EU taking lead in West’s Cuba policy

I believe it is time to recognize that more than four decades of economic embargo and diplomatic isolation have produced nothing more than a failed American policy towards Cuba. The Cuban people are no more prosperous today, nor is their government more willing to submit to the will of American foreign policy.

While the U.S. continues to stubbornly pursue this failed policy, Europe is finally approaching Cuba in a productive fashion and is seeing some results. Cuba has now accepted to engage with the EU in “formal political dialogue” in hopes of eventually normalizing relations with the Union’s 27 member-states. Meanwhile, America is still not talking to the bad guys.

The success of the European Union’s approach will bode well not only for the well-being of the Cuban people and interamerican relations, but will also be a victory for diplomatic engagement over forces pursuing policies of diplomatic isolation in Western governments.

As Simon Jenkins pointed out in an insightful column this summer in the London Times, economic sanctions and other isolating measures almost always add longevity to any government the West imposes them on. Need examples? Okay, Saddam Hussein, Omar Kaddafi, Aya-tollah Khomeini, the Taliban, the Burmese generals and the rulers of North Korea.

All sanctions do is disempower the peoples of these countries through economic hardship and leave the only real power in the hands of the small groups of the elites the sanctions themselves are targeting. Furthermore, such action lends credence to the arguments of the these governments that the forces of capitalism and democracy are working against the people, and the only group they can rely on are their own corrupt leaders.

In the case of Cuba, this hard-line policy has surpassed any sense of logic. Even the Bush administration, seeing the death and destruction across Cuba caused by Hurricane Ike, was moved to offer the pariah state $6.3 million in aid. To Cuba, which has few trading partners, this gesture was useless.

Great. Money. But who can we actually buy what we need from?

The Cuban government therefore responded that the U.S. could keep its money, but if it was truly interested in helping it would temporarily lift the embargo to allow Cuba to purchase construction and relief supplies from the United States. The U.S. State Department predictably — but nonetheless inexplicably — refused.

The U.N. General Assembly has voted on this issue for 16 consecutive years with last year’s vote tallying 184-4 in favor of lifting the embargo.

Thankfully, the European Union is now adopting a policy more aligned with the near consensus of the international community. The EU already participates in some commerce with the island nation and has dangled the promise of further investment with the success of these new talks over the Castro regime’s political future.

With the total failure of the Bush administration to make signifacant gains in any international relations issue over the past seven years, the EU has finally taken its cue to step up and provide much needed leadership. Just weeks ago, EU President Nicolas Sarkozy showed the Union’s ability to take the initiative by quickly providing a brokered cease-fire between Georgia and Russia as the United States stuck to its own national interest and continued that misguided policy — providing more weapons to Georgia and negotiating even less with Russia. Even with a change at the head of the American government early next year, the world will still desperately need this assertiveness and independence on the part of the European Union in order for international issues to be resolved in a sensible manner.