Cuba is the largest Caribbean Sea-area country, larger than nearly all of the islands within the Caribbean Sea-area combined, and with nearly one-third of the combined populations. Nearly as large as the State of Pennsylvania and approximately as long as the State of Florida. With 11 million citizens, the population is approximately the same as the State of Illinois, the home of Chairman Crane. If Cuba were a state within the United States, it would rank 7th in population.
Cuba, like the United States, was a founding signatory of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Cuba, like the United States, is a member of the World Trade Organization, unlike the People's Republic of China and Russia, for example. The United States and Cuba share membership in many international organizations and are signatories to many of the same international treaties.
The United States policy towards Cuba has been remarkably consistent for the past 38 years - it is a policy, which seeks to isolate Cuba politically and economically. A keystone of this policy is the maintenance of a total economic embargo. One characteristic of current U.S. Cuban policy is that in spite of profound changes in geopolitical relationships, where private sector, free market dynamics are being portrayed as the most important vehicle for building an appreciation for, and the practice of, democratic institutions, U.S.- Cuba policies remain one of almost total economic embargo. A case in point, U.S. policy towards the People's Republic of China stresses most favored nation trading status as the core element of our relationship, and the centerpiece of the United States’ efforts to bring its belief in free market democracy to the world's largest Communist nation. With Cuba, for some reason, this dynamic does not apply. Instead, the United States does the opposite. The United States policy strategy for Cuba, one of the world's smallest socialist countries, is to implement, maintain and increasingly tighten one of the harshest economic embargoes in the world, all in the name of providing "support to the people of Cuba".
There are some elements of the United States embargo against Cuba which make it the "world's harshest.”
First, the United States embargo bars any ship that docks in Cuba from docking at any U.S. port for six months. Most international shipping agents refuse to allow any ship that meets the U.S. Coast Guard and Federal Maritime Certificate of Financial Responsibility requirements to sail to Cuba. This leaves only 12 to 15 of the worlds available tankers to call at Cuban ports. This provision thwarts Cuban purchases of food and medicine from other countries and, when ships are willing to dock often doubles the cost of shipments.
Second, United States law stipulates on-site verification for medical sales. This provision forces companies to assume responsibility for end-use, a procedure that raises the financial and potential liability costs to companies and actively dissuades them from selling to Cuba. Efforts are further frustrated by the fact that neither the Treasury nor the Commerce department has published any regulations defining how to meet the on-site verification requirement.
Third, the United States embargo bans medical exports that could be used to develop Cuba's fledgling biotechnology industry. This provision thwarts Cuba's promising biotechnology industry, which has been developed in part to meet food and medicine requirements locally since the embargo thwarts the island's ability to import basic goods. The industry has produced several "firsts" including meningitis B and hepatitis vaccines, as well as the domestically produced vaccines which maintain Cuba's ranking as 26th in the world in infant and child mortality, similar to the United States.
Fourth, our policy of embargo against Cuba serves to isolate the U.S. internationally. It enjoys virtually no support from other nations. The world diplomatic and medical community roundly denounces the U.S. embargo. The United Nations has condemned this embargo for five years, as have numerous other organizations.
Lastly, the United States’ embargo completely bans food sales. Like other Caribbean nations, Cuba imports most of its food.
As any visitor to Cuba can plainly see, the Cuban people are suffering. Supporters of current U.S. policy argue that this suffering is the fault of the Cuban leadership. U.S. policy should make sure that the misery of the Cuban people is not in any way caused by U.S. restrictions on the sale of foods and medicine. Clearly, the current U.S. policy does not permit us this position. As a matter of fact, prohibitions and restrictions on the sale of food and medicine are fairly recent. U.S. subsidiaries were allowed to sell food and medicine to Cuba before 1992, until passage of the Cuban Democracy Act which, in response to concerns voiced at the time, justified the admitted harsh measures as 'the nail in Castro's coffin'. Supporters of this harsh action promised that within six months the people would revolt against such deprivation and Castro would fall. The former Chairman of the U.S. House of Representative's Ways and Means Committee, a member of the U.S. Congress, representing a district in the State of Florida for 34 years, remembers the debate at that time about the health impact cutting off foods and medicine trade would have on the Cuban people. He recalls, "There was a big debate about the health impact cutting off such sales would cause back then, but we were assured that such harsh measures would only last six months or so since the people would rebel against Castro and put 'the final nail in his coffin.' Well, here we are six years later and he's still walking around. But who knows how many Cuban people made it to coffins well ahead of their time because of these terrible restrictions."
President Castro's eminent demise is constantly stated as the reason for maintaining the U.S. policy. Just recently, on January 13, 1998, Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, one of the staunchest advocates for our current economic policies against Cuba, again invoked Castro's eminent demise and asked for "more time" for our embargo to work when he stated that: "Now that Castro is ill and will soon be gone from the scene is not the time to abandon the U.S. embargo....". However, upon information and belief, it is evident that now is exactly the time to remove the ill conceived, U.S. restrictions on trade in foods and medicine.
One question that those favoring lifting the embargo could not answer is why is Castro's number one priority the lifting of the embargo? Among the answers, the one thing that keeps emerging is that Castro does seek the embargo's end. Castro wants it lifted because he thinks he can survive such a U.S. policy change. Further, Castro wants the legitimacy that the embargo's lifting would bestow upon him and his cult of personality. For Castro, "the revolution" is embodied in him as much, if not more so, than in the institutions that have been constructed since 1959.
The United States policy towards Cuba has failed. After nearly 40 years and eight presidents, the United States has not succeeded in removing Castro or moderating his behavior. Castro is still in power, true, and his internal behavior remains as repressive today as it did in its infancy.
Foreign investment in Cuba, as currently structured and implemented, supports the regime and ratifies the taking of property. In fact, it creates a "Cuba precedent" that destroys current international law on property takings. If Castro's Cuba can nationalize and/or expropriate properties, deny the rightful owners any compensation or redress, and then turn those same entities over to other private concerns which then can operate against the rightful owner, then why cannot other nations do the same? Since international property settlements are based on customary international law, which itself is based on State behavior, then European, Asian, Canadian, and Latin American acceptance of that situation raises the question as to whether Cuba's takings are acceptable behavior.
Forty years after the U.S. instituted the embargo to bring democratic reform to Cuba, the same regime rules Cuba and continues to deprive the Cuban people of their human and civil rights. Even the fall of the Soviet bloc more than ten years ago did not accelerate a change in Cuba’s government.
By establishing better relations with Cuba now, America can guide Cuba toward a steady and permanent landing to democracy. But the longer America waits, the greater the risk that Cuba’s post-Castro era will led by an equally oppressive regime, whether from the far-left or far-right.
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Work Cited
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Blinder, Alan S., "Eight Steps to a New Financial Order", Foreign Affairs, September/October 1999.
Huntington, Samuel P., "The Lonely Superpower", Foreign Affairs, March/April 1999.
Walt, Stephen M., "Two Cheers for Clinton's Foreign Policy", Foreign Affairs, March/April 2000.
Wills, Garry, "Bully of the Free World", Foreign Affairs, March/April 1999.
Zoellick, Robert B., "A Republican Foreign Policy", Foreign Affairs, January/February 2000
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