This is a great development, but it carries some risks. Is there a private market in Cuba that can absorb half a million new workers? Or are they being dumped into poverty with no prospects for employment?
And here’s the big debate question: Is it time to drop the Cuban embargo? I say yes. I think the Obama administration should react to this immediately by announcing that it welcomes the creation of new private businesses, and that it is willing to help create the markets Cuba needs by dropping the embargo for all products and services provided by Cuba’s new private sector.
There’s a golden opportunity here for trade that would benefit both countries, and which would cause an immediate increase in the standard of living in Cuba, which would be associated with free markets and private enterprise. There’s a potential here for a major good news story for both countries.
Personally, I think the embargo should have been dropped fifteen years ago. But it couldn’t be dropped for political reasons. But this shift to a private market gives both sides the ‘cover’ they need to support the elimination of the embargo. Democrats can do it without looking like they’re supporting Communism, and the Republicans can do it as a hand out to help kick start a free market economy in Cuba.
So, in other words despite the later news release from Castro saying he misspoke, his initial comments about communism failing were a precursor to these actions.
500,000 suddenly without a paycheck for the first time! Is the smoke from Cuba burning visible from Miami yet?
I’d move a little more slowly than you, though I have no problem with floating some diplomatic feelers. Move on things one step at a time. What’s important is if Castro dismantles his state reopression machine. That done, Cuba will likely become a easy-going Carribean democracy of mdoerate functionality in a relatively short span of time.
I think you are completely right. Unfortunately, I believe US politics is going to get in the way, what with there currently being no sense of bipartisanship even on foreign affairs matters. I am guessing the only way the embargo would end in the next several months is if Republican leaders in Congress called for it first, just to give cover to Obama.
Without need to consider the answer for myself, I will state that so far as any elected official need be concerned, it is not until American-Cubans have decided that the embargo should be lifted, that the embargo shall be lifted.
Despite what some people think, the United States did not embargo Cuba because Cuba has a communist government. The embargo was enacted when the Cuban government siezed property belonging to American citizens. So this economic reform has no legal effect on the status of the embargo.
Should the embargo be lifted? Yes, because it hasn’t worked and it’s probably helping prop up the Castro regime by this point. But that has nothing to do with this announcement.
Exactly. I think that it’s time to make some definite steps in ending the embargo. This would be a perfect ‘bold move’ by the Obama administration, if they simply get the process started and get the diplomats warmed up. Personally, if I were Obama I’d put out some feelers, send up some very positive trial balloons, open some front channel negotiations, then quietly tell the Cubans that we’ll slowly disable the embargo and open up our markets to Cuban, but culminate the end of the embargo after winning re-election.
ETA: Maybe too soon for such thinking, but I’m getting that ‘Berlin wall is coming down!’ feeling lately…
I agree, except that it does have something to do with this announcement in the sense that Cuba’s moves towards a free market give the Republicans and Democrats both cover to actually negotiate an end to the embargo. What was politically impossible before may have just become possible. But probably not before the midterm election. But this is the perfect thing for the Democrats to push for in a lame duck session.
My bet is that there isn’t sufficient punishment for our tighty-righty contingent. Abject repentance, just for starters. Wonder if the Gambino family can expect reparations?
I wouldn’t get too excited about these developments. It may look like 500,000 state jobs are going down the tubes, but from Castro’s perspective it undoubtedly means just the opposite.
I’ve been in favor of dropping the embargo for a long time. This development doesn’t change anything for me. Good luck getting Congress to act. If I’m not correct, it’s up to them, not Obama. Who wants to risk losing Florida in '12?
Maybe what we need is an official Administration announcement that it is U.S. policy that, whatever else happens in Cuba from this point on, as far as the U.S. government is concerned, those expropriatees from 1960 are never, ever going to get any of that property back, it simply will not be an Administration priority or even consideration, fuhgeddaboudit. Just to simplify things and clear the air.
Why do this? What American interest would be served by abandoning this claim (which is quite legitimate - the seized property was legally owned).
Isn’t an American willingness to overlook crimes committed by Third World dictators the kind of thing we’re supposed to be against? If we were ignoring some crime committed by a right-wing dictator during the Cold War, we could at least claim political expedience. But how does it serve the United States to exonerate Castro?
I agree. Why would making BrainGlutton’s statement simplify things? Seems to me it would complicate things by lumping legitimate claims in with illegitimate ones. It would allow party leaders in Cuba to convert state property to private property on their terms - ones not controlled by law and likely wide open to corruption.
There are successful models for allowing claims for property lost in wartime or revolution - better that those are followed than a simplistic blanket statement is made and hands are washed.
Quite true, but – and this is a very, very important point, and one of which we must never lose sight when dealing with Communist or post-Communist states – the government’s nationalization of that property was just exactly as legitimate and legal as the original ownership of it. It was an exercise of a power incident in state sovereignty and well-established in international law. N.B.: The just-compensation clause of the 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is not international law and never was.
Simply recognizing this would make clear that the U.S. does not make a sticking-point of the legitimacy of the Cuban Revolution as such, nor consider Cuba some sort of outlaw state whose works must all be undone. That is absolutely prerequisite to normalization of relations, is it not? We don’t know, after all, what will come after Castro – there might even be a revolution – but whatever it is, it won’t be a counterrevolution, like we tried to put through in the Bay of Pigs invasion. The pre-Castro Cuba is gone and will never live again, the exiles in Miami will never go “home” because the “home” they are thinking of no longer exists.
It would also signal that the end of Cuban Communism will not usher in a tangled mess of old-property-claims litigation. That reassurance would make the present leaders just slightly less reluctant to let go of the reins, I think.
:dubious: You are not seriously suggesting, I hope, that these expropriations deserve to be lumped under the same heading as human-rights abuses?
Why not suggest that as a step forward in simplifying and clearing the air in the Middle East, the Palestinians announce that they are renouncing all claims to any territory that Israel has occupied since 1949?
As for the argument that there was nothing wrong with the property seizure because the Cuban government declared it was legal, that’s just silly. By that standard, no government can ever do anything wrong.