Our FaceOff debaters argue over whether the Cuban embargo should remain in place.

Lifting the Embargo Will Not Bring Prosperity to Cubans

By Ray Walser

It’s late in the game between a 200-year-old democratic republic and a 50-year-old dictatorship.

Victory for the republic appears near, as the dictatorship is being pushed ever closer to the goal of an elected democracy and free society. But the republic’s spectators have grown impatient; they want to rush the field before victory is actually achieved.

On Feb. 24, the control of the dictatorship was passed from an ailing captain to a reliable veteran backup with a disciplined team whose tight unity and ability to demand unquestioned loyalty from their fans has kept them in the game.

This sports analogy is appropriate when analyzing the current state of U.S.-Cuban relations and the debate swirling in the wake of the transfer of leadership by Fidel to Raul Castro. But four points require our attention and remind us the time for a victory celebration has yet to arrive.

One: Lifting the embargo will confer unmerited legitimacy on the regime of the Castro brothers.

While Raul may be less egotistical and more tolerant of dissent, he will continue calling plays using Fidel’s playbook, and Cuba’s communist, totalitarian system will remain firmly in place.

And until Raul Castro relaxes his regime’s rules, the U.S. should not remove its sanction. The embargo remains as much as ever a matter of basic principle and a reasonable response to Cuba’s lack of freedom.

Two: There is no indication that respect for human rights will improve under Raul.

Cuba recently signed additional United Nations human rights accords, of which Fidel disapproved. But will these signings provide guarantees for “the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion,” as prescribed?

Cuba’s penal code states that individuals may be prosecuted for any act committed in opposition to the norms and morals of socialism—that is, for being in a “dangerous state.” Is Raul, as head of the Ministry of Interior, ready to foreswear this blanket tool of tyranny?

Three: Lifting the embargo will not significantly benefit the prosperity and material wellbeing of the Cuban people.

If the game were to end now, the chief beneficiaries would be large corporations with more capital than conscience. Raul’s approved model of corporate responsibility is embodied in companies like mining giant Sheritt International of Canada, which makes a steady return on investment and asks no awkward political questions. In general, many business leaders find it convenient to deal with Raul and his profit-minded generals who are able to deliver cheap, docile and union-
less labor.

In an age of high-tech innovation and globalizing commerce, Raul offers the dazzling promise of more market gardens and a real chance to become a repairman, an independent truck driver or a bed-and-breakfast operator. If the Cuban people have aspired for decades to own an automobile, the best they are likely to receive under Raul’s slow-paced “China model” of economic reforms will be a rickshaw.

Four: Cuba’s major foreign backer, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, will do all that is possible to sabotage any American entry into Cuba.

In the past decade, Chávez has spent billions in propping up the Castro regime. His oil subsidies, activism and anti-Americanism will continue to influence the thinking of Raul and others and will be difficult to counter without real democratic change in Cuba. And U.S. taxpayers aren’t likely to replace the $2 to $4 billion in subsidies the regime currently receives from Venezuela.

The target of the embargo is the regime, the communist system and the officials and bureaucrats. Calling unconditionally for a new relationship with Raul Castro’s Cuba under the present conditions can be likened to advocating a free relationship between the U.S. and South Africa when the National Party was in power and Nelson Mandela locked in Robben Island, or demanding that East Germans stay put under communist rule once the Berlin Wall fell.

Is this how Americans want the game to end?

Ray Walser is a senior policy analyst specializing in Latin America at The Heritage Foundation. His areas of research and interest include defending the values of freedom and individual liberty, strengthening democratic institutions and advancing free trade and free-market economies.

The Cuban Embargo Is Not Only Unsuccessful—It’s Hypocritical

By Andrew Zimbalist

The U.S. embargo of Cuba began in 1960 and was extended to a full embargo in 1962. Since then, bits and pieces have come and gone. But in one form or another, the embargo now has been in place for 48 years.

The intention of the embargo has always been to depose Fidel Castro’s regime and accelerate the transition to a democratic, capitalist Cuba. The U.S. has engaged in myriad foreign policy blunders over the years, but the embargo of Cuba is one of its most enduring mistakes.

It can be argued that no other U.S. foreign policy has been so patently and stubbornly unsuccessful for so long a time. Nevertheless, there are those who claim we’ve finally brought Castro and his coterie to the precipice, and all that is needed is one more nudge.

But those who support this view do not understand the reality of Cuban society and have not learned the lessons of the embargo. Embargos are rarely successful when unilateral. When the U.S. embargo was imposed, it produced the opposite of the desired result, as it threw Castro into the arms of the Soviet Union.

As a result, the Cuban economy became fully integrated into the Soviet trading bloc and managed—in its own distorted way—to develop several industrial branches along with some of Latin America’s most exemplary health and education sectors.

Over time, Cuba also developed closer and closer trade relations with Europe, Canada and the rest of Latin America. Along with these new trading partners came substantial subsidies, which have helped sustain the country’s economy. So instead of bringing the Cuban economy to its knees and weakening Castro, the embargo actually has had a salutary impact on Cuba’s development.

That is not to say that there is nothing wrong with the Cuban economy. But the fact is, the economy will not be substantially harmed by one more year of the embargo. In fact, it grew by 7.5 percent in 2007, buoyed by high nickel prices, brisk cigar sales, over 2.1 million tourists and active exploration by various countries in Cuba’s deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, where the U.S. Geological Survey estimates several billion barrels of oil lie.

So what has the embargo accomplished? It has given Castro a ready excuse for all of the country’s problems and vindicated the claim that a big, bad, imperialist bully resides 90 miles to the north, doing everything it can to weaken or overthrow his government.

This perception has converted Castro into an admired leader in much of Cuba and the rest of the third world and given Cuba a natural insulation from exposure to the ideas, values and consumption habits of U.S. tourists, educators, media and businessmen. It has also prevented U.S. companies from having the same access to Cuba’s magnificent natural resources as companies from Europe, Canada, Asia and Latin America have.

Finally, it has proven that the moralistic U.S. foreign policy is hypocritical at its core, as we continue to trade with numerous other non-democratic regimes around the globe.

The embargo is not an enlightened policy pursued in the best interests of the people of the U.S. or Cuba.

Instead, it is an obscurantist policy based on the angry and vindictive voices of a small segment of the Cuban exile community in South Florida.

Perhaps one day the U.S. government will wake up to the fact that the greatest danger the country faces emanates from its misguided belief that we are the world’s only force of righteousness and that we have to mold all countries in our image. If we can get past that limiting and cynical view and begin to listen to the other countries with whom we share this planet, perhaps we won’t have to worry so much about our next president receiving calls in the White House at three in the morning.

Andrew Zimbalist is the Robert A. Woods Professor of Economics at Smith College. He has written extensively on the Cuban economy and consulted in Cuba for the UNDP.