Global Policy Forum

After 35 years of failure, maybe it's time to rethink our sanctions on Cuba.

The United Nations certainly thinks we should. The General Assembly this week voted 157-2 to urge the United States to drop its embargo. Only loyal Israel voted with us. Last year and in 1996 we could muster three votes, but Uzbekistan deserted us. Instead of re-examining a failed policy, we instead ratcheted up the sanctions with the 1996 Helms-Burton Act. That law was so intrusive in what other nations deemed their own business that even our closest friends, Canada and Mexico, now feel free to ignore our sanctions.

The sanctions remain in place only out of domestic political considerations. The sanctions were a political gimme: While they hurt the Cubans a lot, they hurt us not at all. Our deputy UN Ambassador, Peter Burleigh, loyally tried to defend the sanctions as "an important foreign policy tool ... aimed at promoting a peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba." What? The embargo was imposed in 1963. If deposing Fidel Castro was the goal, the actuarial tables are working faster than the sanctions. Maybe the rest of the world is wrong and we're right, but maybe, after 35 years and no more international support, it's time to try something else, like trade and tourism.

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