The angry battle over Elián González, the Cuban boy rescued off the Florida coast after his mother drowned trying to reach the United States, is just one poignant example of the kinds of showdowns that can be expected from continuing pointless hostility between the U.S. and Cuba, according to a topical Hoover Institution Essay in Public Policy.
In A Strategic Flip-Flop in the Caribbean: Lift the Embargo on Cuba, Hoover fellow William Ratliff and Roger Fontaine argue that current U.S. policy is an increasingly counterproductive product of inertia, a powerful Cuban American lobby and misguided and/or compromising politicians.
Ratliff and Fontaine maintain that sanctions won't make Fidel Castro a democratic market reformer or topple him, but, on the contrary, give him a scapegoat for his own failures and repression and enable him to maintain his cherished image as the "scourge" of an increasingly interventionist U.S. "imperialism."
More importantly, the writers assert, the embargo has transformed from an asset during the Cold War to a liability that heightens tensions in Cuba, making post-Castro cooperation among Cubans and Cuban Americans more difficult, and promotes conflict that could draw in the U.S. military. It is imperialistic and will sour U.S. relations with Cubans for years after Castro's demise, they add.
Last year, under pro-embargo pressure, President Clinton rejected a bi-partisan proposal, supported by former secretaries of state George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, among others, to make a comprehensive evaluation of the policy. In the end, Ratliff and Fontaine conclude, the U.S. cannot control Castro but can unilaterally end a special-interest policy that increasingly endangers Americans and Cubans.
William Ratliff is a senior research fellow and curator of the Latin and North American Collection at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He is co-author of Inside the Cuban Interior Ministry and other studies of Cuba. He spends a portion of every year in on-site research in Latin America, Europe, and China and has interviewed many world leaders, including Fidel Castro. He has published hundreds of commentaries in major U.S. newspapers and is a regular contributor to MSNBC on the Internet.
Roger Fontaine shared responsibility for day-to-day U.S. national security affairs in Latin America as a member of the National Security Council from 1981 through 1983 during the Reagan presidency. The author of many books, his commentaries have appeared on the BBC, National Public Radio, and many major American newspapers.
