Cuban trade embargo adds to budgetary waste
Thomas Overton
The meat-axes are out in Washington these days. If you read the
op-ed pages much, it seems like nearly every federal program on the
books is up for review. Welfare, farm subsidies, Medicare, midnight
basketball leagues  if it’s not working or we don’t need it,
out it goes. So no one can accuse me of ignoring political trends,
I will offer my personal candidate for the budgetary
wastebasket.
Suppose I told you about a federal program that benefitted
absolutely no one and was nothing but a stale holdover from the
1960s, that cost this country millions in tax dollars every year
and millions more (perhaps billions) in lost trade revenue (and
thus more lost taxes), did measurable harm to the national interest
and persisted solely because of political pressure from one narrow
special interest group. You’d think Congress would be pretty eager
to get that program on the chopping block, wouldn’t you?
Unfortunately, such a program exists, and it’s one of the
biggest sacred cows around. It’s called the Cuban Trade Embargo.
The Embargo, with its fellow-travelers Radio and TV Marti, has
probably earned the distinction of being the most pointless
exercise of U.S. power in the last few decades.
Of all the elements of the U.S. foreign policy, the Cuban Trade
Embargo is one of the most likely to elicit knee-jerk reactions.
From the Right: You want to lift the Embargo? You must be a Commie!
Fidel is evil! He must be punished! From the Left: You support the
Embargo? You’re a fascist! Cuba is the perfect society! We should
be sending them money, not persecuting them!
Rational discourse on this issue has been sorely lacking. So
gather round, and I will show you why the Cuban Trade Embargo
serves no good purpose besides pacifying the Cuban exile
community.
From the beginning, the Embargo was not a sterling example of
foreign policy. It began as a cheap political stunt during the 1960
presidential election. Jack Kennedy had accused the Eisenhower
Administration of being insufficiently hard-line with Castro and to
help Richard Nixon’s campaign, President Eisenhower declared an
embargo against Cuba.
From that ignominious beginning, the Embargo has handicapped
rational foreign policy for almost 35 years. A look at the usual
arguments in favor of the Embargo will show that it has long since
outlived any usefulness.
The Embargo is necessary to force Castro from power. Uh-uh. The
Embargo has been in place since 1960 and Castro is as popular as
ever. If anything, the Embargo has kept Castro in power by
providing him with a convenient scapegoat for everything that went
wrong in Cuba.
The Cubans love him because for nearly 40 years he has been able
to stand up to the Yankee bullies who wanted to put a Batista-clone
back in power. Eight U.S. presidents have come and gone, and Castro
is still around. It just ain’t gonna happen.
The Embargo is necessary to force Cuba to abandon Communism.
Leaving aside arguments that maybe the Cubans have the right to
choose their own government, this one assumes a false premise. Cuba
isn’t communist anymore. Socialism in Cuba is all but dead.
The black market and the hard-money tourist trade are the Cuban
economy. Lest you think the Embargo has had something to do with
this, keep in mind that the transition began precisely when the
Cubans stopped receiving $3 billion in yearly aid from the Soviet
Union. It was the loss of that money, not the Embargo, that has
wrecked their economy.
The Embargo is necessary to force Castro to respect human
rights. OK, so the Castro regime has not been without its human
rights problems. The real question, though, is, "So what?" The
United States currently has a multi-billion dollar trade
relationship with a country, China, who less than seven years ago
killed thousands of peaceful civilians and students for getting too
uppity.
The United States is also providing billions in aid to another
country, Russia, that is engaged in a genocidal war against one of
its minority populations. The United States is also in the process
of obtaining two advanced nuclear reactors for a third country,
North Korea, that is perhaps the most repressive in human
history.
Finally, two years ago, the United States lifted an embargo
against a fourth country, Vietnam, which some groups accuse of
still harboring American POWs. Balanced against these relationships
 three out of four with undeniably Communist countries Â
punishing Castro for "human rights violations" is really
disingenuous.
The Embargo is necessary to contain Cuba, because Cuba is a
threat to U.S. society. This may have been true once. When Cuba was
still a Soviet satellite, and the Soviets were basing troops and
huge monitoring devices there (not to mention missiles), it was
necessary for the United States to exercise whatever pressure it
could.
But the Soviets and their technicians are long gone, and the
Cuban army (back from Angola) is no threat to anyone. They could
defend Cuba against an invasion  maybe  but no more
than that. The Cubans simply don’t have the money to support a
large military anymore.
So why lift the Embargo? Lots of reasons. Number one on the list
is trade. Cuba and the United States are natural trading partners,
and until 1960, we had a strong trading relationship. The Cubans
have plenty of natural resources to sell to the United States,
sugar and tobacco being only two, and Cuba is a potentially huge
market for U.S. consumer goods. That means more money and more jobs
for Americans.
Right now, though, most of those jobs are going to Europe. That
motive was why we lifted the embargo against Vietnam, and it’s
equally applicable to Cuba.
Lifting the Embargo could also help ease the Cuban refugee
problem. Opening up the U.S. market to Cuban goods, and Cuba to
U.S. tourists, would provide a boost to the Cuban economy and
create jobs to keep the Cubans in Cuba.
Finally, if you’re still fixated on Castro and his professed
allegiance to Communism, keep in mind that the fall of Communism in
Eastern Europe began when those countries opened themselves up to
Western investment. With the Embargo gone and the Americans ready
to do business, Castro becomes an anachronism. If the Cuban economy
can recover with American investment, the Cubans may decide they
don’t need Fidel anymore.
Add all this up and you come to what I said initially. The Cuban
Trade Embargo exists solely because of political pressure from the
exile community in Miami. There is simply no rational reason for
its continued existence, and it’s time we consigned it to the
ash-heap of history.
Overton is a third-year law student. His column appears on
alternate Thursdays.