I strongly believe that the United States should lift our embargo against Cuba. It’s long been the strategic goal of the Castro regime to keep the embargo up both for propaganda purposes and to keep the island’s population as dependent on the state as possible. We should stop helping them.
However we should do this with our eyes open. Cuba remains a tragically repressive dictatorship, as the beating of dissident blogger Yaoni Sanchez shows. Over on Reason.com this morning, Michael Moynihan has some reflections on the case. He calls actor Sean Penn “mentally challenged;” I think I’d prefer the term “deeply misguided”. You can follow Sanchez herself (in English) on her blog Generation Y.
Cuba is going to be a problem for American foreign policy for a long time to come. The U.S. and Cuba had a difficult relationship from the Spanish-American War of 1898 right up through Fidel Castro’s seizure of power in 1959. We are going to have more trouble after he and his brother leave the scene. Just think about this: whenever Cuba and the U.S. resume normal economic and political relations, Cuban-Americans are going to want to invest in the island. Overall, this is good. Cuba needs capital and Cuban-Americans are very well placed to figure out how the island’s economy can be reintegrated into the world system.
But this will result in a kind of two-class system in Cuba. One class will be noticeably richer and whiter than the other class; it will also have American passports and, like Americans anywhere, it will be entitled to American consular protection. It will also have a pretty effective lobby ensuring that the American government is receptive to its felt needs. Many other Cubans will victimized and left out.
Ever since Cubans began their struggle for independence from Spain, Cuban politics and American politics have been tangled up with each other. We started to get mixed up with each other in the nineteenth century; the entanglement deepened in the twentieth. It will be deeper still in the twenty first.
I don’t think Americans or Cubans are ready for this, but it’s coming all the same.
People like Yaoni Sanchez have an important role to play in making this difficult relationship work better for both sides; I hope people in the Cuban government (some of whom I know and, on a personal basis and all politics aside both admire and like) will find a way to let her and those like her do their thing unmolested. It’s not just the right thing from a moral and human point of view; it’s a necessary thing from the standpoint of Cuban national coherence and strength.