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Brent Scowcroft on the Cuba Embargo: "It Doesn't Do Anything"

Brent Scowcroft, the dean of George H. W. Bush's foreign policy brain trust, was, as you likely know by now, in favor of the first Gulf War and the war in Afganistan but was opposed to the Iraq War from before it began. Though a Republican, he has shown the flexibility and disdain for ideology that comes from being a true adherent of the realist approach to foreign policy.

That doesn't just apply to the Middle East. Here he is talking to Steve Clemons about the long-standing Cuba embargo:

If you couldn't hear the soft-spoken Mr. Scowcroft, here's what he said: "My answer on Cuba is Cuba is not a foreign policy question. Cuba is a domestic issue. In foreign policy, the embargo makes no sense. It doesn't do anything. It's quite clear we can not starve Cuba to death. We learned that when the Soviet stopped subsidizing Cuba and they didn't collapse. It's a domestic issue."

What he's saying is that domestic politics, embodied in this case by the powerful and hard-line Cuban exile lobby in Florida that no politician with national ambitions can alienate, is keeping the embargo in place. Common sense, on the other hand, suggests that decades of the embargo have not produced any results in the island nation, other than a less prosperous and less healthy Cuban people. After all, Castro is leaving on his own terms and has hand-picked his successor.

You never know. With Scowcroft and Obama on board for reform, common sense may pull off a come from behind victory.

Comments

We can hope common sense can prevail, but the history of my lifetime (the last half-century) makes me doubt that it can. Too many people believe what authority figures tell them without bothering to think for themselves. That is why religion is such an important factor in recent politics, and why jingoistic nationalism is mistaken for patriotism. Let's hope for better, but don't be surprised at how long and difficult a road it will be.

Posted by: Bill G on 05/13/08 at 10:31 AM Respond

Starving Cuba out is/was a bad solution for the United States, and communism in the United States works just fine for corporations, it is just a "no-no" for the common population, because the 70% common population must be kept down by all means.

Even though U.S. propaganda paints Castro in a bad light, Castro has FREE medical for ALL the common population, which is more than the United States can say. I understand also that some people that can afford the journey have sought medical surgeries in Cuba, because medical surgeries are FREE.

In the United States' 70% common population, one will become bankrupt if one has a major medical problem, which isn't saying much for the United States way of government.

Posted by: MarthaA on 05/13/08 at 10:40 AM Respond

Bill G:

By jingo, you are right. Jingoistic nationalism combined with domestic colonization and burdensome laws to subdue and separate the common population's poor and sick into private prison warehouses, and enslave the consumer workers for capitalism's revenue stream.

Did you see the documentary on all the prison warehouses in every state of the United States? The United States has more people in prison than any country in the world. It is time to storm the bastille and free the people, not keep warehousing more citizens because of unfair laws and no living wage jobs.

The Clinton's jingoistic DLC and the REPUBLICANS have an unpatriotic nationalist plan that the 70% common population must not allow to continue, as it is Hitler's white Ayrian plan all over again.

Posted by: MarthaA on 05/13/08 at 11:33 AM Respond

I understood that Castro came to the USA first before approaching the then Soviet Union for help. I'm not sure American diplomacy at the time was at its best.

And from what I gather, American citizens are attending Cuban medical schools. Now that seems rather telling.

There's also the literacy issue. Rumor has it that there's practically no illiteracy.

On French tv, they showed workers in a cigar factory making cigars while they listened to ... someone reading to them out of a Victor Hugo novel!

So, there seems to be better overall management in certain sectors than there is in "freer" countries.

But freedom is an important issue and there's definitely a problem with free speech in Cuba. (Do we always use our freedom of speech well?)

Cuba's hard to peg.

Posted by: Kathy Giannini on 05/14/08 at 4:00 AM Respond