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The Cuban Embargo |
September 2002
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The Cuban Embargo - 40 Years of Failure
After four decades, it is a matter of record that the US embargo on Cuba has failed to achieve its objective, the liberation of Cuba. This week's speech by President Bush only added to the cloud of foolishness that is America's Cuban policy.
This is not to say that Fidel Castro is a good guy, or that his regime has done the Cuban people any good. Some may argue that at the margins he has accomplished some good by keeping his island nation free of Yanqui imperialism. But there is little objective proof that he is anything but a vicious old man who only continues with his communist repression because he is incapable of the leap of imagination required to do anything else.
Regrettably, leaps of the imagination are equally rare in Washington, DC. Ex-President Jimmy Carter's call for an end to the embargo is, of course, the correct foreign policy decision. The embargo has been in place for 40 odd years, and so has Castro. No matter what the exiles in Miami may want, trade with Cuba needs to develop because not trading with Cuba has been a policy failure.
One of the definitions of insanity is the repetition of actions while expecting different results. The insanity of the Cuban embargo is that President Bush believes that it will, in its fifth decade, bring freedom to Cuba. Alternatively, if he does not believe that, then one can only conclude that he is cynically playing to the exiles in Florida - a state he'll need again in a few years time.
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