To an impartial observer it might look like Cuba hurt the United States’ feelings when it went communist and the result has been a 50+ year hissy fit by the US. But the US has totally embraced China, which has committed more than a few misdeeds in its recent past.
Actually, the US should have grabbed Cuba way back when- by now it would be completely absorbed and be a hell of a nice state.
Since this is basically a political question, let’s move it over to Great Debates.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I completely agree. From a human rights standard, China is worse than Cuba. If we’re going to embargo anybody, it should be China. The embargo against Cuba exists because of the political power of the Cuban exiles in the USA.
It’s a little-known fact that President James Buchanan attempted to organize the purchase of Cuba from Spain, and Spain was willing to sell. Congress refused to allocate the money, though, because the Buchanan administration was very corrupt, and members of Congress feared that the President would simply steal the money.
There really isn’t a lot of logic to it. In fairness, Cuba is a less open society than the PRC, but that doesn’t explain our bizarre relationship to the place. Back in the sixties, we were extremely unhappy about Cuba going Communist because we saw it as a Soviet beachhead right off our coast. (See, for example, the Cuban Missile Crisis). But that really should have stopped being an issue by the end of the Cold War.
Really, it’s domestic politics. Partly just that our tradition has been to be hard on the Communist dictatorship, and so any softening of our position looks odd. But it probably has more to do with the very active and sizeable Cuban expat community in the US - they have very little love for Castro, and insist that their elected officials feel similarly.
Cuba doesn’t export as much cheap crap, and they aren’t a world power.
Back when Spanish control over Cuba was weakening, a lot of American politicians argued we should go to war with Spain to liberate Cuba. Their opponents said that these people didn’t really want to liberate Cuba; they wanted to take Cuba from Spain and make it an American colony. The first group denied this and said their intentions were pure - they were only against Spain and in favor of the Cuban rebels, not trying to build an American Empire.
So when the declaration of war against Spain was being debated in Congress, Senator Teller proposed an amendment to the declaration, specifically banning any American attempt to take control of Cuba after the war. The pro-war faction couldn’t turn around and argue in favor of Cuban annexation at this point so the Teller amendment became part of the declaration of war.
The result was that when the war was over, the United States did indeed take control of all the other Spanish territory it captured during the war: Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam. But it was legally prohibited from taking control of Cuba.
As for the embargo, it wasn’t officially enacted as a response to conditions in Cuba. It was enacted because Cuba nationalized American-owned businesses. It was until thirty years later that any political conditions were added to the embargo.
Yep…exactly. And it’s the key difference as to the difference between our relationship with China verse that of Cuba. There is still a large enough political faction in the US who won’t budge on our relationship with Cuba until and unless the questions about compensation are on the table. Possibly when those folks (and I guess their immediate family) die off, and/or when there is a serious regime change in Cuba things will change. In the mean time there just isn’t any political will to change our relationship with Cuba. As I’ve said in these discussions in the past, there just aren’t enough people in the US who care enough to push through a change in policy that most folks have seen as it is for most or all of their lives. Cuba has nothing (beyond cigars and sugar I suppose) that we want (not need), and we can get those things in other places at any rate.
China, however, is a HUGE potential market, so that’s going to be a rather large mitigating factor, regardless of how we feel about them and their internal politics.
At the beginning, there was a bit of logic in isolating a Soviet client state that was actively exporting revolution while sitting just a few miles off our shores.
That has failed to be a legitimate reason for at least 20 years, probably more.
The reason that we currently continue to act foolishly has more to do with the fact that Florida is a swing state on national elections and Cuban exiles make up a strong political force in that state. No one wants to act rationally in regard to Cuba as long as there is a possibility that such action will cost them Florida in a presidential race.
That Castro has been so (understandably) virulently anti-American for so long has probably not done anything to encourage Congress or the State Department to modify our overreaction to Cuba’s politics.
For that matter, we currently have stronger travel restrictions and embargoes on Cuba than North Korea! Of course, a big reason for that is that nobody really wants to travel to or do business with North Korea, whereas Cuba is a very nice tourist destination and a natural trading partner. A trade embargo against North Korea would have zero effect, whereas the embargo against Cuba has been a transformative fact of life.
I think the situation is somewhat similar with China. There’s obviously the political background with the cold war and the sino-soviet split, but even beyond that an embargo might not have been the most effective tool. We obviously do trade with them quite a lot, but the Chinese economy wasn’t particularly dependent on the US until very recently. A unilateral embargo simply won’t have the same effect on a country halfway around the world as it will on one in the US’s backyard.
[QUOTE=tomndebb]
That has failed to be a legitimate reason for at least 20 years, probably more.
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The basic issues are still unresolved, and again there simply isn’t enough give a shit in anyone to change the status quo. The only folks who DO give a shit are adamant…no change in policy until there is talk about reparations and regime change (or, at least reparations).
Understand, I’m all for taking the embargo down (before the anti-tobacco folks make it a felony to smoke an occasional cigar), but I think at this point we ought to hold out for regime change. It’s only a matter of time, IMHO, before the whole sorry mess collapses and a new regime comes in…and, that will be a driving force for change in the status quo, and one I think most folks will recognize and agree with.
Obama and the Dems could write off Florida this time, I believe, since it’s not critical to Obama getting re-elected. They COULD…if they really wanted too and felt strongly enough about it. But they don’t because no one outside of Florida really cares and it wouldn’t be worth their while.
Even when a state is “lost” for a particular election, it is always in play for some future election.
More to the point for now: No change could get past a Republican filibuster in the Senate and the House is Republican.
That, and the North Koreans won’t let them in anyway.
What would be a more interesting question would be what would China’s reaction be if we just up and annexed Cuba for ourselves right now? I am sure they would point to Taiwan and yowl in protest, although I am not sure what kind of a relationship China has with Cuba that’s on the level with the one the US has with Taiwan.
How many Cuban ex-pats are there anyway, and should they be allowed to dictate US foreign policy if, in fact, normalization of relations with Cuba was (overall) a good thing?
I do not believe there will ever be a chance of normalizing realtions with a
Communist Cuba as long as Florida is a razor’s edge swing state. This may
apply to all state as well as national elections in Florida.
Furthermore, advocating normalizaion might well be a collatoral net vote loser
in most if not all other constituencies
You do not have the slightest idea what you are talking about. No candidate,
no matter how far ahead in the polls, will ever consider writing off Florida’s 29
electoral votes, and then some.
[QUOTE=colonial]
You do not have the slightest idea what you are talking about. No candidate,
no matter how far ahead in the polls, will ever consider writing off Florida’s 29
electoral votes, and then some.
[/QUOTE]
Please read for comprehension. I said they could…not that they should or would. I was merely illustrating a point, not making a serious suggestion that they should so something that stupid.
You mean just invade Cuba? That would be a bad idea.
Sure, the United States is a big country right next door to Cuba, a smaller weaker country. We obviously could invade Cuba if we wanted to.
But there are lots of other small weak countries in the world that border stronger countries. We’ve been working for decades to establish the precedent that a country shouldn’t invade a weaker neighbour just because it can (see Germany v Belgium, Germany v Poland, USSR v Finland, China v Tibet, Arab League v Israel, Iraq v Kuwait). Do we really want to throw that all out now and go back to the idea of “might makes right”?
I think FGIE was making an ironic point in comparing the US to China vis-a-vis the Taiwan situation. It’s not exactly analogous, of course, since Taiwan was actually part of China in the past, while Cuba never was part of the US (though they were part of the Spanish Empire, which composed parts of the US). My guess is FGIE was speaking mostly tongue in cheek there and going for the irony of the situation, not really advocating the US invade Cuba. 
Yeah. Since China and Cuba were being compared in the OP, and since China kinda has its own little Cuba situation going on with Taiwan (and yes, its not exactly the same, but similar in some regards) I hypothetically wondered what China’s reaction would be if we just up and took over Cuba, after all of our support and whatnot for Taiwan’s democratic existence. And the fact that while the US probably doesn’t really want anything to do with Cuba, China seems to want Taiwan back really badly, but it would be a BIG problem for them due to our pledge to defend Taiwan.