Engagement has failed in Cuba

Paul Crespo, The Miami Herald

With the blood of three executed Cuban boat-jackers barely dry and the voices  of 75 imprisoned freedom activists freshly silenced, some Cuba-engagement  advocates are restarting their misguided campaign to loosen U.S. economic  sanctions against Fidel Castro.

These engagers continue using the cliché that the ''40-year embargo'' has  failed and argue that engagement can still help reform Castro's brutal  dictatorship. But recent history clearly has demonstrated that engagement has  been a policy failure.

Even as one prominent anti-embargo lobbyist group recently closed its doors  in embarrassment, other engagement stalwarts continue their crusade. U.S.  Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., still believes that the embargo is a bad idea  and says he will continue to try to see it lifted.

Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., recently stated: ''If it were up to  me, I would lift the entire embargo. . . . Let's give Castro what he really  fears: exposure to Western capitalism and thought. We're just a scapegoat for  him now, and it does the people no good.'' As if the past decade of European,  Canadian and Latin American trade, investment and tourism hasn't provided  Castro with enough ''exposure'' already. As if Castro's secret police really  needs a ''scapegoat'' to imprison and execute Cubans.

On April 30 a bipartisan group of senators (including Max Baucus, D-Mont.,  and Mike Enzi, R-Wyo.,) introduced the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act of 2003,  which would lift restrictions on travel to Cuba. Others have come to their  support.

''The Cuba travel embargo has been in place for four decades, and it hasn't  done a bit of good,'' said José Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the  Americas Division of Human Rights Watch. "Allowing Americans to travel freely  to Cuba would be much more helpful in encouraging reform.''

Yet the past decade has proven otherwise. The embargo has been used to  promote change in Cuba only since 1992, with the passage of the Cuba  Democracy Act. Previously, the embargo was intended primarily to punish  Castro for confiscating U.S. properties and to keep America from financing  Cuba's repression, military adventurism and terrorism.

In fact, shortly after the act's passage, the Soviet collapse and the effects  of the tightened U.S. embargo began having a powerful effect. As the Cuban  economy entered a tailspin in 1992-1994, Castro experienced his then-worse  crisis -- with riots reported in Havana. Only then did the Cuban despot  initiate some economic liberalization that allowed limited private economic  activity on the island. This increased political dissent.

Had the economic pressure continued, these nascent reforms might have led to  more reforms and dissent and provoked an unraveling of the system similar to  what occurred in the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev; itself a result of  President Reagan's ''hard-line'' tactics.

Instead, Europeans and others came to Castro's rescue, beginning a decade of  Western engagement with his decrepit regime. They, like many here in the  United States, refused to see that Castro's ''reforms'' (just as Gorbachev's  perestroika) were forced on him due to economic pressures.

As Western tourism, trade and investment gradually poured into Cuba, and  President Clinton's new ''go-soft'' policies began to take effect, the Cuban  economy stabilized. By 1996 Castro halted or reversed most of these  ''reforms,'' cracked down on dissent and encouraged tens of thousands of  refugees to flee on rafts. Though Western engagement continued, there have  been no further reforms, and there are still no Western supermarkets or  convenience stores in Havana.

The truth is that engagement and other ''moderate'' policies not only have  failed to promote reforms but actually have stifled democratic change in  Cuba. Now Castro's regime is in a far worse state than in 1993 -- it may well  be Castro's final crisis.

Castro has few options. His foreign debt has doubled, and many Europeans are  withdrawing. Tourism is down substantially, and Cuba's sugar industry has  nearly collapsed after four decades of socialist mismanagement. A mass exodus  is not likely with George W. Bush as president and Jeb Bush as Florida  governor.

Ironically, it seems that only the United States can save the Castro regime  now. We should not make the same mistake that the Europeans did in the 1990s.  This isn't the time to ''go-soft'' on Castro. Economic pressure is a key to  regime change in Cuba.

Paul Crespo is a writer and public-policy consultant.

www.paulcrespo.com

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