The United States & Cuba

I've tended to write more about security/military issues, but I felt this was important enough to merit its own post.

At a meeting between the Organization of American States, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton has been urged to readmit Cuba to the OAS after a 47 year absence. Also, the US and Cuba are set to resume talks over immigration between the two nations. These developments are important first steps, but there is still a long way to go, and I don't think anybody's forgotten that. The embargo has been a flat out disaster for the United States, and it has had terrible consequences on the people of Cuba.

We have to ask ourselves a very simple question, why is the embargo still there? What purpose does it serve? I think it primarily exists due to the influence of the Cuban lobby in Florida, but there are signs that is on the wane, as most of them are becoming older. In addition, President Obama, who won Florida in the 2008 election, was able to do so taking a more moderate approach on Cuba, something that would have been unthinkable in previous elections.

The embargo also speaks to the utter hypocrisy of US foreign policy. Are we really still that mad about the Cuban Missile Crisis? Do Fidel and Raul Castro really still bother us after all these years? It's ironic that the US is perfectly okay being friendly with brutal rulers like King Abdullah in Saudi Arabia, Hosni Mubarek in Egypt, or any of the Central Asian tyrants like Nazerbayev from Kazakhstan or Karimov from Uzbekistan, but the regime in Cuba is entireably intolerable.

On a deeper level, the sanctions do not actually work. Barring trade from Cuba does nothing to bring regime change to the island, as democratic reform in Cuba has not gained much ground in the preceding four decades when the embargo has been in place. Their is almost no internal democratic reform movement in Cuba, why? Most of the ones that really hate Castro have left to move to the United States, because of the harsh economic conditions in Cuba....that the United States created.

If the US wants to continue to pretend like it's a bastion of free markets and capitalism, lifting this repressive and counterproductive embargo on Cuba is a good first step.