While We’re at It, Let’s End the Embargo

On New Year’s Day a Vietnamese-born American pilot of a small Cessna “bombed” Havana with anti-Castro pamphlets and proved that most arguments for and against the U.S. embargo of Cuba miss the point.

While sanctions played a largely positive role during the Cold War, the policy now has become a strategic threat to Americans and Cubans because in the post-Cold War setting, it could lead to armed conflict between the United States and Cuba.

On Saturday, in response to the intruder, Cuba sent up two MIG fighters and the U.S. launched an F-16 fighter. Both sides remained cool and no confrontation occurred.

But what if the plane had dropped a small bomb? Remember that in 1996 Cuba shot down two small planes piloted by Cuban Americans who Havana said had overflown Cuban territorial waters.

Looked at differently, would the United States allow a small Cuban or Syrian plane to fly over Washington, dumping things on the White House and city? Why should the U.S. expect Fidel Castro to allow another such intrusion?

The embargo has become a strategic liability because:

* It sets up potential confrontations like this and earlier ones, usually involving Cuban Americans, which could seriously escalate.

* It polarizes Cubans in Cuba and abroad, thus increasing the possibility of a civil war in Cuba, and possible U.S. military intervention in Cuba.

* It contributes to a climate of hostility in which highly politicized conflicts are inevitable, such as that over the Cuban boy whose mother died in November trying to get him to the United States.

* It encourages pressure groups to lobby wishy-washy politicians and sometimes threaten the interaction of branches of the U.S. government in the analysis and defense of U.S. interests, as occurred in 1998 when pro-embargo legislators delayed the delivery to Congress of a Pentagon intelligence report because it concluded that Cuba poses no threat to the United States.

* It antagonizes our allies around the world and complicates cooperation on other important issues.

* It deepens divisions between Cubans who fled the island and those who stayed, and will make cooperation between them more difficult in the post-Castro period.

* It sets the stage for generations of hostility between Americans and Cubans because of the imperialistic demands of the Helms-Burton legislation, which is now the embodiment of the embargo.

Embargo supporters are rewriting history to defend the policy. For example, some cite two reasons for the embargo: confiscations of U.S. property, which is true, and Castro’s inhumane policies, which is false.

Given the economic condition of Cuba today, no U.S. policy short of a massive loan or gift to Havana could help investors get a cent back for their lost properties. And while Castro’s inhumane policies have long been condemned by many in Washington, the primary motivation for the embargo was Cuba’s role as an ally of the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

When the Cold War ended, the humanitarian critique was elevated to justify the continuation of what became an increasingly irrational and counterproductive policy. The problem is not that democracy and human rights are unworthy, but that they cannot be achieved or even advanced with the resources the U.S. is willing to commit. The embargo simply reinforces a stalemate that could take a turn for the worse.

Arguments by opponents of the embargo often are no more convincing. There is no good evidence that lifting the embargo will speed up Castro’s demise or improve the lives of the Cuban people, though there is at least a better chance of these things happening without the embargo. It does give Castro a scapegoat for his own failures and brutalities.

The embargo continues largely because most politicians see no urgency in changing a policy that is supported by a noisy pressure group waging an understandable but counterproductive vendetta against the Cuban dictator. Among presidential hopefuls, only Pat Buchanan has called the U.S. policy the failure that it is while others, Republican and Democrat, hem and haw.

In the end, if the U.S. military keeps out of the matter, as it should, Castro and Cuba’s broader internal dynamics will determine what happens on the island. The only constructive move the United States can make is to reduce the negative impact the policy has on Americans and Cubans. But to do this we must not persist in foreign policies based on domestic political agendas.