On Feb. 19, Fidel Castro stepped down from his post as president of Cuba. The Marxist revolutionary outlasted nine U.S. presidents and survived numerous CIA-sponsored assassination attempts (from the Bay of Pigs in 1961 to an attempt to present him with a fungus-ridden skin-diving suit in 1963), and the United States has spent nearly his entire tenure in a state of embargo against Cuba. Now that Castro has stepped aside, it seems an appropriate moment to discuss the future of the U.S.-Cuba relationship - a relationship that has remained largely static for more than 40 years.
At the time of its enactment, the embargo against Cuba made a certain amount of sense; the Marxists had sacked the U.S.-backed Batista regime and taken control of American properties. In addition, the Cuban alignment with the Soviet Union and its use as a proxy missile base for the Soviets certainly warranted some kind of aggressive action at a time when communism seemed to be silently simmering and gathering force just 90 miles off the coast of Florida.
However, times have changed drastically since Castro took power, and communism is no longer the Manchurian boogeyman it once was. We have come to the point where the embargo on this tiny island-state is beginning to look like a relic from a bygone episode of "What Form of Government Do We Fear Today?"
In 1963, when then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk was asked why the U.S. traded with the Soviet Union but not with Cuba, he answered that "the Soviet government is a permanent government; the U.S. views Castro as temporary." Now that the Soviet Union has long ago crumbled under the weight of its own failed system and Castro has become one of the longest-serving heads of state in history, it would be wise to reassess that statement. At this point, "give it time to work" is no longer a reasonable argument.
Yet as recently as 2004, at a time when the United States was in the midst of a fevered hunt for terrorists and was struggling mightily against insurgents in Iraq, President Bush found it necessary to sign a presidential proclamation that prohibited the travel of vessels from U.S. ports to Cuban ports. In fact, according to the Associated Press, the Treasury Department had only four full-time employees dedicated to investigating Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in 2004, but more than 24 investigating Cuban embargo violations.
One of the most popular explanations is that the embargo serves as retaliation for Cuban human rights abuses. It is true, after all, that the government of Cuba is guilty of such abuses - but so is Iran. So is North Korea. So are China and Russia and Saudi Arabia and a plethora of other nations with which America enjoys much freer trade. The embargo did not bankrupt the Cuban government (due to the authoritarian nature of the Cuban system, the last sandwich on the island will be eaten by Fidel Castro); neither has it forced a liberalization of the political system.
In 2007, Senator Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) introduced the "Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act" on the floor of the Senate, saying, "If you keep on doing what you have always been doing, you are going to wind up getting what you already got. We are not hurting the Cuban government; we are hurting the Cuban people. It is time for a different policy." With Fidel Castro stepping out of power, it is time to sit down with the new Cuban government and work out a trade policy that makes sense for today.
