Working All Along!

Blake Hounshell finds the man bold enough to proclaim the Cuban embargo a success -- Commentary's Gordon Chang:

An embargo helped kill communism in Europe, and it can also end it in the Caribbean. One day we will establish normal trading relations with Cuba, but that should not be before the people there govern themselves. “The post-Fidel era is clearly at hand, and the Bush administration has done almost nothing to prepare for it,” the New York Times said. Prepare for what? The embargo has been working all along, and it is up to the Cuban dictators to relax their grip, not us.

Beyond parody.

Comments

Gordan Chang is the same guy that was telling us a few years ago that China was going to imminently collapse due to its bank problems. I'm still waiting.

Posted by pan | February 21, 2008 2:37 PM

"An embargo helped kill communism in Europe, and it can also end it in the Caribbean." I don't think this is factually true in any meaningful sense. When Stalinism was strongest (the 1940s and 1950s) the Eastern bloc had very little trade with the West. But starting in the early 1960s, thanks to the policy of ostpolitik, trade and cultural contact with the East greatly increased. That's what made the fall of communism possible: the increased economic and social ties between the east and the west.

Posted by Jeet Heer | February 21, 2008 2:37 PM

It will be worth cataloging the various measures of economic progress in Cuba during the Castro regime as well as similar metrics in other nations off Florida coast that did not have communist rule during this time.

The comparison will be quite interesting.

Posted by gregor | February 21, 2008 2:39 PM

The embargo has been working all along

Maybe the embargo's goal was to force Castro to grow old and ultimately retire after almost five decades in power. In which case: success! Just think how much younger he'd still be if we'd traded with him.

Posted by Ryan | February 21, 2008 2:57 PM

The embargo was to maintain a boogeyman for rhetorical and political purposes. Now that Chavez is on-line, Castro can retire.

Posted by sunsin | February 21, 2008 3:03 PM

had I looked at the delong link in a previous post I would not have posted the comment above.

seems like cuba should be compared with costa rica etc. which have done much better, economically and otherwise, than the castro led cuba.

Posted by gregor | February 21, 2008 3:03 PM

Uh, *was* there an embargo in Europe? I sure remember lots of people going on tours of the Soviet Union and various communist European countries There were certainly restrictions on where you could go and what you could see, but that was on the host country's side. There weren't any US restrictions on Americans visiting and spending money that I remember. (Well, if you had a security clearance, the clearing agency would have you sign an agreement not to go without permission.)

Posted by Rich McAllister | February 21, 2008 3:04 PM

This makes me imagine 100 years from now if Iraq has become a relatively stable country then some wingnut is going to declare, "The surge worked!"

Posted by Ron | February 21, 2008 3:10 PM

All of Bush's foriegn policy ideas will be a success at some point in the future, we just don't know exactly when.

Posted by blah | February 21, 2008 3:17 PM

Beyond parody?

If the embargo isn't going to end any time soon, then the US is showing that it believes the embargo is working.

Know why there is no ban on auto imports, even though Michigan is a swing state and auto-unions are a major part of the political process? Because the policy-class in the US understands that regardless of Michigan's importance and the benefits that would accrue to them of ceasing automobile trade, the harm to the rest of the country outweighs those concerns.

Know why there is a ban on trade with Cuba? Because the policy-class in the US perceives that a ban on trade with Cuba accomplishes a result that class wants to achieve. Florida and the sugar growers are less powerful than Michigan and the auto makers.

The US thinks the embargo is working, or else it would end the embargo. The embargo isn't forcing Castro out of power. The embargo is impoverishing the people of Cuba.

The US policy class wants to starve Cubans for having a government that would nationalize US-owned assets. Democrats, Republicans, everyone thinks that's a good thing. Where is the parody?

It is a little funny that US commentators act as innocent as they do of clear US policy preferences.

Posted by Arnold Evans | February 21, 2008 3:31 PM

But, to rebut Arnold, if that is the actual goal, it is still a bit of a parody to pretend it is achieving its stated goal (which is to bring democracy to Cuba). And, it is a little bit funny that Chang would suggest that the US only tades with countries whose "people govern themselves." I guess that excludes China, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, half of Africa etc etc.

Posted by Chris B | February 21, 2008 3:39 PM

If it's working, why is it up to the CUBAN DICTATORS to do something?

Isn't the point of the embargo to make them POWERLESS to do ANYTHING?

Good God.

The Stupid! It burns!

Posted by MNPundit | February 21, 2008 4:06 PM

Arnold Evans-

In fact, the US embargo has next to nothing to do with Cuba at all, and everything to do with Miami. Its actual political or economic impact on the island is mostly irrelevant to the reasons that it has been maintained.

Posted by N | February 21, 2008 4:10 PM

"If the embargo isn't going to end any time soon, then the US is showing that it believes the embargo is working."

No, it's because politicians need to win Florida if they want to become president and don't want to piss off the rich Cubans there.

The sad thing is Gordon Chang is the nearest thing Commentary has to a sensible, rational human being.

Posted by Reality Man | February 21, 2008 4:11 PM

Jeet Heer is right, it was trade with the Soviet Bloc that undermined it, not an embargo. During the 1960s and 70s the East Bloc imported grain to feed people, and imported $ billions of consumer goods to keep the population relatively mollified and especially to provide special privileges for the nomenklatura. Most of that trade was funded by selling commodities - oil, gas, metal, chemicals, etc. Then when oil prices collapsed in the 80s the East Bloc essentially went bankrupt trying to keep those Western goods flowing East. Or maybe Chang thinks the 1980 Olympic boycott brought the Soviets to their knees.

Not to mention the fact that Western Companies, like Pepsi, Cisco and others started running in to the East Bloc during the Gorbachev era - before Communism actually collapsed.

Commentary is no longer in any sense a respectable magazine, it's perhaps one step above a John Birch society newsletter. Terry Teachout is worth reading for music criticism, and that's it.

Posted by vanya | February 21, 2008 4:23 PM

If there was an anti-embargo consensus in the US, Florida would have to live with it, the way Michigan lives with the consensus against an auto embargo and Pennsylvania lives with the consensus against a steel embargo.

Yglesias is much better, but Delong strings together multiple Cuba posts, advocating that Cubans change their policies while ducking any policy prescriptions for the country whose leaders he and most of his readership elect.

Anyway, this is not a fringe policy in the US, held only by Cuban exiles in Miami. This is mainstream US foreign policy thought. One of my points is that it is better to be Chang and comment on this mainstream US policy in a transparently inconsistent, even laughable, way than to be Delong and be essentially silent on US policy, implicitly arguing that somehow that US policy has no impact compared to Cuba's economic policies.

Posted by Arnold Evans | February 21, 2008 4:56 PM

Arnold, it isn't a matter of an anti-embargo consensus or the lack of one - what matters is that the overwhelming majority of people and interest groups in the country are basically indifferent on the subject of US relations with Cuba. This means that the large, well organized, and sometimes pivotal lobby in Florida has considerable weight, because there is no comparable counterweight.

As Fidel fades from the picture and generational shifts among Cuban-Americans soften attitudes, that balance will change. For now, though, it's still the anti-Castro Cuban-Americans that call the shots.

Of course, old Cold War mentalities still have some impact on policy - that was certainly true for the two legislators whose names adorn the Helms-Burton Act. However, the bottom line is that it's almost all about domestic pressure politics and the Cuban-American lobby. That's the only major reason we still have an embargo on Cuba and not on, say, Vietnam.

Posted by N | February 21, 2008 6:18 PM