I cannot agree with the title of your topic duke.
I could never agree with cutting Fidel Castro some slack. He's a cold-blooded killer who should have met his maker long ago. What I could agree with is cutting the Cuban people some slack. They are the ones who suffer because of Castro, not the U.S.
<a href="http://www.geocities.com/centerspahr/Cubanembargo.html" target="_blank">http://www.geocities.com/centerspahr/Cubanembargo.html</a>
Seven bad reasons in support of
the lifting of the Cuban trade embargo
and how to refute them
Franz Eugen Wagner, Ph.D.
I take it that the debate question for discussion: "What would benefit Cuba now" revolves principally around the issue of the Cuban trade embargo. Since I have but a limited amount of time to discuss a complex topic that requires detailed attention and disquisition , I shall try to be as concise as possible and deal with the argument for an against in its most essential aspects. I shall deal with the objections against the embargo that I have heard most often, followed by a rebuttal.
1. The Cuban trade embargo is unfair. It should be given up unconditionally
"Unconditionally". This much has Fidel Castro said in an interview with a Venezuelan journalist in the early 90’s, although lately he has agreed, after 40 years of unwillingness to even broach the subject , to discuss the issue of compensation if, as a quid pro quo, the United States is willing to factor in the "damages" that the embargo has caused to Cuba .However, the embargo was not unfair and the "damage" was self inflicted. It was Fidel Castro’s action that was both unfair and harmful to the Cuban nation as well as the American and Cuban investors, for it involved downright theft and helped fuel the animosity of the U.S. government against his regime. It must be remembered that what prompted the U.S. to slap such a measure is the fact that Castro expropriated American properties, beginning with land, and never made arrangements to pay for such properties, as international law requires. On October 25, 1960, Fidel Castro, with a stroke of a pen, confiscated 166 enterprises belonging to to American companies or individuals, including Sears Roebuck, Woolworth, General Electric, International Harvester, Remington, Otis Elevators and even a Coca Cola distributor. The confiscation of all American assets amounted to more than a billion dollars at 1960’s dollar value. It was preceded by confiscation of land, about 76,000 acres, which belonged to American businesses (we will not consider the confiscation of land in the hands of Cubans), carried out by the so-called Agrarian Reform Institute which promised, but never delivered, 20-year promissory bonuses and had no intention of redeeming them, alas!, not even of printing them. To this day, both Cuban and American owners of land at the time Castro took over in 1959 are still waiting for their 4-1/2% interest yielding bonds!
The U.S. has not placed in the front burner the issue of monetary compensation for the stolen land, and other real property, but in exchange it has simply said that if Cuban American relations are to improve, he should at least respect such human rights as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, free monitored elections, etc., in other words rights enshrined in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. To this proposition he has given a resounding NO. What is good even for the Sandinistas, and the Chilean Socialists who have agreed to play by the rules of democracy (at least as a tactic) ) is not good for him. The question we must then ask ourselves is: if he is so popular that there is no need to submit to the mechanisms of "formal" democracy, as his followers maintain, why doesn’t he allow the exercise of human rights in his country? Why has his government even rejected the idea of a United Nations supervised plebiscite evaluative of his performance?
2. The embargo has lasted 40 years and it has not worked. Castro is still there. Let’s abandon it.
Somehow the length of time a measure is applied has something to do with its merits. This is a peculiar and whimsical argument The Cold War lasted 50 years and only then the Soviet Union collapsed. George Keenan had predicted in the 40’s that the Soviet Union would implode, but his belief was rejected while his idea of containment of the Soviet Union was accepted.. The steadfast opposition of the West to Soviet hegemonism made the implosion of the Soviet Union possible. It shows that some policies require long periods of time to be successful. and considerable amount of patience, something Americans are always short of. even if their national interest or human and economic costs are not at stake, as is the case with Cuba.
In addition, by this logic, we would have to reformulate our policy towards rather unsavory characters. The Mafia has been fought in earnest since the 60’s and is still around; The drug trade has been fought seriously since the 70’s and it has not waned, yet those of us who are not Libertarians, would not abandon this struggle. Moreover, diabetics, to push this argument into a reductio ad absurdum, have to take insulin all their lives, but no one says to them: the medication has not cured you, give it up! This is a bad argument because it assumes that the struggle against international evil should be arbitrarily circumscribed by a time limit. I wish, that life were such a bowl of cherries, with a temporal and visible silver lining, but we are still in Kansas Toto. Besides, the cost of retaining the embargo is practically non-existent for the U.S.. It is Cuba, not the U.S.the country that is bearing the costs. While it is true that part of the agricultural surplus of wheat and rice could be sold to Cuba and, indeed, Congress has already passed a law authorizing such sales, it has not authorized the sale of Cuban commodities to the U.S. for which the domestic market has no need. I shall return to this important point in due course. The inability of agricultural interests to sell to Cuba is currently cushioned by farm subsidies mechanisms (e.g. the Agricultural Allocation Bill that authorizes funding of up to $78 billion dollars for subsidies to the agricultural sectors and for food stamps recipients). Hence talk of American business interests being harmed by the embargo is unadulterated twaddle, especially if we bear in mind that the amount of the commerce embargoed by the United States constitutes, as Bert Corzo points out in his highly informative article "Si al embargo" (Cuba Net Debates, March 11,2001) only 10% of the commerce of Cuba with the rest of the world has been embargoed. According to Katheleen Parker of the Chicago Tribune (March 14, 2001) 150 countries enjoy formal trade relations and business associations with Cuba. Further, as Corzo reminds us, it is not the embargo that concerns so much the Cuban dictator, but the inability to obtain subsidies and credits from the United States which would ultimately be footed by the American people. In this context, we should be wary of opening lines of credit to a country whose external debt is 1.5 billion dollars with Western countries and 1.2 billion dollars with the former socialist countries and which, according to Corzo, has not serviced its external debt since 1992.
According to the Wealth of Nations Triangle Index Composite 1996-2000, published by a number of reputable investment and security firms, incorporating data from the United Nations Human Development Program , out of 41 countries ranked, Cuba occupied the 39th place, only above Nigeria and Vietnam. Costa Rica, on the other hand occupied the 10th. Can anyone seriously claim that this extremely poor ranking is attributable to the 10% of the external commerce that Cuba has lost as a result of the embargo? After more than 40 years of penury and dictatorship, Cuba has nothing to show for it, except in the area of education and even there, education has been put at the service of indoctrination and political correctness. Students who are not "integrated" into the Revolution, i.e. willing to support it zealously, are barred from universities and advanced technical schools. Costa Rica, without dictatorship and political indoctrination, compares very favorably to Cuba in the field of education. Costa Rica's population literacy rate of 94.8% is almost identical to Cuba's of 94.5%, according to recent statistics, (Znet, " A letter from Cuba, August 7, 2001).Moreover, Costa Rica throughout its recent history has invested 28% of its national budget on primary and secondary education. Because of these and other achievements, the United Nations Human Development Index for 1999 gave Costa Rica one of the highest ratings of human resources among developing nations.
3.The American embargo has caused hardships to the Cuban people, but not to Castro and his stalwarts. Why punish the former?
The argument is wrongly framed. First of all, what has caused substantive hardships to the Cuban people was the end of the Soviet aid after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern block. Soviet patronage and subsidies in excess of $4.5 billion a year enabled Castro to better face the trade embargo and intervene militarily in African countries with Soviet weaponry without totally crippling the Cuban economy. But let us examine the wrongs inflicted on the Cuban people by the Castro dictatorship that can at best be tenuously linked to economic conditions in the country, before returning to the role played by the fall of the Soviet Union on the economy of Cuba.
In a book in progress, The Human Cost of Social Revolution , Dr. Armando M. Lago mentions some hardships inflicted on the Cuban people that advocates of the end of the embargo ignore. Dr. Lago lists by name 97,000 persons who have died in Castro's prisons since 1959: 30,000 of them executed; 5,000 due to beatings and lack of medical care while imprisoned; 2,000 as a result of extra judicial assassinations, and 60,000 while trying to escape Cuba by sea. The magnitude of the crime can be best appreciated when one realizes that Augusto Pinochet has been accused of killing about 3,000 human beings during the early stages of his coup in Chile yet has been more intensely pilloried than Castro for his horrendous abuses of human rights.
Advocates of the end of the embargo do not like to talk about Castro-inflicted hardships on his thousands of victims and the Cuban people in general.. It is obvious that they fail to mention these hardships because these dreadful calamities cannot be attributed to the embargo. The fact that the United Nations Commission on Human Rights has condemned Cuba for serious violations of human rights nine times out of ten, between 1990 and the year 2000, and that every major human rights organization, such as Latin America Watch, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have done likewise, leave Congressmen Charles Rangel, Jose Serrano, Christopher Dodd and some other U.S. legislators of rice and wheat producing states, unmoved or cynically indifferent.
It should be borne in mind that the Soviet Union paid higher than world market prices for Cuban sugar* and took thousands of Cubans to be educated in its universities and technical schools. It also sold oil to Cuba at depreciated values. It armed Cuba with "grants" that were not considered debts. In short, Cuba became the "welfare case" of the Eastern block. Instead of, at least, improving the economy with market reforms, as the Chinese have done, Cuba preserved, with only minor deviations, its Stalinist command economy which is simply inept as the fall of the Soviet Union has shown. . Many thinking heads from Henry Kissinger to Senator Christopher Dodd, tell us it is time to end the embargo, but they never provide a sound argument for doing so, They do not explain, to give one example only, what the embargo has to do with the fact that a hospital in Cuba is using toothpaste to clean its sheets for lack of soap. Soap is not an imported item. To appeal to the embargo to account for this ineptness is simply silly. The embargo does not explain why Cubans in the Island have to beg their relatives in the U.S. to send them aspirin, penicillin, insulin, cold and asthma medications, as well as many other basic medications, because none can be found in Cuban pharmacies (Can the Cuban government not buy them in Canada with the hard currency it's tourists leave in the Island every year?). Neither can the embargo explain why even sugar has been rationed in the past, or why no adult Cuban can drink a glass of milk after 40 years of Revolution, or why Cubans still need to use ration cards to purchase limited amounts of staples not embargo related. We must bear in mind that Cuba has the money to build it’s medical biotechnological sector for export or to fully treat patients from abroad willing to pay in dollars.. There is in Cuba aspirin and penicillin for those foreign patients, indeed. It should also be pointed out that since 1992, the U.S. Treasury Department has licensed the transfer of $230 million of humanitarian aid to Cuba--more than the U.S. humanitarian provided to any other country. An account of how this aid was distributed is the least we could ask of Castro's regime.
(* The previous statement must be qualified, at least for certain periods of time of Cuban-Soviet economic relations. As Robert E. Quirk points out in his biographical book Fidel Castro, in the 60's the Soviet Union "consented to buy increasing amounts of Cuban sugar at the fixed rate of six cents a pound through 1970--2.1 million long tons in 1965, 3 million in 1966 and 5 million in each of the succeeding years. The agreed to price was lower than the prevailing rate, but higher than the average paid on the world market in the previous years.")
It is not the trade embargo, but the world sugar market that has also created, in large measure, the dire straits in which Cuba finds itself. Sugar exports constitute 75% of the total exports of the island. Cuba used to export between 4 and 5 million metric tons to the Soviet block at inflated prices. This is gone, although Russia continues to buy 2 million tons at world prices. In addition the European Union (EU), has become the first producer of sugar, according to the most recent statistics--about 15 million tons. (1997-98). The European Union has subsidized its sugar producers, enabling it to dump sugar at depressed world prices in the international market. The EU has agreed in a recent Gatt Uruguay Round Agreement to make some adjustments to its dumping policy. But the European Union is not prepared to make significant sacrifices when it comes to its sugar exports. Figures from 1993. indicate that Cuba did not have to compete with this European behemoth before the Revolution. In the 90’s, because of the subsidized market offered by the Soviet block to Cuba, the island was insulated from competition in the world market. It must also be borne in that the Soviet Union absorbed almost 2/3 of its sugar production at artificially set prices. Thus, the dire straits in which the economy of Cuba finds itself is the accumulation of three factors : (1) the end of Soviet "welfare" for Castro; (2) the ineptness of the command, centralized economy; and (3) the low sugar prices worldwide due to dumping and a glut of sugar , especially since the early 90's. None of these factors are attributable to the U.S. embargo. The fact of the matter is that the EU has depressed sugar prices in the developing world by 12% in the short run and 17% in the long run are doing more harm to Cuba than the Cuban trade embargo This is not to say that the Cuban trade embargo is a mere bugbear; but it only has had the impact of collaterally but minimally compounding Castro’s self-inflicted wounds, not of creating them.
It may be said that the burgeoning Cuban biotechnology industry could replace the lost Soviet aid and become a significant source of hard currency. However, this has not been the case thus far in spite of the fact that it has been in operation since the early 1980's and it employs thousands of employees in over 200 research centers. Some reasons have been advanced for this state of affairs: (1) Transnational companies dominate the advanced protected technology and have experience in producing, marketing and distributing efficiently their products and forcefully compete with Cuba for international clients and (2) Cuba's lower priced products are the result of Cuba's piracy, i.e. of copying, without paying for them, patented processes and thus ignoring intellectual property rights. Potentially, the U.S. would be its most lucrative market but Cuba faces obstacles like the U.S. Cuban Democracy Act (1992) which prohibits the export of any item that might help the development of the biotechnology sector. Because of this fact, it is Cuba not the United States that should be expected to make concessions, such as the restoration of human rights in the Island. In any event, the biotechnology sector is far from taking the place of the sugar industry as the main source of hard currency for Cuba and it has been unable to redress, or even dent, the dire conditions of the Cuban economy or improve the miserable economic status of the Cuban population.
Tourism, however, has given the dictatorship a new lease on life .It has become the main source of hard currency for the Cuban government .It is claimed that Cuba's gross revenue from tourism was about $1,900 million dollars in 1999, surpassing sugar and nickel. However, this figure does not take into account the fact that after foreign investors, tour operators, transportation firms and hotel management companies take their cut, the Cuban government net earnings total about $500 million annually . It is far from clear which amount represents 43% the balance of payments, as the Central Bank of Cuba reports. However, it must not be overlooked that Cuban exiles, whose family ties are cleverly exploited by Castro, have consecutively pumped into the Island in the last few years at least 600 million dollars per year , by having their family reunions in Cuba and sending cash remittances to their relatives. Roberto Rodriguez in his article "El embargo, que embargo?" in Junta Patriotica (October 1st, 1999) writes that the per annum disbursement of the Cuban exiles has been $1,100 million. This figure does not differ significantly from the figures provided by James B.Cunningham, the U.S. Deputy Representative to the United Nations on the Economic, Commercial and Financial Embargo Against Cuba at the General Assembly Plenary, who declared that $800 million in direct cash remittances and $350 million in humanitarian donations have been received in Cuba from the United States presumably yearly.. Moreover, according to some estimates, 60% of Cuba's population (ll million) obtains its hard currency, mainly, by either working in the tourist and tobacco industries or by receiving it from Cubans abroad. It thus seems that the Cuban exile community whose leaders are described by Castro as a "mafia" are perhaps among the strongest mainstays of the dictatorship.
Tourism, as we have seen, has benefited the Cuban government and the Canadian and European hotel consortia, but not the average Cuban, since it has helped create a two tier economy, one tier made of Cubans with access to dollars, especially those working in the tourist industry who receive tips in dollars, and the other tier without such an access. As of 2001, according to the Cuban Labor Ministry, out of 4.3 million workers, 1.1 million will receive a "portion" of their salaries in dollars. However, it is not clear how substantial such a "portion" will be. Furthermore, many Cubans complain that in spite of the declaration of the Cuban Labor Ministry, they are still being entirely paid in devalued pesos, which do not allow them access to the special government stores selling only to tourists and buyers with dollars, all sorts of much needed goods not found elsewhere in the country .These goods range from condensed milk to TV sets and good quality garments. In a country where a bottle of shampoo costs $6.00, one wonders how quickly the "portion" of the salary Cuban workers are to receive in dollars would disappear if they were to shop in these "dollarized" stores This economic apartheid is deeply resented by many Cubans who view themselves as second class citizens in their own country.
4. The next reason in favor of doing away with the embargo runs as follows: Look here, there is money to be made in Cuba.
Remember Coolidge’s, the "business of America is business?" If everything else fails, appeal to greed . There are some salivating mouths claiming that 6 billion dollars worth of goods and commodities could be sold to Cuba. But unless the U.S. takes the place of the Soviet Union and initially subsidizes the Cuban economy with credits and loans (coming out of American tax paying pockets), and rebuild its shattered infrastructure at a cost of billions upon billions of dollars, the U.S. would have to buy Cuban sugar produced by workers paid now 10 dollars per month in order to enable Cubans to have money to pay for all these goodies, without any guarantees that the large portion of the profits made would not go first to the apparatus of repression (armed forces, secret police and Communist Party cadres) and to the modernization of its weapons systems and only lastly, to the Cuban people. Moreover, one must ask: what happens to the sugar industry of Florida now producing 25% of the sugar consumed in the U.S.?. Furthermore , according to the American Sugar Alliance, 80-85% of the sugar produced in the U.S. is consumed here. The remainder 15% is imported from 40 foreign countries--about 1,5 million tons. Under WTO and NAFTA rules the U.S. is required to bring in AT LEAST that amount, even if the U.S. does not need it now! Any sale of Cuban sugar to a sugar producing country like the U.S. would mean that there would be less of the market for the American sugar industry to go around..
In addition, what would happen abroad to Brazil’s sugar market, one of the largest producers of sugar, (even if a significant amount of that country's sugar is used to produce ethanol)? and to the Dominican Republic’s or Mexico's market? to mention only three sugar producing countries in our hemisphere. We should ponder, in this context, the following statement issued on August 10, 2000 by Joseph Terrell, Director of Public Affairs of the American Sugar Alliance: "We are well aware of the challenges lifting the Cuban embargo could have on the US sugar industry. Also, quota holders in other countries are monitoring the situation closely as well because they could stand to lose…we are monitoring this closely."
Is the U.S. going to harden the grip of Castro by granting him even a significantly diminished market opening at the expense of its own sugar industry? Imperil the Brazilian sale of sugar to the U.S. just to please Castro? Is the U.S. going to finance the the conversion of Cuban sugar into ethanol, as means to reduce the worldwide glut of sugar even though the prospects of creating a large U.S. ethanol market is still an economic entelechy? Moreover, consider that during one year, in the decade of the 50’s (1959, for example) Cuba’s sugar quota in the U.S. totaled 1.256 million metric tons, roughly the same amount that the U.S. now imports from 40 countries! It is well known that when Cuba lost its generous American sugar quota in the 60’s this amount was allocated to other countries. which used the allocation to maintain their sugar industry and increase their production. What would be the ripple effect of the Cuban re-intervention in the American sugar market, given that it will be considerably less than what it sold in the 50’s and will offer sugar at a low price to gain a foothold in the market? This macroeconomic assessment has not been addressed in the public arena by Castro’s acolytes and foot soldiers in this country. In addition, in the case Dominican Republic, the European Union subsidized exports have already caused a 20% income loss of income in that country. If Cuba’s sales of sugar take a slice of the American market, both the domestic and international suppliers, such as the Dominican Republic, Brazil, and Mexico (who incidentally, has been encouraged to develop an ethanol industry) are going to feel even more severely impacted. Even if Cuba did not make efforts to create a capital intensive industry, as the cane sugar producers in the U.S and producers of sugar in the world have done it, Cuban sugar would be produced more cheaply, as already indicated, doubtlessly, with Communist government subsidies in order to retain a share of of the American market.
To reiterate, no one raises the issue of how much damage the sugar import-export status quo in this country and abroad . would undergo. especially if we are aware that an influx of Cuban sugar would do damage to it--especially considering that the U.S. is already the 4thth largest sugar producer in the world, trailing Brazil, India and China. Typical defenders of lifting sanctions need to address the economic repercussions that such a policy would create, especially in publications accessible to the general reader so the American public understands what the stakes are. Finally, what appears to be at best an American zero-sum game would be in the end to what purpose? To prop a hardened totalitarian dictatorship unwilling to make the slightest concession in the arena of human rights, judged to be the worst violator of these rights in this hemisphere? Surely, in exchange for the turmoil the removal of the embargo would cause, the least the U.S. should expect is the democratization of the Island and a reintroduction of Cuba into the comity of democratic nations. It is time to disabuse those who advocate the lifting of the Cuban trade embargo of the notion that the lifting of this embargo will carry with it no serious economic consequences for the U.S., especially if it is accompanied by the lifting of price supports, subsidies and protective barriers which have hitherto sheltered American sugar producers. While the latter is not likely in the short run, it must be kept in mind that Cuban sugar is bound to play an important role in post-embargo Cuban American relations. and in disrupting the present delicate status quo.
5. If we end the embargo, Latin American countries, none of which officially support the embargo, will be more sympathetic to the U.S. It might usher in another "Good Neighbor Policy".
That is one way of seeing it based entirely on undisciplined speculation. But a more plausible way of seeing the situation shows that it will send a message to Hugo Chavez, the leftist demagogue currently President of Venezuela and admirer of Fidel Castro, who has spoken of an "axis of power" with Cuba and other likeminded countries, , to the Colombian narcomarxist guerrillas (FARC) who have been fighting against their government since 1964, to the leftist Zapatista Liberation Army guerrillas of Chiapas, Mexico, and even to the Sandinistas of Nicaragua and the members of the FMLN of El Salvador, not to mention to the thousands of U.S. haters in Latin America who will rejoice in the fact that the Caribbean petty tinhorn dictator was eye-ball to eye-ball with the imperialistic gringo 500 lb., gorilla and the gorilla blinked after 40 years of intense staring. The prestige of Castro, who once described the United States as " a vulture feeding on the bodies of humanity," will be tremendously enhanced and a free shot of adrenalin will be given to Anti-Americanism and Marxism-Leninism in Latin America. Chavez of Venezuela is becoming increasingly strident in his class war and truculent language.- --especially after witnessing the indecisive and frightened attitude of Clinton vis-a-vis Castro, and the refusal of Congress to fund the anti guerilla war in the sums requested by the Colombian President; wary of sliding into another Vietnam. The ripple effect would be a vindication of Castro and would produce consequences in Latin America that cannot be foreseen but are not likely to be minor. Indeed, a crypto-Marxist like Chavez has realized that opposition to the Castroite tyranny has waned of late in the U.S. thanks to the likes of Dodd, Rangel and Waters, and the simplistic Council on Foreign Relations, who have concluded that Castro must now be openly aided..
According to the New York Times, on October 39th, 2000, Chavez and Castro approved a bilateral agreement that would relieve the latter's shortage of oil--53,000 barrels a day for 5 years from Venezuela (satisfying 1/3 of Cuba's oil needs) . According to the agreement, Castro will not only purchase oil at discounted prices ($20.00 a barrel), but will be extended cheap long term credits and allowed to pay in barter with Cuban products and even with physicians' services, "sugar technology", and 3,000 physical education teachers and coaches, instead of with hard currencies (a measure promptly repudiated by many Venezuelan physicians and sugar technicians who saw their incomes jeopardized). Furthermore, Federico Ramirez, president of the largest trade union of Venezuela complained there was money to give to the Cuba, but not to Venezuelan workers. To conclude: Chavez will be using part of the oil revenues earned in the U.S. to subsidize the Cuban oil consumption.
American recognition of the Castro regime will encourage other Latin American countries to do business with the dictatorship free of the concern that the United States displeasure would be reflected in the bilateral trade with this country.
6. Democrat sympathizers usually argue that economic sanctions must invariably be opposed. Is it ethical stance to make the people pay for the "sins" of its leaders? Hence the Cuban embargo must go.
This is a very weird sort of logic. Those that advance this "ethical" proposition are those who usually favored the economic sanctions against South Africa during the apartheid regime, and against Cedras' Haiti, (was Rep. Charles Rangel opposed to the economic sanctions against Haiti or actively promoted it?), against the Burmese junta, or against Yugoslavia, but do not favor economic sanctions against Cuba’s tyrannical regime. There are tyrannies and then there are tyrannies, it seems, and they select which they are going to oppose by applying a simplistic litmus test: Is it a Communist tyranny or is it a right wing tyranny? Sometimes they remain silent about certain embargoes for other political reasons. For instance, they remain silent about the economic sanctions against Iraq, while raising a hue and cry about the trade sanctions of Cuba, yet it is alleged that hundred of thousands of Iraqi children have died as a result of the U.N. embargo. .Perhaps it is just a question of listening to their "Master's voice." Perhaps they remember what Clinton said, about Iraq in the late 90’s:, according to Shyam Bhatia and Daniel McGrory, authors of recently published book :Brighter than the Baghdad Sun: Saddam Hussein’s Threat to the United States. These authors report that Clinton is alleged to have said: "Sanctions (of Iraq) will stay until the end of time, or as long as Saddam lasts."
Remember, in this context, what his Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said about Saddam Hussein, as reported in Robert Kaplan’s book The Coming Anarchy?: "Saddam is the most dangerous man since Hitler." If this is the case, why not try to persuade Congress to remove the threat by any means at the US’s disposal? The U.S. government has not been as damning of Castro, and yet we have not seen the Congressional Black Caucus of the Democratic Party, or Senator Dodd, carry water for Iraq as they have done it for Castro's Cuba.
Inconsistency, whim, opportunism, and in many cases pro-Communist sympathies, as is clearly the case with Congressman Serrano, is what governs the actions of a certain ilk of Democrat politician, not a reasoned assessment of the true national interest. . After all, Democrats like Charles Rangel (who is on friendly terms and has visited the Caribbean tyrant in his lair), the notorious Maxine Waters, and Christopher Dodd did not want to ruffle the feathers of Clinton when it comes to Iraq, but know that his feathers were not that easily ruffled when it came to Cuba. It seems that they get their cues and marching orders from the top echelons of their party and inveighing they go. Certain Republicans, like the infamous Senator Nethercutt and Warner are no better. The question, it must be repeated, that the reader must ask himself/herself is why so much concern with the economic sanctions against Cuba, but not against the economic sanctions against Iraq, Burma and Iran, to mention a few states who are known for their human rights abuses? . What made Cubans eligible for this preferential concern . after all? It cannot be because Castro has been one of the most relentless opponent of American foreign policy, or because the powers that be are afraid of another Mariel boatlift, could it? The acolytes of Castro in this country are not forthcoming with an answer. Indeed, we may have to wait, to use a phrase of Adlai Stevenson, until hell freezes over for one.
7. We grant full diplomatic recognition to, and engage in trade with, China . Why not trade with Cuba?
The reason is diaphanous.. American foreign policy, alas! is governed by realism, not missionary zeal to save the world for democracy or to defend human rights. Human rights are fine but as long as they coincide with the perceived "national interest". If the two coincide, so much the better, we can dust off our democratic ideals once more, One may not like this posture, but the brute facts are that American foreign policy is best understood if conceived in realistic, not idealistic, terms. Perceived "national interest", a shibboleth that enables the governing elite to take actions in the name of more sinister and hidden promoters of self interest and business calculation or political gamesmanship, always override human rights in the long term. Viewed in these terms, China and Cuba differ and have been treated differently for the following pragmatically realistic reasons: (text may continue in the following page in certain browsers)
China has over a billion people Cuba has about 11.4 million inhabitants in a small, impoverished island
China is a nuclear power Cuba is not
China is a Security Council member of the U.N. Cuba is not
A destabilized China could create world wide chaos* Cuba would not
Doing business with China keeps it stabilized and non-expansive A stabilized Cuba would serve as model to others in Latin America to engage in armed conflict
Trade with China will create a vast market of consumers, or so it is thought
.
Doing business with Cuba is a zero-sum game. It can prosper at the expense of the American sugar industry and that of countries in this hemisphere
China is not the seller of one commodity only Cuba’s ¾ of the exports would be sugar affecting the socio-economic status of sellers of sugar domestically.
*This is not an idle conjecture. See Callum Henderson's book China on the Brink: The Myth and Realities of the World's Largest Market (1999)
The previous comparative reasons are, of course, not exhaustive. We could also add two key observations by Robert Zoellick, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies: Between 30 and 40 percent of the economy has been privatized in China, and there is an unfettered market economy. This has enabled China to take some steps towards the recognition of personal rights, even if their record on human rights continues to be deplorable. Cuba has taken no such steps. Indeed, while the Chinese have released from governmental control their cooperatives, Cuba continues to dictate to hers what is to be produced, and certainly does not allow them to exploit market forces and conditions.
But let us return to our developing argument: Neither the national nor the security interests require or even press the United States to deal with Cuba as it has dealt with China, especially since Castro is willing to make no concessions to end the embargo. In the case of Cuba, the U.S. is not between the Scylla of overriding its perceived national interest and the Charybdis of abandoning the cause of human rights.
This is not to say that we must agree with a totally value-free Kissingerian realist foreign policy of the United States. There are good reasons to believe that the China Permanent Normal Trade Relations Act ( China PNTRA) will be detrimental to the national interest of the United States, as the Democratic Senator Paul Sarbanes has shown with weighty arguments in the U.S. Senate. Respect for human rights should play a larger role in our relations with China and should affect economic relations between the two countries, as another Democratic (and liberal to boot) senator, Senator Paul D. Wellstone has persuasively argued. But we must realize that such noble locutions and policy recommendations are best found nowadays mostly in church hallways, trade union halls and in the campaign hustings of a candidate like Clinton, who castigated President Bush for "cuddling Chinese dictators" who violated human rights and later gave up entirely the human rights agenda he irresponsibly advocated in his electoral campaign. The idealists are, thus, not to be found in the hallways of the State Department, or in the Chamber of Commerce.. Given the value-free substance of our foreign policy, or the current covert conception of Realpolitik, professions of democratic faith are meant for temporary public consumption, to be quickly forgotten on Inauguration Day. What precisely distinguishes the case of China from the case of Cuba is that this country can afford to put human rights in the front burner without even eroding its perceived "national interest" or its perceived "national security" in the case of Cuba. In the case of China, the ruling governmental circles of this country believe, whether rightly or wrongly-- although, in my view, wrongly), that they were compelled to make a disjunctive choice between the two, but it is obvious that the United States is not faced with this disjunction in the case of Cuba. Neither the national interest nor national security compels the United States to change significantly its policy towards Cuba. This said, the advocates of a "realistic" policy vis-a-vis China, must carefully read Steven W. Mosher's book Hegemon: China's Plan to Dominate Asia and the World It offers very sobering arguments in support of the thesis that the the China policy favored by both political parties is totally misguided and even dangerous to the national interest of this country. No one unfamiliar with this book should feel entitled to speak on U.S.-China relations authoritatively.
When Madeleine Albright was asked why the U.S. had clamped sanctions against Burma but not against China her reply was typical of beltway thought and can only be understood in terms of "realism" in foreign policy. She said, as reported by Robert Kaplan: (op. cit.): "The U.S. has consistent policies but flexible tactics".
She could as well have said:" the U.S. has flexible policies and consistent tactics." and made as much sense. This Byzantine bilge can be "deconstructed" once we understand the priorities of the sempiternally prevailing realistic foreign policy. This policy is under pressure to take into account the views of powerful corporations such as those represented in Engage*USA, an association of over 600 businesses which, under the pretense of using investments to advance democracy, in reality want to use the Fata Morgana of "democracy" to advance their business interests in countries under American sanctions, by calling for a reevaluation of Cuban American relations. Paradoxically, some of its members, such as Sears Roebuck, General Electric and Coca Cola were once expropriated without compensation by Castro in the 60's, but are so impaled by the love of greed that they are willing to give the Maximum Leader another chance. This shows once again that money is often the solvent of corporate business scruples and self respect.
Their not quite so covert aim is to callously and hypocritically draw a schism between investments and human rights. What my refutation attempts to do is to concede, arguendo, that even if the realistic conception of foreign policy is accepted, such value-free conception does not support the lifting of the trade embargo! Of course, Engage*USA has failed to do a cost-benefit analysis of what impact the lifting of the embargo would have for the powerful sugar industry of this country and how would Cuba pay for the products of most of these corporations, since what it mostly has for sale is sugar, limited amounts of nickel and manganese and access to beach resorts. Further, the cost to the taxpayer would also have to be factored in. Cuba, as already stated, would need vast sums of money to rebuild its infrastructure.
To conclude: The case of the Cuban tyranny allows the U.S. the privilege to live up to the ideals of democracy and human rights without adversely affecting it’s national interest and perhaps even advancing it .Because the national interest, whether imagined, perceived or objectively ascertained, is not only not at stake in the case of Cuba, but may be harmed by the uplifting of the trade embargo, the argument under consideration falls flat on its face.