Keep the Embargo on Cuba Until Castro Opens the Doors

We hear the argument over and over again, from left, center and sometimes even right. It’s made in newspaper editorials, public speeches, college halls and business meetings. And it’s dead wrong.

I am referring to the unilateral lifting of the three-decades-long, bipartisan U.S. commercial embargo against the Castro regime in Havana.

The embargo was instituted by President Eisenhower in response to the confiscation by the Cuban government of thousands of American-owned companies. International law gives host countries the right to nationalize foreign property, but only with just, fair and prompt compensation. Not a cent has ever been paid for these nationalizations.

The other reason for the embargo, the one most appropriate today, is our rejection of the Castro dictatorship and its 40 years of human rights violations, its oppression of the Cuban people, its intolerance for different points of view and its continued refusal to allow any freedoms in a tightly controlled society. These features of the Cuban regime have remained rigid even after Pope John Paul II’s historic call--issued during his visit to the island last year--for the world to open up to Cuba and Cuba to open up to the world. The world has indeed opened up to Cuba; as opponents of the embargo point out, many countries maintain full diplomatic and commercial relations with Havana. On the other hand, Cuba remains a closed society, with another embargo placed on the liberties of the Cuban people by its rulers.

Time to debunk some myths:

* The embargo hurts only the people of Cuba, not the government. The embargo actually prevents the Cuban government from doing business with Cuba’s natural market, the United States. This in turn deprives the Cuban ruling circles of easy access to hard currency, which is used to protect fugitives from U.S. justice and to keep up a very efficient repressive apparatus. The Cuban people are increasingly less dependent on their government for everyday needs. Indeed, Cuba’s dollar economy now accounts for more goods and services than the moribund peso economy. Black market transactions are rampant, as is corruption among officials in the privileged tourism industry. Lifting the embargo may well help the Cuban government obtain financing abroad for infrastructure projects, but it would have minimal impact an the lives of ordinary Cubans.

* The embargo is the cause of Cuba’s economic problems. Back in the 1970s, when I was a boy growing up in Havana, I remember Castro’s speeches: We have defeated the American embargo. We do our commerce with our socialist brothers, and we don’t care whether the embargo is lifted. Then, in 1989, Cuba lost its preferential trading practices with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The Cuban economy started its free fall. Voila! Now it turns out that the fault is not the change in Cuba’s relationship with the Soviet bloc, but the hated, “defeated” U.S. embargo. Cause and effect don’t match very well here.

* American businesses are losing out by not trading with Cuba. First, even if the embargo were lifted, Cuba does not have the infrastructure, the financing or the communications systems to do business in the modern world. Second, the local consumer market is impoverished and cannot afford to buy much of what would be produced. Third, Cuba does not have a lot of money to purchase American products, and it owes many billions to financial institutions and countries around the world. How it could buy millions of American farm products or personal computers has yet to be explained.

* By lifting the embargo, we accelerate changes in Cuba’s political system. One word can answer this argument: China. After 20-plus years of trading massively with the Chinese, they still have a rigidly controlled political system, no free elections, no dissent, no political parties other than the Communist Party. Why would Cuba be different? Remember Tiananmen Square?

The push to lift the embargo comes mainly from left-wing media and academic circles. They have treated Castro’s 40-year dictatorship as somehow different from the rightist regimes that ruled Latin American countries for much of this century. And we Cubans in exile have lost the public relations battle. Most people have this idealized view of Castro that conflicts with reality but has nevertheless taken hold. Some in our own community argue that lifting the embargo would do away with Castro’s last excuse for his totalitarian regime. Reading Castro’s writings or listening to his speeches will demonstrate to any unbiased observer that he will not change his ways whether there is an embargo or not.

Some opponents of the embargo point out that we do business with China and Vietnam, both totalitarian regimes. My answer would be dismissed by Henry Kissinger, that illustrious practitioner of realpolitik, but it is very simple: Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Talk to Castro’s government? Yes, of course. Take measured steps in response to changes in Cuba’s political system? Yes. Allow people-to-people exchanges, baseball games and cultural visits? Yes. Lift the embargo unilaterally? Absolutely not.