By Christopher Caldwell
Published: April 17 2009 19:27 | Last updated: April 17 2009 19:27
A message of reconciliation has gone out from Washington, albeit a
confusing one. On the eve of this weekend's Summit of the Americas in
Trinidad, the White House announced that it will no longer be a crime
for Americans to make gifts of fishing tackle, dog medicine or
soap-making equipment to a citizen of Cuba, provided he is not a member
of the Communist party. Visits to Cuba are unlimited and so are
remittances – provided you have a relative there who is a second cousin
or closer, or live with a person who has such a relative. You are free
to lay fibre-optic cable in Cuba, and engage in most kinds of
telecommunications work, but other forms of business contact remain
off-limits.
President Barack Obama claims the new regulations do not mean a
revocation of the US trade-and-travel embargo against Cuba, which has
been in place since John F. Kennedy imposed it in 1962. But in fact, the
new policy is forcing Americans to confront the possibility that they
have been going about the liberation of Cuba in the wrong way.
The case for the embargo remains what it always was – making communist
Cuba pay a price for the autocratic rule of Fidel (and now his brother
Raúl) Castro. The case against it is that it is a relic of the cold war
that hurts Cuba's citizens more than its government. The embargo remains
because most Florida Cubans want it to remain. Most Americans are
indifferent. Republicans have tended to tighten the embargo, Democrats
to loosen it. Bill Clinton permitted Cubans to visit the island once a
year. George W. Bush cut it to once every three.
Mr Obama's plan has some bizarre elements, such as the granting of
travel rights on ethnic grounds. We know why Americans of Cuban
ethnicity would want to go to Cuba more than other Americans. That they
should be allowed to go to Cuba more than other Americans is an outrage
against republican principles.
It is true that the Obama administration inherited a biased policy.
Messrs Clinton and Bush both offered special travel privileges to ethnic
Cubans and certain occupational classes (journalists, academics, human
rights activists). But the new administration's lifting of all limits on
Cuban-Americans makes the injustice more glaring, and expanding the
definition of "family" makes it more profound. It changes a privilege
based on sentimental ties into a privilege based on ethnicity. It is
another sign (along with affirmative action and the widespread use of
undocumented labour) that Americans are now quite comfortable having
different classes of citizenship.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs has claimed the policy is effective
in practice. He quoted the president as saying: "There are no better
ambassadors for freedom than Cuban Americans." But is the superiority of
American-style freedom over Cuban communism such a close call that it
requires the best ambassadors to argue it?
When it comes to sanctions and embargoes, the central issue is how often
they hurt the regime (almost never) and how often they hurt the people
(almost always). The White House has made clear that its opening is
directed at the Cuban people. Unfortunately, they can be reached only
through the regime. The Castro government skims 20 per cent off the top
of all remittances sent home, a rate that White House aide Dan Restrepo
described as "usurious" and Mel Martinez, Florida's Cuban-American
senator, called "despicable".
It still might be a price worth paying. East Germany's currency-starved
communist rulers hastened their end through their willingness to grant
their citizens some freedom of movement in exchange for Deutschemarks.
So when the White House says, on the one hand, that it aims to
strengthen foes of the regime and, on the other, that it will demand new
gestures from Castro, it is not being illogical. In fact, it is being
sensible.
In its first quarter-century, the embargo against Cuba was a powerful
means of expressing America's enmity, at a time when Cuba had done
plenty to earn it. It was a way of satisfying voters' sense of justice,
showing the high price of crossing the US and demonstrating that, for
Washington, profits took a back seat to strategy. It provided a useful
example to countries choosing sides in the cold war. But it was not an
effective tool for change within Cuba, because the cost of US enmity was
not particularly high. Subsidies from the USSR replaced trade with the US.
Like a lot of things in life, alas, the embargo got stronger as its
raison d'être got weaker. Its golden age came in the decade after the
threat of communism receded. Between the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act and
the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, both of which really tightened the screws,
the advanced economies were developing the internet while Havana
professionals were bused off to cut cane in the countryside as part of
the "special period in a time of peace". Whether or not one joined the
new economy really mattered, economically and politically.
It matters less now. China and Russia prove the embargo's enemies wrong
– trade does not provide the impetus to democratic reform that we once
thought. But the continuing financial crisis proves the embargo's
defenders wrong, too – imposing autarky looks almost like doing Cuba a
favour. Cuba may have few assets but they are 100 per cent non-toxic.
If Mr Obama is defending the embargo, he is defending it in a way that
makes manifest its obsolescence and illogic. His policy is open to the
accusation that it is a tangled mess. But it also shows signs of having
been designed that way, so that unravelling it will mean unravelling the
embargo, too.
The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard. His book,
Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the
West, is published in May
More columns at www.ft.com/caldwell
FT.com / Columnists / Christopher Caldwell - Isolation will not free Cuba
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