In Reason, Steve Chapman wonders if the US embargo has actually propped up the very regime it was intended to topple:
The U.S. embargo of Cuba has been in effect since 1962, with no end in sight. Fidel Castro’s government has somehow managed to outlast the Soviet Union, Montgomery Ward, rotary-dial telephones and 10 American presidents.
The boycott adheres to the stubborn logic of governmental action. It was created to solve a problem: the existence of a communist government 90 miles off our shores. It failed to solve that problem. But its failure is taken as proof of its everlasting necessity.
If there is any lesson to be drawn from this dismal experience, though, it’s that the economic quarantine has been either 1) grossly ineffectual or 2) positively helpful to the regime.
The first would not be surprising, if only because economic sanctions almost never work. Iraq under Saddam Hussein? Nope. Iran? Still waiting. North Korea? Don’t make me laugh.
What makes this embargo even less promising is that we have so little help in trying to apply the squeeze. Nearly 200 countries allow trade with Cuba. Tourists from Canada and Europe flock there in search of beaches, nightlife and Havana cigars, bringing hard currency with them. So even if starving the country into submission could work, Cuba hasn’t starved and won’t anytime soon.
Nor is it implausible to suspect that the boycott has been the best thing that ever happened to the Castro brothers, providing them a scapegoat for the nation’s many economic ills. The implacable hostility of the Yankee imperialists also serves to align Cuban nationalism with Cuban communism. Even Cubans who don’t like Castro may not relish being told what to do by the superpower next door.
