Photo credit: Seth Wenig, Associated Press
As I read the remarks of Ambassador Susan Rice, the U.S. Representative to the United Nations, in that body’s debate on the U.S. embargo on Cuba – which Rice called “stale” and stuck in the Cold War – I found myself repeatedly nodding, “I guess she’s got a point there.”
For instance, Ambassador Rice protested the hyperbolic use of the term “genocide” to describe the embargo; callous and harmful as the policy may be, it hardly qualifies as “the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.” She also noted the U.S. sovereign right to conduct its own bilateral foreign and economic policies, and urged members to consider that the U.S. views its position as a defense of the “basic norms embodied in the Inter-American Democratic Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
Rice asked the General Assembly to consider the Obama administration’s changes to the embargo, such as lifting restrictions on humanitarian donations, family visits and telecommunications services.
Mr. President, it is equally important to note that the United States has demonstrated that we are prepared to engage the Government of Cuba on issues that affect the security and well-being of both our peoples.
True: the Obama administration recently restarted migation talks (called off by the Bush administration), which represent the top security concern between our two countries.
Ambassador Rice also argued that the Cuban government must take some responsibility for its own policies that have contributed to economic pains there. And, quite rightly, Rice pointed out that there are many steps the Cuban government could take that might (and that is the operative word, isn’t it?) convince the United States to ease its embargo.
She did the very best she could - but not without a fair number of painful ironies and
misleading statements.
For instance, Ambassador Rice said the U.S. is the largest single source of Cuban food imports (it accounts for about 35% of imports), but these sales take place under enormous restrictions that, if lifted, could make the imports cheaper and lead to more food to the Cuban people (and a 2/3 market share for U.S. producers).
The Obama administration did lift major restrictions on telecommunications providers earlier this year, but do we really encourage the “free flow of information to the Cuban people” when the U.S. government continues to prevent hundreds of thousands of Americans from visiting the island?
Whether right or wrong, nations have the sovereign right to conduct their own economic and foreign policies. But the point would hold far more sway if the U.S. were to repeal the numerous provisions of law – such as those found in the Cuban Democracy Act and the Helms-Burton Act - that so impinge on the sovereign rights of other countries to trade with Cuba that many of them enacted blocking statutes in protest.
For nearly fifty years, the U.S. government has insisted its beef is only with the Cuban government, and that, as Rice so passionately argued, we only seek to improve conditions for the Cuban people. But how, exactly, does one improve human rights conditions by worsening them with restrictions on, for example, the sale of U.S.-sourced medical and building supplies? In the end, no matter our intentions in maintaining this embargo - itself a relic of the Cold War - it is the Cuban people who feel its effect.