More Thoughts On Normalizing Relations With Cuba

 

President Obama’s announcement on Wednesday that he would seek to normalize relations with Cuba reminded me of an aphorism: even a broken clock is right twice a day.

And so it is that Barack Obama — a man who is objectively terrible at his job — is right about Cuba. He is right because he is reversing (or trying to, anyway) a policy that has been an utter failure for half a century. Obama’s plan is (1) to normalize relations, (2) lift the travel and financial restrictions, (3) build an embassy, (4) seek to lift the embargo.

The response was predictable to anyone who has paid attention to politics long enough: opposition to change, support for preserving the status quo. Senator Marco Rubio held a press conference and angrily denounced the plan. He used the occasion to play the Cuban heritage card. When asked, Speaker Boehner played the terrorism card.

The one card that they couldn’t play — because it’s not in their deck — is the this-policy-works card. That’s because it doesn’t exist. Because this policy has been an utter failure.

Let’s consider the record of our Cuba policy, which has been stuck in time since the Kennedy Administration:

  • If the goal was to bring freedom to Cuba, it has failed.
  • If the goal was to isolate Cuba, it has failed.
  • If the goal was to bring the Castro regime to its knees, it has failed.

Senator Rubio angrily complained that Obama gave away the store; that he received no guarantees from Castro of freedom for the Cuban people. And he therefore complained that Obama is a terrible negotiator. Did Senator Rubio really expect a sudden mea culpa from Raul Castro for half a century of communism? Did he expect that, in turn for an embassy, Castro would dismantle his regime? Senator Rubio brought a lot of anger to his press conference. What he did not bring was any alternative to the current policy which, again, has been a complete failure.

What will restoring relations and eventually trade with Cuba accomplish? First, it’ll help elevate the standard of living. Cuba is a third-world country 90 miles off of Florida. People live in poverty. An influx of American cash will help lift them out of despair.

Second, if Americans travel there to visit relatives or to trade they’ll be bringing with them the truth: that communism doesn’t work and that freedom brings prosperity. The reason North Korea, for example, still survives, is because it remains tightly cloistered. No information gets in without government approval. Once Americans start traveling to Cuba… well, Castro isn’t going to be able to put that cork back into the bottle. It’ll be a new era.

What will follow will be a slow liberalization. This has been done in China. We liberalized trade with China, their economy exploded, and that brought pressure to liberalize. No, it hasn’t happened yet. It’s not an immediate thing. But it will. There have only ever been two communist dynasties: North Korea and Cuba. Cuba’s is nearing its end. Raul Castro is 83. He’s going to kick off at some point. When he goes, a new generation of Cuban leaders will take over.

Maybe I’m being too optimistic. But even if this liberalization doesn’t happen, at a minimum it’ll help lift the people of Cuba out of poverty. It will reconnect families. The wounds of communism will begin the long process of healing. At a minimum, normalizing relations with Cuba will be an improvement.

We should let the current policy meet the death it so richly deserves.

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  1. Petty Boozswha Inactive
    Petty Boozswha
    @PettyBoozswha

    I agree the policy was/is a failure, and I agree it should be changed. But Obama as usual has done it in the worst possible way. A real President would have pointed out the hypocrisy of even our closest friends – if sanctions were justified against South Africa, and I think they were, they were justified against Cuba. Unfortunately even good countries, like Canada, thought it was more important to avoid being seen as a lapdog of the US than to do the morally correct thing and support the embargo. I hope they will look back at this sometime in the future and apologize to the Cuban people.

    • #1
  2. user_280840 Inactive
    user_280840
    @FredCole

    Petty Boozswha: the morally correct thing and support the embargo.

    I reject the notion that the embargo is morally correct.

    I think it’s morally monstrous.

    • #2
  3. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Fred Cole: That he received from Castro no guarantees of freedom for the Cuban people. And therefore Obama is a terrible negotiator.

    This concerns me. I think Obama gave away an opportunity.

    You say that our sanctions have not worked. True. The Castro regime is as evil today as it was ten, twenty, and thirty years ago. So why didn’t we impose some conditions on this new arrangement?

    I have never approved of the sanctions. For the reasons you cite.

    I didn’t approve of the Iraq sanctions, and I was right about those, given the oil-for-baby-food scandal and the UN.

    I didn’t approve of Carter’s wheat embargo, which denied help to people in Russia who were already starving.

    Etc.

    Nevertheless, there must be a middle ground with Cuba. There are some human rights protections we must still demand. To walk away just reminds everyone that, as Osama bin Laden said to his Taliban followers, if you just wait long enough, the Americans will go away, just as they did in Vietnam.

    The way Obama is handling this restoration of relations with Cuba will make us look weak and foolish to our enemies.

    And I can’t help wondering, Why now? Out of the blue?

    I do not trust this president’s judgment or motives.

    • #3
  4. Petty Boozswha Inactive
    Petty Boozswha
    @PettyBoozswha

    Fred did you support sanctions on apartheid South Africa?

    • #4
  5. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    And a postscript: I did at first. I thought to myself, “Well, it’s about time!”

    Then I got to reading more about the deal, or the lack thereof.

    I just don’t trust Obama. Why didn’t he do this six years ago? Why now?

    • #5
  6. user_5186 Inactive
    user_5186
    @LarryKoler

    Petty Boozswha:Fred did you support sanctions on apartheid South Africa?

    This is the important question that must be answered by Fred and MarciN. Other questions will follow but this one must be answered first to have a chance of pursuing a logical argument.

    • #6
  7. Tuck Inactive
    Tuck
    @Tuck

    “If the goal was to bring freedom to Cuba, it has failed.

    “If the goal was to isolate Cuba, it has failed.

    “If the goal was to bring the Castro regime to its knees, it has failed.”

    Yep, well put.  It’s also given us cover for not doing anything serious about Cuba and the threat is presents to this hemisphere.

    Normalizing trade might at least improve the lives of the regular Cubans, which our policy has failed to do.

    The problem with our president is that even though I’ve been in favor of this measure for years, it makes me think I must be mistaken if Obama’s doing it.

    There is however one thing we can be assured of: he’s not doing this to benefit the regular Cubans.  Just ask American blacks how his presidency has worked for them.

    He cares nothing for regular people.

    • #7
  8. user_280840 Inactive
    user_280840
    @FredCole

    Petty Boozswha:Fred did you support sanctions on apartheid South Africa?

    I’m young enough that I didn’t know about apartheid until it was over.

    Looking at it retrospectively, I’d say no.

    • #8
  9. user_280840 Inactive
    user_280840
    @FredCole

    Tuck: Yep, well put.  It’s also given us cover for not doing anything serious about Cuba and the threat is presents to this hemisphere.

    What threat?

    • #9
  10. Asquared Inactive
    Asquared
    @ASquared

    Lifting the embargo will not help the people of Cuba. It will only help Raul Castro and his inner circle. It will extend the life of a brutal regime by decades, allowing Castro to fund the guards he needs to keep thousands in prison. It’s ironic that many of the same people that oppose water boarding want to help fund torture 90 miles from our shore.

    • #10
  11. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Larry Koler:

    Petty Boozswha:Fred did you support sanctions on apartheid South Africa?

    This is the important question that must be answered by Fred and MarciN. Other questions will follow but this one must be answered first to have a chance of pursuing a logical argument.

    A good question. At the time, my impression was that the divestment campaign was directed at companies doing business in South Africa, that the targeted companies were being hurt worldwide, not just their South African operations, which would have disproportionately hurt the South African people.

    I’m sorry but that’s all I remember about them.

    As I recall, these were different from the types of sanctions like those against Iraq, Cuba, and Afghanistan, which harmed the poor. In Iraq, Cuba, and Afghanistan, the idea behind the sanctions was that the people would get angry and overthrow their leaders.

    • #11
  12. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Asquared:Lifting the embargo will not help the people of Cuba. It will only help Raul Castro and his inner circle. It will extend the life of a brutal regime by decades, allowing Castro to fund the guards he needs to keep thousands in prison. It’s ironic that many of the same people that oppose water boarding want to hep fund torture 90 miles from our shore.

    What would you do since the embargo is not helping the people in prison? I don’t like the embargo, but like you, I also don’t want to give Castro money–profits–from trade with America so that he can continue to terrorize the Cuban people.

    • #12
  13. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    This article argues that anti-Apartheid sanctions and divestment were not that effective economically – but that sanctions still did some good wrt ending Apartheid.

    • #13
  14. Asquared Inactive
    Asquared
    @ASquared

    Marci, There is no good answer. But normalizing relations will make things much worse for some, have no change for the vast majority, and enrich a very few.

    Our best chance would have been when Raul died, which won’t be long. Now, he can earn enough hard currency to fund his brutal crackdown and leave his successor with a big enough war chest to survive the inevitable coup attempts

    Obama wants communism to survive and wants his legacy to be helping communism be successful in Cuba. That is the most plausible explanation for this move.

    Not that it matters, but I spent a couple of weeks on Gitmo back in the late 80s and I was fortunate enough to meet some fence jumpers. The risks people take to attempt the necessary swim tells you all you need to know about life in Cuba. The number that make it give you an estimate of the number of attempts. Those that don’t reach Gitmo soil go to jail for life.

    But, yeah we wouldn’t want Raul to run short of money to buy bullets for those guards, Obama certainly does not.

    • #14
  15. Z in MT Member
    Z in MT
    @ZinMT

    Question for Fred:

    Do you actually believe this?

    Fred Cole: What will restoring relations and eventually trade with Cuba accomplish? First, they’ll help elevate the standard of living. Cuba is a third world country 90 miles off of Florida. People live in poverty. An influx of American cash will help lift them out of despair.

    The American cash will go directly into the pockets of the Castro regime.  There are no markets in Cuba except the black market.  I had friends who traveled to Cuba and their tour guide was an M.D. who preferred being a tour guide so he could actually make money from illegal cash tips that he could spend in the black market.  The reason why everyone is poor in Cuba is because that is how the Castro regime wants it.

    I agree that the embargo has failed, but I have very little hope that just ending it with no concessions from the Castro regime will do anything for the people of Cuba. The only thing that will help Cuba is for the regime to die (probably literally).

    We should have waited for Fidel to die before making this move, or have gotten some concession from the regime like the release of the thousands of political prisoners that are imprisoned and tortured (real torture, not waterboarding) by the regime.

    • #15
  16. Mark Coolidge
    Mark
    @GumbyMark

    “What will follow will be a slow liberalization. This has begin in China. We liberalized trade with China, their economy exploded, and that brought pressure to liberalize. No, it hasn’t happened yet, it’s not an immediate thing. But it will.”

    The history with China is a little different.  We normalized relations in the 1970s because we got something in return – it was to our benefit to support China which joined us in opposing the Soviet Union even though both were communist states.

    As to the explosion in the Chinese economy that happened because the post-Mao leadership allowed first agriculture and then much of industry to be freed from state rule.  We certainly did not forbid US trade with China but the increase happened as a byproduct of China’s own decisions.  Cause and effect the reverse of what you posit.

    • #16
  17. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Asquared: Obama wants communism to survive and wants his legacy to be helping communism be successful in Cuba. That is the most plausible explanation for this move.

    That’s interesting and plausible. So does John Kerry. It sounds just like him

    I’m worried.

    • #17
  18. Byron Horatio Inactive
    Byron Horatio
    @ByronHoratio

    I agree. Until the supporters of embargo can convince me why being economic partners with Saudi Arabia (a vile regime that beheads people just like ISIS), Turkey (a regime that has cracked down on journalists and gone increasingly Islamist), and China (a regime that within living memory murdered 50 million plus of its citizens at roughly the same time the embargo was emplaced)…then I will consider their position.

    Will Castro ever be served justice? Doubtful. And I think he deserves to hang and will applaud if his people ever make that happen.

    I tend to value economic freedom slightly more than political freedom. Because even shorn of political liberty, one can still improve your own lot in life. And with uninterrupted travel to Cuba, millions could flow into a burgeoning black market there and lift many people from a destitute life.

    • #18
  19. Asquared Inactive
    Asquared
    @ASquared

    Byron Horatio: I tend to value economic freedom slightly more than political freedom.

    I do to; I would gladly trade normalization for some economic normalization.  But this will do nothing to enhance economic freedom in Cuba.  That is precisely the problem.  It weakens political freedom without enhancing political freedom.

    The only winner here is Raul Castro and perhaps Frank Marshall Davis.

    • #19
  20. Mark Coolidge
    Mark
    @GumbyMark

    I would be open to some alteration in our relationship with Cuba if it were more like the China situation.  It is not.  The allowable scope for business in Cuba is extremely limited.  As I mentioned in another thread Cuba has a maximum monthly wage of about $20.  Some European businesses have wanted to pay their Cuban employees a “fair wage” that is higher (actually much higher).  What they do is pay the higher wage to the Cuban government which then pays the Cuban employees $20 month.  In other words the Castro regime skims the bulk of the wages.

    The part of the economy which has been opened is tourism and the prime attraction is sex tourism for Europeans  (do a Google search or just take my word for it that “cuba sex tourism europeans” generates 2+ million results) a process in which the regime prostitutes its young women and once again skims money.

    I would be open to changes if we got something in return like even a partial opening of the economy.

    I’d also be open to changes if I thought this was part of some sophisticated play to get Cuba to break with the regimes in Venezuela, Iran and Russia like we did with Sadat in Egypt but with a President who admires Castro and a Secretary of State who in the 1980s did everything in his power to prop up the Sandinistas I don’t think that’s in the cards.

    • #20
  21. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Zafar:This article argues that anti-Apartheid sanctions and divestment were not that effective economically – but that sanctions still did some good wrt ending Apartheid.

    Thank you. That’s how I remember it.

    • #21
  22. Albert Arthur Coolidge
    Albert Arthur
    @AlbertArthur

    Of course Fred Cole supports helping the Castros. Perfect. He thinks that the Muslim Brotherhood is the legitimate government of Egypt, too. It all makes sense.

    • #22
  23. iWc Coolidge
    iWc
    @iWe

    I am with Fred on this. Our Cuba policy had long been a failure. Opening full relations is the best way to effect regime change.
    I just wish Obama did not make it look like a massive American defeat.

    • #23
  24. Full Size Tabby Member
    Full Size Tabby
    @FullSizeTabby

    I do not know enough to have a firm opinion on whether “normalizing” relations with Cuba will help or hurt the people of Cuba.

    But I would have a lot more confidence in Obama’s decision if I could see evidence that the decision was made in some manner other than his usual decision-making – on his own, or maybe with a few people who already agreed with the decision he wanted to make, without consulting people with a wide range of experiences and opinions, and with total focus on what the Obama-loving press would say rather and little or no real concern for long term consequences.

    That there is considerable doubt whether Congress will make the law changes that would be required to implement the decision suggests that Obama did not consult widely before making his decision. That he did not get some assurance that Congress would participate will make implementation more difficult. Sure, he can “executive order” or “executive memo” or “executive action” his way past Congress, doing so undermines confidence that this was the correct decision.

    • #24
  25. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    American foreign policy has always been, in some fashion or other, about serving America’s interests. Our policy toward Cuba did effectively isolate and marginalize that country.

    I think these ideals purporting to free people through free trade are just that… ideals. They don’t play out in reality. How do you suppose Cubans will be beneficiaries of our prosperity when they receive no direct payments for their labor or anything else? When Americans pay for something in Cuba, they pay the Castro brothers, who then “redistribute” the wealth.

    The real way to help the Cuban people is politically untenable to most, and most definitely to you, Fred. Colonize Cuba.

    • #25
  26. Albert Arthur Coolidge
    Albert Arthur
    @AlbertArthur

    iWc:I am with Fred on this. Our Cuba policy had long been a failure. Opening full relations is the best way to effect regime change. I just wish Obama did not make it look like a massive American defeat.

    I disagree.. The best way to change the regime in Cuba is to kill the Castros. Boom. Regime change. The best way to show a massive American defeat, on the other hand, is to open full diplomatic relations with the Castros.

    • #26
  27. Albert Arthur Coolidge
    Albert Arthur
    @AlbertArthur

    Western Chauvinist: The real way to help the Cuban people is politically untenable to most, and most definitely to you, Fred. Colonize Cuba.

    I’m a fan of this, and I think I’ve argued for it in the past on Ricochet.

    • #27
  28. skipsul Inactive
    skipsul
    @skipsul

    Since this has been brought up, a bit of clarification is in order regarding South Africa and Apartheid.

    The sanctions against South Africa were, effectively, little more than moral preening at the time, and rather ineffective in practice.  One of SA’s biggest trading partners was the UK, and Thatcher defended her open trading with SA on the grounds that the UK could both gracefully help in shepherding an end to Apartheid, and would be in a good position to work with SA when it would eventually end (as she was confident it would do).  The caveat to all of this is that Thatcher understood that Apartheid was both unsustainable in the long run, and opposed by a significant number of SA whites – in a republican / democratic government, Apartheid was unsustainable in the long run and thus engagement was the best policy.

    However, comparisons of economic policy towards SA and Cuba are impossible.  The governments and economic systems of the two are worlds apart.  You cannot really say X worked with one and so must work with the other, just as you cannot say Y worked with China and so must work with Cuba – again the regimes, cultures, and national outlooks are just too different in both principle and operation.

    This is not to either condemn or condone the Cuban embargo.  Cuba is far more similar to North Korea than anyplace else, but even that comparison is limited in its utility as NK is worlds worse than Cuba has ever been.

    • #28
  29. skipsul Inactive
    skipsul
    @skipsul

    Albert Arthur:

    Western Chauvinist: The real way to help the Cuban people is politically untenable to most, and most definitely to you, Fred. Colonize Cuba.

    I’m a fan of this, and I think I’ve argued for it in the past on Ricochet.

    I would have to disagree on this, mainly because the time (and moral / military / economic justification) passed decades ago.  JFK had the last possible opportunity to have knocked the Castros out and botched it.  Short of Cuba actually shooting down a large target (airliner, fighter jet, etc.) this would bring the US reputation in world affairs to new lows.

    • #29
  30. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    skipsul:

    Albert Arthur:

    Western Chauvinist: The real way to help the Cuban people is politically untenable to most, and most definitely to you, Fred. Colonize Cuba.

    I’m a fan of this, and I think I’ve argued for it in the past on Ricochet.

    I would have to disagree on this, mainly because the time (and moral / military / economic justification) passed decades ago. JFK had the last possible opportunity to have knocked the Castros out and botched it. Short of Cuba actually shooting down a large target (airliner, fighter jet, etc.) this would bring the US reputation in world affairs to new lows.

    I don’t doubt that’s true. However, given the disdain I have for “international opinion,” that could be seen as a bonus. Many of the world’s problems are due to the loss of cultural confidence of the West. “International opinion” (by which we mean leftists (and some of their counterparts among libertarians)) of western cultural confidence is entirely negative.

    Besides, we’re talking about helping Cubans and what they might think of us — theoretically. Aren’t we?

    • #30
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