The continued failure of US-Cuba policy

A member of the US Chamber of Commerce spoke at the Brookings Institution the other day regarding US policy towards Cuba. Some highlights of his remarks:

• The US trade embargo on Cuba is an anachronism that has "made a martyr out of a tyrant." Worse, the embargo has actually effectively served to prop up the country's regime, which likely would not have been able to withstand five decades of free trade with the US. Indeed, economic and political freedom tend to be closely linked. 

• Prior to the imposition of the embargo, Cuba was the US's seventh largest export market. Absent US participation, countries such as Venezuela, China, Vietnam, Canada and Brazil are filling the void.

• The US embargo on Cuba fits within a broader series of policy failures in the region including "Buy America" legislation that has angered Canada, a refusal to live up to NAFTA obligations regarding trade with Mexico and the failure to ratify outstanding free trade agreements with Colombia and Panama. 

Ted Piccone of Brookings, meanwhile, makes some good points in a recent opinion piece:

We've all heard the stories about modern life in Cuba — menial wages, long lines for public services, fewer subsidies for basic necessities, restrictions on travel both on and off the island, vigilante committees that monitor and harass anyone who questions the regime. No doubt, life for the Cuban people is tough, and only getting tougher. 

So why should the United States make it even harder for them?

...It is hard to understand how a unilateral policy of isolation and punishment advances the cause of democracy and human rights in Cuba. Even in the bad days of the Cold War, the United States championed support to rights advocates behind the Iron Curtain while simultaneously conducting direct diplomacy with states in the Soviet sphere. When history eventually turns in Cuba, as it will, should we be on the side of the Cuban people who are fighting for a better future? Or will we be remembered for acts of aggression, denial and obstruction?

...At the end of the day, the future of Cuba rests in the hands of the Cuban people. Like oppressed peoples everywhere, they deserve the full support of the American people as expressed through acts of solidarity, dialogue, trust and direct assistance. That can happen only if both governments get out of the way and allow normal human discourse to flow between two peoples too long separated by history and mistrust.

Washington does absolutely nothing to draw Cuban democracy one day nearer by compounding the misery of its people. A United States confident in its ideals and compassionate towards others should not sever its ties with other countries, but expand them. The economic embargo and travel ban on Cuba are the definition of failed policies, and it is past time for them to end.

Cuban economic reform

Writing in today's Wall Street Journal, José Azel comments on Cuba's much-hyped economic reforms:

There is no interest in introducing the market socialism of a Deng Xiaoping, who famously told China's people in 1984 that "to get rich is glorious." [Nice! -- ed]

...After much debate and with trepidation, the Cuban economic "reformers" have decided to permit the 500,000 to 1,300,000 Cubans being fired from state jobs to solicit permits to become self-employed in certain activities. It is instructive to examine a handful of the 178 trades and professions that are supposed to help rescue the economy.

 

Trade No. 23 will be the purchase and sale of used books. Trade 29 is an attendant of public bathrooms (presumably for tips); 34 is a palm-tree pruner (apparently other trees will still be pruned by the state). Trade 49 is covering buttons with fabric; 61 is shining shoes; 62 is cleaning spark plugs; 69 is a typist; 110 is the repair of box springs (not to be confused with 116, the repair of mattresses).

Trade 124 is umbrella repairs; 125 is refilling of disposable cigarette lighters; 150 is fortune-telling with tarot cards; 156 is being a dandy (technical definition unknown, maybe a male escort?); 158 is peeling natural fruit (separate from 142, selling fruit in kiosks).

Yes sir, the Cuban economy is primed and ready for takeoff...

The Simpsons in real life

Season 9 of The Simpsons, "The Trouble with Trillions":

Mr. Burns: Oh, so the island's not for sale, eh? Well, will you at least permit us to live in your socialist paradise?

Fidel Castro: You talking about Cuba?

Jeffrey Goldberg, journalist for The Atlantic:

During the generally lighthearted conversation (we had just spent three hours talking about Iran and the Middle East), I asked [Fidel Castro] if he believed the Cuban model was still something worth exporting.

"The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore," he said.

Of course, most of us figured that out a long time ago.

Update: Looks like I wasn't the first one to see this particular parallel.

Pic of the day

Cuban dissident Marcelo Manuel Cano Rodriguez, right, hugs former Cuban prisoner Manuel Ubals Gonzalez, left, upon his arrival at a hotel in Madrid, 17 Aug 2010. Source: VOA News

Note the tattoo.

The dissidents speak

Recently freed from a Cuban prison, political dissident Ricardo González Alfonso describes the conditions faced during his incarceration:

They say prison is a school, and it’s true. I did my best to be a good student and kept back my tears. I succeeded so well that my prison companions still think me a brave man. 

Within a few months I could find my way pretty well around the labyrinths of shipwrecked souls. I learned the secrets and legends of killers for hire, crimes of passion, traffickers in illicit powdery substances, would-be emigrants whose clandestine departures had been no secret to the state — even thieves who’d share their teaspoon of sugar on days of hunger. 

Zoology was one class we had every day. I learned to live with rats, and even came, on certain nights of our tropical winter (which is winter, nevertheless) to stare at them with an urgency not unlike what people call appetite. I was a solitary friend to the deft spiders that sometimes freed me from the torturous buzzings and blood-shedding bites that accompanied my insomnia. 

I became well versed in cosmic solitude and silence. I remember being in a cell no wider than a man with outstretched arms. I also grew familiar with fetid overcrowding and unceasing clamor. Months of unending darkness, months of eternal light. 

Fellow released political prisoner Normando Hernandez Gonzalez describes a similar hellish existence:

 “The first month I spent in jail, I only ate eight times because the food they gave us was subhuman and so rotten that if you offered it to a dog, he’d turn away,” Gonzalez recalled. “For refusing to wear prison overalls, I was sent to a dark cell for 101 days without seeing the light of day. There wasn’t a single inch of my skin that wasn’t covered in septic mosquito bites. I was forced to sleep on the concrete floor with rats and cockroaches crawling over me.”

A sober reminder of both our own freedoms and that there are other prisons besides Guantanamo on the island.

Quote of the day

House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman John Tanner (D-TN):

"Our current ban on travel and trade with Cuba makes absolutely no sense - restrictions on agricultural trade in particular. Lifting these travel and trade restrictions is about doing what is best for the United States: It is in the best interest of Americans who want to travel to Cuba. It is in the best interest of American farmers with export opportunities in Cuba. It is in the best interest of the American workers who will fill the jobs created by these expanded Cuba travel and trade opportunities. And it is in the best interest of the Cuban people who need the hard currency that increased tourism will generate to get by."

The trade and travel restrictions on Cuba are both counterproductive and immoral.

Cuba travel ban panel

Today I attended a forum on the Cuba travel ban held on Capitol Hill and sponsored by the Cato Institute. The event's highlight was featured speaker Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), while an unintended lowlight was walking by Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) as he prepared to begin a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee, no doubt looking for more ways to increase government regulation and impinge on the free market.

Some notes:

• Flake said there are 178 co-sponsors for legislation to lift the current travel ban. Flake said the bill faced a "tight vote" in the Foreign Affairs committee.

• Flake attributed the current uphill battle for passage to a reluctance on the part of people to concede long-established positions on Cuba or anything to the other side. He also noted that $50-60 million is currently spent enforcing the travel ban here in the U.S., and there are entrenched interests which would like to see this continue.

• Flake's message for Fidel Castro: "We plan on lifting the travel ban, and if the Cuban government doesn't shape up we'll lift the whole embargo." Flake described lifting the travel ban and economic sanctions as the real "get tough" policy in Cuba -- and he's right.

• Ian Vasquez of the Cato Institute claimed that a majority of Cuban-Americans favor ending the embargo. (The Obama Administration earlier this year lifted the travel ban for Cuban Americans -- a very smart move) This is welcome news.

• Vasquez opined that Raul Castro will not be able to resist calls for economic liberalization after Fidel goes to the great collective in the sky. This is because very few people in Cuba -- like China -- actually believe in communism (unlike, for example, the U.S. Congress).

• He added that an end to the embargo is unlikely to produce huge changes in the country as Cuba is a poor country and unsafe for investment, thus businesses would likely remain wary of investment. An end to the travel ban, however, would be much more effective as it would increase interactions with Americans and would help support civil society and the informal (black market) economy.

• The current travel ban is inconsistent with U.S. policy as no such prohibitions exist on Americans seeking to visit North Korea, Iran or Libya (when sanctions were in place on that country).

Update: Editorial from the Los Angeles Times on the Cuba sanctions here.

Rethinking the Cuba embargo

This is good:

"We must recognize the ineffectiveness of our current policy and deal with the Cuban regime in a way that enhances U.S. interests," wrote Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., in a report dated Monday.

It would really impress me if Obama were to push for a repeal of the embargo, which is a completely failed policy that has accomplished nothing. If we really want to promote regime change in Cuba the best thing we could do is bombard the country with MTV, McDonald's and Major League Baseball while we send waves of American tourists ashore. This would do more to expose the bankruptcy of the regime's ideology than any other possible move.

Even if it did absolutely nothing to loosen the Castro brothers' grip on power it would still promote economic growth and enhance the welfare of the Cuban people, which should be our first priority anyhow.

One thing for certain is that cutting off people from the outside world and leaving them both ignorant and impoverished is hardly a successful formula for promoting a free and democratic country.

Cuba and the Castros

Henry Louis Gomez, not unreasonably, says that the onus should be on the Cuban government, not the U.S., to shift policy gears:

No, you won’t be reading many columns in the mainstream media espousing the unpopular view that it’s the totalitarian dictatorship 90 miles to our south that should change, must change, before the United States modifies its stance. But then again, by now we should expect no less from them than contempt for our country and total awe and respect for its enemies.

I understand the sentiment. Far too many Americans are willing to look the other way on Cuba's transgressions and its horrible human rights record because the country enjoys high literacy rates and has socialized medicine, which to some people is the ultimate acid tests that separates the civilized from the unenlightened.

That said, waiting for Cuba to change before making a move gets us nowhere and strikes me as a policy more deeply rooted in personal animus against the Castro brothers than helping the Cuban people. We have to set the odious Fidel and Raul aside and instead focus on adopting an approach that will improve the standard of living for the average Cuban, who are forced to live in a de facto prison:

The confining shadow of Fidel’s tropical curtain, on the 50th anniversary of the revolution, was captured in the emptiness before me — of the Malecón, but even more so of the sea. I noticed over subsequent days that Cubans perched on the seafront wall rarely looked outward. When I asked Yoani Sánchez, a dissident blogger (www.desdecuba.com/generaciony), about this, she told me: “We live turned away from the sea because it does not connect us, it encloses us. There is no movement on it. People are not allowed to buy boats because if they had boats, they would go to Florida. We are left, as one of our poets put it, with the unhappy circumstance of water at every turn.”

What Cuba needs is more contact with the outside world, not less. The embargo only succeeds in impoverishing the Cuban people. Rather than undermining the Castros it only strengthens their hand by making the people even more dependent on the government. Worse, it hands the Cuban dictatorship an issue on which they can seize the moral highground and helps promote the sense that the island is locked in an ongoing struggle with the U.S. Perpetual crisis, let us remember, is the lifeblood of the state.

Just before the Obama victory, I lunched in the city’s Little Havana district with Alfredo Durán, a former president of the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association. Inevitably, we ate at the kitschy Versailles Restaurant, long a social hub of the Cuban-American community. Durán, who was imprisoned in Cuba for 18 months after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, is a man mellowed by age. Furious with Kennedy and the Democrats in the invasion’s aftermath — “there was a feeling we were sacrificed, left to eat possum in the swamps around the bay” — he decided after the cold war that anti-Fidel vitriol was a blind alley and the trade embargo counterproductive. Fellow veterans were furious; they stripped his photo from the premises of the veterans’ association.

“I say, ‘Lift the embargo unilaterally, put the onus on Cuba,’ ” Durán told me. “If we negotiate, what do we want from them? They have very little to give.”

Exactly. Imagine what would happen if the embargo was lifted tomorrow. Fidel and Raul would no longer be able to blame the country's ills on the big bad U.S. and would instead be more responsible for their own travails. It would be a huge public relations coup for Washington. More importantly, it could help revive the Cuban economy and improve the sad lot of its people.


Nothing would do more to undermine the Cuban government than Starbucks and MTV. Even if, like China, the Castro brothers hold on to power (which, purely from an actuarial standpoint is unlikely to continue from much longer) that should be a purely secondary concern to the state of the Cuban people. Exposure to Western goods and commerce would also help promote an exchange of ideas and better prepare the Cuban people for democracy when that day comes.

Let's remember who is the archaic socialist outpost here and which side stands for free people and free markets. We're the ones that should have nothing to fear from free exchange, not Havana.

Cuban defections II

It never ceases to amaze me how easy it is to find apologists for the Cuban regime here in the U.S. People casually brush aside the lack of political rights and the poor standard of living with retorts about how Cubans enjoy free health care and high literacy levels. Any acknowledgment of Cuban shortcomings is inevitably coupled with blame on the U.S. embargo (which, to be fair, we should all concede is a failed and inhumane policy).

Perhaps the most damning indictment of Cuba, however, is the willingness of so many of its people to risk their lives on the high seas to get to Florida, along with the periodic defection of its athletes. In soccer alone, which I follow near religiously, a total of 15 players have defected since 2002, with two of those defections occurring last week here in the DC area.

These defections are so damning because it completely belies the narrative of Cuba as a compassionate society. Read the story told by one of these defectors:

Reinier Alcantara did not believe he would have another opportunity to pursue freedom, so on Thursday night, as he and his Cuban soccer teammates were preparing for a team dinner at the Crystal City Doubletree Hotel, the 26-year-old forward made his break.

Sharing details in a telephone interview with The Washington Post last night, Alcantara said he was in the lobby, wearing a casual shirt, shorts and tennis shoes, when he saw the coaches wander into the gift shop. He rode the escalator down to street level and "started running like crazy and didn't look behind," he said through an interpreter who arranged the interview and requested anonymity for political reasons.

After sprinting for about eight blocks, Alcantara said he flagged down a taxi and, with the few words of English he knew, told the driver, "Go, go, go!"

About a half-hour later, unaware of where he was, Alcantara said he got out at a McDonald's, paid the driver with dollars he put aside, and called a Cuban friend who lived several hours north of Washington. While he awaited his friend's arrival, he found a cheap hotel and attempted to sleep, all the while worried he would be discovered by Cuban officials.

..."I felt I let the team down, but it is a decision I had to make for my future. I want to be free. It was my decision to make, to leave my family and my country, not knowing when I could go back. But I needed to be free for myself, for my life, to choose my future."

Alcantara described poor treatment of soccer players: bad food that was rationed, terrible field conditions and a lack of equipment, cleats and uniforms. Because there are technically no professional athletes in Cuba, Alcantara said his occupation was officially maintenance worker at a sports complex, a job he never performed.

Before departing Cuba late last week, he did not tell his parents of his plans and never discussed it with his teammates because "no one on the team trusts anyone," he said. At least one member of Cuba's traveling delegation, he claimed, is a government spy.

After Thursday's training session in Washington, the team returned to the hotel and the players reported to their rooms. The telephones had been removed by Cuban officials, a standard practice to discourage players from communicating with outsiders on foreign trips.

He showered, then sought out a team official for permission to lounge in the lobby. Once there, he waited until he was out of view of the coaches and "realized it was my only opportunity. I ran and ran and then told the taxi driver to 'Drive me far away,' " he said. "I was so nervous. I didn't know where we were going, but I knew I was in a free country and everything would be okay."

Bad food. Spies. Lack of trust. Lack of freedom. Stop the apologies, there is no excuse.

Cuban defections

Not really a surprise. Amazing, however, how the Cuba apologists in the US come out of the woodwork when stuff like this happens.

Cuba

This is pretty sad from McCain:

MIAMI, FL -- In the city that nearly half of the nation's Cuban Americans call home, McCain again today criticized Obama, saying that his rival's willingness to meet with Raul Castro would send "the worst possible signal to Cuba's dictators."

McCain also hit Obama on what he characterizes as an inconsistency in the Illinois senator's position on the existing embargo restrictions placed on the island nation.

"Senator Obama filled out a questionnaire a few years ago basically advocating lifting the embargo on Cuba," McCain said today. "Now he is saying that it has to be conditional. What those conditions are is very nonspecific."

When running for Senate in 2003, Obama said that normalized relations with Cuba would "help the oppressed and poverty-stricken Cuban people while setting the stage for a more democratic government once Castro inevitably leaves the scene." He has since advocated that normalization should be contingent upon concessions from the Cuban government.

I saw Obama interviewed by Wolf Blitzer yesterday and Obama noted that the embargo-led policy towards Cuba of the last 40+ years hasn't worked -- and he's absolutely right. That McCain is willing to ignore this basic fact in a bid for votes from Miami's Cuban community doesn't speak too well to his foreign policy views.

Cuba

Over the weekend I was talking to someone I know who received their master's degree in International Development at the University of Amsterdam. She said that some of her fellow students took a vacation to Cuba and came back totally amazed that their socialist model didn't work. She was serious.

I asked if these students had ever bothered cracking a history book or paid a visit to Eastern Europe. Apparently not.