Yes or no–explain why.
Also, this thread is mainly about diplomatic relations but it you want to discuss why the U.S. should or shouldn’t lift the restrictions on travel and trade, go ahead.
The current policy is just a ridiculous failure. It has accomplished nothing. Literally anything would be an improvement over the current policy, and it can’t hurt to try a new approach.
I was expecting “join date Aug 2011” since we’ve done this so many times before. Anyway, I’ll say what I’ve said in all the other threads I posted in.
Yes. Every other country in the world can trade with them (except maybe a few), so there’s nothing they can’t get. More contact is better. We should tear down the wall. Some stuff was nationalized, but that’s kind of a risk you take when you own shit in 3rd world countries.
A second-term president might do it.
Or any president, once the Castro brothers pass on.
I was intending to set this thread up as a poll. However, I forgot there are no polls in Great Debates so it’s just another thread on a well-worn topic.
That being said, I think relations with Cuba should’ve been normalized at least 20 years ago with the lifting of travel and trade restrictions soon afterward. Of course, that’s because I have what might be called an amoral attitude toward diplomatic relations. There are only two circumstances where I think the U.S. should not have diplomatic relations with a country. The first is if we are at war with the country and the second is if the safety of our diplomats is threatened by the foreign government (e.g., the American embassy is seized like it was in Iran).
Yes.
The biggest reason it is still the way it is at this late date is politicians are afraid of pissing of Cubans in Florida and Cuba is a relatively small country so the economic impact of the continued trade embargo is very minor to the United States.
Spot on. If we could normalize relations with Vietnam and with Qaddafi’s Libya then there’s no moral or geostrategic reason to shun Cuba, but at the same time, in contrast to those places, there’s no major geostrategic or economic incentive for normalization either. So the domestic political consideration is decisive.
It’s now a race between what will happen first, the Castro brothers passing on or all the other Latino nationalities growing to outnumber the Cubans in Florida (the latter including a healthy dose of “Sorry, abuelo, but my *patria *is the US of A. Good luck with reclaiming the family farm.”) . My bet’s on the first scenario since in the second, the old Cubans would still be economically strong for another generation.
Yes. The only people who benefit from the boycott, embargo and non-recognition are the Miami anti-Castro good squad who make a living stirring up trouble by getting subsidized by the US govt because they can deliver a few votes. Everybody else suffers.
As I’ve said in other thread, I think we should…but really, I don’t see any need to rush it. 
Ok, just kidding there, but I doubt this is going to happen as long as either Castro brother is still shuffling about on this mortal coil. It will most likely take both of them dying AND some sort of normalization of relations with the new Cuba government for this to happen and the embargo to be lifted. That’s just political reality, since it’s not a big priority for most Americans (it’s hardly on anyone’s radar, unless, like me they want Cuban cigars for sale in the US)…and the folks who it IS on their radar are mostly opposed to ending the embargo without major concessions (including reparation and repatriation of their ‘lost’ property).
If I were God King I’d end the embargo…though I’d be more interested in a tithe of scantily clad Cuban females and boxes and boxes of fine cigars and rum…but since any US president is going to have bigger fish to fry, don’t hold your breath that it will end without some radical change in Cuba driving it.
-XT
Cuba is no threat to us. They will not turn us into commies. Eventually they might be a decent market. There is not reason not to normalize.
Threat has nothing to do with it…political reality is what this is about.
-XT
This.
Just because we have done it this way is no reason to keep doing it this way.
I don’t expect there will ever be any “reparation and repatriation of their ‘lost’ property”. So I suspect that the death of the Castro’s won’t change much. Probably it will take the deaths of the people who are demanding those concessions, or at least of enough of them that they become politically irrelevant.
We should do it - but no politician who wants to get re-elected will come out in favor of it because it’s too easy for his opponents to spin as “he supports communism!”
I am not sure that the communism threat has much traction anymore. Bachmannn did say today that most Americans she talks to fear the rise of Russia and communism. She talks to pretty specific crazies though.
Does she talk to a bunch of people who are unaware that the USSR collapsed 20 years ago, and Russia hasn’t been communist since then?
Communists and for that matter Socialists are just a name they call people they don’t like. They called Warren Buffet a socialist on Fox News this week. Pandering to the fears and hates of idiots is how they make their money.
Exactly. Because no one else cares enough to make it a priority.
-XT
Og yes. There is simply no good reason not to.