It's Time to Trade with Cuba

Two things should be clear concerning America’s Cuba policy: Everything the United States has tried over the past five decades has failed, and it is high time that Washington does something to help transform the country’s Communist system.

The impending transition of power from Fidel Castro to his brother Raúl gives Washington the chance to adopt a new strategy. But if the United States sticks to the current approach it will help consolidate Communist rule for many years to come.

A changed stance is crucial for many reasons, not least because it offers the chance to cut the link between Cuba’s professional skills and Venezuelan oil wealth. Thanks to its great success in education, Cuba has large reserves of well-trained doctors, nurses, teachers and engineers. The government of Hugo Chávez can now pay for these professionals to help not only Venezuelans, but people in many other countries. Venezuela is heavily out-spending the United States in humanitarian and development aid in the region, and Cuban skills are making Venezuelan money effective. This is occurring not just in Latin America. Cuban aid, paid for by Caracas, is now going to earthquake victims in Asia.

All of this is not bad in itself. The danger is that this Cuban-Venezuelan axis will stimulate anti-American populism across the whole region.

If the risks of keeping the status quo in place seem obvious, it is even more evident that Washington’s travel bans, economic sanctions, and the refusal to extend diplomatic ties to Cuba have not only failed, they have damaged Washington’s interests.

These tough measures have harmed both ordinary Cubans and Washington’s relations with Latin America and Europe. They have strengthened Cuba’s Communist regime by increasing the state’s grip on key economic resources, and they have helped cement Cuba’s alliance with Venezuela.

Since we have not succeeded in bullying the Cubans into submission, we should try to woo them by offering trade with the United States and integration into the international market system. How long could the Communist economy -- or the Communist government -- survive such an opening?

There may be good arguments for imposing tough sanctions against particular countries at particular times to bring about specific policy changes. This is true of the sanctions imposed on Iran and North Korea to curb their nuclear ambitions. But for such sanctions to work they must have international support, and, in the case of Cuba, there is no chance of this whatsoever.

There is a key practical and ethical difference between sanctions with specific goals and sanctions extended over decades that are intended to bring about regime change. Sanctions leveled against Iran today may be justified. But U.S. sanctions imposed in the era before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power blocked Iranian reforms, undermined the country’s liberals, strengthened the clerical regime’s grip on the economy and perpetuated its rule.

The Washington establishment talks of the superiority of the free market system, and America’s duty to spread that system in the world. Capitalism is by no means a cure-all, and even a capitalist Cuba might still challenge U.S. policies.

Nonetheless, the course of human development would tend to suggest that free market states are far more likely to try to resolve their problems in ways that do not disrupt the international economic stability on which all depend.

We stand to lose nothing by trying this approach with Cuba. We have already tried everything else without success.