Tema: Lift the Cuba Embargo?

Cuba's "bailout", by obtaining US-backed credit lines as well as the external debt of over $60 billion, will guarantee the continuation of the Castros regime, delaying instead of accelerating a transition to democracy.

Another excellent point by point editorial at Foreign Policy by Nestor Carbonell on the embargo.

Think Again: Engaging Cuba
Foreign Policy: Think Again: Engaging Cuba

By Nestor Carbonell
Posted April 2009

Why dealing with the Castro regime is a fool's errand.

“It’s Time for the U.S. to Reach out and Engage the Castro Regime.”

Watch out!Before embarking on any attempt at rapprochement with the Castro regime, U.S. President Barack Obama would be wise to review his predecessors' experiences.

Gerald Ford's negotiations with Fidel Castro's representatives had to be called off when 15,000 Cuban troops landed in Angola. Jimmy Carter's efforts led to the opening of interest sections in Havana and Washington, but hopes for normalization were quashed when the Castro regime deployed troops to Ethiopia and subsequently unleashed the Mariel boatlift, which brought 125,000 refugees to Florida, including more than 2,700 convicted criminals and misfits. Several foreign-policy experts called the boatlift an act of migratory aggression.

With the Cold War over, President Bill Clinton tried anew to improve U.S. relations with Cuba, fostering people-to-people contacts. These efforts were foiled by a crisis of refugee rafters in 1994 and again in 1996 when Cuban jet fighters shot down two unarmed planes flying over international waters on a humanitarian mission.

The circumstances have changed since then, but the Cuban regime (now under the dual leadership of the Castro brothers) essentially remains the same. So, at the very least, caution and a step-by-step approach are called for in any new attempt to engage with this wily regime, which has managed to exploit naivité and signs of weakness to its advantage.

“The Embargo Is a Failure.”

Depends. Some would say the embargo hasn't worked because Cuba's totalitarian regime remains in power. But it's also exhausted and weaker. The regime today faces disgruntled apparatchiks, cracks within its system, a critical economic and financial situation, and growing restlessness and dissent among the population.

The embargo is the only leverage the United States has to ensure a democratic transition, if not under the Castro brothers, then with their successors. Why give up something for nothing? The European Union did that by unilaterally lifting its diplomatic sanctions against the Cuban regime, but Europe's hopes for human rights improvements have so far been in vain. Despite striking out yet again during his trip to Havana last month, European commissioner for development and humanitarian aid, Louis Michel, said that "Cuba-EU relations may go very far." He also hailed the importance of boosting collaboration between both sides. All this while more than 300 Cuban political prisoners remain behind bars under brutal conditions.

Cuba today is virtually bankrupt, with a huge external debt it is unable to serve or repay. According to the Paris Club group of creditors, Cuba owes close to $30 billion to its trading partners -- the second-highest level of indebtedness reported by the group. Given the sharp decline in oil prices, it is unlikely that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez will be able to maintain the current level of subsidies and other financial assistance granted to Cuba (to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars annually).

Under these circumstances, the Castro regime has embarked on a charm offensive with a single objective in mind: a U.S. bailout. The regime is looking to Uncle Sam for additional dollars via American tourists, plus commercial lines of credit and access to international banks and monetary funds for the renegotiation or cancellation of its external debt. That is leverage the United States could guardedly use -- not to provide life support to a battered tyranny, but to secure meaningful changes that will hasten the democratization of Cuba.

“Raúl Castro Is More Pragmatic Than His Brother.”

Wishful thinking. Remember that Raúl Castro was largely responsible for building the totalitarian-military apparatus in Cuba. He has promised reforms, but those reforms have been more cosmetic than real. Cubans can now legally go to hotels they cannot afford and buy computers without access to the Internet. Farmers have been leased state-owned land, but without the necessary capital, fertilizers, technology, and tools to make it productive.

Raúl Castro said he would encourage open debate, yet dissidents are constantly harassed and detained. Even several high-level government officials, accused by Raúl as deviationists, were recently purged and forced to repent, Stalin-style. The current Politburo has been largely militarized, with key members of the old guard loyal to Raúl. Lacking the grip and charisma of his brother, he fears the "reformists" who are starting to emerge, hence Raúl's interest in shoring up his prestige and authority with high-level negotiations with Washington and the readmission of Cuba to the Organization of American States and other international forums. He is only looking for concessions that will prop up his internal standing, not real change.

“The Embargo Allows the Regime to Blame the U.S. for Cuba’s Problems.”

Who cares? The Castros have never needed help in coming up with reasons to blame Yankee imperialism or the CIA for any criticism or discontent on the island. Dissidents are constantly being accused of serving the enemy (the United States). Even Spain -- a staunch Castro supporter -- was recently lashed by the ailing ruler for helping the "genocide empire" with its anti-Cuba policy.

But it is safe to say that most Cubans long ago realized that the main cause of their calamity is not the external U.S. embargo, but the internal government blockade. Except among the government nomenklatura, there is very little animosity toward Americans in Cuba. The dream of most Cubans today, absent a change that will unshackle them, is to reach Miami, one way or another, to renew their lives with freedom and opportunities to prosper.

“Cultural Exchanges and Tourism Can Hasten Political Change.”

If only. Cultural exchanges would be great if U.S. students, professors, intellectuals, scientists, and artists enjoyed in Cuba the same rights of mobility and expression that their Cuban counterparts are granted in the United States. As for tourism, more than 15 million tourists have gone to Cuba in the last 10 years, primarily from Canada and Europe. They have had no discernable impact on the regime, other than providing hard currency, and have had very limited interaction with the local population. Under the existing system, a kind of apartheid on the Caribbean, Cubans are barred from entering tourist enclaves (most of them are outside Havana) and penalized for engaging in discussions or accepting publications deemed counterrevolutionary. In any forthcoming negotiations, attempts should be made to remove these barriers.

“Cuba Is No Longer a Threat to the United States.”

Don't be so sure. The fact that Cuba, without Soviet backing, is no longer a direct military threat does not make the regime that rules the island a benign dictatorship. Its biotechnology capability, developed in conjunction with Iran, and its close relationship with North Korea pose serious concerns. Cuba continues to harbor terrorists from ETA, FARC, and ELN, as well as U.S.-convicted criminals and fugitives.

Cuban officials have been indicted in the past for trafficking drugs from the island to the United States, and today, according to the Miami Herald's summary of a report by the U.S. Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, "Cuba is doing little to stop drug smuggling, and … its cooperation with U.S. efforts is sporadic and limited." Most ominous is the Castro regime's continued support of Chávez's authoritarian and expansionist government with some 40,000 Cubans in Venezuela, including intelligence and military officers and educational "indoctrinators." For many populists in Latin America, Castro's Cuba remains an attractive and contagious symbol of anti-U.S. defiance.

“U.S. Engagement with the Castro Regime Is the Best Hope for a Democratic Cuba.”

Not at all. The hope lies primarily with the silent majority on the island, which is no longer so silent. It includes the brave members of the dissident and human rights movements who remain at the vanguard; the political prisoners who from their cells remain undaunted; the wives of those prisoners parading and demanding the release of their loved ones; intellectuals challenging the Communist Party's rewrite of Cuban history; the priest who sent an open letter to Raúl Castro demanding drastic reforms; tourism workers objecting to stifling taxes; comedians making fun of the government; bloggers debunking the lies spread by the regime; and the Cubans who, during a recent art fair in Havana, went up to the podium, shouted "Freedom!", and were warmly applauded by the audience.

This surging dissident movement, conscious of its rights and determined to be the protagonist of Cuba’s future, needs to be encouraged and supported by the United States and others as Solidarity was in Poland: with sufficient funds and tools for civic, peaceful resistance, and with enlightening radio and TV transmissions that can overcome the regime's jamming and provide the same impetus for change that Radio Free Europe did in the 1980s.

This dissident movement, part of the larger civil society, will eventually coalesce with reformists from within the government's ranks and pave the way for a democratic transition in Cuba. Forget the Castro brothers; these are the Cubans the United States must engage with.
Nestor Carbonell is an international public affairs consultant and author of And the Russians Stayed: The Sovietization of Cuba and Luces y Sombras de Cuba.

Should the Cuban Embargo Be Lifted?
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/04/29/should_the_cuban_embargo_be_lifted_96232.html

ByAlvaro Vargas Llosa
Real Clear Politics
April 29, 2009

WASHINGTON -- Most Americans seem to reject the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba. According to a Washington Post/ABC poll, 57 percent of Americans now oppose the policy. A survey by Bendixen & Associates shows that only 42 percent of Cuban-Americans continue to back it.

I have been conflicted on this issue for years. Until not long ago, I favored the embargo. As an advocate for free trade, I would normally have called such a measure an unacceptable restriction on the freedom of people to trade with whomever they pleased. But I thought that trading with a regime that had killed, jailed, exiled or muzzled countless of its citizens for decades was not a worthy objective, as it would also preserve that dictatorship. Any transaction with Cuba would also benefit the government. After all, the authorities were already skimming 20 percent of the remittances from Cuban-Americans and 90 percent of the salary paid to Cubans by non-American foreign investors.

Eventually, I admitted to myself that there was an intolerable inconsistency in my thinking. No democracy based on liberty should tell its citizens what country to visit or whom to trade with, regardless of the government under which they live. Even though the Castro brothers, Fidel and Raul, would obtain a political victory in the very short run, the embargo could no longer be justified.

But this is not the reasoning coming from the most vocal critics of U.S. sanctions these days. Many of them fail to even mention the fraud that is a system which bases its legitimacy on the renunciation of capitalism and at the same time implores capitalism to come to its rescue. There is also an endearing hypocrisy among those who decry the embargo but devote hardly any time to denouncing the island's half-century tyranny under the Castros.

Another risible subterfuge attributes the catastrophe that is Cuba's economy on Washington's decision to cut off economic relations in 1962 after a wave of expropriations against American interests. The amnesiacs conveniently forget that in 1958, Cuba's socioeconomic condition was similar to Spain's and Portugal's and the standard of living of its citizens was behind only those of Argentines and Uruguayans in Latin America. Many of the critics also seem to suffer what French writer Jean-Francois Revel used to call "moral hemiplegia" -- a tendency to see fault only on one side of the political spectrum: I never heard Cuba's champions complain about sanctions against right-wing dictatorships.
Sometimes, sanctions work, sometimes they don't. A study by Gary Hufbauer, Jeffrey Schott, Kimberly Elliot and Barbara Oegg titled "Economic Sanctions Reconsidered" analyzes dozens of cases of sanctions since World War I. In about a third of them, they worked either because they helped to topple the regime (South Africa) or because they forced the dictator to make major concessions (Libya). Archbishop Desmond Tutu told me a few months ago in San Francisco that he was convinced that international sanctions were crucial in defeating apartheid in his home country. In the cases in which the embargo worked, the sanctions were applied by many countries and the affected regimes were already severely discredited or weakened.

In the cases in which sanctions have not worked -- Saddam Hussein between 1990 and 2003, and North Korea today -- the dictatorships were able to isolate themselves from the effects and concentrate them on the population. In some countries, a certain sense of pride helped defend the government against foreign sanctions -- which is why the measures applied by the Soviet Union against Yugoslavia in 1948, China in 1960 and Albania in 1961 were largely useless.

In the case of Cuba, the Castro regime has been able to whip up a nationalist sentiment against the U.S. embargo. More significantly, it has managed to offset much of the effects over the years in large part because the Soviets subsidized the island for three decades, because the regime welcomed Canadian, Mexican and European capital after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and because Venezuela is its new patron.

But these arguments against the U.S. embargo are mostly practical. Ultimately, the argument against the sanctions is a moral one. It is not acceptable for a government to abolish individual choice in matters of trade and travel. The only acceptable form of economic embargo is when citizens, not governments, decide not do business with a dictatorship, be that of Burma, Zimbabwe or Cuba.

Álvaro Vargas Llosa is a Bolivian writer and political commentator on international affairs with emphasis on Latin America. In this article, that by coincidence has the same title than the one written by Bert Corzo, he exposes the moral reasons for abandoning the embargo. Until recently he was in favor to keep the embargo.

I've never understood why Cuba is always able to "blame" the U.S. embargo for everything the embargo does. At the beginning of the embargo, there was some immediate dislocation and adjustments, but in relatively short order things were back to normal; other trading partners (communist block) rush in and fill the gaps. For over 30 years the embargo was a non issue. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Castros regime received support from ideological bedfellows such as the USSR, China, Venezuela and Iran and there is already plenty of tourism income from the other major countries of the world.

You don’t need to look further; here you have the answer from the “horse” mouth:

“It is necessary to impose financial, economic and material restrictions to dictatorships, so that they will not take roots for long years….Diplomatic and morals measures do not work against dictatorships, because these make fun of the Governments and the population”.- Fidel Castro

(Excerpt from the book “Fidel Castro and Human Rights”, Editora Política, Havana, Cuba, 1988)

What will bring "Change" to Cuba are free elections, the freeing of all political prisoners, and the implementation of a market economy.
Everything else is “mental masturbation!”

The survey by Bendixen & Associates, cited by Vargas Llosa, shows that only 42 percent of Cuban-Americans continue to back it.

The phone interview among 400 Cuban and Cuban-Americans adults in Florida, New Jersey and other states took place on April 15-16, 2009, few days after President Obama announced the relaxation of the travel restriction to Cuba. The margin of sampling error is +/- 5%.
http://www.bendixenandassociates.com/studies/National_Survey_of_Cuban_Americans_on_Policy_towards_Cuba_FINAL.pdf

A national telephone survey conducted by Rasmussen, released April 13, 2009, and conducted April 9-10, 2009, show U.S. voters evenly divided over whether the United States should lift its long-standing economic embargo of Cuba. 36% say the United States should lift its embargo on Cuba, 35% say that the embargo shall be maintained, and 29% are not sure what to do about it. 83% have an unfavorable opinion of Fidel Castro, including 52% who view him very unfavorably.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/36_favor_lifting_u_s_embargo_on_cuba_35_disagree

The Cuban Research Institute of the Florida International Universitypublished on March 20, 2009 the results of their survey, which included 1,000 randomly selected Cuban-Americans. The opinion survey was conducted during the presidential elections on November 2008. 57 percent of participants supported the continuation of the Cuban embargo. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3.6%.
Link: http://www.fiu.edu/~ipor/cuba-t/

A survey conducted by McLaughlin & Associates, January 25-26, 2009, and published February 4, 2009, among 500 Cuban-Americans registered voters throughout Florida, these were the results: 72%

En una encuesta de opinión realizada por McLaughlin & Associates en enero 25 y 26 de 2009, y publicada el 4 de febrero de 2009, entre 500 Cubano-estadounidensesvotantes registrados en La Florida, estos fueron los resultados:Un 72% de los entrevistados están a favor de mantener el embargo, y un 58% favorece las restricciones impuestas en 2004 a los viajes. El 69% apoyan la prohibición de los viajes turísticos a Cuba. El margen de error de la encuesta es de +/-4.5%.

Link: http://media.miamiherald.com/smedia/2009/02/04/10/poll.source.prod_affiliate.56.pd

What Cuba Embargo?
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=477329

OPINION
Posted 05/19/2009 06:05 PM ET

Trade: Many Americans favor ending the trade embargo on Cuba, saying sanctions don't work and Cubans' lives will improve. But a recent AP report unwittingly proves that trade only props up the oppressive regime.

Some 34,000 American tourists sneak into Cuba illegally each year, determined to get an "authentic" Cuban experience on Varadero Beach or in old Havana.

In Cuba's old hotels, they sip daiquiris, a pre-revolutionary Cuban cocktail, like Ernest Hemingway. These travelers kick in a share of the $1.2 billion tourist income to the Cuban economy.

The Associated Press found the experience they get is largely Made In America. The daiquiri mix used in Havana, for instance, is the same stuff you get in an Atlanta fern bar.

The AP also found the Communist Party's propaganda "newspaper" in the tourist hotel is made from genuine Alabama wood pulp.

Meanwhile, the Cuban bureaucrats who deny that same Alabama newsprint to a free press go shopping in special stores for the party elite brimming with goods stocked from — you got it — Uncle Sam's empire. Ordinary Cubans get nothing.

The whole tourist experience is bogus, with U.S. businesses telling AP that since Cubans are too poor — making $18 a month, on average — to buy their goods, they want more U.S. tourists to do so.

This shows that what passes for an embargo on Cuba really isn't one. The U.S. sells $718 million in goods to Cuba through a 2000 legal loophole that permits the sale of food, medicine and lesser-known goods like chemicals, crude materials, machinery and transport equipment, according to the Census Bureau.

The goods do nothing for average Cubans. No, these goods merely prop up the Castro regime through the circular dynamic of tourists and goods. The daiquiris come from the U.S., the tourists follow to drink them, and Castro's regime skims the profits.

No end to the embargo will stop that, because there is no consumer market for goods or services in Cuba; there's only bureaucratic distribution. The one thing Cuba's regime cannot create is a real economy that produces things of value, like tasty daiquiris.

For an authentic Cuban experience, tourists would need to experience rationing, shortages, long lines and bureaucratic indifference, because that's the real product of Cuba's regime.

The tourist activity is pernicious, because for outsiders it creates an illusion of a nation that only needs goods. The AP report shows that goods are plentiful — or potentially so.

The real problem is communism — not lack of trade. The only people the embargo's end will help are the party's oppressive elites.

Their first interest is in perpetrating their hold on power. If U.S. goods and tourists achieve that, then goods and tourists it will be.

Investor’s Business Daily pull back the curtain to expose the great and powerful media, academia and legislative smoke and mirror show.

Dorgan Seeks Frustrated Creditor Status
http://www.capitolhillcubans.com/2009/07/dorgan-wants-to-become-frustrated.html

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Last week, the Russian Federation's Audit Chamber revealed that the Cuban regime failed on three occasions to pay installments on the US$355 million credit deal it signed with Russia on Sept. 28, 2006.

This is just the latest episode in a saga that, in 2009 alone, includes:

1. Reports by Mexico's La Jornada and Spain's El Pais newspapers that hundreds of foreign companies that transact business with the Cuban regime's authorities, have had their accounts frozen since January 2009 by the regime-owned bank that is solely empowered to conduct commercial banking operations in convertible currencies, Banco Financiero Internacional, S.A. ("BFI").

2. "Cuba has rolled over 200 million euros in bond issues that were due in May, as the country's central bank asked for another year to repay foreign holders of the debt, financial sources in London and Havana said this week." Reuters, June 9, 2009.

As a reminder, in Castro's Cuba, you can only do business with the government, as private business activity severely restricted.

Yet, the National Journal reports this morning:

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., will offer legislation today to change a provision in the 2000 law that allows agriculture trade with Cuba so that the Treasury Department cannot require the government of Cuba to pay for food before it is shipped, Dorgan said Tuesday.

During the Senate Appropriations Committee markup of the FY10 Agriculture appropriations bill, Dorgan said he had considered offering his Cuba amendment to the bill, but that he had been told that some members of the committee "would have an apoplectic seizure" so he will instead offer it today on the Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill.

Dorgan noted that the Treasury Department had initially allowed Cuba to follow the normal commercial pattern of making payment before goods arrive in the country, but that in 2005 the Bush administration decided that "cash in advance" meant payment for the goods before they left the country.

Dorgan said he would introduce the measure because he has failed in his attempts to convince Treasury officials to change their position. "Someone down at Treasury apparently still can't hear," Dorgan said. "We've had meeting after meeting after meeting."

EDITOR'S NOTE: The U.S. can also join this ever-growing club of Castro's frustrated creditors by supporting Senator Dorgan's legislation.

Hasn't anyone learned any lessons about extending easy credit yet? What does it take?

Senator Dorgan intend to stick US taxpayers with the bill, this is not ignorance of Cuba's deadbeat status, it's criminal intent on his part.

These politicians are being influenced and manipulated by those Cuban Investment Experts that want the embargo to end without any real change in Cuba's government. Their job is to make sure that we continue to loosen sanctions of the embargo, so they can continue and secure deals that they currently have and plan for the future. They are very cleaver and are getting away with it. They control the fate of the Cuban claims and also what's going on with the embargo.