Human rights, diplomacy, and the Cuba Embargo

The Cuban Democracy Act means you can cross Havana off your list of potential spring break destinations again this year.

Thanks to the 1992 act’s codification of a long-standing embargo, American holiday makers and those eager to expand their cultural horizons have been largely banned from setting foot on the island for the past 50 years.

More importantly, the embargo has cut Cuban exports off from the United States, the largest and closest market, making the embargo a major contributor to the island’s depressed living conditions.

If promoting democratic governments is our aim, we certainly have some work to do to make our foreign policy consistent around the world.  Al-Jazeera Opinion contributor Mark LeVine recently called attention to some of the ways our foreign policy defeats itself when he wrote about the recent revolution in Tunisia.

According to LeVine, while the United States has admirably hoped for democratic governments, we have actually favored stability in the Middle East against respect for human rights, supporting regimes like those of Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

If our desire to create prosperity and stability in the Middle East undermines our support for human rights there, our heavy-handed and punitive approach to dealing with Cuba’s government, sadly, is equally ineffective at bettering the lives and liberties of most Cubans.

Anyone can recognize our current administration’s noble intentions in calling on the Cuban government to release political prisoners.

Yet to make democratic government and respect for political foes’ rights a precondition to normalizing relations with Cuba fails to appreciate what we know to be effective foreign policy.

The fact that China keeps Liu Xiaobo, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and democracy advocate, imprisoned on vague charges of political subversion does not stop the United States from entertaining Chinese President Hu Jintao at a White House State Dinner.

The last 40 years of Chinese-U.S. relations demonstrates the unsurprising fact that friends may be willing to follow our lead and heed advice more quickly than enemies.

Since Richard Nixon visited China in 1972, China has gone from being in the throes of the Cultural Revolution to an increasingly open society.

And it was diplomacy, not embargoes, that allowed President Obama to stand alongside the Chinese president in Washington last week and emphasize the “universal rights of all people.”

In contrast, the Cuban embargo does little damage to Cuban leaders. It supplies them with an easy “villain” to blame for all Cuba’s problems, a technique that may have helped them stay in power for the last half century.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton essentially made this observation last year when she speculated that the Castro government likely did not want the embargo to come to an end.

It’s time to overhaul our policies toward Cuba. An embargo that economically hurts average Cubans and drives them into the arms of a government with a less-than-stellar human rights record does nothing to promote democracy.

If we instead try to draw them closer as friends, maybe we will gain another friend willing to listen attentively and seriously weigh our suggestions.


E-mail: wallacen@indiana.edu