Relations

Lifting embargo key to preserving US image

Pomerantz 1/1- Phyllis Pomerantz, licensed clinical social worker. She obtained her social work degree from
New York University in 1994, and has extensive experience with adolescents in a variety of settings during her
training and since obtaining her degree. Ms. Pomerantz provides individual, group and family therapy. Ms.
Pomerantz is a member of the DBT treatment team at Rathbone & Associates. (Nows the Time to Lift the U.S.
Embargo on Cuba, The Globe and Mail, January 1, 2013, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/nows-the-
time-to-lift-the-us-embargo-on-cuba/article6790494/, accessed: 6/27/13, LR)

The U.S. stand on Cuba is incomprehensible and only serves to look hypocritical and arbitrary in
the eyes of a world that doesnt understand the intricacies of American politics. Now that the
election is over, there is a window of opportunity to open up a full commercial and diplomatic relationship. Mr.
Obama should use the full extent of his executive powers to immediately relax restrictions, and Congress should
pass legislation lifting the remaining legal obstacles.
Its time to forget about old grudges and remember that the best way to convert an enemy into a
friend is to embrace him. Instead of admiring Havanas old cars, Americans should be selling them new ones.
The embargo fails counterproductive and bad for US image
Edmonds 12 Kevin Edmonds, writer for the NACLA, focusing on the Caribbean. (Despite Global
Opposition, United States Votes to Continue Cuban Embargo, North American Congress on Latin America,
November 15, 2012, https://nacla.org/blog/2012/11/15/despite-global-opposition-united-states-votes-continue-
cuban-embargo, accessed: 7/4/13, LR)

In many ways, the ongoing Cuban embargo is one of the most symbolic policies of U.S. imperial
control in the Americas. That said, the impact is much more than merely symbolic for the Cuban people, as
according to Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, the embargo is an act of aggression and a
permanent danger to the stability of the nation.
While the Cuban embargo was ultimately created to isolate Cuba economically and politically, the routine
imposition of harsher conditions has failed to bring down the Castro government. In 1992, President George
H. Bush signed the Cuban Democracy Act (also known as the Torricelli Act) into law, which forbids subsidiaries of
U.S. companies from trading with Cuba, U.S. nationals from traveling to Cuba and remittances being sent to the
country. The Cuban Democracy Act also attempts to limit the amount of interaction the international
community has with Cuba by imposing sanctions on any country that provides assistance to Cuba, including
ending U.S. assistance for those countries and by disqualifying them from benefiting from any programme of
reduction or forgiveness of debt owed to the USA. It was widely assumed that after the fall of the Soviet Union it
would only be a matter of time before Castro fell as well.
When that prediction didnt materialize, President Bill Clinton signed the internationally condemned Cuban
Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act in law (more commonly known as the Helms-Burton Act) in March 1996.
This act further deepened the sanctions against Cuba as it sought to strengthen international sanctions against the
Castro government, and to plan for support of a transition government leading to a democratically elected
government in Cuba. The Helms-Burton Act allowed for any non-U.S. company that dealt with Cuba to be
subjected to legal action and that the respective company's leadership could be barred from entry into the United
States. This essentially meant that many international businesses were blackmailed to choose between operating in
Cuba or the United Stateswhich financially speaking isnt much of a choice in regards to market size.
Like any embargowhether in Iran, Gaza, or Cubait is the regular people who suffer the most. While
there is a wide disagreement on the exact amount of harm the embargo has done to the Cuban economy, the
estimates range between one and three trillion $US. In 2008, the Indian Delegation to the United Nations stated
that The negative impact of the embargo is pervasive in the social, economic, and environmental
dimensions of human development in Cuba, severely affecting the most vulnerable socioeconomic groups of
the Cuban population.
Politics are changing and now is key new generation, GOP decline, and foreign
opposition to the embargo
Bandow, 12 Doug Bandow, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, specializing in foreign policy and civil
liberties. He worked as special assistant to President Reagan and editor of the political magazine Inquiry.
He writes regularly for leading publications such as Fortune magazine, National Interest, Wall Street
Journal, and Washington Times. Bandow speaks frequently at academic conferences, on college
campuses, and to business groups. Bandow has been a regular commentator on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN,
Fox News Channel, and MSNBC. He holds a J.D. from Stanford University. (Time to End the Cuba
Embargo, The National Interest, December 11, 2012, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-
pointless-cuba-embargo-7834?page=1, accessed: 6/27/13, LR)

But the political environment is changing. A younger, more liberal generation of Cuban
Americans with no memory of life in Cuba is coming to the fore. Said Wayne Smith, a diplomat who served
in Havana: for the first time in years, maybe there is some chance for a change in policy. And there are now
many more new young Cuban Americans who support a more sensible approach to Cuba.
Support for the Republican Party also is falling. According to some exit polls Barack Obama narrowly
carried the Cuban American community in November, after receiving little more than a third of the vote four years
ago. He received 60 percent of the votes of Cuban Americans born in the United States.
Barack Obama increased his votes among Cuban Americans after liberalizing contacts with the island. He also
would have won the presidency without Florida, demonstrating that the state may not be
essential politically.
Today even the GOP is no longer reliable. For instance, though Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul
Ryan has defended the embargo in recent years, that appears to reflect ambition rather than conviction. Over the
years he voted at least three times to lift the embargo, explaining: The embargo doesnt work. It is
a failed policy. It was probably justified when the Soviet Union existed and posed a threat through Cuba. I think
its become more of a crutch for Castro to use to repress his people. All the problems he has, he blames the American
embargo.
There is essentially no international support for continuing the embargo. For instance, the European
Union plans to explore improving relations with Havana . Spains Deputy Foreign Minister Gonzalo de
Benito explained that the EU saw a positive evolution in Cuba. The hope, then, is to move forward in the
relationship between the European Union and Cuba.
The administration should move now, before congressmen are focused on the next election. President
Obama should propose legislation to drop (or at least significantly loosen) the embargo. He also could use
his authority to relax sanctions by, for instance, granting more licenses to visit the island.
The embargo must be repealed US foreign policy
Lloyd 10 Delia Lloyd, American writer based in London. Her work has appeared in The International
Herald Tribune, The Financial Times and The Guardian Weekly. She is a regular contributor to
www.PoliticsDaily.com, a subset of the Huffington Post. (Ten Reasons to Lift the Cuba Embargo,
Politics Daily, Huffington Post, August 24, 2010, http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/08/24/ten-reasons-
to-lift-the-cuba-embargo/, accessed: 7/3/13, LR)

3. It's a double standard. Another reason to question the link between the embargo and human rights is that it's a
double standard that flies in the face of U.S. foreign policy toward other high-profile authoritarian
countries, most notably China. Stephen Colbert once quipped that Cuba is "a totalitarian, repressive,
communist state that -- unlike China -- can't lend us money." Unless and until the U.S. pursues a consistent policy of
sanctions against politically repressive regimes, the case against Cuba doesn't hold up very well.
4. It's out of date. To argue that U.S.-Cuban policy is an anachronism is putting it mildly. In an international climate
marked by cooperation on issues ranging from terrorism to global financial crises, holding on to this last vestige
of the Cold War foreign policy no longer makes sense. (Bear in mind that the young people now entering
college were not even alive when Czechoslovakia existed.) Sure, there's still tension between the United States and
Russia. But the recent renegotiation of the START agreement on nuclear proliferation reinforces the notion that the
Cold War is no longer the dominant prism for understanding that bilateral relationship, much less the Cuban-
American one.

Lifting embargo greatly beneficial to US economy and global image
Franks 12 Jeff Franks, reporter for Reuters, an international news agency founded in London. (Cuba
says ending U.S. embargo would help both countries, Reuters, September 20, 2012,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/20/us-cuba-usa-embargo-idUSBRE88J15G20120920, accessed:
7-3-13, LR)

(Reuters) - Both the United States and Cuba would benefit if Washington would lift its longstanding trade
embargo against the island, but U.S. President Barack Obama has toughened the sanctions since taking office in
2009, a top Cuban official said on Thursday.
The embargo, fully in place since 1962, has done $108 billion in damage to the Cuba economy, but also
has violated the constitutional rights of Americans and made a market of 11 million people off
limits to U.S. companies, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told reporters.
"The blockade is, without doubt, the principal cause of the economic problems of our country and the essential
obstacle for (our) development," he said, using Cuba's term for the embargo.
"The blockade provokes suffering, shortages, difficulties that reach each Cuban family, each Cuban
child," Rodriguez said.
He spoke at a press conference that Cuba stages each year ahead of what has become an annual vote in the United
Nations on a resolution condemning the embargo. The vote is expected to take place next month.
Last year, 186 countries voted for the resolution, while only the United States and Israel supported the embargo,
Rodriguez said.
Lifting the embargo would improve the image of the United States around the world, he said, adding
that it would also end what he called a "massive, flagrant and systematic violation of human rights."
That violation includes restrictions on U.S. travel to the island that require most Americans to get U.S. government
permission to visit and a ban on most U.S. companies doing business in Cuba, he said.
"The prohibition of travel for Americans is an atrocity from the constitutional point of view," Rodriguez said.
Cuba has its own limits on travel that make it difficult for most of its citizens to leave the country for any
destination.
Rodriguez said the elimination of the embargo would provide a much-needed tonic for the sluggish
U.S. economy.
"In a moment of economic crisis, lifting the blockade would contribute to the United States a totally new
market of 11 million people. It would generate employment and end the situation in which American companies
cannot compete in Cuba," he said.
Overwhelming support for embargo repeal retaliatory actions growing
Gordon 12 Joy Gordon, Professor of Philosophy at Fairfield University, and Senior Fellow at the Global Justice
Program, MacMillan Center for Area and International Studies, Yale University. (The U.S. Embargo Against Cuba
and the Diplomatic Challenges to Extraterritoriality, Law Journal Library, Winter 2012,
http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/forwa36&div=11&g_sent=1&collection=journals, accessed:
7/2/13, LR)

Statements of condemnation
In addition to the WTO action and retaliatory legislation by Canada, Mexico, and the European
Union, U.S. embargo measures have also met broad, consistent international condemnation. In 2009
and 2010, for example, statements of condemnation came from the XV Summit of the Non-Aligned
Movement held in Egypt in 2009," the II Africa-South America Summit (ASA) in 2009, the Vll Summit of
the countries of the Bolivarian Alliance For the Peoples of the Americas (ALBA) in 2009, the Unity Summit
of 2010, consisting of the XXI Rio Group Summit and the II Summit of Latin America and the Caribbean on
Integration and Development (CALC)," and the VI Summit of Latin America and the Caribbean and the
European Union.
UN General Assembly resolutions
It is not surprising that Cuba would have support from the devel-oping world, particularly its trading
partners in Latin America and the Caribbean. A more dramatic demonstration of the breadth of international
opposition to the legality of the U.S. embargo legislation was the series of annual votes before the UN General
Assembly, which began in 1992. After the Torricelli law was passed, Cuba introduced a resolution before
the UN General Assembly that called upon member states not to imple-ment its provisions and
expressed concern about the extraterritorial effects and their consequent violation of the principle of
equal sovereignty." The resolution passed by a vote of 59 to 3, with 71 abstentions and 46 nations not voting.
International support for
Cubans resolutions has grown steadily from 1992 through the present, as states that had abstained in
one voted yes the next, and then continue to do so each year. While the I992 resolution had 59 votes in favor, the
next years resolution had 88 votes in favor, 4 opposed, and 92 abstaining or not voting. For each of the last several
years, over 180 members out of 193 in the United Nations have joined Cuba in condemning this U.S. violation
of international trade law. Most recently, in October 2011, 186 countries voted in support of Cubas
resolu-tion, two opposed it, and three abstained.

The embargo decks diplomacy international response proves
Gordon 12 Joy Gordon, Professor of Philosophy at Fairfield University, and Senior Fellow at the Global Justice
Program, MacMillan Center for Area and International Studies, Yale University. (The U.S. Embargo Against Cuba
and the Diplomatic Challenges to Extraterritoriality, Law Journal Library, Winter 2012,
http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/forwa36&div=11&g_sent=1&collection=journals, accessed:
7/2/13, LR)

Many analysts have criticized the U.S. embargo against Cuba as an anachronistic holdover from the Cold War. Yet
its problems go well beyond that. In many regards, the U.S. embargo against Cuba represents a caricature of
the various American misapplications of economic sanctions: if the goal is to end the Castro
regime this policy has not only Failed, but has spent half a century doing so. If the intent is to support Cubans
in their aspirations for a different political system the sanctions have failed in that regard as well, since even the
most vocal dissidents in Cuba criticize the embargo. In the Face of the smart sanctions" movement to develop
economic tools that target the leadership rather than the people, the embargo against Cuba represents the opposite
pole: it impacts the Cuban population indiscriminately, affecting everything from family travel, to the
publication of scientic articles by Cuban scholars, to the cost of buying chicken For Cuban households.
This article will briey describe the history and the main compo-nents of the U.S. embargo against Cuba, and the
impact of the unilateral measures on Cubes economy. It will look at some of the ways in which the U.S. embargo is
"extraterritorial"impacting Cubas trade with third countriesas well as ways in which the United States
unilateral embargo functions in effect as a global measure. It will then examine the over- whelming response
of the international community, and in particular, the United Nations General Assembly, in
condemning the embargo as a viola-tion of international law. This response represents a
diplomatic challenge to the United States that is unparalleled in the last fty years of global governance.

The embargo fails hypocritical and regime-strengthening policy
Brush 1/22 Michael Brush, award-winning New York financial writer who has covered business and
investing for The New York Times, Money magazine and the Economist Group. Michael studied at
Columbia Business School in the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship program. He is the author of "Lessons from
the Front Line," a book offering insights on investing and the markets based on the experiences of
professional money managers. (Time to Invest in Cuba?, MSN Money, 1/22/13,
http://money.msn.com/investing/time-to-invest-in-cuba, accessed: 7/2/13, LR)

It is a commendable policy but, sadly, hypocritical. If this were consistent U.S. policy, we'd have no
political or trade relations with Vietnam, Myanmar or even China, says Juan Carlos Hidalgo, a Latin
America policy analyst at the Cato Institute, who notes that each of these countries fails to clear the Helms-Burton
hurdles applied to Cuba.
Thus, the Cuba embargo is a pretty glaring anomaly, which makes it vulnerable. "The only advantage of the
embargo is that it allows the Cuban regime to blame the miserable Cuban economy on 'the
blockade' as they call it," says Hidalgo.
The embargo is also vulnerable because it's an obvious failure. After 50 years of embargo, the Castro brothers
still rule Cuba, notes Tomas Bilbao, the executive director of the Cuba Study Group, a lobbying organization whose
goal is "empowering" Cuban people by helping them start businesses and sell goods abroad. "I think we need to shift
from an obsession with hurting the regime to an obsession with helping the Cuban people," he says.

Embargo theory wrong not suited for Cuba
Llosa 9 - Alvaro Vargas Llosa, Senior Fellow of The Center on Global Prosperity at the Independent
Institute, nationally syndicated columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group and among his books,
Liberty for Latin America, received the Sir Anthony Fisher International Memorial Award for its
contribution to the cause of freedom in 2006. (Should the Cuban Embargo Be Lifted?, Real Clear
Politics, April 29, 2009,
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/04/29/should_the_cuban_embargo_be_lifted_96232.html,
accessed: 7/3/13, LR)

But this is not the reasoning coming from the most vocal critics of U.S. sanctions these
days. Many of them fail to even mention the fraud that is a system which bases its
legitimacy on the renunciation of capitalism and at the same time implores capitalism to
come to its rescue. There is also an endearing hypocrisy among those who decry the
embargo but devote hardly any time to denouncing the island's half-century tyranny under
the Castros.
Another risible subterfuge attributes the catastrophe that is Cuba's economy on
Washington's decision to cut off economic relations in 1962 after a wave of expropriations
against American interests. The amnesiacs conveniently forget that in 1958, Cuba's
socioeconomic condition was similar to Spain's and Portugal's and the standard of living of its
citizens was behind only those of Argentines and Uruguayans in Latin America. Many of the
critics also seem to suffer what French writer Jean-Francois Revel used to call "moral
hemiplegia" -- a tendency to see fault only on one side of the political spectrum: I never
heard Cuba's champions complain about sanctions against right-wing dictatorships.
Sometimes, sanctions work, sometimes they don't. A study by Gary Hufbauer, Jeffrey Schott,
Kimberly Elliot and Barbara Oegg titled "Economic Sanctions Reconsidered" analyzes
dozens of cases of sanctions since World War I. In about a third of them, they worked
either because they helped to topple the regime (South Africa) or because they forced the
dictator to make major concessions (Libya). Archbishop Desmond Tutu told me a few
months ago in San Francisco that he was convinced that international sanctions were
crucial in defeating apartheid in his home country. In the cases in which the embargo worked,
the sanctions were applied by many countries and the affected regimes were already severely
discredited or weakened.
In the cases in which sanctions have not worked -- Saddam Hussein between 1990 and 2003,
and North Korea today -- the dictatorships were able to isolate themselves from the effects and
concentrate them on the population. In some countries, a certain sense of pride helped defend
the government against foreign sanctions -- which is why the measures applied by the
Soviet Union against Yugoslavia in 1948, China in 1960 and Albania in 1961 were largely
useless.
In the case of Cuba, the Castro regime has been able to whip up a nationalist sentiment against
the U.S. embargo. More significantly, it has managed to offset much of the effects over the years
in large part because the Soviets subsidized the island for three decades, because the
regime welcomed Canadian, Mexican and European capital after the collapse of the Berlin
Wall, and because Venezuela is its new patron.

Castro decline, Obamas second term, and international disapproval are all reasons now is
key
Williams 12- Carol Williams, national affairs writer for the LA Times, Former foreign
correspondent, 25 years covering Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East. (Widely
condemned U.S. policy on Cuba unlikely to change soon, Los Angeles Times, November 16, 2012,
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/16/world/la-fg-wn-us-cuba-embargo-20121115, accessed:7/4/13,
LR)

But this week's overwhelming international censure of the U.S. embargo against Cuba -- a 188-3
vote of condemnation by the U.N. General Assembly -- was a sobering reminder of how little has changed
between the Cold War adversaries despite President Obama's 2008 campaign vow to end half a century of
ideological standoff.
Foreign policy analysts see possibilities that Obama may have more room to maneuver in a second term.
Younger Cuban Americans care more about staying in touch with family on the communist-ruled island than did
their embittered elders, who fled after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution, vowing never to return until Cuba was free of
the leftist firebrand.
Castro, now 86 and ailing, seems likely to be out of the picture within the next four years, say Cuba watchers
who predict the commandante's passing would ignite more profound rethinking of Cuban economic and foreign
policy. Raul Castro, 81, has undertaken modest reforms, but he is seen as a placeholder who will be pushed
aside once his brother dies.

The embargo is counterproductive costs alliances
Hanson, et. al. 13 Daniel Hanson, Daniel Hanson is an economics researcher at the American Enterprise
Institute. (It's Time For The U.S. To End Its Senseless Embargo Of Cuba, Forbes, 1/16/13,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/01/16/its-time-for-the-u-s-to-end-its-senseless-embargo-of-cuba/,
accessed: 7/2/13, amf)

Moreover, since Europeans, Japanese, and Canadians can travel and conduct business in Cuba
unimpeded, the sanctions are rather toothless. The State Department has argued that the cost of conducting
business in Cuba is only negligibly higher because of the embargo. For American multinational corporations
wishing to undertake commerce in Cuba, foreign branches find it easy to conduct exchanges.
Yet, estimates of the sanctions annual cost to the U.S. economy range from $1.2 to $3.6 billion, according to the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Restrictions on trade disproportionately affect U.S. small businesses who lack the
transportation and financial infrastructure to skirt the embargo. These restrictions translate into real reductions in
income and employment for Americans in states like Florida, where the unemployment rate currently stands at 8.1
percent.
Whats worse, U.S. sanctions encourage Cuba to collaborate with regional players that are less
friendly to American interests. For instance, in 2011, the country inked a deal with Venezuela for the
construction of an underwater communications link, circumventing its need to connect with US-owned networks
close to its shores.
Repealing the embargo would fit into an American precedent of lifting trade and travel
restrictions to countries who demonstrate progress towards democratic ideals. Romania,
Czechoslovakia, and Hungary were all offered normal trade relations in the 1970s after preliminary reforms even
though they were still in clear violation of several US resolutions condemning their human rights practices. China, a
communist country and perennial human rights abuser, is the U.S.s second largest trading partner, and in
November, trade restrictions against Myanmar were lessened notwithstanding a fifty year history of genocide and
human trafficking propagated by its military government.
Which, of course, begs the question: when will the U.S. see fit to lift the embargo? If Cuba is trending towards
democracy and free markets, what litmus test must be passed for the embargo to be rolled back?
The cost of the embargo to the United States is high in both dollar and moral terms, but it is
higher for the Cuban people, who are cut off from the supposed champion of liberty in their
hemisphere because of an antiquated Cold War dispute. The progress being made in Cuba could be
accelerated with the help of American charitable relief, business innovation, and tourism.
A perpetual embargo on a developing nation that is moving towards reform makes little sense,
especially when Americas allies are openly hostile to the embargo. It keeps a broader
discussion about smart reform in Cuba from gaining life, and it makes no economic sense. It is
time for the embargo to go.

Cuban relations with China and Venezuela saving the regime
Feinberg 11 Richard Feinberg, Richard Feinberg is professor of international political economy at the
Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego. Feinberg served
as special assistant to President Clinton and senior director of the National Security Councils Office of Inter-
American Affairs. He has held positions on the State Department's policy planning staff and worked as an
international economist in the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of International Affairs. (Reaching Out: Cubas
New Economy and the International Response, The Brookings Institute, November 2011,
http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2011/11/18-cuba-feinberg, accessed: 7/4/13, amf)

Five decades after Fidel Castros 26th of July Movement marched victoriously into Havana on New Years Day,
1959, the United States and Cuba, separated by less than 100 miles of choppy waters, remain deeply distrustful
neighbors entangled in a web of hostilities. Heated U.S. policy debates over how best to respond to the Cuban
Revolutionthrough legislation in the Congress or executive orders issued by the Executive Branchimplicitly
assume that there are only two players in contention: Washington and Havana. Yet, this conceit
takes us very far from the realities of Cuba today.
Since the collapse of its former patron, the Soviet Union, a resilient Cuba has dramatically diversified its
international economic relations. Initially, Cuba reached out to Europe, Canada, and a widening array of
friendly states in Latin America. Over the last decade, Cuba has reached out to forge economic
partnerships with major emerging market economiesnotably China, Brazil, and Venezuela.
Spanish firms manage many of the expanding hotel chains in Cuba that cater to 2.5 million international tourists
each year. A Canadian company jointly owns mining operations that ship high-priced nickel to Canada and China.
In the next few years, China is poised to spend billions of dollars building a large petrochemical
complex at Cienfuegos. A Brazilian firm will modernize the Mariel Port so that it can accommodate very large
container ships transiting the newly widened Panama Canal. Petroleum companies from ten or more
countries have lined up to explore for deepsea oil in Cuban waters in the Gulf of Mexico.
Despite these advances, the Cuban economy remains in the doldrums (as described in Section 1). The
main constraint slowing the Cuban economy is not U.S. sanctions (even as they have hit hard). Rather,
it is Cubas own outdated economic model, inherited from the Soviet Union, of central planning. Cubas many
commercial partners would like to invest more in Cuba and would prefer to purchase more
Cuban exports to correct the imbalances in their bilateral trade accounts, but are frustrated by Cubas scant
economic offerings.
Section 2 of this policy paper tells the story of Cubas outreach to the dynamic emerging market economies, as seen
from the perspective of Cuba and also through the eyes of its Chinese, Brazilian, Venezuelan and Mexican
partnersexamining their motivations as well as their anxieties and frustrations. How does Cuba fit into their
international economic and geo-political strategies, and what are the domestic political drivers behind their
friendships with Havana? Canadian interests are also explored, as Ottawa has sharply differentiated its Cuba policy
from those of its close North American ally.
While comprehensive U.S. sanctions attempt to undermine the Cuban economy, European
countries have been sending development assistance, albeit in modest amounts. European aid targets its
resources to empower municipalities, private farmers and cooperativesto strengthen social forces less dominated
by Havanas powerful bureaucracies. Section 3 describes these European and Canadian cooperation programs as
well as the creative initiatives of the non-governmental organization Oxfam, and draws lessonspointing out
potential pitfalls as well as opportunitiesfor future international development programs operating in the difficult
Cuban context.

Cuba building relations with China now recent talks
Latino Daily News 6/19 Latino Daily News: Hispanically Speaking News. (Cuban VP Strengthens Relations
with China on Trip Abroad, Latino Daily News, 6/19/13, http://www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/latino-daily-
news/details/cuban-vp-strengthens-relations-with-china-on-trip-abroad/25261/, accessed: 7/4/13, amf)

Cuban First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel and Chinese President Xi Jinping gave a new push to
longstanding bilateral relations with a meeting here Tuesday.
We want you to feel at home, Xi told Diaz-Canel at the start of the meeting at the Great Hall of the People, which
was only open to the media for a few minutes.
Joined by a large political retinue, Diaz-Canel was the first senior Cuban leader to meet with Xi
since he became Chinas president in March.
While the officials remarks to the media stayed within the bounds of diplomatic propriety, tangible steps to
boost trade relations and other ties have been taken in recent weeks.
Indeed, Diaz-Canel and Chinese counterpart Li Yuanchao on Monday presided over the signing of
several bilateral cooperation accords.
Those agreements included a donation by the Asian giant, an interest-free loan to Cuba and
another credit for purchases of farm machinery and equipment.
The amounts were not disclosed.
The two countries have learned from one another during the process of building socialism, the
Chinese vice president said Monday after a meeting with his Cuban counterpart, the official Xinhua news agency
said.
Diaz-Canel, for his part, said then that Cuba viewed its relations with China from a strategic
perspective and was interested in bolstering bilateral cooperation.
Beijings Communist Party secretary, Guo Jinlong, and Cuban President Raul Castro also met earlier this
month in Havana, a sit-down that ended with the signing of cooperation accords in the areas of
energy, transportation, tourism and biotechnology.
China is Cubas second-largest trading partner with two-way trade valued at more than $2 billion
in 2011, up from $590 million in 2004, according to official figures.

The current embargo prevents cooperation on many issues.

Siegelbaum 11 [Portia. September 14. CBS News. Cuba: U.S. embargo causes $1 trillion in losses.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20106159-503543.html]

He also noted the embargo interfered with Cuba's cooperation with international agencies giving the example of how in
January 2011, the U.S. Government seized over $4.2 million of funding from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS,
Tuberculosis and Malaria because they were earmarked for the implementation of cooperation projects with Cuba.
The Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 further codified the original embargo into law so as to maintain sanctions on
Cuba until Havana takes steps toward "democratization and greater respect for human rights." The Helms-Burton Act
passed by Congress in 1996 added yet further restrictions to prevent U.S. citizens from doing business in or with Cuba. In 1999,
President Bill Clinton expanded the embargo even more by prohibiting foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies from trading with
Cuba. This led among more serious moves to the removal of Cuban-made pajamas from shelves in Wal-Mart in Canada. Clinton
did authorize the sale of certain humanitarian products to Cuba in 2000 only on a cash basis with no credit permitted. The policy
has pitted pro-embargo Cuban-American exiles against many business leaders and agricultural producers who insist trade with
Cuba would benefit American farmers, port workers and others. The U.S. Rice Federation has lobbied hard in Washington
believing that Cuba could once again become the largest foreign market for American grown rice, a position currently
held by Mexico. At present the U.S. State Department says the biggest obstacle to improving relations between the two countries
is the imprisonment of an American aid worker Alan Gross. Gross was arrested in December 2009 and sentenced last March to
15 years in prison for bringing illegal communications equipment into Cuba as part of a program subcontracted to his employer
by USAID. The Cubans say this program and others like it are intended to overthrow throw their government. Moreno refused at
this morning's press conference to respond to a question on Gross. Former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson left Havana
this morning after a week's efforts to see the American who is being held in a Havana military hospital. Yesterday Richardson
told foreign journalists in Havana that the Cuban Government had rebuffed all his appeals. Nevertheless, President Obama said
yesterday in Washington that his administration's relaxation of the travel ban that now allows more Americans to visit Cuba on
educational, religious, cultural or people-to-people group trips would remain in effect as would the loosening of restrictions on
the amount and frequency with which Cubans in the U.S. could send money to relatives on the island.

Cuba and Canada have strong relations.
Government of Canada 13 -- Government of Canada. (Canada- Cuba relations
http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca/cuba/bilateral_relations_bilaterales/canada_cuba.aspx Accessed:
July 2, 2013. AK_

Canada and Cuba enjoy a broad and diverse relationship built on a long history of mutually
beneficial engagement, important and growing economic and commercial relations, and
strong people-to-people ties across a wide range of sectors and interests. Canadas
approach is to engage with all elements of Cuban society - government, the business sector,
non-governmental organizations and civil society at large. Canada supports the process of
economic modernization being undertaken by the Cuban government, with greater
opportunities for the development of non-state economic activity and private initiatives.
Building on our successful cooperation experience in areas of economic policy
development and institutional strengthening, Canada will seek to support the Cuban
governments intention to implement a process of economic modernization.
Cuba and Canada have strong relations.
Government of Canada 13 -- Government of Canada. (Canada- Cuba relations
http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca/cuba/bilateral_relations_bilaterales/canada_cuba.aspx Accessed:
July 2, 2013. AK)

Canada supports a future for Cuba that fully embraces the fundamental values of freedom,
democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Canada has consistently recognized Cubas
strong commitment to economic and social rights, with its particularly important
achievements in the areas of education and health. At the same time, Canada has stressed
the importance of basic civil and political rights, such as freedom of speech, association and
the press. Canadas public advocacy programme in Cuba promotes greater understanding
of Canada and Canadians, and of the Canadian model of a multicultural, democratic and
innovative society. One of the most successful Canadian-inspired events in Cuba is the
annual run in honour of Terry Fox, a cancer victim and national hero who undertook a run
across Canada to raise awareness of the importance of cancer research. The Terry Fox Run
in Cuba has become the largest in the world outside of Canada. Knowledge of Canada, its
history, geography, policies and programs, is also promoted through Canadian Studies
Centres located in six universities across Cuba. Academic cooperation represents one of the
most important aspects of the relationship between Canada and Cuba, with expanding
networks of academics and researchers from both countries working together in a wide
range of disciplines. While the Canadian Embassy in Havana does not directly fund or
facilitate cultural or interpersonal exchanges, cultural and interpersonal ties contribute to
strengthening people-to-people relations between Canadians and Cubans. To learn more
about promoting Canadian culture and funding Canadian cultural projects, please consult
Canadian Heritage or the Canadian Council for the Arts. For additional information, read
our cultural FAQs for Canadians interested in Cuba. Cuba is the third most popular overseas
destination for Canadians (after the United States and Mexico) and Canada is Cubas largest
source of tourists, with over one million Canadians visiting annually (more 40 per cent of
all visitors to Cuba). The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) manages
Canada's bilateral development assistance program in Cuba. Current program priorities are
sustainable economic growth and food security. Canada and Cuba have a well-established,
significant and growing commercial and investment relationship. Cuba is Canadas top
market in the Caribbean/Central American sub-region and bilateral merchandise trade
between the two countries is over one billion dollars annually. Canadian companies have
significant investments in mining, power, oil and gas, agri-food and tourism.
Appointment of Diaz Canel does not mean normalization of relations.

Alam 13 Hannah Alam. Hannah is a writer for the Miami herald. (Even if Raul Castro steps
down in 2018, U.S.-Cuba relations may not thaw. Miami Herald. McClatchy Newspapers. 2/25/13.
Accessed: July 2, 2013.)

WASHINGTON -- Cuban President Raul Castros announcement over the weekend that hell step
down in 2018 after the five-year term he just began ends starts the countdown for U.S. officials
contemplating a thaw in relations with the island nation. But analysts caution that so far the regimes
reforms amount to window dressing. By law, the United States is restricted from normalizing relations
with Cuba as long as the island is ruled by the Castro brothers: ailing revolutionary leader Fidel, 86, and
his brother Raul, 81. Raul Castro said Sunday that not only would he step aside in 2018, he also
would propose term limits and age caps for future presidents, the latest in a series of moves that are
hailed by some Cuba observers as steps toward reform but dismissed by others as disingenuous. But those are
hardly the kinds of breakthrough reforms that State Department and independent analysts say
will be needed to improve U.S.-Cuba relations, which froze after the Cuban revolution of 1959 that saw
Fidel Castro align himself with the communist bloc and the United States impose a trade embargo that 54 years later
remains in place. Each side is making small, subtle moves, but since its a glacier, its not going to melt overnight,
said Alex Crowther, a former U.S. Army colonel and Cuba specialist whose published commentaries on bilateral
relations include a 2009 essay calling for an end to the embargo. Analysts of U.S.-Cuban relations said that the latest
moves are primarily self-serving for the regime, allowing the two elderly brothers to handpick an acceptable
successor before theyre too infirm to administer the country. Raul Castros anointing of Communist Party
stalwart Miguel Diaz-Canel, 52, as the favored successor was the most important takeaway from the
presidents speech, several analysts agreed. It doesnt mean hes being chosen to succeed Raul, but
it does mean theyre leaving the gerontocracy and opening up the aperture to younger leaders,
Crowther said. Diaz-Canel is an impressive career politician, said Jorge Dominguez, a Cuban American professor
of Mexican and Latin American politics and economics at Harvard University. He moved through the Communist
Party ranks, serving as a provincial first secretary, minister of higher education, a member of the partys political
bureau and one of the Castros gaggle of vice presidents. In those roles, he has a wider array of responsibilities that
have positioned him well for the eventual succession, Dominguez said. He has also been traveling abroad with
Raul to add foreign experience to what had been principally a domestic-policy resume. When Castro elevated Diaz-
Canel to first vice president and set a date for his own stepping aside, for the first time there was an expiration date
for Castro rule of Cuba. It is true that other would-be successors appeared from time to time, but none was
anointed, and none had a formal designation as the successor, Dominguez said. Sure, there will be political fights
in the future. Theirs is a political party, after all, and politicians will jockey for power and position. But Diaz-
Canel is now the frontrunner. The Castro brothers know by now that such moves also play well
in the United States, where they just got a public relations boost with the remarks of a U.S.
senator who led a delegation to Cuba this month to seek the release of Alan Gross, an American imprisoned
on the island for illegally importing communications equipment while on a USAID-funded democracy-building
program.

Cuba- US trade growing now.

Perales 10 -- Jose Perales. Perales is a senior program associate at the Woodrow Wilson Center Latin American
Program. The Woodrow Wilson Center is one of Washingtons most respected institutions of policy research and public
dialogue. Created by an act of Congress in 1966, the Center is a living memorial to President Woodrow Wilson and his
ideals of a more informed public policy commu- nity in Washington. It supports research on in- ternational policy issues;
organizes conferences, seminars, and working groups; and offers resi- dential fellowships for scholars, journalists and
policymakers. Center director Lee H. Hamilton is a widely respected former member of Congress who chaired the House
International Relations Committee. The Latin American Program focu- ses attention on U.S.-Latin American relations
and important issues in the region, including democratic governance, citizen security, peace processes, drug policy,
decentralization, and economic development and equality. (The United States and Cuba: Implications of an Economic
Relationship WOODROW WILSON CENTER LATIN AMERICAN PROGRAM.
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/LAP_Cuba_Implications.pdf August 2010 Accessed: July 3, 2013. AK)

The last decade has been marked by a significant growth in economic ties between the United
States and Cuba a response to the partial relaxation of certain embargo restrictions explained Jose au l
Perales, Senior Program Associate of the Latin American Program.This has been particularly true within
the agriculture and tourism industries. For instance, in 2000 the United States implemented the
Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act; in the following eight years bilateral
agricultural trade and farm sales more than tripled. Furthermore, since 2003, the United States has
supplied annually more agricultural products to Cuba than any other nation; from 2003 to 2008 an
estimated 35 percent of Cubas agricultural imports came from the United States. In terms of tourism, it is
estimated that, by eliminating current restrictions on U.S. travel to Cuba, the island nation could
expect 500,000 to one million tourism-related U.S. visits per annum.This would not only be a boost
to the U.S. travel industry, it would also fundamentally transform the landscape of the entire Caribbean
tourism industry. These data hint at the many benefits to a deeper U.S.- Cuban economic relationship.
However, there are important pitfalls associated with deeper economic relations. In a April 29, 2010,hearing
on H.R.4645,theTravel Restriction Reform and Export Enhancement Act (designed to remove obstacles to
legal sales of U.S.agricultural commodities to Cubaby eliminating the cash- in-advance provision required
for all such sales to Cubaand to end travel restrictions on all Americans to Cuba), Representative Kevin
Brady (R-TX), the Republican ranking member on the House Ways and Means Committee, outlined some of
these drawbacks. Cubas economic climate is intolerant of U.S. firms: there exists no accord on U.S. individual
or corporate property claims. Indeed in spite of the Obama administrations move to allow U.S.
telecommunication firms to apply for licenses to conduct business in Cuba, few such companies have rushed
in. This is in no small part due to the important challenges associated with policy unpredictability under the
current Cuban regime, not to mention significant questions arising from issues of human rights and labor
relations. In spite of these considerations, at the time of this publication, H.R. 4645 had been approved in the
House Agriculture Committee and awaited further consideration on the Foreign Affairs and Financial Services
committees before reaching the House floor.

Baby steps arent enough.
Perales 10 -- Jose Perales. Perales is a senior program associate at the Woodrow Wilson Center Latin American
Program. Christopher Sabatini is the senior director of policy at the Americas Society and Council of the Americas. The
Woodrow Wilson Center is one of Washingtons most respected institutions of policy research and public dialogue.
Created by an act of Congress in 1966, the Center is a living memorial to President Woodrow Wilson and his ideals of a
more informed public policy commu- nity in Washington. It supports research on in- ternational policy issues; organizes
conferences, seminars, and working groups; and offers resi- dential fellowships for scholars, journalists and
policymakers. Center director Lee H. Hamilton is a widely respected former member of Congress who chaired the House
International Relations Committee. The Latin American Program focu- ses attention on U.S.-Latin American relations
and important issues in the region, including democratic governance, citizen security, peace processes, drug policy,
decentralization, and economic development and equality. (The United States and Cuba: Implications of an Economic
Relationship WOODROW WILSON CENTER LATIN AMERICAN PROGRAM.
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/LAP_Cuba_Implications.pdf August 2010 Accessed: July 3, 2013. AK)

Sabatini noted that the ability to affect significant change on the embargo falls within the scope
of executive regulatory authority, particularly in areas such as telecommunications and some elements of travel
particularly in licensing for cultural and educational exchanges and even some elements of marketing trips. In this sense
the Obama administration took a first step on April 13, 2009, when [he] President Obama announced an
increased allowance for U.S. telecommunications companies to establish licensing agreements to
allow roaming coverage on the island and establish a fiberoptic cable to Cuba, with the stated purpose
of helping Cubans communicate with the rest of the world. However, according to Sabatini, it turned out that despite
the fanfare, the regulations that came out of the U.S. bureaucracy five months later did little
realistically to allow U.S. companies to establish the necessary and sufficient links to allow
broad communication between Cubans and the rest of the world. For instance, in his announcement,
President Obama called for the establishment of a fiberoptic cable linking Cuba to the outside world. However,
regulations prohibiting U.S. equipment transfers or sales to the island for commercial purposes
persist. Similarly, the regulations continued to prevent the sale of handsets on the island for commercial purposes and
blocks infrastructure investments such as cell phone towers, routers, and switchers. All of these sorts of now-prohibited
equipment is essential if there is to be any meaningful broad- based access to the tools of communication.

After Chavez, A chance to rethink relations
White 13 -- Robert E. White, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, was the United States ambassador to Paraguay from
1977 to 1979 and to El Salvador from 1980 to 1981. ( After Chavez, A Chance to Rethink Relations, The New York Times, March 7, 2013,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/opinion/after-chavez-hope-for-good-neighbors-in-latin-
america.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0, Accessed: July 3, 2013, SD) FOR most of our history, the United States assumed that its
security was inextricably linked to a partnership with Latin America. This legacy dates from the Monroe
Doctrine, articulated in 1823, through the Rio pact, the postwar treaty that pledged the United States to come to the
defense of its allies in Central and South America. Yet for a half-century, our policies toward our southern neighbors
have alternated between intervention and neglect, inappropriate meddling and missed opportunities. The death this week of President Hugo
Chvez of Venezuela who along with Fidel Castro of Cuba was perhaps the most vociferous critic of the United States
among the political leaders of the Western Hemisphere in recent decades offers an opportunity to restore bonds with
potential allies who share the American goal of prosperity. Throughout his career, the autocratic Mr. Chvez used our embargo as
a wedge with which to antagonize the United States and alienate its supporters. His fuel helped prop up the rule
of Mr. Castro and his brother Ral, Cubas current president. The embargo no longer serves any useful purpose
(if it ever did at all); President Obama should end it, though it would mean overcoming powerful opposition from Cuban-
American lawmakers in Congress. An end to the Cuba embargo would send a powerful signal to all of Latin America that the United States
wants a new, warmer relationship with democratic forces seeking social change throughout the Americas. I joined the State Department as a
Foreign Service officer in the 1950s and chose to serve in Latin America in the 1960s. I was inspired by President John F. Kennedys creative
response to the revolutionary fervor then sweeping Latin America. The 1959 Cuban revolution, led by the charismatic Fidel Castro, had inspired
revolts against the cruel dictatorships and corrupt pseudodemocracies that had dominated the region since the end of Spanish and Portuguese rule
in the 19th century. Kennedy had a charisma of his own, and it captured the imaginations of leaders who wanted democratic change, not violent
revolution. Kennedy reacted to the threat of continental insurrection by creating the Alliance for Progress, a kind of Marshall Plan for the
hemisphere that was calculated to achieve the same kind of results that saved Western Europe from Communism. He pledged billions of dollars
to this effort. In hindsight, it may have been overly ambitious, even nave, but Kennedys focus on Latin America rekindled the promise of the
Good Neighbor Policy of Franklin D. Roosevelt and transformed the whole concept of inter-American relations. Tragically, after Kennedys
assassination in 1963, the ideal of the Alliance for Progress crumbled and la noche mas larga the longest night began for the
proponents of Latin American democracy. Military regimes flourished, democratic governments withered, moderate political and civil leaders
were labeled Communists, rights of free speech and assembly were curtailed and human dignity crushed, largely because the United States
abandoned all standards save that of anti-Communism. During my Foreign Service career, I did what I could to oppose policies that supported
dictators and closed off democratic alternatives. In 1981, as the ambassador to El Salvador, I refused a demand by the secretary of state,
Alexander M. Haig Jr., that I use official channels to cover up the Salvadoran militarys responsibility for the murders of four American
churchwomen. I was fired and forced out of the Foreign Service. The Reagan administration, under the illusion that Cuba was the power driving
the Salvadoran revolution, turned its policy over to the Pentagon and C.I.A., with predictable results. During the 1980s the United States helped
expand the Salvadoran military, which was dominated by uniformed assassins. We armed them, trained them and covered up their crimes. After
our counterrevolutionary efforts failed to end the Salvadoran conflict, the Defense Department asked its research institute, the RAND
Corporation, what had gone wrong. RAND analysts found that United States policy makers had refused to accept the obvious truth that the
insurgents were rebelling against social injustice and state terror. As a result, we pursued a policy unsettling to ourselves, for ends humiliating to
the Salvadorans and at a cost disproportionate to any conventional conception of the national interest. Over the subsequent quarter-century, a
series of profound political, social and economic changes have undermined the traditional power bases in Latin America and, with them,
longstanding regional institutions like the Organization of American States. The organization, which is headquartered in Washington and which
excluded Cuba in 1962, was seen as irrelevant by Mr. Chvez. He promoted the creation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean
States which excludes the United States and Canada as an alternative. At a regional meeting that included Cuba and excluded the United
States, Mr. Chvez said that the most positive thing for the independence of our continent is that we meet alone without the hegemony of
empire. Mr. Chvez was masterful at manipulating Americas antagonism toward Fidel Castro as a rhetorical stick with which to attack the
United States as an imperialist aggressor, an enemy of progressive change, interested mainly in treating Latin America as a vassal continent, a
source of cheap commodities and labor. Like its predecessors, the Obama administration has given few signs that it has grasped the magnitude of
these changes or cares about their consequences. After President Obama took office in 2009, Latin Americas leading statesman at the time, Luiz
Incio Lula da Silva, then the president of Brazil, urged Mr. Obama to normalize relations with Cuba.
Lula, as he is universally known, correctly identified our Cuba policy as the chief stumbling block to
renewed ties with Latin America, as it had been since the very early years of the Castro regime. After the failure of the 1961 Bay
of Pigs invasion, Washington set out to accomplish by stealth and economic strangulation what it had failed to do by frontal attack. But the
clumsy mix of covert action and porous boycott succeeded primarily in bringing shame on the United States and turning Mr. Castro into a folk
hero. And even now, despite the relaxing of travel restrictions and Ral Castros announcement that he will retire in 2018, the implacable hatred
of many within the Cuban exile community continues. The fact that two of the three Cuban-American members of the Senate Marco Rubio of
Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas are rising stars in the Republican Party complicates further the potential for a recalibration of Cuban-American
relations. (The third member, Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, is the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, but his power has been weakened by a continuing ethics controversy.) Are there any other examples in the history of diplomacy
where the leaders of a small, weak nation can prevent a great power from acting in its own best interest merely by staying alive? The re-
election of President Obama, and the death of Mr. Chvez, give America a chance to reassess the
irrational hold on our imaginations that Fidel Castro has exerted for five decades. The president and his new secretary of state, John Kerry, should
quietly reach out to Latin American leaders like President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia and Jos Miguel Insulza, secretary general of the
Organization of American States. The message should be simple: The president is prepared to show some flexibility on Cuba and asks your help.
Such a simple request could transform the Cuban issue from a bilateral problem into a
multilateral challenge. It would then be up to Latin Americans to devise a policy that would help Cuba achieve a sufficient measure of
democratic change to justify its reintegration into a hemisphere composed entirely of elected governments. If, however, our present
policy paralysis continues, we will soon see the emergence of two rival camps, the United States
versus Latin America. While Washington would continue to enjoy friendly relations with individual countries like Brazil, Mexico and
Colombia, the vision of Roosevelt and Kennedy of a hemisphere of partners cooperating in matters
of common concern would be reduced to a historical footnote.


U.S. Constituencies want to normalize relations with Cuba
Hanson and Lee 13, Stephanie Hanson, associate director and coordinating editor of the Council on Foreign Relations. Brianna Lee, Senior
Production Editor of the Council on Foreign Relations. (U.S.-Cuba Relations, Council on Foreign Relations, January 13, 2013,
http://www.cfr.org/cuba/us-cuba-relations/p11113#p3, Accessed: July 3, 2013, SD) What is U.S. public opinion on
the isolation of Cuba? Some U.S. constituencies would like to resume relations. U.S. agricultural groups already deal with
Cuba, and other economic sectors want access to the Cuban market. Many Cuban-Americans were angered by
the Bush administration's strict limits on travel and remittances, though a small but vocal contingent of hard-line Cuban exiles, many of them
based in Florida, does not want to normalize relations until the Communist regime is gone. "When they're polled, the majority of
Cuban-Americans say that the embargo has failed, and support lifting the travel ban or loosening the embargo or
some steps along that continuum of liberalization and normalization," says Julia E. Sweig, CFR director of
Latin American studies. Ending the economic embargo against Cuba would require congressional approval. Opinions in Congress
are mixed: A group of influential Republican lawmakers from Florida, including former representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart, his brother Mario
Diaz-Balart, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen are stridently anti-Castro. Still, many favor improving relations with Cuba. In 2009,
Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released a report
calling for U.S. policy changes. He said: "We must recognize the ineffectiveness of our current policy and
deal with the Cuban regime in a way that enhances U.S. interests" (PDF).

Lifting Embargo key to Regional Relations
Sheridan 09 , Mary Beth Sheridan, Washington Post Reporter (U.S. Urged to Relax Cuba Policy to Boost Regional Relations, the Washington Post, May 29, 2009,
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-05-29/politics/36798831_1_cuba-scholar-oas-members-travel-restrictions, Accessed: July 3, 2013, SD)

Eliminating the Cold War-era ban would be largely symbolic, because Cuba has shown no sign of wanting to return to the OAS, the main forum
for political cooperation in the hemisphere. But the debate shows how central the topic has become in U.S. relations with an increasingly
assertive Latin America. The wrangling over Cuba threatens to dominate a meeting of hemispheric foreign ministers, including Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton, scheduled for Tuesday in Honduras. "Fifty years after the U.S. . . . made Cuba its litmus test for its commercial and
diplomatic ties in Latin America, Latin America is turning the tables," said Julia E. Sweig, a Cuba scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Now, she said, Latin countries are "making Cuba the litmus test for the quality of the Obama administration's approach to Latin America."
President Obama has taken steps toward improving ties with Cuba, lifting restrictions on visits and money transfers by Cuban Americans and
offering to restart immigration talks suspended in 2004. But he has said he will not scrap the longtime economic embargo until Havana makes
democratic reforms and cleans up its human rights record. Ending the embargo would also entail congressional action. Obama is facing
pressure to move faster, both from Latin American allies and from key U.S. lawmakers.
Bipartisan bills are pending in Congress that would eliminate all travel restrictions and ease the
embargo. Cuba has sent mixed signals about its willingness to respond to the U.S. gestures. Latin American leaders say that
isolating Cuba is anachronistic when most countries in the region have established relations with
communist nations such as China. The OAS secretary general, Jos Miguel Insulza, has called the organization's 1962
suspension of Cuba "outdated" -- noting it is based on the island's alignment with a "communist bloc" that no longer exists. However, he has
suggested that OAS members could postpone Cuba's full participation until it showed democratic reforms. Cuban exile organizations and some
U.S. lawmakers are strongly opposed to readmitting the island. "If we invite Cuba back in, in spite of their violations, what message are we
sending to the rest of the hemisphere -- that it's okay to move backwards away from democracy and human rights, that there will be no
repercussions for such actions?" Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), a Cuban American, demanded in a speech. He threatened to cut off U.S.
funding for the OAS -- about 60 percent of its budget -- if the measure passed. Clinton said last week that Cuba should be readmitted only if it
abided by the OAS's Democratic Charter, a set of principles adopted in 2001 that commits countries to hold elections and to respect human rights
and press freedoms. Most Latin American countries broke relations with Cuba after its 1959 revolution. Nearly all have restored diplomatic
ties, and the United States will soon be the only holdout in the hemisphere. The Cuba ban could be lifted by a two-thirds vote of the OAS
foreign ministers on Tuesday. However, the organization generally works by consensus, and several countries have indicated they do not want a
showdown with the United States. Diplomats have been trying in recent days to hammer out a compromise. U.S. diplomats introduced a
resolution that would instruct the OAS to open a dialogue with Cuba about its "eventual reintegration," consistent with the principles of
"democracy and full respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms." A diplomat said last night that the United States appears to be
softening its opposition to lifting the ban as long as Cuba's full reinstatement is contingent on moving toward democracy. He spoke on the
condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks. Venezuela, an ally of Cuba, has indicated it will not support any resolution that
includes such conditions. "This is 'Jurassic Park,' " fumed Venezuelan Ambassador Roy Chaderton. "We're still in the Cold War." Some Latin
American diplomats worry that the Cuba imbroglio (misunderstanding) could further marginalize the OAS. The organization is respected for
monitoring elections, and it has tried to broker disputes in the hemisphere. But critics lambaste it as largely a debating society. Venezuela has
threatened to quit the organization and form an alternative regional group. It has set up a leftist trade alliance known as ALBA with several poor
countries in Latin America. Cuba has derided the OAS as a U.S.-dominated tool of the United States. Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-
American Dialogue, a think tank in Washington, said the Cuba resolution has trapped the Obama administration between two of its priorities:
democracy promotion and better relations with its neighbors. In 2001, the U.S. government supported the Democratic Charter, a milestone in a
region once known for dictatorships. But Obama told hemispheric leaders in Trinidad and Tobago last month that he wanted to form closer
partnerships and not have the United States dictate policy. "There's really two different values at play here:
multilateralism versus democracy. You can't have multilateralism and then let one country, i.e.
the U.S., make the decision for a multilateral organization," Hakim said.


Lifting the embargo makes the US more credible
Crowther 09 --- Colonel Glenn A. Crowther, research professor at Strategic Studies Institute (KISS THE EMBARGO
GOODBYE, February 2009, SSI, http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub906.pdf, accessed July 4, 2013,MY)
The United States has a motive and a history of operating against the Cuban government, and therefore against the Cuban people. The proof that
the United States is still operating against them is obviousthe embargo. The government uses the embargo as the
only excuse for maintaining its internal security apparatus. If we were to drop the embargo, either
Cuba would have to dismantle its security apparatus, or be revealed as being hypocritical. Either
result would be good for both the United States and the Cuban people. Dismantling the repressive security
structure would provide a modicum of freedom for the Cubans. Maintaining the security apparatus would significantly delegitimize the Cuban
government domestically and internationally and could only hasten the demise of the current system. Lifting the embargo would
be a strong sign to the international community that the United States is magnanimous and
inclusive. Maintaining it makes us look petty and vindictive to the rest of the world. We cannot
convince anyone that Cuba is a threat to the United States, nor can we make the case internationally that more of the same will have a positive
impact. Lifting the embargo would signal that we are ready to try something different to bring
democracy to Cuba.

Lifting the embargo improves democracy, relations, and US global reputation
Hanson, Batten, & Ealey 1/16 --- Daniel Hanson, Dayne Batten & Harrison Ealey, Daniel Hanson is an economics
researcher at the American Enterprise Institute. Dayne Batten is affiliated with the University of North Carolina Department of Public
Policy. Harrison Ealey is a financial analyst (It's Time For The U.S. To End Its Senseless Embargo Of Cuba, January 16, 2013,
Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/01/16/its-time-for-the-u-s-to-end-its-senseless-embargo-of-cuba/, accessed June 28,
2013, MY)

For the first time in more than fifty years, Cuban citizens can travel abroad without permission
from their government. The move, part of a broader reform package being phased in by Raul
Castro, underscores the irrationality of Americas continuation of a five-decade old embargo.
While the embargo has been through several legal iterations in the intervening years, the general tenor of the U.S. position toward Cuba is a
hardline not-in-my-backyard approach to communism a la the Monroe Doctrine. The official position is outdated,
hypocritical, and counterproductive. The Cuban embargo was inaugurated by a Kennedy administration executive order in
1960 as a response to the confiscation of American property in Cuba under the newly installed Castro regime. The current incarnation of the
embargo codified primarily in the Helms-Burton Act aims at producing free markets and representative democracy in Cuba through economic
sanctions, travel restrictions, and international legal penalties. Since Fidel Castro abdicated power to his brother Raul in 2008, the
government has undertaken more than 300 economic reforms designed to encourage enterprise, and
restrictions have been lifted on property use, travel, farming, municipal governance, electronics
access, and more. Cuba is still a place of oppression and gross human rights abuse, but recent events would indicate the
11 million person nation is moving in the right direction. Despite this progress, the U.S. spends
massive amounts of money trying to keep illicit Cuban goods out of the United States. At least 10
different agencies are responsible for enforcing different provisions of the embargo, and according to the Government Accountability Office, the
U.S. government devotes hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of man hours to administering the embargo each year. At the
Miami International Airport, visitors arriving from a Cuban airport are seven times more likely to be stopped and subjected to further customs
inspections than are visitors from other countries. More than 70 percent of the Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control inspections each year
are centered on rooting out smuggled Cuban goods even though the agency administers more than 20 other trade bans. Government
resources could be better spent on the enforcement of other sanctions, such as illicit drug trade
from Columbia, rather than the search for contraband cigars and rum. At present, the U.S. is largely alone in
restricting access to Cuba. The embargo has long been a point of friction between the United States and
allies in Europe, South America, and Canada. Every year since 1992, the U.S. has been
publically condemned in the United Nations for maintaining counterproductive and worn out
trade and migration restrictions against Cuba despite the fact that nearly all 5,911 U.S. companies nationalized during the
Castro takeover have dropped their claims. Moreover, since Europeans, Japanese, and Canadians can travel and conduct business in Cuba
unimpeded, the sanctions are rather toothless. The State Department has argued that the cost of conducting business in Cuba is only negligibly
higher because of the embargo. For American multinational corporations wishing to undertake commerce in Cuba, foreign branches find it easy
to conduct exchanges. Yet, estimates of the sanctions annual cost to the U.S. economy range from $1.2 to $3.6 billion, according to the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce. Restrictions on trade disproportionately affect U.S. small businesses who lack the transportation and financial
infrastructure to skirt the embargo. These restrictions translate into real reductions in income and employment for Americans in states like
Florida, where the unemployment rate currently stands at 8.1 percent. Whats worse, U.S. sanctions encourage Cuba to
collaborate with regional players that are less friendly to American interests. For instance, in
2011, the country inked a deal with Venezuela for the construction of an underwater
communications link, circumventing its need to connect with US-owned networks close to its shores. Repealing the
embargo would fit into an American precedent of lifting trade and travel restrictions to countries
who demonstrate progress towards democratic ideals. Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary were all offered normal
trade relations in the 1970s after preliminary reforms even though they were still in clear violation of several US resolutions condemning their
human rights practices. China, a communist country and perennial human rights abuser, is the U.S.s second largest trading partner, and in
November, trade restrictions against Myanmar were lessened notwithstanding a fifty year history of genocide and human trafficking propagated
by its military government. Which, of course, begs the question: when will the U.S. see fit to lift the embargo? If Cuba is trending towards
democracy and free markets, what litmus test must be passed for the embargo to be rolled back? The cost of the embargo to the United States is
high in both dollar and moral terms, but it is higher for the Cuban people, who are cut off from the supposed champion of liberty in their
hemisphere because of an antiquated Cold War dispute. The progress being made in Cuba could be accelerated with the help of American
charitable relief, business innovation, and tourism. A perpetual embargo on a developing nation that is moving towards reform makes little
sense, especially when Americas allies are openly hostile to the embargo. It keeps a broader discussion
about smart reform in Cuba from gaining life, and it makes no economic sense. It is time for the embargo to
go.

Lifting the embargo increases our sphere of influence
Grisworld 05 --- Daniel Griswold is director of the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies (Four Decades of Failure:
The U.S. Embargo against Cuba, October 12, 2005, http://www.cato.org/publications/speeches/four-decades-failure-us-embargo-
against-cuba, accessed July 3, 2013, MY)

Yes, more American dollars would end up in the coffers of the Cuban government, but dollars would also go to private Cuban citizens. Philip
Peters, a former State Department official in the Reagan administration and expert on Cuba, argues that American tourists would boost the
earnings of Cubans who rent rooms, drive taxis, sell art, and operate restaurants in their homes. Those dollars would then find their way to the
hundreds of freely priced farmers markets, to carpenters, repairmen, tutors, food venders, and other entrepreneurs. Second, restrictions
on remittances should be lifted. Like tourism, expanded remittances would fuel the private
sector, encourage Cubas modest economic reforms, and promote independence from the
government. Third, American farmers and medical suppliers should be allowed to sell their products to Cuba with financing arranged by
private commercial lenders, not just for cash as current law permits. Most international trade is financed by temporary credit, and private banks,
not taxpayers, would bear the risk. I oppose subsidizing exports to Cuba through agencies such as the Export-Import Bank, but I also oppose
banning the use of private commercial credit. Finally, the Helms-Burton law should be allowed to expire. The law,
like every other aspect of the embargo, has failed to achieve its stated objectives and has, in fact,
undermined American influence in Cuba and alienated our allies. Lifting or modifying the
embargo would not be a victory for Fidel Castro or his oppressive regime. It would be an overdue acknowledgement
that the four-and-a-half decade embargo has failed, and that commercial engagement is the best
way to encourage more open societies abroad. The U.S. government can and should continue to
criticize the Cuban governments abuse of human rights in the U.N. and elsewhere, while
allowing expanding trade and tourism to undermine Castros authority from below. We should apply
the presidents sound reasoning on trade in general to our policy toward Cuba. The most powerful force for change in Cuba
will not be more sanctions, but more daily interaction with free people bearing dollars and new
ideas. How many decades does the U.S. government need to bang its head against a wall before it changes a failed policy?

People don't want the embargo anymore
Crowther 09 --- Colonel Glenn A. Crowther, research professor at Strategic Studies Institute (KISS THE EMBARGO
GOODBYE, February 2009, SSI, http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub906.pdf, accessed July 4, 2013,MY)
Although many believe there is unity in thinking among all Cubans in the United States,
conversations with people from each of these groups demonstrate that this is not true. Although the
diminishing group of original exiles still tends to be extremely antiCastro, many of the others just want the whole thing to end
so that they can either go home, or get this all behind them. Others just want to be able to help
their families at home or be free to travel back and forth at will. The offspring of the original
exiles (the oldest of whom are now in their early 50s) tend to be anti-Castro, however many of them are not as enthusiastic as
their parents about overthrowing the Revolution. Most desire that the Castro regime go away and Cuba be free, but they
feel that time will make this happen, and they are not usually dedicated to this cause like their parents. In private conversation, however, a
trend appears. Very few Cubans in the United States actually want the embargo to continue.

Now is the time for engagement, diplomatic transition, Florida, and Kerry
Padgett 7/3 --- Tim Padgett is WLRN-Miami Herald News' Americas correspondent covering Latin America and the Caribbean
from Miami. He has covered Latin America for almost 25 years, graduate of Northwestern University (Why This Summer Offers Hope
For Better U.S.-Cuba Relations, July 3, 2013, WLRN, http://wlrn.org/post/why-summer-offers-hope-better-us-cuba-relations, accessed
July 3, 2013, MY)
And yet, despite all that recent cold-war commotion, could this finally be the summer of love on the
Florida Straits? Last month the Obama Administration and the Castro dictatorship started talks
on re-establishing direct mail service; this month theyll discuss immigration guidelines. Diplomats on
both sides report a more cooperative groove. New Diplomacy So what happened thats suddenly
making it possible for the two governments to start some substantive diplomatic outreach for the first
time in years? First, Castro finished crunching the numbers on Cubas threadbare economy, and the results
scared him more than one of Yoani Snchezs dissident blog posts. To wit, the islands finances are held up by little more than European tourists
and oil charity from socialist Venezuela. Hes adopted limited capitalist reforms as the remedy, and to make
them work he has to loosen the repressive screws a turn or two. That finally includes letting Cubans travel freely
abroad, which gives them better opportunities to bring back investment capital. As a result, says Carlos Saladrigas, a Cuban-American business
leader in Miami and chairman of the Washington-based Cuba Study Group, The timing is right for some U.S.-Cuban rapprochement. Cuba
is clearly in a transitionary mode, says Saladrigas. They need to change to reinsert themselves
in the global order, they need to become more normal in their relations with other nations.
Changing Attitudes Second, although the White House is still intimidated by the Cuban exile lobby, its had its own numbers to ponder --
namely, poll results from South Floridas Cuban-American community. Over the past five years, surveys have consistently shown that. Over
the past five years, surveys have consistently shown that Cuban-Americans, especially the more
moderate younger generation and more recently arrived Cubans, favor engagement with Cuba as
a way of promoting democratization there. Some polls even indicate that a majority want to ditch
the failed 51-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba. As a result, Obama -- who according to one exit poll won
48% of Floridas Cuban vote in last years presidential election, which would be a record for a Democratic candidate -- feels more elbow room
for dilogo with the Castro regime. The Administration even recently let Gonzlez return to Cuba. The Cuban-American
community in Miami is definitely changing, says Cuban-American Elena Freyre, president of the Foundation for
Normalization of U.S.-Cuba Relations in Miami. Its reached kind of a critical mass at this point, and I think people are ready to try something
different. Freyre notes that Obamas appointment this year of former Massachusetts Senator John Kerry as the new U.S. secretary of state is
also having an impact. Mr. Kerry has always felt [the U.S.s] position with Cuba made no sense, she
says. Hes been very vocal about thinking that if we engage Cuba we will get a lot further. Kerry,
for example, believes the U.S. should lift its ban on U.S. citizen travel to Cuba.
The time is right, US and Cuba moving forward on relations
Haven 6/21 --- Paul Haven, Associated Press bureau chief in Havana (Cuba, US Try Talking, but Face Many Obstacles, June
21, 2013, Associated Press, http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/cuba-us-talking-face-obstacles-19457659#.Uc2ttT7wJ9k,
accessed June 28, 2013, MY)
They've hardly become allies, but Cuba and the U.S. have taken some baby steps toward
rapprochement in recent weeks that have people on this island and in Washington wondering if a
breakthrough in relations could be just over the horizon. Skeptics caution that the Cold War enemies have been here
many times before, only to fall back into old recriminations. But there are signs that views might be shifting on both sides of the Florida Straits.
In the past week, the two countries have held talks on resuming direct mail service, and
announced a July 17 sit-down on migration issues. In May, a U.S. federal judge allowed a
convicted Cuban intelligence agent to return to the island. This month, Cuba informed the family of jailed U.S.
government subcontractor Alan Gross that it would let an American doctor examine him, though the visit has apparently not yet happened.
President Raul Castro has also ushered in a series of economic and social changes, including making it easier for Cubans to travel off the island.
Under the radar, diplomats on both sides describe a sea change in the tone of their dealings. Only
last year, Cuban state television was broadcasting grainy footage of American diplomats meeting with dissidents on Havana streets and publically
accusing them of being CIA front-men. Today, U.S. diplomats in Havana and Cuban Foreign Ministry
officials have easy contact, even sharing home phone numbers. Josefina Vidal, Cuba's top diplomat for North
American affairs, recently traveled to Washington and met twice with State Department officials a visit that came right before the
announcements of resumptions in the two sets of bilateral talks that had been suspended for more than two years. Washington has also granted
visas to prominent Cuban officials, including the daughter of Cuba's president. "These recent steps indicate a desire on
both sides to try to move forward, but also a recognition on both sides of just how difficult it is to
make real progress," said Robert Pastor, a professor of international relations at American
University and former national security adviser on Latin America during the Carter
administration. "These are tiny, incremental gains, and the prospects of going backwards are equally high."

Embargo doesnt work and only hurts international relations
Hanson et al 13- Daniel Hanson, economics researcher at the American Enterprise
Institute, Dayne Batten, affiliated with the University of North Carolina Department of
Public Policy ,Harrison Ealey, financial analyst, (It's Time For The U.S. To End Its Senseless Embargo Of
Cuba, 1/16/13, http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/01/16/its-time-for-the-u-s-to-end-its-senseless-embargo-of-cuba/, 7/2/13, CAS)

At present, the U.S. is largely alone in restricting access to Cuba. The embargo has long been a point
of friction between the United States and allies in Europe, South America, and Canada. Every year since
1992, the U.S. has been publically condemned in the United Nations for maintaining counterproductive
and worn out trade and migration restrictions against Cuba despite the fact that nearly all 5,911 U.S.
companies nationalized during the Castro takeover have dropped their claims.
Moreover, since Europeans, Japanese, and Canadians can travel and conduct business in Cuba
unimpeded, the sanctions are rather toothless. The State Department has argued that the cost of
conducting business in Cuba is only negligibly higher because of the embargo. For American
multinational corporations wishing to undertake commerce in Cuba, foreign branches find it easy to conduct
exchanges.

Lifting the embargo reduces international perception of the U.S. as punitive and
hypocritical
Dickerson 10 Sergio Dickerson, Lt.Col. in U.S. Army [United States Security Strategy in Cuba, DTIC, 1/14/10,
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf, accessed: 7/3/13, JK]

The argument can also be made that the U.S. has foreign relations with China, Saudi Arabia and other non-democratic governments while
applying a different standard towards Cuba. With growing perception that Cuba no longer poses a credible
threat to the U.S., it appears that U.S. policy has changed from coercive to punitive following the
end of the Cold War. With a renewed focus on multilateralism, President Obama could go a long
way to break this image by spreading the seeds of a new beginning in U.S.-Cuba relations

The embargo is counterproductive costs alliances
Hanson, et. al. 13 Daniel Hanson, Daniel Hanson is an economics researcher at the American Enterprise
Institute. (It's Time For The U.S. To End Its Senseless Embargo Of Cuba Forbes, 1/16/13,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/01/16/its-time-for-the-u-s-to-end-its-senseless-embargo-of-
cuba/, accessed: 7/2/13, amf)

Moreover, since Europeans, Japanese, and Canadians can travel and conduct business in Cuba
unimpeded, the sanctions are rather toothless. The State Department has argued that the cost of
conducting business in Cuba is only negligibly higher because of the embargo. For American multinational
corporations wishing to undertake commerce in Cuba, foreign branches find it easy to conduct exchanges.
Yet estimates of the sanctions annual cost to the U.S. economy range from $1.2 to $3.6 billion according to
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Restrictions on trade disproportionately affect U.S. small businesses who lack
the transportation and financial infrastructure to skirt the embargo. These restrictions translate into real
reductions in income and employment for Americans in states like Florida, where the unemployment rate
currently stands at 8.1 percent.
Whats worse, U.S. sanctions encourage Cuba to collaborate with regional players that are less
friendly to American interests. For instance, in 2011, the country inked a deal with Venezuela for the
construction of an underwater communications link, circumventing its need to connect with US-owned
networks close to its shores.
Repealing the embargo would fit into an American precedent of lifting trade and travel
restrictions to countries who demonstrate progress towards democratic ideals. Romania,
Czechoslovakia, and Hungary were all offered normal trade relations in the 1970s after preliminary reforms
even though they were still in clear violation of several US resolutions condemning their human rights
practices. China a communist country and perennial human rights abuser is the U.S.s second largest trading
partner, and in November, trade restrictions against Myanmar were lessened notwithstanding a fifty year
history of genocide and human trafficking propagated by its military government.
Which, of course, begs the question: when will the U.S. see fit to lift the embargo? If Cuba is trending towards
democracy and free markets, what litmus test must be passed for the embargo to be rolled back?
The cost of the embargo to the United States is high in both dollar and moral terms, but it is
higher for the Cuban people, who are cut off from the supposed champion of liberty in their
hemisphere because of an antiquated Cold War dispute. The progress being made in Cuba could be
accelerated with the help of American charitable relief, business innovation, and tourism.
A perpetual embargo on a developing nation that is moving towards reform makes little
sense, especially when Americas allies are openly hostile to the embargo. It keeps a
broader discussion about smart reform in Cuba from gaining life, and it makes no economic
sense. It is time for the embargo to go.

Cuban relations with China and Venezuela saving the regime
Feinberg 11 Richard Feinberg, Richard Feinberg is professor of international political economy at the
Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego. Feinberg
served as special assistant to President Clinton and senior director of the National Security Councils Office of
Inter-American Affairs. He has held positions on the State Department's policy planning staff and worked as
an international economist in the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of International Affairs. (eaching Out:
Cubas New Economy and the International esponse The Brookings Institute, November 2011,
http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2011/11/18-cuba-feinberg, accessed: 7/4/13, amf)

Five decades after Fidel Castros 26th of July Movement marched victoriously into Havana on New Years
Day, 1959, the United States and Cuba, separated by less than 100 miles of choppy waters, remain deeply
distrustful neighbors entangled in a web of hostilities. Heated U.S. policy debates over how best to respond to
the Cuban Revolutionthrough legislation in the Congress or executive orders issued by the Executive
Branchimplicitly assume that there are only two players in contention: Washington and
Havana. Yet, this conceit takes us very far from the realities of Cuba today.
Since the collapse of its former patron, the Soviet Union, a resilient Cuba has dramatically diversified
its international economic relations. Initially, Cuba reached out to Europe, Canada, and a widening
array of friendly states in Latin America. Over the last decade, Cuba has reached out to forge
economic partnerships with major emerging market economiesnotably China, Brazil, and
Venezuela. Spanish firms manage many of the expanding hotel chains in Cuba that cater to 2.5 million
international tourists each year. A Canadian company jointly owns mining operations that ship high-priced
nickel to Canada and China. In the next few years, China is poised to spend billions of dollars
building a large petrochemical complex at Cienfuegos. A Brazilian firm will modernize the Mariel
Port so that it can accommodate very large container ships transiting the newly widened Panama Canal.
Petroleum companies from ten or more countries have lined up to explore for deepsea oil
in Cuban waters in the Gulf of Mexico.
Despite these advances, the Cuban economy remains in the doldrums (as described in Section 1).
The main constraint slowing the Cuban economy is not U.S. sanctions (even as they have hit
hard). ather it is Cubas own outdated economic model inherited from the Soviet Union of central planning.
Cubas many commercial partners would like to invest more in Cuba and would prefer to
purchase more Cuban exports to correct the imbalances in their bilateral trade accounts, but are
frustrated by Cubas scant economic offerings.
Section 2 of this policy paper tells the story of Cubas outreach to the dynamic emerging market economies as
seen from the perspective of Cuba and also through the eyes of its Chinese, Brazilian, Venezuelan and Mexican
partnersexamining their motivations as well as their anxieties and frustrations. How does Cuba fit into
their international economic and geo-political strategies, and what are the domestic political drivers behind
their friendships with Havana? Canadian interests are also explored, as Ottawa has sharply differentiated its
Cuba policy from those of its close North American ally.
While comprehensive U.S. sanctions attempt to undermine the Cuban economy, European
countries have been sending development assistance, albeit in modest amounts. European aid
targets its resources to empower municipalities, private farmers and cooperativesto strengthen social
forces less dominated by Havanas powerful bureaucracies. Section 3 describes these European and Canadian
cooperation programs as well as the creative initiatives of the non-governmental organization Oxfam, and
draws lessonspointing out potential pitfalls as well as opportunitiesfor future international development
programs operating in the difficult Cuban context.

Cuba building relations with China now recent talks
Latino Daily News 6/19/13 Latino Daily News: Hispanically Speaking News. (Cuban VP Strengthens
elations with China on Trip Abroad Latino Daily News, 6/19/13,
http://www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/latino-daily-news/details/cuban-vp-strengthens-relations-with-
china-on-trip-abroad/25261/, accessed: 7/4/13, amf)

Cuban First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel and Chinese President Xi Jinping gave a new push
to longstanding bilateral relations with a meeting here Tuesday.
We want you to feel at home Xi told Diaz-Canel at the start of the meeting at the Great Hall of the People,
which was only open to the media for a few minutes.
Joined by a large political retinue, Diaz-Canel was the first senior Cuban leader to meet with
Xi since he became Chinas president in March.
While the officials remarks to the media stayed within the bounds of diplomatic propriety tangible steps
to boost trade relations and other ties have been taken in recent weeks.
Indeed, Diaz-Canel and Chinese counterpart Li Yuanchao on Monday presided over the
signing of several bilateral cooperation accords.
Those agreements included a donation by the Asian giant, an interest-free loan to Cuba and
another credit for purchases of farm machinery and equipment.
The amounts were not disclosed.
The two countries have learned from one another during the process of building
socialism the Chinese vice president said Monday after a meeting with his Cuban counterpart, the official
Xinhua news agency said.
Diaz-Canel, for his part, said then that Cuba viewed its relations with China from a strategic
perspective and was interested in bolstering bilateral cooperation.
Beijings Communist Party secretary Guo Jinlong and Cuban President Raul Castro also met earlier this
month in Havana, a sit-down that ended with the signing of cooperation accords in the
areas of energy, transportation, tourism and biotechnology.
China is Cubas second-largest trading partner with two-way trade valued at more than $2
billion in 2011, up from $590 million in 2004, according to official figures.
Lifting the embargo makes the US more credible
Crowther 09 --- Colonel Glenn A. Crowther, research professor at Strategic Studies
Institute (KISS THE EMBARGO GOODBYE, February 2009, SSI,
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub906.pdf, accessed July 4,
2013,MY)
The United States has a motive and a history of operating against the Cuban government, and therefore against the Cuban people. The
proof that the United States is still operating against them is obviousthe embargo. The government uses the
embargo as the only excuse for maintaining its internal security apparatus. If we were to
drop the embargo, either Cuba would have to dismantle its security apparatus, or be revealed
as being hypocritical. Either result would be good for both the United States and the
Cuban people. Dismantling the repressive security structure would provide a modicum of freedom for the Cubans. Maintaining
the security apparatus would significantly delegitimize the Cuban government domestically and internationally and could only hasten
the demise of the current system. Lifting the embargo would be a strong sign to the international
community that the United States is magnanimous and inclusive. Maintaining it makes us
look petty and vindictive to the rest of the world. We cannot convince anyone that Cuba is a threat to the
United States, nor can we make the case internationally that more of the same will have a positive impact. Lifting the embargo
would signal that we are ready to try something different to bring democracy to Cuba.
Lifting the embargo is key to Obamas credibility- solves a litany of global conflicts
Dickerson 10- Lieutenant Colonel Sergio M. Dickerson of the US Army War College, (United
States Security Strategy Towards Cuba, 1/14/10, Strategic Research Project,
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA518053-Accessed-6-27-13,RX)
Today, 20 years have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall its time to chip away at the diplomatic wall that
still remains between U.S. and Cuba. As we seek a new foreign policy with Cuba it is imperative that we
take into consideration that distrust will characterize negotiations with the Cuban
government. On the other hand, consider that loosening or lifting the embargo could also be mutually
beneficial. Cubas need and Americas surplus capability to provide goods and services
could be profitable and eventually addictive to Cuba. Under these conditions, diplomacy
has a better chance to flourish.
If the Cuban model succeeds President Obama will be seen as a true leader for
multilateralism. Success in Cuba could afford the international momentum and credibility to solve
other seemingly wicked problems like the Middle East and Kashmir. President Obama could leverage this
international reputation with other rogue nations like Iran and North Korea who might associate their
plight with Cuba.35 The U.S. could begin to lead again and reverse its perceived decline in the
greater global order bringing true peace for years to come.
Lifting the Embargo key to boost relations with Europe, South America, and Canada
Hanson, Batten and Ealey, 1/16- Daniel Hanson, Dayne Batten, and Harrison Ealey. Daniel is an
economics researcher at the American Enterprise Institute, Dayne is affiliated with the UNC Department of
Public Policy and Ealy is a financial analyst at Forbes (Its Time for the U.S. to End its Senseless Embargo of
Cuba Forbes 1/16/13 http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/01/16/its-time-for-the-u-s-to-end-its-
senseless-embargo-of-cuba/Accessed-7-2-13-RX)
At present, the U.S. is largely alone in restricting access to Cuba. The embargo has long been a
point of friction between the United States and allies in Europe, South America, and
Canada. Every year since 1992, the U.S. has been publically condemned in the United Nations for
maintaining counterproductive and worn out trade and migration restrictions against Cuba
despite the fact that nearly all 5,911 U.S. companies nationalized during the Castro takeover
have dropped their claims.
US-Canada relations key to solve oil, the environment, disease, and terror
Milne 2007- Noella Milne, Partner, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, Canada's oldest and largest speakers'
forums with a membership comprised of some of Canada's most influential leaders from the professions,
business labour education and government (Canada-U.S. Relations: Our Common Cause Agenda in a
Perilous World January 22 2007 http://speeches.empireclub.org/62962/data-Accessed-7-2-13-RX)
In the energy field, Canada and the U.S. have a strong relationship, with the U.S. being the
world's largest energy producer, consumer and importer, and Canada the largest foreign-
energy supplier to the United States of oil, natural gas, uranium and electricity. We both see eye-
to-eye on the importance of a market-based approach to energy resource development--our oil sands being a great example, growing
from a pipe dream in the early '80s to production today of a million barrels a day, on the way to three million or more by 2015. We
see increasing amounts of oil and natural gas production being controlled by government--
Russia, for example, using its energy strength for wider geo-political ends. Also
nationalization by Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia. At the recent G-8 meeting in St. Petersburg, Prime Minister
Harper succeeded in getting the market-based approach to energy resources development agreed in a number of important texts. In
our approach to environmental stewardship, the United States and Canada both afford an
important role to technology and innovation as important means of addressing global
challenges and finding solutions. For example, we are already partners, along with other countries and the private sector,
in the Weyburn project in Saskatchewan to study the possibility of capturing and storing carbon dioxide in geological forms such as oil
fields. Another area of multilateral co-operation where the embassy has been active has been
the preparedness for pandemics . Canada and the United States are concerned about the
potential for a human influenza pandemic that would have significant global health,
economic and social consequences. Canada, drawing on our SARS experience, and the United States have worked
together to raise international consciousness and preparedness for another pandemic. While the pandemic threat is
global, the co-ordinated response must be also at the regional and country level. And in this
regard, Canada and the United States have each developed its own Influenza Pandemic response plans, which are continually updated
and shared. We at the embassy follow this issue closely. I would like to add a final area of common endeavour--one closer to home. It is
directed towards the most important responsibility a government has. That is to protect and defend the freedom,
independence and sovereignty of our two countries. NORAD is an emblem of common
endeavour. It stands for shared strategic vision for defence of the continent, shared
decision making, and unrivalled interoperability of our personnel, radars and aircraft.
NORAD is evolving in the post 9/11 world. Last year, we renewed the NORAD agreement in
perpetuity, ending the previous five-year cycles. The new agreement gives NORAD added
responsibility for maritime warning. We have a proud tradition and history of Canada-U.S. defence co-operation--
arguably the most complex in the world. Over 80 treaty-level agreements, and more than 250 memoranda of understanding. More than
600 members of the Canadian Forces serve in the U.S. and on exchange with U.S. forces. Canadian Forces have the distinction of being the
most interoperable with the United States of any of the NATO allies. We train together, patrol together, serve together. The Defense
Development and Defense Production Sharing Agreements manage defence industry trade, and the related research and development--
approximately $2 billion in trade flows annually. We are an integral part of the U.S. defence industrial and technology base and the
largest foreign supplier, contributing to both economic growth and jobs on both sides of the border, and to the interoperability of our
forces in the field. One example is the current Joint Strike Fighter project, supporting interoperability but also access to up to $8 billion in
industrial participation opportunities. The embassy in Washington plays a key part in this activity. We have an active and robust
Defense Liaison Office, which interacts daily with our Department of National Defense on policy and operational issues, including co-
operation on Afghanistan. I myself have already visited NORAD twice, and the AWACS base in Oklahoma once, to underscore the
importance Canada attaches to this relationship. The embassy has taken a lead role in addressing the current ITARS problem, in defence
procurement, and tomorrow, we host a visit of the Minister of National Defence to his new U.S. counterpart. On Capitol Hill, our job is to
make members of Congress aware of the significant Canadian role in defending the continent and our major contribution to the campaign
in Afghanistan. Before I conclude, I want to come back to perhaps our greatest personal and economic common cause--"daily" life along
our shared borders--whether it be truckers delivering auto parts between Windsor and Detroit, day shoppers travelling between
Montreal and Plattsburg, or friends and family making a spontaneous trip across the border to visit one another in Toronto or Buffalo or
Vancouver and Bellingham. The shared protection and mobility across our shared border is our
most important economic bi-lateral common cause issue with the United States. After all, the
border is not an imaginary line across the 49th parallel; it is an ever-evolving complex entity that interconnects our lives, our economies
and our continued prosperity. Canada has seen a gradual thickening of the border over the past four years, initiatives that jeopardize
our long-standing commercial and people-to-people connections. Recently we have seen measures introduced in food inspection and
the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI)--the new passport rules--both initiatives which, if not implemented carefully, will
undermine the foundation of NAFTA, the backbone of our economic integration, as well as our 140 years of shared friendship and family
connections. The air rule for WHTI will be implemented tomorrow. I expect this will go smoothly since passport usage is around 95 per
cent and the U.S. intends to demonstrate flexibility in the implementation. And while land and sea implementation is still 11 or
potentially more months away, we are still encouraging the U.S. to take all of the necessary time required to get this right. We cannot
rush into this and have a "cold turkey" implementation without appropriate flexibility and phasing-in. But we are encouraged by recent
indications that the Administration and Congress may be more flexible in the implementation of WHTI related to land crossings. Let me
conclude. I've said on a number of occasions the paradox of the Canada-U.S. relationship is that the steadier it is, the more attention is
given to any difference that may arise between us. Yes, we've had disputes. I know when things are bumpy, having lived through the
softwood lumber issue. But we solved it. And yes, we have a problem in the defence co-operation realm. And we're working to solve it.
My point to you is that, if you overlook those areas where things are smooth, you miss the fundamental nature of our relationship. You
are looking only at the occasional blemish on the skin, not grasping the basic sinews that connect our two countries--and that give us
important strengths and advantages. You also risk overlooking how Canada's international agenda is supported and how national
interests are furthered by our common cause endeavour with the United States. And that, to me, would do not just a disservice to our
neighbours to the south, and our bilateral relationship, it would also impede reaching our national objectives as a country. So
whether it is Afghanistan, weapons of mass destruction, the Western Hemisphere, trade,
pandemics, energy and the environment or the defence of North America, there are many ways
where the national interest of the United States and Canada converge. This brings real meaning to a
recent observation of a senior member of the U.S. Administration, "We often speak of our two countries as being friends, neighbours and
allies. Canada is also a good and reliable partner."

Lifting the embargo is key to regaining international reputation
Holmes 10- Michael G. Holmes, MA The School of Continuing Studies, Georgetown
(SEIZING THE MOMENT, June 21, 2010, Georgetown,
https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/bitstream/handle/10822/553334/holm
esMichael.pdf?sequence=1-Accessed-7-2-13-RX]
From an image stand point repealing the sanctions and removing the embargo is symbolic. It shows
Cuba and the world that although the United States is pro democracy, it does not wish to
impose its values on other nations. The Cuba Democracy Act was an attempt to force democratic changes in
Cuba.10 By repealing the act the United States, illustrates that it respects the sovereignty of nations. Considering that this Act
did allow for the application of U.S. law in a foreign country11, repealing it not only sends the message about U.S. views on
sovereignty but also shows that the administration is taking steps to ensure that sovereignty is actually respected.
Repealing the Helms-Burton Law will certainly stimulate foreign investment in Cuba as
well. Many foreign countries were leery of investing in Cuba out of fear of being sued or losing property under the provisions
established by the Helms-Burton Act.12 This return of foreign investment will further secure Cuba's
place in the global marketplace. It also will help to silence skeptics who will question U.S. intentions. Since the
sanctions against Cuba were unilateral U.S. actions, an unsolicited change in course will undoubtedly spark speculation.
Allowing all countries to invest in Cuba again underscores the United States' position of
desiring for all countries to participate in the global market place. It is difficult to imagine
that the benefits of lifting the embargo will not be immediate and substantial in regards to
the United States reputation in the world. Looking at the long-term benefits of removing
the sanctions, the two benefits that stand out the most are trade and fuel.

Lifting the embargo improves democracy, relations, and US global reputation
Hanson, Batten, & Ealey 1/16 --- Daniel Hanson, Dayne Batten & Harrison Ealey,
Daniel Hanson is an economics researcher at the American Enterprise Institute.
Dayne Batten is affiliated with the University of North Carolina Department of Public
Policy. Harrison Ealey is a financial analyst (It's Time For The U.S. To End Its
Senseless Embargo Of Cuba, January 16, 2013, Forbes,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/01/16/its-time-for-the-u-s-to-end-its-
senseless-embargo-of-cuba/, accessed June 28, 2013, MY)
For the first time in more than fifty years, Cuban citizens can travel abroad without
permission from their government. The move, part of a broader reform package being
phased in by aul Castro underscores the irrationality of Americas continuation of a five-
decade old embargo. While the embargo has been through several legal iterations in the intervening years, the general tenor
of the U.S. position toward Cuba is a hardline not-in-my-backyard approach to communism a la the Monroe Doctrine. The official
position is outdated, hypocritical, and counterproductive. The Cuban embargo was inaugurated by a
Kennedy administration executive order in 1960 as a response to the confiscation of American property in Cuba under the newly
installed Castro regime. The current incarnation of the embargo codified primarily in the Helms-Burton Act aims at producing free
markets and representative democracy in Cuba through economic sanctions, travel restrictions, and international legal penalties. Since
Fidel Castro abdicated power to his brother Raul in 2008, the government has undertaken more than 300
economic reforms designed to encourage enterprise, and restrictions have been lifted on
property use, travel, farming, municipal governance, electronics access, and more. Cuba is still a
place of oppression and gross human rights abuse, but recent events would indicate the 11 million person
nation is moving in the right direction. Despite this progress, the U.S. spends massive
amounts of money trying to keep illicit Cuban goods out of the United States. At least 10 different
agencies are responsible for enforcing different provisions of the embargo, and according to the Government Accountability Office, the
U.S. government devotes hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of man hours to administering the embargo each year. At
the Miami International Airport, visitors arriving from a Cuban airport are seven times more likely to be stopped and subjected to further
customs inspections than are visitors from other countries. More than 70 percent of the Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control
inspections each year are centered on rooting out smuggled Cuban goods even though the agency administers more than 20 other trade
bans. Government resources could be better spent on the enforcement of other sanctions,
such as illicit drug trade from Columbia, rather than the search for contraband cigars and
rum. At present, the U.S. is largely alone in restricting access to Cuba. The embargo has long been a point of
friction between the United States and allies in Europe, South America, and Canada. Every
year since 1992, the U.S. has been publically condemned in the United Nations for
maintaining counterproductive and worn out trade and migration restrictions against Cuba
despite the fact that nearly all 5,911 U.S. companies nationalized during the Castro takeover have dropped their claims. Moreover, since
Europeans, Japanese, and Canadians can travel and conduct business in Cuba unimpeded, the sanctions are rather toothless. The State
Department has argued that the cost of conducting business in Cuba is only negligibly higher because of the embargo. For American
multinational corporations wishing to undertake commerce in Cuba, foreign branches find it easy to conduct exchanges. Yet, estimates
of the sanctions annual cost to the U.S. economy range from $1.2 to $3.6 billion according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Restrictions
on trade disproportionately affect U.S. small businesses who lack the transportation and financial infrastructure to skirt the embargo.
These restrictions translate into real reductions in income and employment for Americans in states like Florida, where the
unemployment rate currently stands at 8.1 percent. Whats worse U.S. sanctions encourage Cuba to
collaborate with regional players that are less friendly to American interests. For instance,
in 2011, the country inked a deal with Venezuela for the construction of an underwater
communications link, circumventing its need to connect with US-owned networks close to its shores. Repealing the
embargo would fit into an American precedent of lifting trade and travel restrictions to
countries who demonstrate progress towards democratic ideals. Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary
were all offered normal trade relations in the 1970s after preliminary reforms even though they were still in clear violation of several US
resolutions condemning their human rights practices. China, a communist country and perennial human rights abuser, is the U.S.s
second largest trading partner, and in November, trade restrictions against Myanmar were lessened notwithstanding a fifty year history
of genocide and human trafficking propagated by its military government. Which, of course, begs the question: when will the U.S. see fit
to lift the embargo? If Cuba is trending towards democracy and free markets, what litmus test must be passed for the embargo to be
rolled back? The cost of the embargo to the United States is high in both dollar and moral terms, but it is higher for the Cuban people,
who are cut off from the supposed champion of liberty in their hemisphere because of an antiquated Cold War dispute. The progress
being made in Cuba could be accelerated with the help of American charitable relief, business innovation, and tourism. A perpetual
embargo on a developing nation that is moving towards reform makes little sense, especially when Americas allies are
openly hostile to the embargo. It keeps a broader discussion about smart reform in Cuba
from gaining life, and it makes no economic sense. It is time for the embargo to go.

Lifting the embargo increases our sphere of influence
Grisworld 05 --- Daniel Griswold is director of the Cato Institute's Center for Trade
Policy Studies (Four Decades of Failure: The U.S. Embargo against Cuba, October
12, 2005, http://www.cato.org/publications/speeches/four-decades-failure-us-
embargo-against-cuba, accessed July 3, 2013, MY)
Yes, more American dollars would end up in the coffers of the Cuban government, but dollars would also go to private Cuban citizens.
Philip Peters, a former State Department official in the Reagan administration and expert on Cuba, argues that American tourists would
boost the earnings of Cubans who rent rooms, drive taxis, sell art, and operate restaurants in their homes. Those dollars would then find
their way to the hundreds of freely priced farmers markets to carpenters repairmen tutors food venders and other entrepreneurs.
Second, restrictions on remittances should be lifted. Like tourism, expanded remittances
would fuel the private sector encourage Cubas modest economic reforms and promote
independence from the government. Third, American farmers and medical suppliers should be allowed to sell their
products to Cuba with financing arranged by private commercial lenders, not just for cash as current law permits. Most international
trade is financed by temporary credit, and private banks, not taxpayers, would bear the risk. I oppose subsidizing exports to Cuba
through agencies such as the Export-Import Bank, but I also oppose banning the use of private commercial credit. Finally, the
Helms-Burton law should be allowed to expire. The law, like every other aspect of the
embargo, has failed to achieve its stated objectives and has, in fact, undermined American
influence in Cuba and alienated our allies. Lifting or modifying the embargo would not be a victory
for Fidel Castro or his oppressive regime. It would be an overdue acknowledgement that the four-and-a-
half decade embargo has failed, and that commercial engagement is the best way to
encourage more open societies abroad. The U.S. government can and should continue to
criticize the Cuban governments abuse of human rights in the U.N. and elsewhere while
allowing expanding trade and tourism to undermine Castros authority from below. We should
apply the presidents sound reasoning on trade in general to our policy toward Cuba. The most powerful force for
change in Cuba will not be more sanctions, but more daily interaction with free people
bearing dollars and new ideas. How many decades does the U.S. government need to bang its head against a wall before
it changes a failed policy?

People don't want the embargo anymore
Crowther 09 --- Colonel Glenn A. Crowther, research professor at Strategic Studies
Institute (KISS THE EMBARGO GOODBYE, February 2009, SSI,
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub906.pdf, accessed July 4,
2013,MY)
Although many believe there is unity in thinking among all Cubans in the United States,
conversations with people from each of these groups demonstrate that this is not true.
Although the diminishing group of original exiles still tends to be extremely antiCastro, many of the others just want the
whole thing to end so that they can either go home, or get this all behind them. Others just
want to be able to help their families at home or be free to travel back and forth at will.
The offspring of the original exiles (the oldest of whom are now in their early 50s) tend to be anti-Castro, however
many of them are not as enthusiastic as their parents about overthrowing the Revolution. Most
desire that the Castro regime go away and Cuba be free, but they feel that time will make this happen, and they are not usually
dedicated to this cause like their parents. In private conversation, however, a trend appears. Very few Cubans in the
United States actually want the embargo to continue.

Now is the time for engagement, diplomatic transition, Florida, and Kerry
Padgett 7/3 --- Tim Padgett is WLRN-Miami Herald News' Americas correspondent
covering Latin America and the Caribbean from Miami. He has covered Latin America
for almost 25 years, graduate of Northwestern University (Why This Summer Offers
Hope For Better U.S.-Cuba Relations, July 3, 2013, WLRN, http://wlrn.org/post/why-
summer-offers-hope-better-us-cuba-relations, accessed July 3, 2013, MY)
And yet, despite all that recent cold-war commotion, could this finally be the summer of love
on the Florida Straits? Last month the Obama Administration and the Castro dictatorship
started talks on re-establishing direct mail service; this month theyll discuss immigration
guidelines. Diplomats on both sides report a more cooperative groove. New Diplomacy So what
happened thats suddenly making it possible for the two governments to start some
substantive diplomatic outreach for the first time in years? First, Castro finished crunching the
numbers on Cubas threadbare economy and the results scared him more than one of Yoani Snchezs dissident blog
posts. To wit the islands finances are held up by little more than European tourists and oil charity from socialist Venezuela. Hes
adopted limited capitalist reforms as the remedy, and to make them work he has to loosen
the repressive screws a turn or two. That finally includes letting Cubans travel freely abroad, which gives them better
opportunities to bring back investment capital. As a result, says Carlos Saladrigas, a Cuban-American business leader in Miami and
chairman of the Washington-based Cuba Study Group The timing is right for some U.S.-Cuban rapprochement. Cuba is clearly
in a transitionary mode says Saladrigas. They need to change to reinsert themselves in
the global order they need to become more normal in their relations with other nations.
Changing Attitudes Second, although the White House is still intimidated by the Cuban exile lobby its had its own numbers to ponder --
namely poll results from South Floridas Cuban-American community. Over the past five years, surveys have consistently shown that.
Over the past five years, surveys have consistently shown that Cuban-Americans, especially
the more moderate younger generation and more recently arrived Cubans, favor
engagement with Cuba as a way of promoting democratization there. Some polls even
indicate that a majority want to ditch the failed 51-year-old U.S. trade embargo against
Cuba. As a result, Obama -- who according to one exit poll won 48% of Floridas Cuban vote in last years presidential election which
would be a record for a Democratic candidate -- feels more elbow room for dilogo with the Castro regime. The Administration even
recently let Gonzlez return to Cuba. The Cuban-American community in Miami is definitely changing
says Cuban-American Elena Freyre, president of the Foundation for Normalization of U.S.-Cuba elations in Miami. Its reached kind of a
critical mass at this point and I think people are ready to try something different. Freyre notes that Obamas appointment this year of
former Massachusetts Senator John Kerry as the new U.S. secretary of state is also having an impact. Mr. Kerry has always
felt [the U.S.s] position with Cuba made no sense she says. Hes been very vocal about
thinking that if we engage Cuba we will get a lot further. Kerry for example believes the U.S. should lift its
ban on U.S. citizen travel to Cuba.

Lifting Embargo key to Regional Relations
Sheridan 09 Mary Beth Sheridan Washington Post eporter (U.S. Urged to elax Cuba Policy to Boost egional elations the Washington Post, May 29, 2009,
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-05-29/politics/36798831_1_cuba-scholar-oas-members-travel-restrictions, Accessed: July 3, 2013, SD)
The U.S. government is fighting an effort to allow Cuba to return to the Organization of American States after a 47-year suspension. But the resistance is putting it at odds with much of
Latin America as the Obama administration is trying to improve relations in the hemisphere.
Eliminating the Cold War-era ban would be largely symbolic, because Cuba has shown no sign of wanting to return to the OAS, the main forum for political cooperation in the
hemisphere. But the debate shows how central the topic has become in U.S. relations with an increasingly assertive Latin America. The wrangling over Cuba threatens to dominate a
meeting of hemispheric foreign ministers, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, scheduled for Tuesday in Honduras. "Fifty years after the U.S. . . . made Cuba its
litmus test for its commercial and diplomatic ties in Latin America, Latin America is turning the tables," said Julia E. Sweig, a Cuba scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations. Now, she
said, Latin countries are "making Cuba the litmus test for the quality of the Obama administration's approach to Latin America." President Obama has taken steps toward improving
ties with Cuba, lifting restrictions on visits and money transfers by Cuban Americans and offering to restart immigration talks suspended in 2004. But he has said he will not scrap the
longtime economic embargo until Havana makes democratic reforms and cleans up its human rights record. Ending the embargo would also entail congressional action.
Obama is facing pressure to move faster, both from Latin American allies and from key U.S.
lawmakers. Bipartisan bills are pending in Congress that would eliminate all travel
restrictions and ease the embargo. Cuba has sent mixed signals about its willingness to respond to the U.S. gestures. Latin American leaders
say that isolating Cuba is anachronistic when most countries in the region have established
relations with communist nations such as China. The OAS secretary general, Jos Miguel Insulza, has called the organization's 1962
suspension of Cuba "outdated" -- noting it is based on the island's alignment with a "communist bloc" that no longer exists. However, he has suggested that OAS members could
postpone Cuba's full participation until it showed democratic reforms. Cuban exile organizations and some U.S. lawmakers are strongly opposed to readmitting the island. "If we
invite Cuba back in, in spite of their violations, what message are we sending to the rest of the hemisphere -- that it's okay to move backwards away from democracy and human rights,
that there will be no repercussions for such actions?" Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), a Cuban American, demanded in a speech. He threatened to cut off U.S. funding for the OAS --
about 60 percent of its budget -- if the measure passed. Clinton said last week that Cuba should be readmitted only if it abided by the OAS's Democratic Charter, a set of principles
adopted in 2001 that commits countries to hold elections and to respect human rights and press freedoms. Most Latin American countries broke relations with Cuba after its 1959
revolution. Nearly all have restored diplomatic ties, and the United States will soon be the only holdout in the hemisphere. The Cuba ban could be lifted by a two-thirds vote of the
OAS foreign ministers on Tuesday. However, the organization generally works by consensus, and several countries have indicated they do not want a showdown with the United
States. Diplomats have been trying in recent days to hammer out a compromise. U.S. diplomats introduced a resolution that would instruct the OAS to open a dialogue with Cuba
about its "eventual reintegration," consistent with the principles of "democracy and full respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms." A diplomat said last night that the
United States appears to be softening its opposition to lifting the ban as long as Cuba's full reinstatement is contingent on moving toward democracy. He spoke on the condition of
anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks. Venezuela, an ally of Cuba, has indicated it will not support any resolution that includes such conditions. "This is 'Jurassic Park,' "
fumed Venezuelan Ambassador Roy Chaderton. "We're still in the Cold War." Some Latin American diplomats worry that the Cuba imbroglio (misunderstanding) could further
marginalize the OAS. The organization is respected for monitoring elections, and it has tried to broker disputes in the hemisphere. But critics lambaste it as largely a debating society.
Venezuela has threatened to quit the organization and form an alternative regional group. It has set up a leftist trade alliance known as ALBA with several poor countries in Latin
America. Cuba has derided the OAS as a U.S.-dominated tool of the United States. Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank in Washington, said the Cuba
resolution has trapped the Obama administration between two of its priorities: democracy promotion and better relations with its neighbors. In 2001, the U.S. government supported
the Democratic Charter, a milestone in a region once known for dictatorships. But Obama told hemispheric leaders in Trinidad and Tobago last month that he wanted to form closer
partnerships and not have the United States dictate policy. "There's really two different values at play here:
multilateralism versus democracy. You can't have multilateralism and then let one country,
i.e. the U.S., make the decision for a multilateral organization," Hakim said.









Relations Advantage
Plan Solves / Embargo Key
Lifting the embargo against economic engagement solves relations, Cubas economy, and
democratic stability
Whiting 13 (Ashley, LEEHG Institute for Foreign Policy, Policy Recommendation to Lift the Cuban Embargo, 1/30/13,
http://www.leehg.org/?p=467)

The U nited S tates embargo against Cuba has failed to fulfill its purpose even half a century after its
implementation. Although the Cold War ended over twenty years ago, the United States still utilizes this
outdated mindset in their relations towards Cuba. The Cuban embargo is one of the last relics of the Cold
War era, and it is time to move forward in terms of foreign policy. During a time when containment was
the overruling policy of foreign affairs, imposing an embargo against Cuba was rational diplomacy. In todays times
though, using failed and outdated tactics against Cuba will not yield the results that the United States desires. The
time has come to reform relations with Cuba. The Cuban embargo should be lifted due to the
sanctions ineffectiveness, the correlation between wealth and democracy, the benefits of free
trade, and the disapproval by the international community. Before entering into the core arguments
against the embargo, it is important to understand the history of U.S.-Cuban relations. The embargo was
implemented in 1960, during the height of the Cold War, when the Cuban government nationalized U.S. businesses
on their land. The Castro regime has still not paid their reparations, and most likely will not do so
anytime soon. With the rising communist government, the support from the Soviet Union, and the looming
danger of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the embargo was a highly reasonable decision at that time. Although
U.S.S.R.-Cuban relations troubled the U.S. fifty years ago, this relationship is no longer an issue.
The Helms-Burton act, implemented during the Clinton Administration, strengthened the sanctions but
allowed for humanitarian aid. Although critics of the embargo hoped that President Obama would ease
these trade restrictions in 2009, the President has openly stated that he shall continue the embargo
until Cuba shows signs of democratization. One of the core arguments against the embargo is that the sanctions
have failed to spread democracy to Cuba. Although economic sanctions provide an attractive alternative to
full-scale military intervention against an antagonistic nation, they often prove to be ineffective. According to
research by Abel Escriba-Folch and Joseph Wright in their publication, Dealing with Tyranny: International
Sanctions and the Survival of Authoritarian Rulers, a sanction will fail if it is unsuccessful at affecting the citizens in
a leaders support coalition. This concept correlates perfectly with the core arguments of the rational political
ambition theory. A leaders support coalition is the percentage of people which a leader must satisfy in order to
remain in office. If a leader wants to maintain power, then domestic policies must be focused on satisfying the
winning coalition. Considering this hypothesis, dictators will value private goods due to the small size of their
winning coalition, whereas democratic leaders will distribute more public goods due to the large size of their
winning coalition.[5] Although research shows that sanctions are more effective against other democracies, the
United States generally imposes sanctions against authoritarian governments. These sanctions may be used to
destabilize a totalitarian state, or to simply demonstrate disapproval. Unintentionally, sanctions against dictatorships
generally harm those citizens outside of the electorate. These citizens cannot choose their leaders, but they still face
the extreme consequences of their governments policies. If a sanction fails to negatively alter the support coalitions
loyalty, then the leader shall remain in office. Some studies suggest that imposed sanctions strengthen a dictatorship
since the leader must reinforce oppression in response to rising foreign pressure. If this is true, then one could argue
that the embargo strengthens the Castro regime more than Cubas chances of democratization.[5]
Considering the correlation between wealth and democracy, lifting the embargo can serve as a beneficial
strategy in democratizing Cuba. Research from Freedom House and GDP measurements have demonstrated a
strong correlation between a states economic growth and level of democracy. Considering the gruesome fate that
generally awaits a dictator after leaving office, it is predictable for totalitarian leaders to avoid implementing
democratic reforms. Since the United States cannot force Castro to reform, the U.S. must take a different approach.
By strengthening the Cuban middle class, the U.S. can indirectly push Cuba further down the path of
democratization. One well-known hypothesis, created by political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset, states that,
The more well-to-do a nation, the greater the chances that it will sustain a democracy.[3] Various examples in
history have supported this hypothesis, such as with the prosperity of South Korea. A once autocratic
nation, South Korea has flourished after decades of industrialization and urbanization. A strong middle class is
the core of a democracy, since economic stability allows for more political participation. Increased
economic inequality may not directly decrease democratic stability, but an impoverished population certainty will. If
the majority of a population lacks the necessary resources to fulfill their basic needs, then the probability of them
participating in politics is quite low. Without such opportunities, these oppressed people can only change their
government in the form of a revolution. Even so, revolutions are rare, unpredictable, chaotic, and catastrophic to
those directly involved. When considering basic macroeconomic ideas, free trade is theoretically preferable over
pure self-reliance. In this age of globalization, the increased rise of economic interdependency must not be ignored.
If each country produces that which they have a comparative advantage in, then all states can capitalize on their own
prosperity. A tariff on trade generally helps those companies that cannot compete, but such restrictions defeat the
purpose of comparative advantage. Even the concept of free trade between international markets injures communism
at its core. Lifting the trade embargo shall not only stimulate the United States economy, but shall
also improve the living conditions of the Cuban population. By opening up the markets in Cuba,
the country may slowly move towards capitalist ideals. [4] The Cuban embargo has become increasingly unpopular
through the eyes of the public. The international community overwhelmingly condemns the Cuban embargo, with
the U.N. General Assembly member states voting 186-2 against the embargo in 2011.[2] Critics of the embargo
argue that the United States uses a double standard towards foreign policy with Cuba. The U.S. does not always
trade with other capitalist democracies. China is a communist country, and is also one of the United States most
important trading partners. Saudi Arabia is commonly defined as a dictatorship, yet the U.S. receives oil and other
valued resources from this state. In the long run, Castros communism shall eventually crumble. However, the
Cuban embargo has not helped this process of democratization. The embargo has failed at destabilizing the Castro
regime, and succeeded in unintentionally harming the civilian population. These sanctions are ineffective
since they have failed at directly harming Castros support coalition. The lack of a strong middle
class decreases Cubas chances of democratizing, and enables Castro to continue his oppression.
Instead of coercing Castro into making top-down democratic reforms, the U nited S tates can stimulate the
Cuban economy and encourage reform from the bottom-up. From a more liberal viewpoint, free trade shall
benefit the United States economy since it may allow a new source of income and a wider access of resources. All
things considered, the United States should lift this failed embargo and take a new approach in influencing the
domestic politics of Cuba.



Engagement Key
Increased economic engagement is uniquely key
Piccone 13 (Joseph, Brookings Institute Senior Fellow and Deputy Director, Foreign Policy, Opening to Havana, 1/17/13,
http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2013/01/opening-to-havana)

Your second term presents a rare opportunity to turn the page of history from an outdated Cold War
approach to Cuba to a new era of constructive engagement that will encourage a process of
reform already underway on the island. Cuba is changing, slowly but surely, as it struggles to adapt its outdated
economic model to the 21st century while preserving one-party rule. Reforms that empower Cuban citizens
to open their own businesses, buy and sell property, hire employees, own cell phones, and travel
off the island offer new opportunities for engagement .
Recommendation:
You can break free of the straitjacket of the embargo by asserting your executive authority to facilitate trade,
travel and communications with the Cuban people. This will help establish your legacy of rising above
historical grievances, advance U.S. interests in a stable, prosperous and democratic Cuba, and pave the way
for greater U.S. leadership in the region.



Now Key
Now is the key time both economic and political issues align
Tisdall 13 (Simon, 4/8/13, Time for U.S. and Cuba to kiss and make up, http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/08/opinion/opinion-
simon-tisdall-cuba)

But Obama's approach is the antithesis of the politics of hate and division. He broke that mold last
year, making big gains among the Cuban American electorate. This result suggested the polarized
ethnically-based politics of the past may be breaking down, said Julia Sweig of the U.S. Council on Foreign
Relations in a recent article in The National Interest. "Having won nearly half of the Cuban American vote in
Florida in 2012, a gain of 15 percentage points over 2008, Obama can move quickly on Cuba. If he were to do so, he
would find a cautious but willing partner in Ral Castro, who needs rapprochement with Washington to advance his
own reform agenda," Sweig said. Little wonder Republicans like Ros-Lehtinen are worried. If things go on like this,
they could lose a large piece of their political raison d'etre. There are other reasons for believing the time is right
for Obama to end the Cuba stalemate. The recent death of Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's influential president,
has robbed Havana of a strong supporter, both political and financial. Chavez was not interested in a
rapprochement with the U.S., either by Cuba or Venezuela. His revolutionary beliefs did not allow for an
accommodation with the American "imperialists." His successors may not take so militant a line, especially given
that Venezuela continues to trade heavily with the U.S., a privilege not allowed Cuba. The so-called "pink tide" that
has brought several left-wing leaders to power in Latin America in the past decade is not exactly on the ebb, but the
hostility countries such as Brazil, Ecuador and Bolivia felt towards the Bush administration has abated. In fact,
according to Sweig's article, U.S. business with Latin America as a whole is booming, up 20% in 2011. The
U.S. imports more crude oil from Venezuela and Mexico than from the Persian Gulf, including Saudi Arabia. The
U.S. does three times more business with Latin America than with China. The stand-off over Cuba is an obstacle
to advancing U.S. interests and business in Latin America n countries, and vice versa. The continuation of the
embargo has left the U.S. almost totally isolated at the United Nations, and at sharp odds with its
major allies, including Britain and the EU. But more importantly, the continued ostracism of Cuba's people -- for
they, not the Havana government, are the biggest losers -- is unfair, unkind and unnecessary. If the U.S. wants
full democracy in Cuba, then it should open up fully to ordinary Cubans. Tear down the artificial
walls that separate the people of the two countries and, as Mao Zedong once said, let a hundred flowers bloom.


AT Russia Impact D

Furthermore, this is the only scenario for global conflict all other conflicts are contained
locally
ROZZOFF 2009 (Rick, Manager of STOP NATO International, February 27, Baltic Sea: Flash Point for
NATO-Russia Conflict, http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/baltic-sea-flash-point-for-nato-russia-conflict/,
accessed January 28, 2010, JN)
The world has been on edge for a decade now and a form of numbing has set in with many of its inhabitants; a
permanent condition of war apprehension and alert has settled over others, particularly those in areas likely to be directly affected. Over
the past six years the worst and most immediate fears have centered on the prospects of three major regional conflicts, all of which are fraught
with the danger of eventual escalation into nuclear exchanges. The three are a renewed and intensified Indian-Pakistani
conflict, an outbreak of hostilities on the Korean Peninsula and an attack by the U.S., Israel or
both in unison against Iran. The first would affect neighbors both in possession of nuclear weapons
and a combined population of 1,320,000,000. The second could set Northeast Asia afire with
China and Russia, both having borders with North Korea, inevitably being pulled into the vortex. The last could lead
to an explosion in the Persian Gulf and throughout the Middle East, with the potential of spilling over into the
Caspian Sea Basin, Central and South Asia, the Caucasus and even the Balkans, as the U.S. and NATO have strategic air bases in Bulgaria,
Romania, Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan and, at least for the time being, Kyrgyzstan that would be employed in any major assault on Iran, and the
latter would retaliate against both land- and sea-based threats as best it could. In the event that any of the three scenarios
reached the level of what in a humane and sensible world would be considered the unthinkable the use of nuclear
weapons the cataclysmic consequences both for the respective regions involved and for the world would be incalculable.
Theoretically, though, all three nightmare models could be geographically contained. There is a fourth
spot on the map, however, where most any spark could ignite a powder keg that would draw in
and pit against each other the worlds two major nuclear powers and immediately and ipso facto
develop into a world conflict. That area is the Baltic Sea region. In 2003, months before NATO
would grant full membership to the Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the Russian Defense
Minister at the time, Sergei Ivanov, warned that such a development would entail the deployment of
NATO, including American, warplanes a three-minute flight away from St. Petersburg, Russias
second largest city. And just that occurred. NATO air patrols began in 2004 on a three month rotational basis and U.S. warplanes just
completed their second deployment on January 4 of this year. Had history occurred otherwise and Soviet warplanes alternated with those of
fellow Warsaw Pact nations in patrolling over, say, the St. Lawrence Seaway or the Atlantic Coast off Nova Scotia, official Washingtons
response wouldnt be hard to imagine or long in coming. A 2005 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council confirmed that the
U.S. maintained 480 nuclear bombs in Europe, hosted by six NATO allies, Belgium, Britain, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Turkey.
More recent estimates indicate that over 350 American nuclear weapons remain in Europe to the present time. If the six above-
mentioned nations continue to host nuclear arms, what would new NATO members Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania the first and third currently
governed by former U.S. citizens, president Toomas Hendrik Ilves and Valdas Adamkus, respectively deny the Pentagon? In the interim
between the accession of the three Baltic states and former Soviet republics into NATO and now,
the Alliance as a whole and the U.S. in particular have expanded their permanent military
presence within all three nations: Estonia and Latvia which both border the main body of Russia and Lithuania
which abuts the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.