg writes that he was vacationing on the "People's Republic of Martha's Vineyard" when he got a call that Castro wanted to see him in Havana.
Goldberg quipped that he was eager to see an even more socialist island paradise, and his hastily arranged trip yielded an extended colloquy with the iconic revolutionary leader as he enters a new chapter of his life.

The re-emergence of Castro after everybody thought he was dying comes at a time when the House Agricultural Committee recently voted to lift the ban on travel to Cuba, and Fidel's brother, Raul, is taking significant steps to open up the country economically. Cuba's labor federation announced on Monday that the government plans to lay off half a million state employees in anticipation of their move "into private businesses." Can a new-style economy -- one that lets ordinary citizens open businesses and market goods -- absorb all the excess bureaucrats? It's an open question, but it represents the clearest break yet from the Fidel era.

Cuba is groping its way toward a new economic model, and the 50-year-old U.S. embargo on Cuba is seen as a relic of domestic politics. Instead of stopping the revolution, it helped maintain Castro in power by providing a convenient scapegoat for the country's ills. In a phone call Monday with reporters, Cuba expert Julia Sweig said that the Obama Administration recognizes U.S. policy is obsolete, but the stability of the succession from Fidel to Raul has made change less urgent. She also pointed out that Cuba policy since the end of the Cold War has little to do with national security and everything to do with domestic politics. The Cuban ex-pat population in Florida remains adamantly opposed to lifting the ban, and represents a formidable voting bloc.

Also speaking with reporters, Goldberg said he doesn't see Castro rewriting his history, or trying to erase the past, but rather revisiting and reflecting on the last 65 years of his life. He remains a touchstone for Latin American leaders, as well as for the leaders of unaligned countries elsewhere, notably Iran. After recalling his own boyhood and how anti-Semitism takes root in ignorance, he wanted this message sent to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: "Stop slandering the Jews." Castro broke off relations with Israel in 1973, and consistently sides with the Palestinians in the Middle East conflict, but that does not make him personally anti-Semitic, Goldberg said, adding that, "The idea of Holocaust denial seems to offend him."

Figuring out what Castro is up to has confounded U.S. presidents and policymakers for generations. Is this latest iteration the manifestation of an old man indulging himself - or is this an orchestrated opening to a new bilateral relationship with the U.S. that could define Castro at age 84 as much as the revolution he led as a young man?

Goldberg says the invitation he got seemed spontaneous, that it was not a plan set in motion by the foreign ministry, that it was something Castro wanted to do, and could do now that he is essentially the "retired king." Castro seems as surprised as everyone that he has this new lease on life, and seems determined to harness this new energy in his own way, but not in opposition to what his brother is doing. Goldberg said that when capitalism takes over the world, Fidel will be the last man standing to say no, but he doesn't get in the way of what his brother is doing to introduce more free-market principles to Cuba. Fidel is not seizing power or asking for power back, but he is opening a new chapter in his life that isn't about governing on a daily basis, and that could go in any number of directions.

Castro reflected on the 1962 missile crisis, and how President Kennedy's cool leadership averted what could have been a preemptive nuclear strike on Cuba. "I asked one question about the missile crisis, and we were off to the races," Goldberg said, explaining that Castro sees President Obama as the leader who can rein in Israel's bellicose intentions toward Iran, just as Kennedy put the brakes on General Curtis Lemay and others in his government who were far more gung-ho about using American military power to resolve the standoff. It was Goldberg's piece in the Atlantic putting the odds at slightly better than even for an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities that got Castro's attention.

Now that Castro has regained his health and found his voice, he will find a way to once again capture our attention. Cuba has always been too small for Castro, and now he has a chance to be relevant again. Up until the last ten years, what U.S. presidents did or didn't do with regard to Cuba mattered a lot. Now it's the United States that is being increasingly marginalized as Cuba breaks down barriers to foreign investment and evolves toward a new economic model.
The Obama Administration, preoccupied with other more pressing problems, has let Cuba policy drift. The Bush era enshrined regime change as its goal, and the arrest of an American contractor, Alan Gross, earlier this year, reflects Cuban suspicion of U.S. intentions. Sweig said there is some progress toward resolution of his case, but that there is little willingness in Washington to recognize that the communications equipment Gross was delivering was meant for programs that in Cuba are seen as very provocative.
The return of an older and perhaps more mellow Castro is heartening, but there's still much that must be cleared away on both sides before Americans can make that short flight to Cuba with the same freedom they travel across the world to other Communist countries.

SHANGHAI -- On a warm and breezy August night here, a small group of reporters visiting from Washington met with the China president of Mary Kay cosmetics over dinner at a rooftop restaurant. Mary Kay is thriving in China, recovering nicely from a bleak time during the late 1990s when the Dallas-based company was shut down by the Chinese government, its network of sales consultants barred from doing business for five months. The venerable and innocent Mary Kay had been swept up in a government crackdown on pyramid schemes that cropped up as capitalism took root in the Chinese economy, many of them fly-by-night schemes that had destroyed the livelihoods of ordinary Chinese and forced the government to step in.

The government was wary of Mary Kay because of the unbridled enthusiasm of its representatives along with the company's grassroots network throughout the country, a combination that seemed potentially threatening to a central government learning how to navigate western-style capitalism. Mary Kay worldwide relies on a sales force of 1.8 million, with more than half in global markets, who host skin-care parties and sell directly to customers. The women who are employed - and they're all women - are cheerleaders for Mary Kay products and the principles of female business empowerment established by the company's late founder, Mary Kay Ash.

In China, the U.S. embassy stepped in to work out a compromise that allowed Mary Kay's method of direct selling to continue, and today there are 1,000 pink cars in China, the time-honored reward for top sellers. Mary Kay China President Paul Mac, using his Americanized name, said that until this year, he got the cars from General Motors, but switched to Volkswagen because the German company agreed to paint the cars pink in the factory, which for whatever reason, GM refused to do.

Asked what the top-selling Mary Kay product is in China, Mac replied without hesitation, whiteners. Lighter skin is the beauty goal for Chinese women, who carry brightly colored umbrellas that look more like parasols to protect themselves from the summer sun. "If you open a tanning salon in Shanghai, you will go broke," he said. "In China, fair skin is good." Anti-aging and anti-wrinkle creams are also popular. Skin-care products are big in China, accounting for 80 percent of Mary Kay's business, with only 20 percent for what Mac calls color cosmetics. While men are using skin-care products more than they did in the past, Mary Kay's customer base is predominantly women, with men doing what Mac confesses he does, borrow his wife's products.

Over a western-style dinner with the bright lights of a newly vibrant Shanghai skyline glittering all around, Mac addressed our group of five journalists on a tour hosted by the Institute for Education, a Washington-based nonprofit, in partnership with the Chines People's Institute of Foreign Affairs. Mac told us that in his first ten years as president, he grew the business 42 times over. "It's not just me -- the income level and the population grew," he readily concedes. His entire workforce is female, and he notes that in China there are more and more career women and that most women work outside the home. Mac is 51 or 52, depending how you count, he says, because in China some add the months of gestation, and babies emerge at 1 year. His grandmother's generation stayed home, and that began to change with his mother's generation, much as it did in the United States.

Amidst all the dynamic capitalism and consumerism in China, many strong traditions remain. For example, I was surprised to learn that makeup is banned in high school. It's considered bourgeois and it distracts from studying. Mary Kay herself probably wouldn't mind that prohibition. She was all about hard work and building self-esteem to compete in what was then an overwhelmingly man's world. She started her company in 1963 as a way for women to earn money part-time while caring for their children, or for empty-nesters looking for a way to enter the workforce. Mary Kay died in 2001, but her business practices live on with her son and granddaughter now running the business.

At the end of the evening, Mac handed out copies of "The Mary Kay Way," originally published in 1984 and reissued in 2008. It sets forth a philosophy of business that is both revolutionary and quaint in its insistence on praising workers and rewarding them. In addition to the pink Cadillac, for which Mary Kay is known, top sales people receive a large, diamond-studded bumblebee. Aerodynamically, bumblebees aren't supposed to fly. Their wings are too weak, and their bodies too heavy. It's the perfect symbol, Mary Kay explains, for a company that teaches people how to spread their wings and fly on their own.

Security in Afghanistan hinges on a legitimate revenue stream -- rather than the drug trade -- to develop the war-torn country, and U.S and Afghan officials have pushed mineral investments as the backbone of a new Afghan economy. But China's stagnancy on its promises to the Afghans and controversy surrounding the 2007 Aynak deal have raised alarm that Chinese investments might create more instability and fuel Afghanistan's culture of corruption.

"The Chinese have a checkered record at best," said Tom Lynch, research fellow for South Asia at the National Defense University Institute for National Strategic Studies. "They don't deliver, and when they do, they've left a trail of heartbreak."

China's footprint in Afghanistan is growing, and its investments will help shape the Afghan mineral business. In addition to the Aynak Mine, the largest investment in Afghan history, China is pursuing a second mine near Kabul that is said to contain more than 60 billion tons of iron, according to Congressional Research Services, the nonpartisan research center for Congress.

Meanwhile, American troops, who provide security essentially for the whole country, carry the burden of protecting Chinese investments and quelling any conflict they may create.

Aynak is consistent with Chinese ventures in other parts of the world, said Lynch. China has proved an unreliable investor in natural resources, rarely contributing to local communities as it promises to do, and often leaving the land scarred with ecological devastation, he said.

The exception may be Africa, according to Deborah Brautigam, an expert on China-Africa relations at American University.

China is heavily invested in countries of conflict, including Sudan, Angola and Democratic Republic of Congo - all countries where armed conflict is funded in part by mineral reserves. Brautigam points out that China's investments in Africa have brought new infrastructure to countries that otherwise couldn't afford it, even if Chinese business practices aren't always up to U.S. standards.

The U.S. has pressured the Chinese to invest in Afghanistan, Lynch said. China's deep pockets and voracious pursuit of energy resources make it an ideal candidate to spur mineral development and generate a legitimate source of revenue for the Afghan government.

In the case of Aynak, the Chinese may have bid too much for the mining contract without really knowing if it could deliver the infrastructure Afghanistan needs so badly, some experts say. Its offer was "generous to the point where I might not be commercially profitable for China," according to the August Congressional Research Service report on Afghanistan.

Experts predicted the Aynak project would cost $2.2 billion, but state-owned Metallurgical Corporation of China made a deal Afghanistan couldn't refuse. China pushed the price to $3.4 billion with promises of two power plants, roads servicing Aynak and a railway for exporting minerals back to China, which is funded by the Asian Development Bank and is in the early stages of construction.

So far, though, the Chinese, "have done nothing to contribute to the local economy," Lynch said.

Allegations of bribery that mired the deal have concerned some experts that China's investments will set the precedent for of corruption in mining contracts, which could further destabilize Afghanistan. Former Afghan Minister of Mines Mohammad Ibrahim Adel was ousted after the deal, accused of taking bribes from the Chinese. The U.S. Institute of Peace called for more a transparent contracting process, warning that unfair contracts could fuel more conflict.

Kenneth Katzman, leading Afghanistan expert at Congressional Research Service, is more forgiving in his assessment of the Aynak deal: "This is Afghanistan. This is not Donald Trump going out to bid," he said.

With an estimated $1 trillion in untapped minerals, Afghanistan should be the new frontier for Chinese investment. While Aynak is not yet operating, officials have big hopes. Aynak, in Logar province in eastern Afghanistan, could add more than $200 million to the Afghan national revenue each year and create an estimated 30,000 new jobs, according to the U.S. Institute of Peace.

So far, the Chinese have relied on U.S. and international troops to keep their investors and mining projects safe. The Chinese are responsible for their own security at Aynak, but because they do not have their own troops Afghanistan, they hire Afghan National Police. U.S.-led ISAF (International Security Assistance Force, the coalition fighting in Afghanistan) troops are responsible for building and training the Afghan police force, and work side-by-side with them.

"Directly or indirectly, ISAF is in some way trying to secure Afghanistan for these projects," Katzman said.

China policies allow it to send military outside its borders only for United Nations peacekeeping missions. Although U.S. diplomats have asked for Chinese forces in Afghanistan, China has made no commitment to provide military even in a noncombat role, according to a Congressional Research Service report on Afghanistan released Monday.

"You could well have a situation where U.S .troops are guarding a Chinese mineral field," said Frederick Starr, chairman of the Central Asia-Caucuses Institute, a research and policy center affiliated with Johns Hopkins University.

China is competing with India for the Hajji Gak iron mine near Kabul. If the Chinese continue scooping up big-ticket contracts, other competitors like India would be pushed aside.

"It would produce intense frustration," Lynch said.

A little regional economic competition, though, isn't nearly the threat to Afghanistan security that the Taliban is, some experts argue. Chinese investment practices may have less oversight and transparency than the U.S. would like, but the two countries share the same security goals. China has grown increasingly concerned about the Taliban spilling over the small border the two countries share, according to Congressional Research Service.

"The Chinese have national interest in stability in Afghanistan," said Steve Coll, president of the New America Foundation and Pulitzer Prize-winning author on South Asia conflict. "The more active they are in promoting stability and being concerned about how to contribute to stability, the better off everyone will be."