Cuban embargo: Castros need attitude adjustment
By Frank Calzon
January 16, 2011
It was more than 50 years ago, October 1960, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower imposed a trade embargo against Cuba. Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl, already designated as Fidel’s successor, had been in power less than two years but already had confiscated American and Cuban companies, welcomed the Soviet Union into Havana, initiated subversion against neighboring countries, executed many protesting Cubans, blamed the United States for the island’s misfortunes, and led mesmerized masses in chants of “Yankee, Go Home!”
“There is a limit to what the United States … can endure. That limit has now been reached,” Eisenhower said when Washington severed diplomatic relations. Havana saw it differently: “Now the Yankees will learn to drink bitter coffee,” Ernesto “Che” Guevara said when the United States, which had paid Cuba prices higher than the world market, stopped buying Cuba’s sugar.
Today the embargo remains, but very different from those 1960 sanctions. It has been repeatedly modified, and American companies now annually sell Cuba more than half a billion dollars in agricultural products. Still the Castro brothers cling to communism and have reduced Cuba’s economy to that of a beggar state that has frozen bank accounts of foreign companies doing business in Cuba and depends on exile remittances and the charity of Hugo Chávez.
Two years ago, President Obama offered a hand of friendship by lifting remaining restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba by Cuban-Americans. He expected the Castro brothers to open their still-clenched fists, but was rebuffed. Havana grabbed the dollars but continued its anti-American jihad with Bolivia, Nicaragua and Venezuela — and then provided diplomatic support to North Korea and Iran. Cuba even detained Alan Gross, a USAID contractor. Gross has now spent a year in prison in Cuba for the “crime” of giving his laptop and a cell phone to Cubans.
What the Castros want is U.S. credits and access to international financial institutions. What they don’t want to do is make the fundamental economic reforms those institutions demand. Granted, Raúl Castro has agreed that Cuban barbers may work “independently,” and Cuban housewives can sell paper flowers on street corners. They are meaningless changes: Havana — like North Korea — disdains fundamental changes in the Cuban economy and routinely resorts to intimidation to obtain concessions. In particular, the regime is now demanding President Obama silence U.S. radio and TV broadcasts to the island and abandon U.S. efforts to promote democracy in Cuba.
The European Parliament has stood tall against similar efforts: It has maintained its “Common Position,” conditioning trade benefits, and normalization of relations to significant reforms on the island.
When the embargo was first enacted, Cuba’s leaders were happy to get rid of America’s “pernicious” ties to the island, particularly since the Soviets were willing to provide generous assistance. For many years, Fidel Castro boasted that rather than hurt Cuba, “the blockade has been effective in favor of the revolution.”
“At best,” he said, the embargo was the subject of “scorn and laughter.” In 1985 he said that “economic relations with the United States would not imply any basic benefit for Cuba, no essential benefit.” Cuba, Fidel Castro said, would produce “more milk than Holland, and more cheese than France.” Enough milk indeed “to fill Havana’s bay.”
By 1986, he was blustering that the Soviets and socialist countries “pay Cuba much higher prices and sell their products to us at lower prices, but also charge us much lower interest for credits and reschedule our debt for 10, 15, or 20 years without interest. In fact, what are we supposed to do? There is an old folk saying that goes, ‘Don’t swap a cow for a goat!’”
The Castros’ attitude hasn’t changed; neither has their propaganda. Until there’s change in Cuba, there are no discernible reasons for the United States to actually play the role of goat and change its policy toward Cuba.
Frank Calzon is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba in Arlington, Va.
January 17th, 2011 at 7:41 pm
[...] Cuban embargo: Castros need attitude adjustment [...]
September 9th, 2011 at 8:03 pm
Honorable Executive Director Calzone:
Once again, I have read with great interest (as always) a newspaper article you have authored. Specifically, the above titled article appearing in today’s Miami Herald. I am a 57 year old, Cuban born American citizen who arrived in this country in 1957 fleeing the prior dictatorship (Batista – still cannot believe his grandson, Raul Cantero, was actually nominated to the Florida Supreme Court; presumably, his law degree was paid for in part by the millions plundered by his tyrannical Grandfather on New Year’s Eve, 1958, but I digress). You are correct that such so-called “Ping-Pong Diplomacy” is highly unlikely to bring democratic change to Cuba. After all, it failed to do so with China, or indeed, anywhere else of which I am aware. At the last, I believe it safe to assert that “external” forces or policies are highly unlikely to bring democratic change to any State. Indeed, the recent “Arab Spring” should serve to remind all of us (liberal anti-embargo Cubans, and the more old-guard conservative hardliners) that such existential political changes only truly occur from within. I believe no policy which the U.S. may initiate is likely to lead to any substantive political reform in Cuba. However, by the same token, I have reached the point of feeling apoplectic every time I read articles authored by the intelligentsia of the Cuban Diaspora (such as you) that, overtly or not, continue to summon support for a policy which has failed miserably for the past 50 years. Most respectfully, isn’t it insane to continue a course of action for 50 years and expect a different result from that which is otherwise constant? If for no other reason than this, I assert it is time for a change in our policies…and I care little if the present Cuban dictatorship responds with quid pro quo “concessions.”
Your article asks “…what is happening is Cuba? Do [we] know?”…and so forth. Great questions. I have one for you. Can you imagine, esteemed Director, how much more we would know (or at least be in a better position to intelligently surmise) if numerous American tourists were on the island? Would they not have borne witness to the recent violence against those three courageous women who attempted to deliver a petition to the Capitol building? You, or course, may argue that such would not matter and American tourists would only serve to feed the extremely depleted coffers of the Cuban regime, while failing to produce any regime change. Maybe yes, maybe not. The point is, we don’t know because we have never tried such measures. What we do know with absolute, unvarnished certainty is that the embargo and similar hardline policies have failed miserably (and have been utilized by the regime’s propaganda machine to retain power). That is so sad.
Lastly, please remember the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact fell from within (despite doing regular business with the U.S. and the West, as well as having their wheat subsidized by America!!). Why is Cuba different? One reason may be due to the fact that so many who might have been prodded to rise up have instead emigrated to the U.S. for economic reasons under the Cuban Adjustment Act. Imagine if the over 300,000 Czech citizens who filled Wenceslaus Square in Prague in 1989, had instead been able to emigrate to the West beforehand. Would the Velvet Revolution have occurred? Sorry, but your views are more of the same old, same old, and truly not worthy of your status, leadership skills and education. Most significantly, they are refuted by the lessons of history. We need for individuals as you to lead us to a new, coherent, and yes, revolutionary policy vis-a-vis Cuba. The old, tired, failed policies have to go — by hook or by crook. Speaking of “crook,” didn’t Nixon toast with Chairman Mao (who makes Castro look like a priest by comparison)? What about our ties with Saudi Arabia, or our overtures to Gaddafi prior to the current revolution in Lybia, or our support for Kuwait, and all the other non-democratic regimes with which we do business on a regular basis while hardly caring for its citizens or the respective regime’s lack of basic freedoms? As they say in America: “that dog just won’t hunt;” such is the embargo and resulting hardline policies.
A Patriot Awaiting a Free Cuba, I remain…,
Respectfully yours,
Luis Androuin
September 26th, 2011 at 11:47 am
Why was Vietnam able to overcome the embargo and not Cuba? The answer, as in all things political is money and agendas. Cuba has a force working against it that Vietnam did not have to contend with: the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF). Their influence and power have kept the embargo on Cuba. In my opinion, they are doing more to keep freedom and democracy from Cuba than generating it. Isolating Cuba with an embargo only separates Cuba from the rest of the world. Cuba needs globalization, like Vietnam experienced.
On 8 February 1994, President Clinton lifted the 19 year embargo against Vietnam, which dramatically enhanced Vietnam’s future. Since then, Vietnam has flourished. On 11 January 2007, Vietnam became the 150th member of the World Trade Organization. Although Vietnam remains a one-party communist state, its international relations and economy continue to expand. Vietnam proves that capitalism does not have to be synonymous with democracy.
Although Vietnam is still a communist state with problems, it is arguably further along in its development today then if it would have stayed under US embargo.
The same future awaits Cuba. Cuba’s government is no more communist than Vietnam’s, and its human rights violations are no worse, yet Cuba continues to be isolated by the United States. In essence, the US is driving Cuba deeper into isolation, which increases their threat to the US. The embargo against Cuba was relevant for the first 30 years, when Castro formed alliances with the Soviet Union and demonstrated radical support for revolution around the globe; but the end of the cold war should have ended the embargo as well.
MAJ HETTICH IS CURRENTLY A STUDENT AT ARMY ILE. HIS OPINION DOES NOT REPRESENT THAT OF ILE, THE US ARMY, OR THE US GOVERNMENT.