Next Tuesday, the United Nations General Assembly will debate the "Necessity of ending the economic, commercial, and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba."
This will be the twentieth year the General Assembly has considered a resolution condemning the U.S. embargo. In every previous year, the resolution has been adopted in a rout.
In 2010, a resolution that called upon the U.S. to repeal the embargo was approved by 187-2. Only Israel voted with us. Our nation was condemned by our adversaries and abandoned by our other allies with the exception of three Pacific island nations -- Palau, Marshall Islands, and Micronesia --and they abstained. The policy was totally repudiated.
Next week it will happen again. But even if we suffer a defeat of similar magnitude, the vote is likely to attract scant attention.
The press has grown bored with a story it has covered nineteen times before. Embargo defenders will dismiss the outcome because they simply scorn the U.N. as aligned against America. The Obama administration -- which should hang its head in shame for enforcing a policy it inherited with such vigor -- will simply move along as if nothing much has happened. Even the General Assembly will quickly turn to other pressing items on its agenda such as Cyprus, armed aggression against the Congo, and the peaceful uses of outer space. If it's business as usual, the Cuba story will come and go.
But before this moment passes, it's appropriate to stop and remember how this policy started, what it does, and why the U.S. embargo unites the globe against us.
The U.S. embargo contains the most comprehensive set of U.S. economic sanctions that we impose on any nation in the world. From the beginning, the goal of the embargo was to make the Cuban people suffer so much more than they could bear that they would tear down a government we viewed as a Cold War security threat.
For five decades, the United States has tightened the screws as hard as it could: imposing sharp limits on Cuba's access to American food, medicines and visitors; banning almost all other business activity; using sanctions to stop third countries, including our closest allies, from trading with Cuba; blocking Cuba's access to high technology goods; even siphoning off some of its most promising thinkers by giving Cubans incentives to emigrate and persuading its highly-trained doctors to defect.
None of this caused an uprising or broke the back of the Cuban system. Nor has it ever stopped. A generation after the Cold War ended, the Soviet Union fell, and the U.S. intelligence community concluded that Cuba posed no threat to U.S. security, the regime of sanctions grinds on as if none of this ever happened.
How can this be?
In 2009, Amnesty International pointed out "There is no formal mechanism within the U.S. government to monitor the impact of the embargo on economic and social rights in Cuba."
It's actually worse than that. In reality, there is no formal process inside the U.S. government for assessing the impact of the embargo on the United States.
We hear few voices in the U.S. Congress, the State Department, or the White House asking the tough questions: Do our sanctions backfire and take away from everyday Cubans the prospect for leading more prosperous and independent lives? Is the embargo damaging our nation's standing in Latin America or harming our image across the world? Do U.S. sanctions cost American workers jobs, American businesses profits, and American citizens their liberties?
Even fewer are asking, if the policy has failed to achieve its goals, or if it still causes suffering among everyday Cubans, the presumed beneficiaries, isn't it time to change course and end the embargo?
We're not optimistic that the vote next week at the U.N. will prick the consciences of U.S. policy makers or spark a serious reexamination of the policy. More's the pity.
But if policy makers could do one thing, they should read the report of the Secretary-General that compiles statements from member states about the embargo and reports from U.N. agencies about how the embargo affects them.
The most arresting story comes from the United Nations Development Program. In late 2010, the U.S. government blocked a $4,207,904 payment from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS for programs in Cuba. This action threatened the purchase of life-saving anti-retroviral drugs for Cubans with HIV and put other efforts at testing, prevention, and education at risk. Six months later, after a tough negotiation, the funds were released. But the story begs the question: Why do we have an embargo against Cuba that blocks funds to fight AIDS?
One last point: you can read every comment by member nations and find not one sentence uttered in favor of the embargo. Not even by the United States. We take our government at its word that even it finds our position indefensible.
Follow Sarah Stephens on Twitter: www.twitter.com/sarahatcda
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Or step aside as it were
I do agree with one thing in the article: few in the US care what the UN does. It would be difficult to imagine how the UN vote on this issue could be less important than it already is. It is simply no one's business but our own.
YOU folks are totally brainwashed. In fact, given the incredible decline of the American economy, people outside the US wonder if there is any brain life worth washing!
Keep up the good work! -:)
When someone invents a word (by stringing together words he hardly understands) at the beginning of a paragraph, that's a sure sign what follows next would be pure ignorant BS.
Why??? Last time I checked, the Castro regime was still in power.
Once Castro and his regime is gone, we can reconsider our stance towards Cuba. Not before.
Clinton can visit Cuba and allow the news media to know. If an agreement can be reached, which has a great chance to, the end of the embargo and a trade agreement would likely allow 'some' changes for better human rights. It will likely continue be a dictatorship no matter if the castros are kicked out. Read the history concerning the US and Cuba and the number of times the could have had a democratic government and the reasons it failed.
REUTERS: Cuba says U.S. climbs to 5th leading trade partner-HAVANA | Thu Aug 14, 2008
(Reuters) - The United States ranked among communist Cuba’s top five trading partners for the first time in 2007 despite the decades-old U.S. trade embargo, as U.S. agriculture sales increased by $100 million. Trade data for 2007 posted on the Web site of Cuba’s National Statistics Office (www.one.cu) placed the United States fifth at $582 million, compared with $484 million in 2006, including shipping costs.
The United States, which began selling food to Cuba in 2002 under an amendment to the embargo, placed seventh in 2006 and 2005.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/08/14/us-cuba-usa-trade-idUSN1447847620080814
You just proved Ms. Stephen's points with your linked article - the embargo is costing U.S. businesses hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in lost trade opportunities.
Let me spell it out for you. The article talks about food exports to Cuba making the U.S. Cuba's fifth largest trading partner. Question: does the U.S. produce and export food only?
No? Without the embargo, the U.S. could easily be Cuba's number 1 trading partner. Won't even come close to exports to Colombia or Panama (under the new free trade agreements). The island is simply starved for infrastructure, factories, computers, etc - all built or coming from the U.S. How many billions do you think will all that amount to?
I suspect you have more reason other than practical economics to oppose the ending of the embargo. Your side lost the civil war, time to let go. The realities on the ground is no longer the same as in the 1950s when you guys left Cuba for Florida.
"Castrofascist."
When people string up words they hardly understand, that's all I need to know that what follows next would be pure unadulterated BS.
The same question -- why? could be asked about US unemployment for example.
The answer, quite frankly, is that US has a horribly broken system of government that is unable to effectively deal with any major or minor public policy issue other than war.
There is simply no mechanism or forum in existence for well reasoned, rational policy discussion. All policies are based solely on empty baseless rhetoric and ideology.
There is no room for an empirical approach only special interests and raw political ideology, regardless of the ultimate impact of any policy on people.
Why do they hate democracy so much?
Why do they hate democracy so much?"
You have got to be kidding! The UN is not some supranational government. The only voters who count, as to whether the US should follow this or that policy, are our own.
Despite some initial disagreement, there now seems to be a consensus around the figure of a minimum of $1.2 billion as the amount remitted yearly from Cuban Americans to their relatives in Cuba. Of this, the Cuban government assesses about 20 percent in various fees. If Cuban expatriates and their now adult children had not fled to the U.S. and elsewhere, the economy of Cuba would be in far worse shape than it is today. That's one of the many ironies of the Cuban Revolution
http://spectator.org/archives/2011/08/19/an-old-mans-island#
I know your daddy or granddaddy was probably a buddy of Batista that's why you're upset at someone suggesting a saner approach to a changed situation. No need to go ballistic on the rest of us.
It is so hard for you to understand????
By the way...... what difference you find between batista and castro??????
For us Cubans this is a regime called castro-batista regime.