Do we not trade with Cuba because of Communism, or is it something they did? Are we still trying to prove that marxism/communism is bad?
I didn’t understand this during the cold war, and I still dont get it. I know he pissed us off in the 60s, but that was another world then.
China’s too large a market to ignore.
There’s not a very politically influential group of Chinese exiles demanding that we not trade with China. Although, I suspect that even if there was, business interests would trump them given the huge potential of the Chinese market. There’s just not enough business demand to trade with Cuba to overrule the Cuban exiles.
So, mostly, it’s reason #1.
Yeah, except he’s still pissing off some people, and he still doesn’t have anything worth significant quantities of money. Hence, no real reason to de-embargo his country. Compare with Vietnam or China, who while being enormously annoying now and again also represent giant steaming piles of freshly printed $$$$$$$ to influential groups with lobby power.
In a word - hypocrisy
If we could persuade the Cuban exile community to move out of a swing state with 27 electoral votes to a committed state with 9 or 6 votes (Alabama or Mississippi), we could probably recognize Cuba the next afternoon.
It won’t happen, so the Cuban people who want to lead normal lives (and the commerical interests salivating to get at new sources for tobbaco and sugar) simply have to wait until Castro dies.
The big problem isn’t Cuba, it’s Castro himself. China, Vietnam, Russia, heck, even Iran, none are today headed by the actual person who did the things that pissed us off.
The US will normalize relations with Cuba when Castro dies, not before.
The Cuba exiles in Florida are an important factor, but another important factor is that people believe that Cuba should be in the US’s sphere of influence, because it’s so close. After Canada, Mexico and the Bahamas, it’s the closest foreign country to the lower 48 states, so it’s especially annoying that it defies the US. Other communistr countries were/are a lot further, so they weren’t/aren’t as annoying.
Does Castro really “defy” the US anymore?
As my brother would say, “he talks a lot of smack”.
I’m sorry, but in what way does Cuba defy the US? Cuba is a sovereign state, and as such has it’s own laws and customs. How can Cuba defy the US when it is in no way beholden legally to the US?
One way is that it confiscated American property at the time of the Cuban Revolution, and has ever since refused to compensate for that. (But it’s not the only country that’s ever done that, of course – just the closest one to the US in recent history).
As far as I can recall (though I might be mistaken) it is the ONLY time US property has not been ‘returned’ and/or compensated.
Iran nationalized the oil industry in 1979 and gave the shaft to the American oil companies located there.
Don’t forget there are also American commercial interests anxious to avoid competition from Cuban tobacco and sugar.
No, the 20th century already proved sufficiently that Marxism and Communism are bad.
You didn’t understand it during the Cold War? They were allied with the Soviet Union. That’s like saying you didn’t understand why America didn’t trade with Italy during World War II.
There’s several reasons, anyways, that our relationship with Cuba is different from that with China:
America had a pretty big presence in Cuba, and with the old regime. Castro struck directly against that pissing off American business interests and by association politicians.
The whole Bay of Pigs–>Cuban Missile Crisis thing. There’s not really an event too similar to that with China. There is the Korean war, but we’ve found it convenient to blame China’s involvement on MacArthur’s bellicose disobedience.
Cuba was always very close with the USSR, China on the other hand, specifically did not want to become subserviant to the USSR, thus it wanted to make it known that while it was Communist that didn’t mean it was in the Soviet sphere. So China was ready and willing to move closer to the United States during the Cold War, and strategically speaking the U.S. would have been stupid to take not take advantage of that.
The economic reasons already mentioned (ie China is big potatoes, Cuba is small potatoes.)
Cuban expats already mentioned.
There’s a lot of reasons why Cuba/U.S. don’t get along. It really is time to bury the hatchet though, as aside from Castro’s sometimes meddling and the Cuban expats none of the reasons we embargoed Cuba really matter anymore.
ahem…to expand upon Martin Hyde 's #2
before castro was batista (we’ll skip urrutia, because he was a puppet of castro’s anyways). batista was pro-US. castro screwed that up by defying batista (and his military’s constant blundering at a point) and eventually overthrowing him. one of the first things done in cuba after the revolution was the Agrarian Land Reform, which nationalized (already mentioned) most, if not, all of the american-owned land. after that, it became a little more snippy between the two nations.
the us (supposedly) blew up a huge cargo ship loaded to the gills with belgian munitions cuba also needed oil and supplies, so they turned to the ussr. the soviet union bought yearly quotas of sugar, so the us told everyone not to sell the ussr OR cuba any oil tankers.
there just so happened to be a tanker glut at that time and they had no problem finding a bunch of tankers by waving some money around. the us tightened the embargo, so cuba nationalized the rest of the american land (the factories, mills and the refineries themselves).
then the us broke negotiations completely. of course, when castro was still fighting batista, he went to the us for some support. the us was going to give him money, but only if he asked. castro would have taken money, but he wasn’t going to ask for it. it definitely wasn’t the cause itself.
look at it like a playground fight. someone took the others’ ball. there’s pushing and shoving. there’s name calling. someone starts swinging. moreor less, it’s the same thing.
Sheer idiocy, definately.
Nothing bad would happen if we traded with Cuba, and lots of good things, the best of which would be undermining communism. The entire affair has had the stink of stupidity for decades now.
The Cuban expats are one of the most irrational interest groups in the country. At least when lawyers lobby on behalf of their profession, they’re at least working in their own interests. The anti-Castro contingent has managed to keep Castro in power in their former homeland for decades longer than he would have lasted without an embargo and trade restrictions.
Not least, because they seem to think that someday, after Castro goes, they’re going to get back the old sugar plantation or the old Havana townhouse. Ain’t gonna happen. No post-Castro government, whatever its form or ideology, would have the slightest interest in restoring property expropriated by Castro.
We don’t trade with them either, do we?
The official reason, of course, for the embargo is to undermine the Castro regime by inducing the populace to revolt. I can’t ever recall a situation where this has worked; the leaders don’t suffer, but get a new scapegoat to blame the problems of their rule on (the same thing happened in pre-war Iraq during the embargo of the 90s).
In fact, I think we’ve seen more results from the other approach that we’ve taken with China, trading quite openly with them, causing the society to be more open, and a slow process of natural rights expansion (that hasn’t happened yet) instead of walling them off from the world.
Count me in as another supporter of lifting the Cuban embargo; a policy made with the best intentions that worked 180 degrees from that intention.