Good news everyone. This past Tuesday, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution that called for the United States to end its 46-year-old embargo of Cuba. The international community overwhelmingly supported this non-binding resolution with a vote of 184 in favor and four against. According to CBS, “In addition to the United States, Israel, Palau and the Marshall Islands voted against the resolution.”
This is the sixteenth consecutive year the U.N. has passed the resolution, and the 16th time the United States has chosen to ignore it. It should be the last time. The United States should end the embargo on Cuba.
The embargo against Cuba began in 1961 when the Castro regime “nationalized” property owned by American companies. Proponents of the embargo argue that its purpose is to weaken Castro’s communist government and bring democracy and market reforms to the Cuban people. After 46 years, Cuba is one of the few remaining countries under communist control and the only country to receive U.S. sanctions for this long.
Obviously, the sanctions have failed to bring about any change in Cuba: it has actually served as Castro’s scapegoat for Cuba’s stuggling economy after the “Special Period” economic collapse in 1991. According to the Cuban American National Foundation, Cuba has an annual economic growth rate of 2 percent per year. In contrast, Brazil is growing by 10 percent, and Mexico is growing at 14 percent per year. Cuba has a national debt of $30.5 billion. According to the Miami Herald, Cuba owes $1.8 billion to Russia alone.
So can the U.S. embargo be mostly responsible for all of Cuba’s economic woes? The U.S. is not the only rich Western country in the world, and every other nation which falls into that category trades with Cuba. If the U.S. embargo was actually hurting the Cuban economy, then free trade with Canada, the European Union and many other nations all over the world should be enough to overcome such a challenge, but Cuba has not.
What does Cuba need which other countries cannot provide? Canada has medical supplies, Japan has technology and China has potential foreign investors. Trade with the other nations has not brought prosperity to Cuba because the fault lies with Castro, not the U.S. embargo.
The Castro regime is responsible for the economic suffering in Cuba. Blaming the U.S. embargo for all of the Cuban people’s problems has been Castro’s method of deflecting attention away from his failed social and economic policies. Every major industry has been “nationalized,” which means they are owned by the government. Every employee of any of these industries is an employee of the government and thus earns Castro’s designated wage.
The communist government takes the majority of the profits and wastes it on military spending and various failing welfare programs, while leaving workers with a minimal cut. All foreign investors in Cuba must be partners with the Castro regime, which restricts investment in Cuba’s economy while Castro makes more money for himself. According to CANF, “Cuba’s imports totaled $2.8 billion dollars, yet only $46 million dollars – only 1.5% of overall foreign purchases – on medical imports for its 11 million people.” Castro’s national healthcare plan – the one Michael Moore thinks is so much better than ours – is barely able to stand on its own.
Proponents of continuing the U.S. embargo on Cuba argue similar sanctions on other nations have worked in the past. They point to the embargo of South Africa in ending apartheid, but that embargo had wide-spread international support. The U.S. embargo of Cuba has only three other nations who agree with us – Israel, Palau and the Marshall Islands. Cuba is the only communist country that the United States still enforces such sanctions upon. Trade with China began under the Nixon administration, and open relations with that communist regime led to many of our cultural ideas seeping into their culture.
If the U.S. had kept the same type of embargo on China as we do on Cuba, there would never have been the protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989 or the growing seedlings of capitalism in the Chinese market we see today in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai. I have been to China and walked along the street watching capitalism take hold among the open markets. I have no doubt the same will be true in Cuba.
The best chance for bringing democracy to Cuba is to end the embargo. For 46 years, the United States has given the embargo a chance, and it has not delivered results. It is time for a new strategy in demanding freedom and human rights in Cuba.
——Contact Michael Schouest at [email protected]