By Jim Hoagland

                  In his final days, Fidel Castro endures an appropriate fate: The old
                  revolutionary who once consciously sought to drag two superpowers into
                  nuclear confrontation has become a geopolitical bone. His only importance
                  comes from the energy others put into scrapping over and gnawing at him.

                  When Secretary of State Madeleine Albright staged a preemptive strike
                  against a full review of America's obsolete and self-defeating Cuba policy
                  this week, her real target was not Castro. The small opening offered as a
                  substitute for a policy review, and dramatic change will have marginal or no
                  impact on the entrenched status of the world's last historical communist
                  dictator.

                  Don't misunderstand. Albright's changes are certainly better than a slap in
                  the face with a wet fish. They are in fact the kind of steps that a bold,
                  innovative president would have taken on Day One of Term Two as a
                  commitment to bringing full change in U.S.-Cuban relations and an end to
                  embargo within his presidency.

                  Clinton's mind and boldness were elsewhere. Cuba could wait. Two years
                  after his second inauguration, and almost a full year after the mind-opening
                  visit of Pope John Paul II to Cuba, Clinton abruptly announced on
                  Tuesday that he would accept Albright's recommendation for an easing of
                  restrictions on the flow of mail, money and travelers to the Caribbean
                  island.

                  This quarter-loaf fell out of the oven between two more ambitious and
                  worthy efforts to question the U.S. embargo on Cuba. Clinton's plan
                  clearly was influenced, if not triggered, by them.

                  Also figuring in the timing mix is a tentatively scheduled trip to and
                  speeches in Florida by Albright. Such is the importance of appearance,
                  and of the short run, in policy-making in the administration of the ninth
                  American president Castro has bedeviled.

                  Clinton and Albright seem unwilling to accept the political costs for Al
                  Gore in Florida and New Jersey of understanding that Castro today is
                  weak enough to be negotiated out the door of power. Castro is a relic of
                  another era and another battle.

                  In the 1962 missile crisis, he brought the United States and the Soviet
                  Union to the edge of nuclear war and actually pushed Moscow to respond
                  with atomic rockets to the U.S.-backed landing on Cuba he thought
                  imminent. Today he is an anachronism in what has become the
                  decade-long Aftermath of the Cold War.

                  The full-loaf effort led by Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) and other
                  conservatives to have Congress and the White House empower a national
                  commission to review and revise U.S. policy toward Cuba is the right idea
                  at the right time.

                  Warner has made no secret of his view that the commission would be
                  looking at drastically revising or ending the 37-year U.S. trade embargo.
                  He has eloquently described the costs to U.S. foreign policy of a
                  mindlessly enforced embargo that serves little purpose. It merely gives
                  Castro an external excuse for the glaring failures of his regime and
                  intensifies friction between Washington and its most important allies.

                  "We allow food and medicine to get into North Korea. We allow food and
                  medicine to get into Iraq. And we still deny this tiny country basic things,"
                  Warner said of Cuba, correctly calling Clinton's decision to preempt the
                  commission "a missed opportunity."

                  Administration officials say they doubt that the Warner approach would
                  prevail in the Senate and bring the changes in the Helms-Burton law and
                  other legislation needed to end the embargo.

                  "We did not want to use up political capital in naming a commission that
                  would probably not be effective," said one State Department official. "We
                  felt it was more realistic to split the difference. We felt it was not a time to
                  go through a major self-examination on this."

                  But the administration did even less than the half-loaf approach urged on it
                  by a Council on Foreign Relations report released this week. The report,
                  written by Bernard W. Aronson and William D. Rogers, former State
                  Department officials, stresses the importance of opening Cuba to U.S.
                  market forces. They also hold out the possibility of military-to-military
                  contacts and U.S.-Cuban cooperation in the war on drugs.

                  The real message that comes from Clinton's tiny steps is that he is still not
                  prepared to exercise leadership on Cuba as both he and Castro fade into
                  the sunset. John Warner should not abandon his idea of a national
                  commission simply because this lame-duck president demurs. Americans
                  have become accustomed to leadership on vital topics coming from outside
                  this spinally challenged White House.