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Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Clout of Cuban community is not enough
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Republican who wins the Florida primary will likely win the Republican presidential nomination, Rudy Giuliani told a group of Cuban-Americans last week in Hialeah, Fla.
“You’re going to have a big, big impact on who the nominee is going to be,” Giuliani said, promising not to support lifting a trade embargo against Cuba until democracy has come to that island nation.
Such promises, most likely sincere, are to be expected from both parties’ presidential candidates. But the day will come when such expressions of support will be followed by betrayal, as supporters of the Republic of China, also known as Taiwan, can testify. Cuban-Americans should steel themselves for that eventuality.
It’s reasonably certain that the embargo won’t be lifted during Fidel Castro’s lifetime. But it won’t endure until democracy comes to Cuba, either. U.S. Reps. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) have introduced legislation to lift barriers to travel and to ease trade restrictions.
“Why is our government telling us where we can and can’t go?” asked Flake in a joint appearance with Rangel before the libertarian Cato Institute. Rangel said trade and travel restrictions are “bordering on sophomoric.”
In Congress, meanwhile, the Bush administration last week managed a five-fold spending increase, to $47 million, on efforts to support dissidents in bringing democracy to Cuba. Democrats on the appropriations panel chaired by Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) had cut that spending to $9 million, but Cuban-American Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) and Albio Sires (D-N.J.) restored funding to the level Bush wanted. Supporting the Cuban-Americans were 66 Democrats and 188 Republicans.
Without question, Cuban-Americans are the prime reason, and perhaps the sole reason, the embargo remains. It has been effective. But it’s also true that the Cuban regime can survive for decades more with the embargo. While Cubans cannot import nonagricultural goods from the United States, and while foreign suppliers can’t sell equipment, such as airplanes, that have a defined percentage of American parts, Cuba is free to trade with the rest of the world.
American agricultural interests argue uniformly against the embargo, pointing out that the United States routinely trades with Communist countries, including Vietnam and China. The dollar has no conscience or ideology, and while Cuba — with a population of 11.4 million, less than a third the size of California — is not a major potential market and certainly not as a noncapitalist state, it does have potential interest to energy companies.
Reserves estimated at 6 billion barrels of oil have been discovered in an area of the Gulf of Mexico that Cuba divided into 59 deep-water blocks and started leasing seven years ago. About 20 have been leased. The oil could add to business interest in Cuba.
Cubans are working, too, to influence American public opinion, recognizing from the debate over Iraq that this nation lacks the will to sustain confrontation and that public opinion will change U.S. foreign policy. Cubans also understand that globalization and the Internet have turned most reasonably educated Americans into freelance diplomats, meaning that the U.S. government is severely limited in its ability to make a restrictive policy stick.
The embargo can be lifted after Castro’s passing, but slowly, in a way that induces economic and political reform while respecting Cuban sovereignty. Both American businesses and Cuban-Americans are due compensation for expropriated property, though they may not get the compensation they deserve, or any at all.
Businesses should get full value. Cuban-Americans should get something, a negotiated share of future oil royalties, perhaps.
The post-Castro world will force a lot of change on Cuba. Now it’s a country in a time capsule, stuck in 1959 with flashes of ’70s Soviet architectural atrocities. Its people live in a kind of harmonic balance with a world that no longer exists elsewhere. A government that tries to parcel out liberties while allowing a few new ideas and a little free enterprise will find itself overwhelmed. It can handle the embargo. It can’t handle freedom.
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