Is It Time to End the United States Embargo Against Cuba?

Trump Classifies Cuba as State Sponsor of Terrorism, Worsening Relations

A little more than a week before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, President Donald Trump, alongside Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, re-designated Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism.” Barack Obama had withdrawn the designation in May 2015 as part of a refreshing reengagement policy marked by restored diplomatic relations and increased travel and commerce between the two nations. While these latest sanctions bar travel and all remittances sent to Cubans from relatives in the United States, they are but a small, final piece of a four-year assault against Obama-era improvements to U.S.-Cuba relations.

President Trump began rollbacks of normalized relations in June 2017 with a national security presidential memorandum that introduced new sanctions targeting the Cuban tourist sector, including restrictions on 111 hotels and two tourist agencies. In early 2019, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on shipping companies to prevent the transport of Venezuelan oil to Cuba. Trump’s threats of “highest-level sanctions'' disrupted foreign supply chains to the point that international banks withdrew critical support worth billions in food imports. Furthermore, the Cuban government considers Washington’s decision to reactivate Title III of the Helms-Burton Act—waived for the previous 22 years—an attack on its sovereignty and a breach of international law. Title III allows U.S. nationals to initiate legal action against Cuban entities or foreign companies which maintain commercial relations with Cuba. The unilateral coercive measures and extraterritorial application of this title are so extreme that the European Union has voiced “strong opposition.”

At the 116th Congress in September 2020, Senators Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) introduced the bipartisan Combating Trafficking of Cuban Doctors Act of 2020, following accusations by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo levied against Cuban doctors allegedly coerced and forced to work in foreign countries for the purpose of exploitative “sinister interference in their affairs.” The New York Times furthered this narrative in publishing an exposé on the interference of Cuban doctors in Venezuelan elections. The article relied on faulty testimony and has since been proven inaccurate. John Kirk, an expert on Cuban international relations at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia and author of Healthcare Without Borders: Understanding Cuban Medical Internationalism, describes these claims as “exaggerated;” “Cuban doctors represented the threat of a good example of what public health could be—and that’s why they had to be stopped,” says Kirk.  

The financial impediments imposed by the embargo and the smear campaign against Cuban medical diplomacy have negatively impacted Cuba’s COVID-19 response efforts. Despite these challenges, more than 2,000 Cuban doctors and nurses were sent to 23 countries within the first two months of the COVID-19 pandemic. This included an emergency contingent of 53 medical professionals sent to Italy’s hard-hit Lombardy region at the height of Europe’s outbreak. 

However, attacks against the Cuban medical brigade also function as an extension of economic sanctions. While Cuba often volunteers their doctors to crisis zones, such as in West Africa during the Ebola outbreak and in response to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, they also generate revenue by leasing medical professionals to wealthier nations. In 2018 alone, international medical assistance generated $6.4 billion for the Cuban government, which was used to pay for their free healthcare and education systems. There has been no evidence that the Cuban political elite exploit this profit; in fact, Transparency International ranks Cuba as one of the least corrupt countries in Latin America. 

History of U.S. Embargo Against Cuba and Its Effects

Following the overthrow of U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in the waning days of the Cuban Revolution, U.S. Cold War politics viewed communist Cuba as an immediate threat. John F. Kennedy’s Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, intended to assist developing nations, authorized “a total embargo upon all trade between the United States and Cuba,” specified in section 620. In 1982, Ronald Reagan was the first U.S. president to designate Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism.” And in 1992, Bill Clinton further strengthened the embargo with the Cuban Democracy Act (CDA), which specified the need to “seek a peaceful transition to democracy” through sanctions “directed at the Castro government,” but in support of “the Cuban people.” During Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign he admitted that isolating Cuba had “failed to advance U.S. interests.”

The embargo has crippled the Cuban economy and quality of life for the Cuban people. For instance, the CDA prohibits foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations from selling to Cuba, limiting Cuba’s access to critical medical equipment and raising their prices. The embargo has prevented the import of essential chemicals needed to supply safe drinking water. Mortality rates from water-born diseases skyrocketed within two years of the authorization of the CDA, including from acute diarrheal disease which increased from 2.7 cases per 100,000 people in 1989 to 6.7 per 100,000 people in 1994. Furthermore, the financial blockade has destroyed Cuba’s agricultural and food processing sectors leading to massive food shortages and food lines reminiscent of the mass hunger experienced during the “special period” in the early 1990s. In addition, an increase in freight rates on the import of school supplies has damaged Cuba’s ability to maintain quality universal free education. In total, the trade embargo has cost Cuba $130 billion over six decades.

This continuous blockade and the use of unilateral coercive measures against Cuba violate international law and put other developing nations at risk. The Foreign Ministers of the Group of 77 (G77), the world’s largest coalition of developing countries, reiterated its strong objection to the longest embargo in modern history through resolution 73/8 in the November 2018 United Nations General Assembly. A group of UN independent human rights experts have called on countries to lift all sanctions during the COVID-19 pandemic, as humanitarian exemptions to sanctions have not been effective and require an extensive multilateral reform effort from the U.N. Security Council and member states. Instead of delivering human rights and democracy, the experts assert that sanctions are “killing people and depriving them of fundamental rights, including the rights to health, to food and to life itself.”

Ending the Embargo As A Jumpstart to New U.S. Foreign Policy in Latin America  

The United States needs to reject the lingering hard-lined Cold War-era foreign policy of intervention and regime change in favor of public diplomacy’s soft power benefits. In conjunction with President Biden’s vision for unity, a new era of cooperative humility and rapprochement would amplify the United States’ core ideals of democracy and human rights. The Biden administration, as well as the Democratic Party-held Congress, should take these three factors into consideration when drafting a new Cuba policy:

1. Coercive unilateral measures strengthened by the Cuban Democracy Act (CDA) are in violation of the U.N. Charter and principles of international law

The U.N general assembly has condemned the embargo on numerous occasions citing its prevention of a free flow of food and medicine. The disastrous repercussions on human welfare exacerbated by provisions within the CDA and restrictions that limit international humanitarian assistance are contributing to an unnecessary loss of life.   

2. Ending the embargo is overwhelmingly popular, both regionally and internationally

According to a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, 76% of Latin Americans support the United States ending the trade embargo against Cuba. By ending the world’s longest trade embargo and repairing a broken relationship with one of its closest neighbors, the U.S. could boost its record low international reputation, including among close allies such as Canada, who oppose the use of the Helms-Burton Act. .

3. A post-coronavirus era of cooperative reconstruction is beginning in Latin America

Due to the severe economic and social downturn in Latin America caused by COVID-19, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) has called for a more sustainable development model based on a stronger integration of Latin American states to alleviate poverty, quell an immigration crisis, and foster health and sanitary emergency strategies across the region. The United States can show good faith and build political capital with its Latin American neighbors in the post-COVID world by ending its embargo on Cuba and helping to rebuild its economy.