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Here's a nice little article detailing why the Cuban embargo is a total bust. What do you guys think? I happen to agree.
[h2]Dump the Cuban Embargo[/h2]
by Matthew Cooper
December 2007 Issue
Why it never worked and why we should end it.
International News
Evolution of an Embargo
Start the Conversation
VIEW SLIDESHOW
I'm in the U.S. Airways Shuttle Terminal at La Guardia. It's a late night in October, and I run into a senior economic official from the Clintonadministration. We catch up on friends, and I tell him that I'm working on a column about the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba and what a disasterit's been-for Cuba and for the United States. The official says this to me: "If someonehad told supporters of the embargo that after nearly 50 years, the Soviet Union would be gone; Communism would be gone from Eastern Europe; China, whileCommunist-controlled, would have 300
McDonald's and thriving capitalism; that Cuba would be one of the only Marxistgovernments left; and, oh, that Castro would still be alive, they might have thought differently."
The American embargo of Cuba is one of those things that most of the political elite in Washingtonprivately acknowledge as a failure. Publicly, they defend it because of fears that the Cuban American community, famously concentrated in presidentiallypivotal Florida, will beat the tar out of them. In October, President Bush reiterated his commitment to it in a speech to Cuban dissidents, and it's nowonder that none of the leading presidential candidates has called for abolishing the embargo, initiated in 1960 as Fidel Castro's regime beganconfiscating U.S. assets. During the past 47 years, the embargo has evolved into a slew of restrictions on travel and trade (see slideshow), all designed to bring down Castro. And it's worked so well!
It's time to end the embargo-unilaterally and completely. The policy has been useless as a tool for cudgeling Castro, and it is hindering opportunities for American industries from travel to banking to agriculture, which is whythere's no shortage of U.S. business groups lobbying to ease it. Far from hurting the deplorable Communist regime, the embargo has only given Castroan excuse to rail against Uncle Sam, both to his own people and to the world. Every year, Cuba asks the United Nations for a vote lifting the embargo. Whathappens? We usually end up with a couple of superpowers like Palau and the Marshall Islands standing with us. Last year, the vote was 183 to 4. The embargo makes us look like an arrogant bully.
Sure, in the early days of the cold war, we persuaded other countries to help us isolate Castro by severing trade ties with him. But in the ensuing years,they've all fallen away. That's why you can buy and smoke a fine Habana Cohiba pretty much anywhere but in the U.S. Sanctions are hard enough to enforce when the world agrees on them, as was the case with Saddam Hussein'sIraq. With Cuba, it's an embargo of one, which is like a lone guy in Times Square on New Year's Eve grumpily refusing to put on a party hat.
While we grouse, the world sells. Italian telecoms, French hotels, and Korean automakers are morethan happy to trade with an island 90 miles off our shores. Of course, Cuba is not a huge market: The island is the size of Pennsylvania, but its population isonly 11 million and its G.D.P. a mere $46 billion. By comparison, Vietnam, the last Communist country with which we ended a dubious embargo, is 85 millionstrong, with a G.D.P. of $262 billion. Selling to Cuba wouldn't slash our trade deficit, but it wouldn't hurt us either.
Aside from hindering American business, the policy also keeps us from having any politicalinfluence over the country, says my old friend Julia Sweig, who is the foremost Cuba expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. She's been to Cubanearly 30 times and has escorted the likes of the
Blackstone Group's Pete Peterson to meet with Castro. Reading her work and talking with her shaped my thinking for this piece. "We're shooting ourselves in the foot," she says near her Dupont Circle office.
Then there's the sheer intellectual dishonesty of the embargo. We trade withthe tyrants of Beijing and Damascus, so why not Havana? This question has lingered at least since 1964, when then-secretary of state Dean Ruskwas asked why we were selling to the Soviets and not to the Cubans: The Soviet Union was permanent, Rusk said, while Cuba was "temporary." Oops.
We shouldn't wait for Cuban Communism to magically collapse before we end the embargo; otherwise we'll miss out on the post-Fidel era. It isn'tgoing to be like Eastern Europe in 1989, when the region cast off the shackles of Communism and swiftly embraced the free market. Observers agree that theCuban regime is going to outlive the 81-year-old Castro; that was the testimony of American intelligence officials before the Senate earlier this year. Plus,like Uncle Junior on The Sopranos, Fidel could hang on, still aspiring to set the tone for the family business, even if his younger relative-brotherRaúl, as opposed to nephew Tony-is in control. Indeed, in 2006, when the bearded one became ill and transferred power to Raúl, nothing happened, despiteexpectations that Communism would fall without Fidel's charisma.
The Cuban government is likely to linger partly because of the island's limited history ofdemocracy and partly because of raw repression, but also because the regime has built up enough legitimacy that Cubans will probably not revolt. They have seena rise in literacy and health-care standards-not as much as Michael Moore would have you believe, but real improvements nonetheless, especially compared withthe rest of Latin America. If you want to imagine Cuba in five years, think of Vietnam, not the Czech Republic; it will be a freer country, probably, but stilla Communist one.
Where does that leave us? Right now, Washington's position is what it has always been:We'll talk about easing the embargo if the regime agrees to dismantle itself. Under current law-the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, which strengthened theembargo-the next American president is actually forbidden from ending the embargo until Fidel and Raúl are out of power. But even Miami's famously anti-Castro Cuban Americans are starting to come around, something presidentialcandidates have yet to notice. According to the latest poll of South Florida's Cuban expatriates, conducted earlier this year, more than half stillsupport the embargo. But Cuban Americans who lived under Castro more recently are much less supportive, and a majority want to lift the travel ban that theBush administration strengthened in 2004. One Cuban exile, Carlos Saladrigas, an executive with Premier American Bank in Miami and the co-chairman of the CubaStudy Group (which pushes for more openings to Cuba but not a repeal of the embargo), says, "I used to be one of those hard-liners, but over time I havecome to understand things in a different way."
Finding a different way won't be easy, but there is movement in Congress. At a June meeting of anti-embargo representatives, which I attended, there weremostly Democrats, including those who were once voices in the wilderness, like Charlie Rangel, of New York, and Collin Peterson, of Minnesota. Now they'rethe heads of the Ways and Means and the Agriculture committees, respectively. One Republican representative, Jo Ann Emerson, of Missouri, told the group,"It's my hope that we can make a little more progress this year because common sense is lacking in our dealings with the country of Cuba. . . . Tradeand opening of markets opens ideas and opens people's minds and will enable us to build bridges that really haven't been there for 40-plus years butthat culturally are there."
She's right. But sadly, if the presidential candidates are to be believed, there's no Nixon-to-China breakthrough coming. It'll take a moredramatic example of the embargo's idiocy to change things-maybe if, say, Citgo, a subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company (ultimatelycontrolled by Hugo Chávez, a Castro pal), which has already obtained rights to drill in Cuba's offshore reserves, discovers that those reserves areoil-rich.
Capitalism is a good thing, and Karl Marx was wrong in saying its cultural contradictions wouldinevitably lead to the system's demise. But sooner or later, the U.S. embargo will collapse under its own contradictions, and we'll stop ignoring Cuba.President William McKinley, who launched the Spanish-American War (which liberated Cuba), said we shared "the ties of singular intimacy" with theisland nation. It's time to retie them.
The Link
[h2]Dump the Cuban Embargo[/h2]
by Matthew Cooper
Why it never worked and why we should end it.
International News
Evolution of an Embargo
Start the Conversation
VIEW SLIDESHOW
I'm in the U.S. Airways Shuttle Terminal at La Guardia. It's a late night in October, and I run into a senior economic official from the Clintonadministration. We catch up on friends, and I tell him that I'm working on a column about the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba and what a disasterit's been-for Cuba and for the United States. The official says this to me: "If someonehad told supporters of the embargo that after nearly 50 years, the Soviet Union would be gone; Communism would be gone from Eastern Europe; China, whileCommunist-controlled, would have 300
McDonald's and thriving capitalism; that Cuba would be one of the only Marxistgovernments left; and, oh, that Castro would still be alive, they might have thought differently."The American embargo of Cuba is one of those things that most of the political elite in Washingtonprivately acknowledge as a failure. Publicly, they defend it because of fears that the Cuban American community, famously concentrated in presidentiallypivotal Florida, will beat the tar out of them. In October, President Bush reiterated his commitment to it in a speech to Cuban dissidents, and it's nowonder that none of the leading presidential candidates has called for abolishing the embargo, initiated in 1960 as Fidel Castro's regime beganconfiscating U.S. assets. During the past 47 years, the embargo has evolved into a slew of restrictions on travel and trade (see slideshow), all designed to bring down Castro. And it's worked so well!
It's time to end the embargo-unilaterally and completely. The policy has been useless as a tool for cudgeling Castro, and it is hindering opportunities for American industries from travel to banking to agriculture, which is whythere's no shortage of U.S. business groups lobbying to ease it. Far from hurting the deplorable Communist regime, the embargo has only given Castroan excuse to rail against Uncle Sam, both to his own people and to the world. Every year, Cuba asks the United Nations for a vote lifting the embargo. Whathappens? We usually end up with a couple of superpowers like Palau and the Marshall Islands standing with us. Last year, the vote was 183 to 4. The embargo makes us look like an arrogant bully.
Sure, in the early days of the cold war, we persuaded other countries to help us isolate Castro by severing trade ties with him. But in the ensuing years,they've all fallen away. That's why you can buy and smoke a fine Habana Cohiba pretty much anywhere but in the U.S. Sanctions are hard enough to enforce when the world agrees on them, as was the case with Saddam Hussein'sIraq. With Cuba, it's an embargo of one, which is like a lone guy in Times Square on New Year's Eve grumpily refusing to put on a party hat.
While we grouse, the world sells. Italian telecoms, French hotels, and Korean automakers are morethan happy to trade with an island 90 miles off our shores. Of course, Cuba is not a huge market: The island is the size of Pennsylvania, but its population isonly 11 million and its G.D.P. a mere $46 billion. By comparison, Vietnam, the last Communist country with which we ended a dubious embargo, is 85 millionstrong, with a G.D.P. of $262 billion. Selling to Cuba wouldn't slash our trade deficit, but it wouldn't hurt us either.
Aside from hindering American business, the policy also keeps us from having any politicalinfluence over the country, says my old friend Julia Sweig, who is the foremost Cuba expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. She's been to Cubanearly 30 times and has escorted the likes of the
Blackstone Group's Pete Peterson to meet with Castro. Reading her work and talking with her shaped my thinking for this piece. "We're shooting ourselves in the foot," she says near her Dupont Circle office.Then there's the sheer intellectual dishonesty of the embargo. We trade withthe tyrants of Beijing and Damascus, so why not Havana? This question has lingered at least since 1964, when then-secretary of state Dean Ruskwas asked why we were selling to the Soviets and not to the Cubans: The Soviet Union was permanent, Rusk said, while Cuba was "temporary." Oops.
We shouldn't wait for Cuban Communism to magically collapse before we end the embargo; otherwise we'll miss out on the post-Fidel era. It isn'tgoing to be like Eastern Europe in 1989, when the region cast off the shackles of Communism and swiftly embraced the free market. Observers agree that theCuban regime is going to outlive the 81-year-old Castro; that was the testimony of American intelligence officials before the Senate earlier this year. Plus,like Uncle Junior on The Sopranos, Fidel could hang on, still aspiring to set the tone for the family business, even if his younger relative-brotherRaúl, as opposed to nephew Tony-is in control. Indeed, in 2006, when the bearded one became ill and transferred power to Raúl, nothing happened, despiteexpectations that Communism would fall without Fidel's charisma.
The Cuban government is likely to linger partly because of the island's limited history ofdemocracy and partly because of raw repression, but also because the regime has built up enough legitimacy that Cubans will probably not revolt. They have seena rise in literacy and health-care standards-not as much as Michael Moore would have you believe, but real improvements nonetheless, especially compared withthe rest of Latin America. If you want to imagine Cuba in five years, think of Vietnam, not the Czech Republic; it will be a freer country, probably, but stilla Communist one.
Where does that leave us? Right now, Washington's position is what it has always been:We'll talk about easing the embargo if the regime agrees to dismantle itself. Under current law-the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, which strengthened theembargo-the next American president is actually forbidden from ending the embargo until Fidel and Raúl are out of power. But even Miami's famously anti-Castro Cuban Americans are starting to come around, something presidentialcandidates have yet to notice. According to the latest poll of South Florida's Cuban expatriates, conducted earlier this year, more than half stillsupport the embargo. But Cuban Americans who lived under Castro more recently are much less supportive, and a majority want to lift the travel ban that theBush administration strengthened in 2004. One Cuban exile, Carlos Saladrigas, an executive with Premier American Bank in Miami and the co-chairman of the CubaStudy Group (which pushes for more openings to Cuba but not a repeal of the embargo), says, "I used to be one of those hard-liners, but over time I havecome to understand things in a different way."
Finding a different way won't be easy, but there is movement in Congress. At a June meeting of anti-embargo representatives, which I attended, there weremostly Democrats, including those who were once voices in the wilderness, like Charlie Rangel, of New York, and Collin Peterson, of Minnesota. Now they'rethe heads of the Ways and Means and the Agriculture committees, respectively. One Republican representative, Jo Ann Emerson, of Missouri, told the group,"It's my hope that we can make a little more progress this year because common sense is lacking in our dealings with the country of Cuba. . . . Tradeand opening of markets opens ideas and opens people's minds and will enable us to build bridges that really haven't been there for 40-plus years butthat culturally are there."
She's right. But sadly, if the presidential candidates are to be believed, there's no Nixon-to-China breakthrough coming. It'll take a moredramatic example of the embargo's idiocy to change things-maybe if, say, Citgo, a subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company (ultimatelycontrolled by Hugo Chávez, a Castro pal), which has already obtained rights to drill in Cuba's offshore reserves, discovers that those reserves areoil-rich.
Capitalism is a good thing, and Karl Marx was wrong in saying its cultural contradictions wouldinevitably lead to the system's demise. But sooner or later, the U.S. embargo will collapse under its own contradictions, and we'll stop ignoring Cuba.President William McKinley, who launched the Spanish-American War (which liberated Cuba), said we shared "the ties of singular intimacy" with theisland nation. It's time to retie them.
The Link
