Through the embargo, the US have not only prevented trade with Cuba involving American companies, but have also threatened with a lawsuit any company in the world that profits from land that was seized from Americans in the Communist Revolution. These sanctions were originally put in place for the ostensible reason of stopping the spread of Communism in Latin America. Through these sanctions, the United States wanted to isolate Cuba economically and increase discontent within the country in the hopes that the Communist government would fall (Perez, 345-346).
Since the early 1990s, however, the United States has changed its reasoning for the continuation of the embargo. In the above quotation, George Bush maintains that the United States cannot trade with Cuba because it “routinely stifles all the freedoms that make us human” (U.S. Department of State). While this is quite an overstatement, it is true that Cuba does deny its people some of the human rights that are outlined by the United Nations in its Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including democracy. It is for this reason, Bush states, that the United States could not possibly permit trade with, and thus help support, the government of Cuba.
Bush also condemns Cuba for not respecting human rights by not giving its citizens democracy. However, China, who is the fourth largest trading partner of the United States, is also constantly criticized for the same thing. The fact is, the United States attempts to hold the moral high ground over Cuba, but is profiting off of another country that is just as oppressive. We can see from this the double standard that the US has in its foreign policy. Evidently, the United States will attempt to institute its values on other societies at almost any cost, except for a loss of money for American companies.
However, the real question that is raised from this issue is why the leaders, and many citizens, of western countries think that we have the right to push our values of democracy and freedom of the individual on others. While many may feel that our way of living is superior, that does not give us the right to force others to live that way, or even to assume that our way of life will help others. There are many examples of countries that we see as “backwards,” that are operating just fine within their own culture. Saudi Arabia seems to get along with a fundamentalist Muslim government, and the Native people of North America had a peaceful and stable existence with no government at all. To suggest that democracy works for everyone is ridiculous. In a place like Cuba that is still behind the industrialized world, the slow, cautions approach of democracy is probably not the most effective way to advance the nation. Rather, what a developing country that exists in a developed world usually needs is either huge amounts of foreign aid, which Cuba is not getting, or a leader with a stable government and a vision who has little or no limits on his/her power. While this can easily lead to disaster, democracy in a developing nation is more or less useless, as has been repeatedly illustrated in virtually all of the countries of Africa.
We must be careful not to romanticize Cuba too much, however. Cuba is not an innocent island paradise that is being crushed by the evil United States. There is no good and evil or hero and villain in this matter as both sides in this matter would have you believe. Cuba is, however, the victim of a policy of “Westernization” that the United States has been following for years. Nevertheless, Cuba is still a relatively stable country. Given this, instead of trying to slowly crush a government that is obviously not going anywhere soon, the United States would probably benefit from removing one of the many contradictions in its foreign policy and slowly integrating Cuba into the World economy. Not only would this serve the citizens of Cuba better, the very people the United States claim they are trying to help, but it would also help remove total government control over the Cuban economy, and likely, many other facets of life in Cuba. It really seems like it would benefit the interests of both the US and Cuba, but the American government apparently is not interested in the welfare of the people, but rather having other countries adopt the western model of society, even if the livelihood of a generation of Cubans has to be sacrificed.
Works Cited
Perez, Louis A. Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
U.S. Department of State. “The United States and Cuba.” International Information Programs. 2002. http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/ar/us-cuba/ (18 March, 2002).
