The Heritage Foundation's experiment in computing where people are most free rates Hong Kong and Singapore as top of the liberty league.

Both are anomolies. Singapore was founded by the British in 1819 and Hong Kong in 1841. Although the sweat and dexterity that made these two city states flourish was mostly Chinese the Brits added two magic ingredients - the rule of law and free trade.

In both cases the men who selected the sites were regarded as wildly misguided and their projects utterly futile. Singapore was mangrove swamp that not even the locals fancied. Hong Kong was no more than a fishing village.

Now make a leap. The 71 Square miles of the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba could have a far happier and prosperous future if it raised its horizons from the merely military to becoming an entreport centre for the entire Caribbean.

Hong Kong's vitality served to convert China to capitalism. A Guantanamo Free Port could subvert Fidel Casto's grim regime. The oldest American base on foreign soil is a legal curiosity. It was stolen from Cuba in 1898, then given a fig leaf of respectability in 1903 by Theodore Roosevelt and then a further one by FDR in 1939. Some argue the "lease" expires in 2032.

Guantanamo Bay was not chosen at random. It is one of the world's great anchorages. It is better used as a bustling freeport than a gun emplacement. Today it is a small speck of South Florida suburbia attached to a moribund socialist economy. The only commerce permitted at Guantanamo is in the Commissary store with a MacDonald's, bowling alley, and cinema. Holding alleged terrorist internees are its only growth industry.