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Hurricane Ike is heading toward Cuba. If the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is to be believed — and NOAA is pretty good at this — a Category 4 hurricane is about to rip from one end of Cuba to the other. If this happens, it will give us a chance to see how Cuba estimates its situation after Georgia. That is a strange leap to make, so let us try to lay this out.

Cuba gets a lot of hurricanes and is quite adept at handling them. But the intensity and the projected path, while not unprecedented, make Ike special. It will touch every part of Cuba and, given its strength, could devastate the whole island, not just part of it. It will not annihilate Cuba or cause irreversible damage. But it will hurt Cuba a great deal — quite possibly beyond Cuba’s capacity to rebuild very quickly. Ike’s effects will linger.

This means Cuba will require foreign assistance in both immediate recovery and longer-term reconstruction. The only country that is in a position to provide substantial aid quickly enough for the first stage of recovery is the United States. Recently, during another hurricane, the United States offered Cuba $100,000 in aid. It was a meaningless sum — one-third of what China offered — but Cuba was not badly hurt. The offer was designed to test the waters of U.S.-Cuban relations in an area where the administration would not take political heat. The Cubans rejected the offer.

Ike is going to be different, it seems. Rejecting offers of aid will not be as easy. Cuba will need aid, and the Cuban public will not be pleased with Havana rejecting help from any quarter. As we said, Ike will not annihilate Cuba by any means, but it will leave many people in dire straits. When you have no food or water, you can’t wait for a week for an acceptable European country to send aid. You need aid now, and that means you need it from the United States.

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