When news broke that Fidel Castro had temporarily ceded power to his brother Raúl before undergoing intestinal surgery, the Cuban exiles of Miami took to the streets and cheered. And no wonder: They have felt the weight of Castro’s oppression and seen firsthand the misery that his dictatorship, one of the longest-lived in world history, has inflicted on their country. Castro’s precise medical condition isn’t known, but the thought of his shuffling off this mortal coil — be it next week or some years hence — makes us smile too.

At the same time, the U.S. should acknowledge the reality that Castro’s regime will almost surely survive him. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Cuban-American congressman who represents Miami, probably spoke prematurely yesterday when he said, “We are seeing the end of this 50-year-old, almost 50-year-old, terrorist regime. It could be hours, it could be days, it could be months, but it’s on the way out.” We’d like nothing more than for Diaz-Balart to be proved right, but we find it hard to share his optimism. Nothing suggests that Raúl Castro — Fidel’s designated successor since 1959 — will fail to take control of the country upon his elder brother’s death. And nothing about Raúl suggests that he would be a more benevolent dictator than his predecessor. He is reportedly more ideological than Fidel, having belonged to a Communist youth group well before the older Castro publicly declared himself a socialist. He is responsible for hundreds of extra-judicial assassinations. Fidel has described him as “more radical than I.” And while he has expressed interest in Chinese-style economic reforms, he has shown no desire to retreat from Cuba’s Stalinist politics, and has hinted that his hostility toward the United States exceeds even that of his brother. Though Raúl is 75 years old, the upper ranks of the Communist leadership are filled with his loyalists, making it likely that his poisonous ideology will live many years longer than he.

Given all this, there’s no reason to think that Fidel’s death would justify a major change in the United States’ Cuba policy. Indeed, this policy cannot change without congressional authorization, as the 1996 Helms-Burton Act prohibits the normalizing of relations with any Cuban government that includes Fidel or Raúl. Once Fidel exits the scene, there will inevitably be calls for the U.S. to retreat from that position and engage Havana. What there will not be is evidence that Raúl is open to reform, or that concessions from the U.S. would be reciprocated.

This isn’t to say that the U.S. can’t do more to promote freedom in Cuba. President Bush’s Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba has released a lengthy report detailing the ways in which we could simultaneously undermine the Castro dynasty and empower the democratic elements of Cuban society. The debate over Cuba policy tends to proceed as though we faced a choice between engaging the regime and thereby spreading liberal ideas among the people, on one hand, and isolating the regime at the cost of isolating the people, on the other. In fact, we could clamp down further on the regime’s sources of revenue and diplomatic support even as we redoubled our efforts to spread freedom.

To clamp down on the regime, the commission recommends, among other things, strengthened enforcement of travel restrictions on Americans who wish to visit Cuba. Foreign visitors are now the top source of income for Castro’s regime, which siphons off some 20 percent of annual tourism revenues. One hears the claim that tourists have a liberalizing effect, but we have yet to see any liberalization since Castro started aggressively promoting Cuba as a tourist destination in 1992. How could it be otherwise, when most tourists are required to use hotels, restaurants, beaches, and medical clinics different from those available to ordinary Cubans, with whom they have almost no contact? What we have seen is a comeback by a regime that faced financial ruin in the early ’90s after its font of Soviet aid had run dry. Beyond enforcing travel restrictions, the U.S. should also exercise greater control over remittances from Cuban expatriates, which, however well-intentioned, have become the second-biggest source of hard currency to Castro’s government. And all such efforts should be coupled with intensified public diplomacy on the part of America and its allies to expose Cuba’s human-rights abuses.

As for spreading freedom, the U.S. should start by increasing funding for Radio and TV Martí, a Miami-based Spanish-language broadcaster that President Reagan created in 1983. Martí’s current Cuban audience could be greatly expanded, and the regime’s efforts to jam its broadcasts largely overcome, if America devoted a C-130 Commando Solo — a type of Air Force plane — to sending radio and television transmissions into Cuba. This should accompany the building of new, permanent broadcast platforms, as well as a review of Martí’s programming to emphasize democracy promotion. Roughly 75 percent of Cubans watch state-run television or listen to state-run radio; it’s time they had a reliable alternative.

The U.S. should also do more to aid Cuba’s civil society. That would mean working with NGOs to organize and supply Cubans unaffiliated with Castro’s government — and particularly the religious, the workers, and the young. Churches, unions, and youth groups were powerful anti-regime forces in the Soviet Bloc, and could play a similar role in Cuba. Working with the youth could be especially effective: More than half the population is under 35, and youth groups in Central and Eastern Europe have already expressed their willingness to go to Cuba and help its youth organize themselves and agitate for political reform, if only they had the money. The U.S. should also increase funding for the provision of supplies to the dissident community, and particularly its writers and journalists: fax machines and computers, short-wave radios and satellite dishes, independent libraries, and the like. (Here we could take a cue from the Czech Republic, which — inspired by its own memories of Communist oppression — is very generous with such aid.) None of this will ignite a revolution overnight, but it will make Cuba’s restive population harder to suppress.

The unfortunate fact is that the Castros have skillfully dodged what seemed an inevitable demise after the fall of Soviet Communism. Worse, they have seen the spread of left-wing authoritarianism throughout Latin America: Evo Morales fulminates in Bolivia, Daniel Ortega is resurgent in Nicaragua, and Hugo Chávez possesses dictatorial powers in Venezuela. This has only made life easier for Cuban Communists, both diplomatically and materially (Venezuela props up the Cuban economy by selling it oil at below-market prices). If the United States wishes to forfend the rise of this Latin American axis, its goal must be a new regime in Havana.