Plan: The United States federal government should normalize economic relations with the Republic of Cuba.

1AC Solvency
Lifting the embargo would substantially improve relations throughout the world and spur the economy. Trani 6/23 --- permanent member Council on Foreign Relations Eugene P. Trani, President and University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, Graduate of the University of Notre Dame (Trani: End the embargo on Cuba, Times Dispatch, June 23, 2013, http://www.timesdispatch.com/opinion/their-opinion/columnists-blogs/guest-columnists/end-theembargo-on-cuba/article_ba3e522f-8861-5f3c-bee9-000dffff8ce7.html, accessed June 28, 2013, MY) The Soviet support of Cuba lasted right up to the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. That event shattered the economy of Cuba and many hoped would lead to normal diplomatic and economic relations between the United States and Cuba. But 22 years later, normal relations are still not in the cards.In fact, with the passage of the Cuban Democracy Act (the Torricelli Law) in 1992 and the Cuban Liberty and Democracy Solidarity Act (the Helms-Burton Act) of 1996, relations have become even more difficult. The result is a patchwork of policies that appear to contradict one another and do
not seem to be a sensible and rational policy for the United States to follow.On the one hand, more than 200,000 Americans are now visiting Cuba on American Treasury Department-approved licenses annually. The sight of American Airlines planes dropping off and picking up American citizens at the Jos Mart International Airport in Havana seems at best surprising. My trip, conducted by Insight Cuba, was one such officially approved trip. Further, there are now more than $2 billion of remittances sent by Americans to their Cuban relatives annually. So there are some points of progress in overall Cuban-American relations. At the same time, there

are many significant problems that tend to hurt the Cuban people most at risk in economic terms. The visit of a cruise ship to a Cuban port results in that ship being unable, no matter which flag registry the ship has, to dock in the United States for six months. This policy really hurts the Cuban tourist economy, which could greatly improve employment and job creation across Cuba. If Cuban materials are used in the construction of cars (more than 4% nickel for example), these cars cannot be sold in the United
States, a policy which works against the rise of an automobile-based manufacturing segment of the Cuban economy.The American embargo has had, therefore, very significant impact on different parts of the economy in Cuba. In fact, such varied political leaders as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; George P. Shultz, former Republican secretary of state; and the late former Democratic presidential candidate, George McGovern, have called for the embargo to be lifted and relations to be renewed between Cuba and the United States. Even

polls of Americans show a majority in favor of an end to the embargo and re-establishing of normal relations between the countries. My own trip to Cuba reinforced the call for such actions. We spent four days visiting with many different kinds
of groups in Havana, community projects, senior citizens, a health clinic, youth programs, artist and recording facilities, musical ensembles, historic sites such as Revolution Square and the Ernest Hemingway house and an environmental training facility, and not once did we hear anger toward the United States or the American people.What we heard was puzzlement about the embargo and strong feelings that it was hurting the people of Cuba. In fact, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the absolute poverty rate has increased significantly in Cuba. It was also evident that there is visible decline in major infrastructure areas such as housing. Today,

there seem to be both humanitarian and economic factors, particularly with the significant growth of the non-governmental section of the economy that could factor in a change in American policy. There is also a major diplomatic factor in that no other major country, including our allies, follows our policy. What a positive statement for American foreign policy in Latin America and throughout the world it would be for the United States to end its embargo and establish normal diplomatic relations with Cuba. We would be taking both a humanitarian course of action and making a smart diplomatic gesture. The time is right and all our policy makers need is courage to bring about this change.

1AC Agriculture AdvantageScenario 1 is Economy

First- Status quo prevents agriculture trade with Cuba Griswold 05- Daniel Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute (Four
Decades of Failure: The U.S. Embargo against Cuba, 10/12/05, http://www.cato.org/publications/speeches/fourdecades-failure-us-embargo-against-cuba, Accessed: 7/3/13, zs) Cuban families are not the only victims of the embargo. Many of the

dollars Cubans could earn from U.S. tourists would come back to the United States to buy American products, especially farm goods. In 2000, Congress approved a modest opening of the embargo. The Trade Sanctions Reform and Export
Enhancement Act of 2000 allows cash-only sales to Cuba of U.S. farm products and medical supplies. The results of this opening have been quite amazing. Since 2000, total sales of farm products to Cuba have increased from virtually zero to $380 million last year. From dead last in U.S. farm export markets, Cuba ranked 25th last year out of 228 countries in total purchases of U.S. farm products. Cuba is now the fifth largest export market in Latin America for U.S. farm exports. American farmers sold more to Cuba last year than to Brazil. Our leading exports to Cuba are meat and poultry, rice, wheat, corn, and soybeans. The American Farm Bureau estimates that Cuba could eventually become a $1 billion agricultural

export market for products of U.S. farmers and ranchers. The embargo stifles another $250 million in potential annual exports of fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides and tractors. According to a
study by the U.S. International Trade Commission, the embargo costs American firms a total of $700 million to $1.2 billion per year. Farmers in Texas and neighboring states are among the biggest potential winners. One study by Texas A&M University estimated that Texas ranks fifth among states in potential farm exports to Cuba, with rice, poultry, beef and fertilizer the top exports.

Removing the embargo is key to agriculture trade

Copeland, Jolly, and Thompson 11- Cassandra Copeland, Curtis Jolly, Henry Thompson, professors of
economics, business, and trade at the University of Auburn (2011, Journal of economics and business, PDF, Auburn, Accessed 6/27/13, http://www.auburn.edu/~thomph1/cubahistory.pdf, zs)

Cuba has substantial potential to export to the US. Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean, about as large in land area as Alabama. Two-thirds of the land in Cuba can be cultivated. Cubas
population of 11 million is about twice that of Alabama or about equal to Georgia or the combination of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas. Cuba is potentially a major component of the regional economy. Cubas major agriculture exports are sugar, citrus, fish, cigars, and coffee. These crops complement US wheat, rice, meat, poultry, cotton, soybeans, and feed grains. Cuba also has mineral deposits of nickel (worlds second largest reserves), cobalt, iron, copper, chromite, manganese, zinc, 12 and tungsten, as well as unexplored petroleum potential. Cuba has no potential to export manufactures but that would develop with foreign investment. Figure 11 reports

US agricultural exports to Cuba in 2006, led by wheat, soybeans, chicken, corn, and rice. Given this demonstrated demand, it is safe to say lifting the embargo will increase demand for US agricultural products. Cuba can compete in only a few international agricultural markets but could supply a niche organic market in the US as suggested by Kost (1998) who projects annual agricultural exports to Cuba of $1 billion of US feed grains with a lifted embargo.

The agriculture industry is key to prevent US economic decline

Pulliam 12 John Pulliam, writer for Galesberg, winner of 2010 AP article contest (Farmers want Cuban
embargo lifted, Galesberg, 7/8/12, http://www.galesburg.com/news/x1271220402/Farmers-want-Cuban-embargolifted#axzz2Y1R3Us3L , accessed: 7/3/13, ckr)

trade relations with Cuba is an important step in furthering Illinois farmers abilities to market their produce, including grains, meat and dairy products, said Tamara Nelsen, senior director of commodities for the Illinois Farm Bureau. Agriculture has been a bright spot in our nations and our states economy during the recent downturn. Improving our trade relations with Cuba will only help to ensure agriculture can continue to strengthen our state and national economies.
Restoring normal While there may be some potential for renewed trade with Cuba if the embargo is lifted, Serven thinks it will help Cuba more than affecting U.S. farmers. As far as being a boon for U.S. agriculture, I dont think that will happen, he said. But its just the fact that were so close.

Strom said the trade embargo has very real effects. For instance, rather than buying rice from Mississippi, which would take three days to get to the island nation, Cuba is forced to buy it from Vietnam, which takes 28 days to ship the nation, about 100 miles south of Florida.
So logistically, the cost would be a whole lot cheaper (for Cuba) to buy food from the United States, just because of transportation costs, Serven said.

Avoiding US economic decline key to global economy. BW 13

(internally quoting Dr. Venkatesh Bala, chief economist at The Cambridge Group, a part of Nielsen Business Wire February 5, 2013 lexis) "North

America is slowly but steadily heading in the right direction," said Dr. Bala. "Compared to a year ago, North America showed progress toward recovery with a six-point year-on-year consumer confidence increase, driven mainly by a three-point increase in a positive job outlook, up from 37 percent to 40 percent year-on-year. With continued weakness in Europe and uneven growth in Asia, it may well be that with a brighter job market, the U nited S tates w ill serve as the
critical engine of improved global economic activity in 2013."

Global economic decline causes nuclear war Auslin 9

(Michael, Resident Scholar American Enterprise Institute, and Desmond Lachman Resident Fellow American Enterprise Institute, The Global Economy Unravels, Forbes, 3-6, http://www.aei.org/article/100187) What do these trends mean in the short and medium term? The Great Depression showed how social and global chaos followed hard on economic collapse. The mere fact that parliaments across the globe, from America to Japan, are unable to make responsible, economically sound recovery plans suggests that they do not know what to do and are simply hoping for the least disruption. Equally worrisome is the adoption of more statist economic programs around the globe, and the concurrent decline of trust in free-market systems. The threat of instability is a pressing concern. China, until last year the world's fastest growing economy, just reported that 20 million migrant laborers lost their jobs. Even in the flush times of recent years, China faced upward of 70,000 labor uprisings a year. A sustained downturn poses grave and possibly immediate threats to Chinese internal stability. The regime in Beijing may be faced with a choice of repressing its own people or diverting their energies outward, leading to conflict with China's neighbors. Russia, an oil state completely dependent on energy sales, has had to put down riots in its Far East as well as in downtown Moscow. Vladimir Putin's rule has been predicated on squeezing civil liberties while providing economic largesse. If that devil's bargain falls apart, then wide-scale repression inside Russia, along with a continuing threatening posture toward Russia's neighbors, is likely. Even apparently stable societies face increasing risk and the threat of internal or possibly external conflict. As Japan's exports have plummeted by nearly 50%, one-third of the country's prefectures have passed emergency economic stabilization plans. Hundreds of thousands of temporary employees hired during the first part of this decade are being laid off. Spain's unemployment rate is expected to climb to nearly 20% by the end of 2010; Spanish unions are already protesting the lack of jobs, and the specter of violence, as occurred in the 1980s, is haunting the country. Meanwhile, in Greece, workers have already taken to the streets. Europe as a whole will face dangerously increasing tensions between native citizens and immigrants, largely from poorer Muslim nations, who have increased the labor pool in the past several decades. Spain has absorbed five million immigrants since 1999, while nearly 9% of Germany's residents have foreign citizenship, including almost 2 million Turks. The xenophobic labor strikes in the U.K. do not bode well for the rest of Europe. A prolonged global downturn, let alone a collapse, would

dramatically raise tensions inside these countries. Couple that with possible protectionist legislation in the United States, unresolved ethnic and territorial disputes in all regions of the globe and a loss of confidence that world leaders actually know what they are doing. The result may be a series of small explosions that coalesce into a big bang .

1AC OFAC Iran Advantage

Plan boosts OFAC sanctions on Iran reallocates resources Johnson, Spector and Lilac 10 - Andy Johnson, Director, National Security Program, Kyle Spector, Policy
Advisor, National Security Program, Kristina Lilac, National Security Program, Senior Fellows of The Third Way Institute, (End the Embargo of Cuba, Article for The Third Way Institute, 9/16/10, http://content.thirdway.org/publications/326/Third_Way_Memo_-_End_the_Embargo_of_Cuba.pdf, Accessed 7/02/13, AW)

Keeping the embargo in place requires that the US government devote time and resources to fighting a Cold War -8 era threat. Senator Chris Dodd argued in a 2005 op ed that the US spends extraordinary resources each year to enforce the sanctions instead of devoting such resources to the fight against terrorism. 4 While the financial resources dedicated to enforcing the embargo may be limited compared to resources dedicated to other causes, lifting the Cuban embargo could put the US in a better position to fight terrorist organizations by freeing up resources currently enforcing the embargo. For example, the Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which governs travel and trade between the US and Cuba, is also responsible for maintaining sanctions against truly problematic countries, including Iran and North Korea. OFAC also is responsible for responding to economic threats posed by terrorist organizations and narcotics traffickers. By ending OFACs need to regulate the Cuban embargo, OFAC could instead devote those resources to respond to the current threats posed by rogue states and terrorist networks That revamps sanctions on Iran previous lack of focus and disorganization Maberry and Jensen 13 J. Scott Maberry, J.D, Georgetown University Law Center, International Trade
partner in the Government Contracts, Investigations & International Trade Practice Group, Mark L. Jensen, J.D, Harvard Law School, International Trade associate in the Government Contracts, Investigations & International Trade Practice Group, (OFAC gets hot, bothered on Iran and Cuba: how economic sanctions work today, Report for Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP, 5/7/13, http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=8657e6ce454a-4eaf-ba8b-d225ea59ecdd, Accessed 7/9/13, AW) People who practice U.S. economic sanctions law like to talk about how sanctions are policy-oriented, or an engine of U.S. foreign policy. Whereas some laws may be more opaquely political, economic sanctions and embargoes seem to express most bluntly how international leverage works through regulation. And yet, a few recent regulatory developments show that the direction that sanctions take is not always predictable. The U.S. Department of Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has

A torrent of development in laws and regulations on Iran served as the unsurprising focus of this years OFAC symposium, held on March 19, 2013, in Washington D.C. Among the developments were sanctions imposed on non-U.S. banks, a new executive order related to the purchase of petroleum and petrochemical products from Iran, an expanded scope of the Iran Transactions and Sanctions Regulations to companies owned or controlled by U.S. companies, and a new statute that targets sectors of the economy related to goods and services to Iran, including secondary financial transactions in energy, shipping, shipbuilding, precious metal, and graphite. See our recent posts on Iran here and here. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the Iran sanctions program is its proliferation into not only additional laws and regulations, but also additional regulatory regimes. The Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010 ( CISADA), the National Defense Authorization Act for 2012 (NDAA), and Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act of 2012 (ITR), have created a polyglot system focused on individual sectors of the economy. OFAC presenters at
had a raucously busy year.

the March symposium gave the sense of

a proliferation of laws that is undoubtedly aimed at accomplishing U.S. foreign policy goals. But the laws are paradoxically both targeted (at industries, vessels, banks) and incredibly expansive in jurisdiction. The system is the embodiment of the powerful yet somewhat disorganized U.S. government piling on everything it can to economically overwhelm Iran. The Iran program also serves as a good case study of how far and wide economic sanctions can be made to reach. If legislation of past years has proved anything, it is that the U.S. Congress appears ready to use any and all means within its legislative authority to sanction Iran. Insofar as Congress is able to map out the reach of the U.S. financial system and economy further, it seems likely that additional sanctions will be applied. OFAC is unique involves allied cooperation your evidence doesnt assume that DoT 05 United States Department of Treasury, (OFAC, Report Written for the Federal Financial Institutions
Examination Council, June 2005, http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/OFACEnforcement/Documents/ofac_sec_frb.pdf, Accessed 7/9/13, AW)

OFAC administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions based on U.S. foreign policy and national security goals against targeted foreign countries, terrorists, international narcotics traffickers , and those engaged in activities related to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. OFAC acts under the Presidents wartime and national emergency powers, as well as under authority granted by specific legislation, to impose controls on transactions and freeze assets under U.S. jurisdiction. Many of the sanctions are based on United Nations and other international mandates, are multilateral in scope , and involve close cooperation with allied governments. OFAC requirements are separate and distinct from the BSA, but both OFAC and the BSA share a common national security goal. For this reason, many financial institutions view compliance with OFAC sanctions as related to BSA compliance
obligations; supervisory examination for BSA compliance is logically connected to the examination of a financial institutions compliance with OFAC sanctions.

Sanctions solve Iran prolif multilateral coalitions international position of strength DeLeon et al 12 - Rudy deLeon, National and International Security, John F. Kennedy School of Government at
Harvard University, Recipient of The Defense Civilian Distinguished Service Award in 1994, 1995, and 2001, National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal in 2001, Former US Senior Department of Defense Official, Senior Vice President of National Security and International Policy at American Progress, with Brian Katulis, Peter Juul, Matt Duss and Ken Sofer, (Strengthening Americas Options on Iran, Report for The Center for American Progress, April 2012, http://www.americanprogress.org/wpcontent/uploads/issues/2012/04/pdf/iran_10questions_INTRO.pdf, Accessed 7/10/13, AW) *********NOTE: P5+1 is comprised of: United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom, France and Germany******* Indeed, amid

an array of political transitions and military conflicts around the globe, the prospect of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons has galvanized a global debate on how to stop the regime in Tehran from getting the bomb. This debate has spilled over into the domestic politics of the worlds great
powers, becoming a talking point in the 2012 U.S. presidential election and the subject of behind-the-scenes discussion during Chinas transition to its next generation of political leadership at their Party Congress this fall. In the Middle East and Central Asia, Irans nuclear program has implications for the ongoing civil war in Syria, a political transition beset by economic troubles in Egypt, and U.S. and NATO ground combat operations in Afghanistan entering their 10th year. Oil price surges worldwide threaten economic recoveries around the globerecoveries Iran could thwart in a number of ways depending on how it reacts to global pressure to come clean on its nuclear program. Events are quickly producing a decision point: A

concerned Israel

warns the diplomatic community that its window for military options to delay or deny Irans potential weapon is not unlimited due to the progress Iran has made in hardening its nuclear facilities beyond Israeli capability to penetrate them. At the same time, a vigorous roster of nations is tightening the burden of economic sanctions against Iranisolating the countrys already feeble economy , which survives only because of its vast oil reserves. Irana longtime supporter of terrorism, both
directly and through its proxies, with a track record of dissimulation on its nuclear ambitionshas no reservoir of credibility or good will, and its repeated professions that its nuclear program is peaceful deserve no benefit of the doubt. Of course Iran could quickly defuse the crisis and allow the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency full access to all facilities of interest so it can measure and catalogue Irans capability to produce highly enriched uranium (the essential element required for weapons production), and Iran could come clean on its known nuclear weapons research. As IAEA Director General Yukio Amano affirms , Iran needs to cooperate fully with the [International Atomic Energy] Agency on all outstanding issues, particularly those which give rise to concerns about the possible military dimensions to Irans nuclear program, including by providing access without delay to all sites, equipment, persons and documents requested by the Agency. It is Irans lack of response that fuels concerns about their nuclear ambitions. Importantly, there is a strong bipartisan consensus in America and within the inter national community on this single pointan Iranian nuclear weapon would destabilize the one of the worlds most important oil -producing regions at a critical point in the global economic recovery, would harm Israels security, and would severely undermine the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty. Unfortunately, much of the political debate in this U.S. election year now distracts from these central realities. Today the United States is leading a successful three-year global effort to isolate Iran diplomatically and

implement a broad range of strict economic sanctions targeted at undermining its nuclear program. The Obama administrations initial outreach to the Iranian regime in 2009 did not achieve immediate constructive results, but the demonstration of American good faith forged greater international unity around the problem and served as an important force multiplier for subsequent successful efforts to pressure the regime. Now, as talks with the P5+1 approach, Iran must choose how to respond to the growing global concerns about its nuclear program and make the choice to live up to its international obligations or face increased international isolation. During the 2008 campaign, candidate Obama defended his proposed engagement policy by explaining that were [not] going to be able to execute the kind of sanctions we need without some cooperation with some countries like Russia and China
that...have extensive trade with Iran but potentially have an interest in making sure Iran doesnt have a nuclear weapon. Affirming his goal of tough, direct diplomacy with Iran, Obama acknowledged that diplomacy may not work, but if it doesnt work, then we have strengthened our ability to form alliances to impose tough sanctions. Over the past three years, this is precisely what the Obama administration achieved. The engagement policy has served as an important force multiplier for efforts to pressure the Iranian government. By giving Iran repeated opportunities to meet its international responsibilities, this administration has been able to forge a far stronger and more enduring international coalition to pressure Iran. Far from strengthening the Iranian regime, as some critics have alleged, Obamas engagement effort has in fact further isolated it. The United States and its partners in the P5+1 group are operating from a position of strength that would have been hard to imagine four short years ago. U.S. policy on Iran should not be determined by partisan politics and easy sound bites. Nor will U.S. policy objectives be quickly accomplished. Instead, this crisis requires policymakers and all citizens to challenge their own preconceived notions and make decisions based on facts while preparing fully for all

contingencies. Iran prolif leads to Middle East arms race ensures nuclear war Allison 6 Graham Tillett Allison Jr., Graham Allison is an American political scientist and professor at the
John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. (The Will to Prevent, Harvard International Law Review, Fall 2006, page lexis)

Meanwhile, Iran is testing the line in the Middle East. On its current trajectory, the Islamic Republic will become a nuclear weapons state before the end of the decade. According to the leadership in Tehran, Iran is exercising its inalienable right to build Iranian enrichment plants and make fuel for its peaceful civilian nuclear power generators. These same facilities, however, can continue enriching uranium to 90 percent U-235, which is the ideal core of a nuclear bomb. No one in the international community doubts that Irans hidden objective in building enrichment facilities is to build nuclear bombs. If Iran crosses its nuclear finish line, a Middle

Eastern cascade of new nuclear weapons states could trigger the first multi-party nuclear arms race, far more volatile than the Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. Given Egypts historic role as the leader of the Arab Middle East, the prospects of it living unarmed alongside a nuclear Persia are very low. The IAEAs reports of clandestine nuclear experiments hint that Cairo may have considered this possibility. Were Saudi Arabia to buy a dozen nuclear warheads that could be mated to the Chinese medium-range ballistic missiles it purchased secretly in the 1980s, few in the US intelligence community would be surprised. Given Saudi Arabias role as the major financier of Pakistans clandestine nuclear program in the 1980s, it is not out of the question that Riyadh and Islamabad have made secret arrangements for this contingency. Such a multi-party nuclear arms race in the Middle East would be like playing Russian roulettedramatically increasing the likelihood of a regional nuclear war. Other nightmare scenarios for the region include an accidental or unauthorized nuclear launch from Iran, theft of nuclear warheads from an unstable regime in Tehran, and possible Israeli preemption against Irans nuclear facilities, which Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has implied,
threatening, Under no circumstances, and at no point, can Israe l allow anyone with these kinds of malicious designs against us to have control of weapons of destruction that can threaten our existence.

1AC Soft Power Advantage

US credibility on the international stage is low now-increased engagement key Duddy & Mora 2013,Patrick Duddy served as U.S. ambassador to Venezuela from 2007 until 2010 and is
currently visiting senior lecturer at Duke University. Frank O. Mora is incoming director of the Latin American and Caribbean Center, Florida International University, and former deputy assistant secretary of Defense, (Western Hemisphere (2009-2013)] 05.01.2013 Latin America: Is U.S. influence waning? 5/1/13 http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/05/01/3375160/latin-america-is-us-influence.html, Accessed July 4, 2013, KH)
Is U.S. influence in Latin America on the wane? It depends how you look at it. As President Obama travels to Mexico and Costa Rica, its likely the pundits will once again underscore what some perceive to be the eroding influence of the

United States in the Western Hemisphere. Some will point to the decline in foreign aid or the absence of an overarching policy with an inspiring moniker like Alliance for Progress or Enterprise Area of the Americas as evidence that the United States is failing to embrace the opportunities of a region that is more important to this country than ever. The reality is a lot more complicated. Forty-two percent of all U.S. exports flow
to the Western Hemisphere. In many ways, U.S. engagement in the Americas is more pervasive than ever, even if more diffused. That is in part because the peoples of the Western Hemisphere are not waiting for governments to choreograph their interactions. A more-nuanced assessment inevitably will highlight the complex, multidimensional ties between

the United States and the rest of the hemisphere. In fact, it may be that we need to change the way we think and talk about the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. We also need to resist the
temptation to embrace overly reductive yardsticks for judging our standing in the hemisphere. As Moises Naim notes in his recent book, The End of Power, there has been an important change in power distribution in the world away from states toward an expanding and increasingly mobile set of actors that are dramatically shaping the nature and scope

of global relationships. In Latin America, many of the most substantive and dynamic forms of engagement are occurring in a web of cross-national relationships involving small and large companies, people-to-people contact through student exchanges and social media, travel and migration. Trade and investment remain the most enduring and measurable dimensions of U.S. International support for lifting the embargo-UN vote proves Havana Times 12 (Cuba Embargo Blasted Again at UN 188-3, Havana Times, November 13 2012,
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=82054, Accessed: 7/4/13, EH)
HAVANA TIMES (dpa) The UN General Assembly on Tuesday renewed a demand that the United States lift the economic embargo imposed on Cuba since the 1960s. The 193-nation assembly voted 188-3 to adopt an annual resolution, for the 21st consecutive year, calling for UN members to consider the US embargo against Cuba as illegal and respect international law that reaffirms freedom of trade and navigation. Last years vote was 186-2. The United States, Israel and Palau voted against the resolution, while the Marshall Islands and Micronesia abstained. Washington has rejected the repeated UN demands to end the embargo. But it has also improved ties with Havana and allowed US citizens to travel to Cuba. The resolution, like in previous ones, asked all states that have been implementing the US embargo to take the necessary steps to repeal or invalidate them as soon as possible in accordance with their legal regime.

The economic embargo against Cuba was strengthened by US President John F Kennedy in February 1962 following the failure of US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. The US embargo was further boosted in 1996 by the Helms-Burton Act with the US Congress demanding compliance by all companies with regard to trade and navigation with Cuba. - See more at: http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=82054#sthash.yJBO6ieX.dpuf

The embargo undermines US influence and soft power Hansing 11 Katrin Hansing, Associate Professor of Black and Hispanic Studies at Baruch College
(10 Reasons to Oppose the Embargo, Center for Democracy in the Americas, October 21 2011, http://www.democracyinamericas.org/blog-post/10-reasons-to-oppose-the-embargo/, Accessed: 6/28/13, EH)

In light of the UN Secretary-Generals report on the U.S. embargo of Cuba, and in advance of Tuesdays vote against it, we offer a series of statements from a variety of sourcesincluding a retired General, Ronald Reagans Agriculture Secretary, an environmentalist, a physician, an actor/human rights advocate, several scholars, and one of Washingtons leading voices on foreign policyon why the U.S. should end the embargo. We hope you read them all.

The embargo undermines U.S. foreign policy interests Failure of the U.S. to finally snuff out the last vestiges of the Cold War in the U.S.-Cuba embargo signals impotence in American strategic vision and capability. Those who support the embargo undermine the empowerment of Cuban citizens, harming
them economically and robbing them of choices that could evolve through greater engagement exactly what we have seen in transitioning Communist countries like Vietnam and China. The world is dismayed and rejects yet again Americas nonsensical embargo,

which ultimately makes the U.S. look strategically muddled and petty rather than a leader committed to improving the global order.
Steve Clemons, Washington Editor-at-Large, The Atlantic Senior Fellow & Founder, American Strategy Program New America Foundation The embargo hurts U.S. national security interests The U.S. embargo against Cuba is a Cold War relic that hurts America and Cuba by preventing normal trade and travel between our two countries. From the perspective of U.S. national security, not only does the embargo prevent our cooperation with Cuba on common security issues such as crime and terrorism, it hurts U.S. standing throughout the world by highlighting our aggression against a neighboring country that poses no threat. The United States demeans itself by this futile and hypocritical policy. It is long past time to repeal the U.S. embargo against Cuba. John Adams, Brigadier General US Army (Retired)

Repealing embargo key to regaining international reputation- Embargo is symbolic 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/holmesMichael.pd f?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 HelmsBurton 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.

US soft power key in order to solve global problems such as economic competitiveness, terrorism, war, proliferation, disease, human trafficking, and drugs Kurlantzick 06- Joshua Kurlantzick visiting scholar in the Carnegie Endowments China Program and a fellow
at the USC School of Public Diplomacy and the Pacific Council on International Policy; previously foreign editor at The New Republic, (The Decline of American Soft Power, carnegieendowment.org, 2006, http://carnegieendowment.org/files/Kurlantzick.pdf, Accessed: July 10, 2013, KH)

A broad decline in soft power has many practical implications. These include the drain in foreign talent coming to the United States, the potential backlash against American companies, the growing attractiveness of China and Europe, and the possibility that anti-US sentiment will make it easier for terrorist groups to recruit. In addition, with a decline in soft power, Washington is simply less able to persuade others. In the run-up to the Iraq War, the Bush administration could not convince Turkey, a longtime US ally, to play a major staging role, in part because America's image in Turkey was so poor. During the war itself, the United States has failed to obtain significant participation from all but a handful of major nations, again in part because of America's negative image in countries ranging from India to Germany. In attempts to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons, Washington has had to allow China to play a central role, partly because few Asian states view the United States as a neutral, legitimate broker in the talks. Instead, Washington must increasingly resort to the other option Nye discusses-force, or the threat of force. With foreign governments and publics suspicious of American policy, the White House has been unable to lead a multinational effort to halt Iran's nuclear program, and instead has had to resort to threatening sanctions at the United Nations or even the possibility of strikes against Iran. With America's image declining in nations like Thailand and Pakistan, it is harder for leaders in these countries to openly embrace counterterrorism cooperation with the United States, so Washington resorts to quiet arm-twisting and blandishments to obtain counterterror concessions. Force is not a long-term solution. Newer, nontraditional security threats such as disease, human trafficking, and drug trafficking can only be managed through forms of multilateral cooperation that depend on America's ability to persuade other nations. Terrorism itself cannot be defeated by force alone, a fact that even the White House recognizes. The 2002 National security Strategy emphasizes that winning the war on terror requires the United States to lead a battle of ideas against the ideological roots of terrorism, in addition to rooting out and destroying individual militant cells.

North Korea Nuclear EMP kills Millions of Americans Instantly Maloof 13- F. Michael Maloof, staff writer for WND and G2Bulletin, is a former senior security policy analyst in
the office of the Secretary of Defense, NORTH KOREAN EMP ATTACK 'UNSTOPPABLE, WND, April 14, 2013, http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/north-korean-emp-attack-unstoppable/, Accessed July 10, 2013, KH) If North Korea were to launch a preemptive nuclear attack on the United States, it could use a long-range missile to orbit a satellite over the South Pole, putting it in line to fly over Omaha, Neb., and explode it at a 300-mile altitude where U.S. Aegis anti-ballistic missile systems cannot reach, sources have told WND. In addition, these sources say, there is no way to determine whether a missile is carrying a dummy or real nuclear warhead, obviating the need to shoot down any missile that is launched from North Korea, given the public warning by Pyongyang that it intends to launch a preemptive nuclear strike against the U.S. The U.S. has positioned Aegis ships near North Korea and Japan, but a political decision apparently has been made not to attempt to shoot it down if it is heading for open water. Sources say, however, that a missile to be launched toward the U.S. would take a trajectory over the South Pole, and it is questionable whether the U.S. has Aegis assets anywhere along the southerly path such a missile would take. In addition, the missile would need to be shot down almost after lift-off, since the missile would launch the satellite relatively quickly into an orbit of 300 miles, which was the altitude of its satellite launch last December. North Korea, meanwhile, announced in a statement that it has drawn the arrows for merciless retaliatory strikes at the U.S. mainland, U.S. military bases in the Pacific and all other bases where the U.S. imperialist aggression forces station. The powerful strike means of the revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK [Democrat ic People's Republic of Korea] have been put in their places and the coordinates of targets put into the warheads, a North Korean statement said. Just pressing the button will be enough to turn the strongholds of the enemies into the sea of fire. North Korea in December successfully orbited a satellite weighing 220 pounds so they could deliver against the United States, or against any nation on Earth, a small nuclear warhead, said Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, who served as staff director on the a commission that looked into the effects of an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, on the national electrical grid system and other critical U.S. infrastructures. THIS is how an EMP event could bring the worlds remaining superpower to its knees. Read it in A Nation Forsaken. A nuclear weapon designed specifically to generate a powerful electromagnetic pulse, or EMP a single such super-EMP warhead would be able to collapse the U.S. electric grid and other critical infrastructures, inflicting catastrophic consequences on the entire nation would probably be deliverable by North Koreas so -called space launch vehicle over the United States, said Pry, who also worked for the Central Intelligence Agency. North Korea orbited its satellite on a trajectory and at an altitude ideal for making an EMP attack on the U.S. Pry pointed out that South Korean military intelligence has warned not only their government but also the U.S. that North Korea is developing super-EMP warheads with Russian help. In 2011, Pry pointed out, a military commentator with the Peoples Republic of China

stated that North Korea has super-EMP warheads. Data from North Koreas nuclear tests, he said, are consistent with a super-EMP warhead. Prys comments echo those of former U.S. Ambassador Henry Cooper, in which he said that North Korea could launch a nuclear weapon on a satellite, similar to satellites North Korea has previously launched southward over the South Pole. After all, Cooper said in an interview with WND, their previous satellites have been successfully placed in orbits that are optimum for executing an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, attack on the entire continental U.S. with a single nuclear burst. Cooper, chairman of the board of High Frontier, which is dedicated to warning the U.S. against a missile attack, developed the framework for President Ronald Reagans Strategic Defense Initiative. He also pushed for a workable missile defense system for the U.S. and later became director of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization under President George W. Bush. Cooper pointed out that the satellite carrying a nuclear warhead could be detonated at an altitude of 300 miles. With a detonation over Omaha, he said, it would blanket the entire continental United States with EMP effects, the consequences of which could, within a year, lead to the death of hundreds of millions of Americans and end our way of life . Other sources have indicated that the 220-pound satellite would be able to carry a 300 kiloton nuclear bomb, similar to the weight of warheads on U.S. missiles and would be sufficient to create an EMP effect from coast to coast if exploded at 300 miles above Omaha. North Korea, Iran and everyone else understands these points or certainly should if they have been awake, Cooper said. But have they connected the dots? Cooper said that if the satellite with a nuclear weapon in it were to come from the southern hemisphere, there may not be sufficient warning and tracking information to support an intercept attempt before North Korea detonates its nuclear device over Omaha. He said North Korea could launch a nuclear weapon on a satellite, similar to satellites North Korea has previously launched southward over the South Pole. After all, their previous satellites have been successfully placed in orbits that are optimum for executing an electromagnetic pulse attack on the entire continental U.S. with a single nuclear burst, Cooper said. Our current defense is focused on an attack from the north but if the attack came from the south via satellite, it might not be capable of intercepting the satellite before North Korea detonates its device, Cooper warned. Moreover, he added, where there are disputes about whether North Korean ballistic missiles launched in a normal ballistic trajectory have sufficient range to reach the U.S. mainland, there can be no dispute about whether a nuclear weapon on a satellite can be detonated on orbit above the United States or anywhere else on the surface of the earth.

Iran prolif leads to Middle East nuclear arms race causes nuclear war Allison 6 Graham Tillett Allison Jr., Graham Allison is an American political scientist and professor at the
John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. (The Will to Prevent, Harvard International Law Review, Fall 2006, page lexis) Meanwhile, Iran is testing the line in the Middle East. On its current trajectory, the Islamic Republic will become a nuclear weapons state before the end of the decade. According to the leadership in Tehran, Iran is exercising its inalienable right to build Iranian enrichment plants and make fuel for its peaceful civilian nuclear power generators. These same facilities, however, can continue enriching uranium to 90 percent U-235, which is the ideal core of a nuclear bomb. No one in the international community doubts that Irans hidden objective in building enrichment facilities is to build nuclear bombs. If Iran crosses its nuclear finish line, a Middle

Eastern cascade of new nuclear weapons states could trigger the first multi-party nuclear arms race, far more volatile than the Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. Given Egypts historic role as the leader of the Arab Middle East, the prospects of it living unarmed alongside a nuclear Persia are very low. The IAEAs reports of clandestine nuclear experiments hint that Cairo may have considered this possibility. Were Saudi Arabia to buy a dozen nuclear warheads that could be mated to the Chinese medium-range ballistic missiles it purchased secretly in the 1980s, few in the US intelligence community would be surprised. Given Saudi Arabias role as the major financier of Pakistans clandestine nuclear program in the 1980s, it is not out of the question that Riyadh and Islamabad have made secret arrangements for this contingency. Such a multi-party nuclear arms race in the Middle East would be like playing Russian roulettedramatically increasing the likelihood of a regional nuclear war. Other nightmare scenarios for the region include an accidental or unauthorized

nuclear launch

from Iran, theft of nuclear warheads from an unstable regime in Tehran, and possible Israeli preemption against Irans nuclear facilities, which Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has implied,
threatening, Under no circumstances, and at no point, can Israel allow anyone with these kinds of malicious designs against us to have control of weapons of destruction that can threaten our existence.

1AC Human rights Advantage

Advantage __ is human rights: Two internal links

First is credibility, the US embargo violates the human rights of Cubans Amnesty International 09Non-profit organization to protect human rights (THE US EMBARGO
AGAINST CUBA ITS IMPACT ON ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RIGHTS, Amnesty International, http://www.amnesty.org/ar/library/asset/AMR25/007/2009/en/51469f8b-73f8-47a2-a5bdf839adf50488/amr250072009eng.pdf, Accessed 7/4/13, jtc)
The adverse consequences of economic sanctions on the enjoyment of human rights, a Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, concluded that the

study prepared by Marc Bossuyt for the SubUS embargo violates human rights law

in two distinct ways. Firstly, the fact that the United States is the major regional economic power and the main source of new medicines and technologies means that Cuba is subject to deprivations that impinge on its citizens human rights. Secondly, by passing legislation that tries to force third-party countries into embargoing Cuba as well the 1992 Torricelli Act the US government attempted to turn a unilateral embargo into a multilateral embargo through coercive measures, the only effect of which will be to deepen further the suffering of the Cuban people and increase the violation of their human
rights.34

The embargo doesnt work- its just a scapegoat Bandow 12 --- Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a former special assistant to former US president Ronald Reagan (Time to End the Cuba Embargo, December 11, 2012, Cato Institute, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/time-end-cuba-embargo, accessed July 4, 2013, MY) The U.S. government has waged economic war against the Castro regime for half a century. The policy may have been worth a try during the Cold War, but the embargo has failed to liberate the
Cuban people. It is time to end sanctions against Havana. Decades ago the Castro brothers lead a revolt against a nasty
authoritarian, Fulgencio Batista. After coming to power in 1959, they created a police state, targeted U.S. commerce, nationalized American assets, and allied with the Soviet Union. Although Cuba was but a small island nation, the Cold War magnified its perceived importance. Washington reduced Cuban sugar import quotas in July 1960. Subsequently U.S. exports were limited, diplomatic ties were severed, travel was restricted, Cuban imports were banned, Havanas American assets were frozen, and almost all travel to Cuba was banned. Washington also pressed its allies to impose sanctions. These various measures had no evident effect, other than to intensify Cubas reliance on the Soviet Union. Yet the collapse of the latter nation had no impact on U.S. policy. In 1992, Congress banned American subsidiaries from doing business in Cuba and in 1996, it penalized foreign firms that trafficked in expropriated U.S. property. Executives from such companies even were banned from traveling to America. On occasion Washington relaxed one aspect or another of the embargo, but in general continued to tighten restrictions, even over Cuban Americans. Enforcement is not easy, but Uncle Sam tries his best. For instance, according to the Government Accountability Office, Customs and Border Protection increased its secondary inspection of passengers arriving from Cuba to reflect an increased risk of embargo violations after the 2004 rule changes, which, among other things, eliminated the allowance for travelers to import a small amount of Cuban products for personal consumption. Lifting

sanctions would be a victory not for Fidel Castro, but for the power of free people to spread liberty. Three years ago, President Barack Obama loosened regulations on Cuban Americans,
as well as telecommunications between the United States and Cuba. However, the law sharply constrains the presidents discret ion. Moreover, UN Ambassador Susan Rice said that the embargo will continue until Cuba is free. It is far past time to end the embargo. During the Cold War, Cuba offered a potential advanced military outpost for the Soviet Union. Indeed, that role led to the Cuban missile crisis. With the failure of the U.S.-supported Bay of Pigs invasion, economic pressure appeared to be Washingtons best strategy for ousting the Castro dictatorship. However,

the end of the Cold War left Cuba strategically irrelevant. It is a poor country with little ability to harm the United States. The Castro regime might still encourage unrest, but its survival has no measurable impact on any important U.S. interest. The regime remains a humanitarian travesty, of course. Nor are Cubans the only
victims: three years ago the regime jailed a State Department contractor for distributing satellite telephone

equipment in Cuba. But Havana is not the only regime to violate human rights. Moreover, experience has long demonstrated that it is
virtually impossible for outsiders to force democracy. Washington often has used sanctions and the Office of Foreign Assets Control currently is enforcing around 20 such programs, mostly to little effect. The

power. Indeed, it has consistently used the

policy in Cuba obviously has failed. The regime remains in embargo to justify its own mismanagement, blaming poverty

on America. Observed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: It is my personal belief that the Castros do not want to see an end to the emba rgo
and do not want to see normalization with the United States, because they would lose all of their excuses for what hasnt happened in Cuba in the last 50 years. Similarly, Cuban exile Carlos Saladrigas of the Cuba Study Group argued that keeping the embargo, maintainin g this hostility, all it does is strengthen and embolden the hardliners.

Cuban human rights activists also generally oppose sanctions. A decade ago I (legally) visited Havana, where I met Elizardo Sanchez Santa Cruz, who suffered in communist prisons for eight years. He told me that the sanctions policy gives the government a good alibi to j ustify the failure of the totalitarian model in Cuba.

Second is oppression, the embargo allows the Cuban government to commit atrocities against its people, lifting solves Amash 12- Brandon Amash, writer at the Prospect Journal, (EVALUATING THE CUBAN EMBARGO, 7/23/12, http://prospectjournal.org/2012/07/23/evaluating-the-cubanembargo/, 6/28/13, CAS)
Although Americas previous policies of intervention, use of force and economic sanctions have all failed at achieving democratization in Cuba, not all options have been exhausted. One policy alternative for promoting democracy and human rights in Cuba that the United States has not attempted is the exact opposite of the approach it has taken for the past half century. Namely, the United States should lift the embargo on Cuba

and reopen diplomatic relations in order to work internationally on improving human rights in Cuba. Unless Cuba, as a rogue state, is isolated internationally, rather than merely by the United States, the human
rights situation in Cuba may never improve. A fresh policy of engagement towards Cuba has been delayed long enough. 4.1: Reopening diplomatic relations with Cuba will decrease the chances of conflict and will promote cooperation between the two countries economically, politically and socially. Diplomatic relations and negotiations have proven to be effective in the past in similar situations, such as the renewed relations between Egypt and Israel following the Camp David Accords. As Huddleston and Pascual state, a great lesson of democracy is that it cannot be imposed; it must come from within. [] Our policy

should therefore encompass the political, economic, and diplomatic tools to enable the Cuban people to engage in and direct the politics of their country (Huddleston 14). The mobilization of the
Cuban people on the issues of democratization, which are inherently linked to the human rights violations in Cuba, is a first step to producing changes in Cuba. American engagement with the Cuban people, currently lacking under the embargo policy, will provide the impetus in Cuban society to produce regime change. Furthermore, integrating U.S.-Cuba relations on a multilateral level will ease the burden on the United States in fostering democracy and a better human rights record in the country, as other states will be more involved in the process. In contrast to a policy of isolation, normalized relations will allow America to engage Cuba in new areas, opening the door for democratization and human rights improvements from within the Cuban state itself. 4.2: With diplomatic relations in place, the United States may directly promote human rights in the country through negotiations, conferences, arbitration and mediation. Providing the support, resources, and

infrastructure to promote democratic systems in Cuba could produce immense improvements to the human rights situation in the nation. Normalizing diplomatic relations with the state will also allow America
to truly support freedom of opinion and expression in Cuba, which it cannot currently promote under the isolationist policy. Furthermore, through diplomatic relations and friendly support, Cuba will be more willing to participate in the international system, as well as directly with the United States, as an ally. As the United States, along with the international community as a whole, helps and supports Cubas economic growth, Cuban society wi ll eventually push for greater protection of human rights.

 4.3: Lifting

economic sanctions will improve economic growth in Cuba, which correlates to democratization. Empirical evidence shows that a strong economy is correlated to democracy. According to the
Modernization Theory of democratization, this correlation is a causal link: economic growth directly leads to democratization. Lifting the current economic sanctions on Cuba and working together to improve economic situations in the state will allow their economy to grow, increasing the likelihood of democracy in the state, and thus promoting greater freedom of expression, opinion and dissent. 4.4: A policy of engagement will be a long-term solution to promoting democracy and improving human rights in Cuba. This proposal, unique in that it is simply one of abandoning an antiquated policy and normalizing relations to be like those with any other country, does not present any large obstacles to implementation, either in the short run or the long run. The main challenge is in continuing to support such a policy and maintaining the normal diplomatic, economic and social relations with a country that has been isolated for such a long period of time. Although effects of such a policy may be difficult to determine in the short term, promoting democracy and improving human rights in Cuba are long-term solutions. As discussed above, engagement with the Cuban government and society, along with support from the international community, will provide the spark and guidance for the Cuban people to support and promote democracy, and thus give greater attention to human rights violations.

US needs to adopt consistent strategy to human rights to gain credibility and end oppression McDonough 2/11-- Amy McDonough, Program Assistant with the Open Society Foundations, previously
worked at John Snow, Inc. (JSI) on USAIDs Maternal and Child Health Project , B.A. in Diplomacy and World Affairs from Occidental College (Human Rights and the Failings of U.S. Public Diplomacy in Eurasia, HuffPost, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amy-mcdonough/human-rights-and-the-fail_b_2664667.html, Accessed 7/10/13, jtc) The United States has two distinct approaches to human rights violations in the countries of the former Soviet Union. When it is in Washington's perceived strategic interest, the U.S. government normally remains quiet. When its strategic interests are not at stake, U.S. officials speak forcefully and work to expose human rights violations and corruption. This inconsistent approach fuels cynicism toward the United States when it professes support for human rights. The approach also limits the

incentives for governments in the region to improve their behavior and it fosters the perception that the United States is not a legitimate global protector of human rights. These inconsistencies
become abundantly clear by comparing U.S. officials' public statements on Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Tajikistan and Russia, as shown in a recently published OSF policy paper, "Human Rights and the Failings of U.S. Public Diplomacy in Eurasia." Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, which provide critical supply routes to U.S. troops in Afghanistan, are rarely criticized. U.S. officials tend to emphasize the positive aspects of the respective countries' behavior while ignoring persistent violations of human rights. When U.S. officials do mention human rights and democracy, they are usually buried at the end of a list of issues. But the United States takes the opposite approach toward Belarus. U.S. officials strongly condemn human rights violations and treat improvements in democratic governance as a requirement for improving bilateral relations. In Russia, the United States takes a middle-of-the-road approach, addressing human rights and democracy problems while making clear that it considers these issues separate from other areas on which it seeks progress. The volume and stridency of U.S. rhetoric rises and falls depending on the state of play in other areas of the relationship with Russia. This approach underscores the reality that the United States will publicly comment on Russia's human rights and democracy problems only to the extent that its comments will not have a detrimental impact on its other interests. To be sure, a one-size-fits-all approach to U.S. public diplomacy on human rights and democracy across its many diverse bilateral relationships is not feasible. Nevertheless, the United States should develop a more consistent approach to defending human rights to live up to its own standards. As former Secretary of State Clinton's said in her last television interview: "... I believe that what we've done is to pioneer the new diplomacy, taking the best and continuing the traditions of... government-to-government negotiations, whether it's a trade treaty or a peace treaty, but also expanding our aperture so that we understand that the United States must tell its story better... must stand for our values more strongly." The beginning of the second Obama Administration

presents an opportunity for the United States to reaffirm its values by taking the following steps: Give greater weight to public diplomacy considerations in determining its approach to human rights and democracy. These issues should not only be discussed privately between governments; the United States needs to show the public in the region that it cares enough to speak publicly about these issues. Speak more forthrightly about human rights in countries where it has strategic interests. There is significant room to increase pressure on countries such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, whose governments will not change course without greater pressure from the United States and the international community. Weave human rights into discussions of other issues and address them concurrently, rather than "last but not least." Last is least. It is a means of trying to ensure that unpleasant discussions on human rights will not poison discussions on other strategic issues. Treating human rights and

democracy on a par with other issues will show the United States' commitment to these issues and encourage real progress. If the United States starts treating these issues more consistently, leaders of oppressive regimes in the region will know that they will face increased pressure on the international stage if they do not choose to fully respect the rights and freedoms of their citizens.
As importantly, their citizens will know that the United States is truly committed to supporting the universal values of human rights and democracy.

The Cuban embargo is inhumane and Genocidal Schweid 08 Barry Schweid, AP diplomatic writer (Cuban diplomat: US embargo is akin to genocide, USA Today, 10/24/2008, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-10-242543966879_x.htm, Accessed: 7/3/2013, EH)
WASHINGTON Looking ahead to a new American administration, Cuba's top diplomat in Washington opened a campaign Wednesday to generate world pressure to kill a half-century old U.S. trade embargo that he likened to genocide. "It's equivalent to genocide; its intention is strangulation," Jorge Bolanos said in an Associated Press interview a week before Cuba plans to ask the U.N. General Assembly to condemn the U.S. boycott of his country. Bolanos steered clear of presidential politics, but he said Cuba was ready for talks with the United States "if the U.S. considers Cuba an equal partner in negotiations." Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has said he would be willing to meet with Cuban leader Raul Castro without preconditions and would ease restrictions on family-related travel and on money Cuban-Americans want to send to their families in Cuba. Republican nominee John McCain, meanwhile, has called the offer to meet "the wrong signal," but also has said he favors easing restrictions on Cuba once the United States is "confident that the transition to a free and open democracy is being made." The United States has no diplomatic relations with Cuba and lists the country as a state sponsor of terror. The trade embargo, imposed in 1962, has been tightened during President Bush's two terms. "The last eight years have seen the most ruthless and inhumane application of the blockade," Bolanos said. It "typifies the act of genocide" and from the start was designed to undermine the Cuban revolution of 1959 led by Fidel Castro, the diplomat said. Forced to retire because of intestinal illnesses, Fidel yielded control of the government to his brother, Raul. "He is better and better every day," Bolanos said. "He is writing." But Bolanos said he did not know if Fidel Castro, now 82, would be able to participate in the half-century anniversary celebration of the revolution in Santiago at the end of the year. Bolanos, who heads Cuba's "interest section" in Washington out of the embassy of Switzerland, said he had "no doubt the blockade is going to disappear" at some point. Next Wednesday, the U.N. General Assembly will consider a resolution calling on the United States to end the trade embargo. Every year for the past 17 years, the Assembly has approved Cuba's resolution, but the United States has not yielded. "It is the most isolated issue at the U.N.," Bolanos said, and the U.N. has "a psychological and moral effect." The diplomat, a former ambassador to Mexico, Brazil and Britain, predicted the embargo, in time, will "disappear." Representing a government the United States shuns, Bolanos said he is limited in his travels to the Washington area and is permitted among government offices only to visit the State Department, where he said he has had occasional meetings. However, he said, the diplomatic community has treated him as "an ambassador in full capacity." Again and again, in a 50-minute interview conducted mostly in English, Bolanos returned to the U.S. embargo and its impact. He said a few sick Cuban children have been unable to receive proper medical treatment because the United States would not approve the export of catheters. Some material for the blind also is under boycott , and Cuba was unable to purchase washing machines from Mexico because they had parts manufactured in the United States, he said. "Eleven million Cubans live under the blockade's effects," he said. "Each day, each of them, child, woman, man, elder of whatever social position or religion, suffers without distinction, the perverse effects of the blockade ." The cost to Cuba has risen to $93 billion, but the blockade has failed to undermine the Cuban government "because of the irrevocable will of the Cuban nation to defend its legitimate right to self-determination," the ambassador said.

1AC Democracy Advantage

Lifting embargo starts democracy chain Arzeno 12MBA in military art and science strategy Mario A. Arzeno, M.B.A. of military art and
science strategy, University of Miami. She is also a member of the Inter American Defense board. Created on March 30th, 1942, the Inter-American Defense Board (IADB) is the oldest regional defense organization in the world. Its main purpose is to provide the OAS and its member states with technical and educational advice and consultancy services on matters related to military and defense issues in the Hemisphere in order to contribute to the fulfillment of the OAS Charter. The IADB enjoys technical autonomy in carrying out the purpose and functions contained in these Statutes, taking into account the mandates of the OAS (General Assembly, Meeting of Consultation of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, and Permanent Council) Currently, the IADB has 27 Member States and its structure is composed by the Council of Delegates, by the Secretariat and by the Inter-American Defense College, bringing together civilian and military representatives of various American countries. (THE U.S. EMBARGO ON CUBA: A TIME FOR CHANGE?, BiblioScholar, 9/18/12, Page 51, Print, Accessed 7/3/13, jtc)
Critics argue free markets do not promote democracy. However, free

trade and open markets do promote open economies and societies with greater freedom for their people, with better opportunities and less poverty. Less poverty equals stability. Charles William Maynes, President of the Eurasia Foundation and a leading political scientist in the United States calls this idea of free markets promoting democracy Liberal Internationalism. He argues open markets lead to the formation of a middle class; the middle class then brings pressure on non-democratic governments to open the political process; once that opening occurs, democracy develops. With Cubas proximity to the United States, democracy is inevitable. It will be a slow
process. Nevertheless, it will happen, as it has in countless other countries like the Dominican Republic, Chile, Argentina, El Salvador and the other thirty-one out of thirtytwo countries in the Latin American region. The

first step before any real change happens in Cuba must be engagement within our own borders with the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF). The
CANF is without question the center of gravity for this issue. The CANF is single handedly preventing progress in the Cuba policy. Clausewitz defines a center of gravity as the hub of all power and movement, on which everything else depends. That is the point agains t which all our energies should be directed. The United States should focus its energy on encouraging the CANF to reform its uncompromising stance against

Several actions, or decisive points, must occur for the CANF to compromise and ultimately create change in Cuba; beginning with the review of the Torricelli Bill and the Helms-Burton Act, followed by the opening of economic trade, and the lifting of restrictions on the travel ban and the sale of food and medicine. The CANF will not allow any of this to happen without the unconditional removal of Castro and anyone associated with the Castro family. This is an unrealistic goal that the embargo alone cannot accomplish. The CANF, as the source of all power in this issue, should be part of the solution by seeking ways to promote change in the Cuba policy, instead of seeking ways to prevent change in a failed policy. The CANFs power and influence is becoming less relevant each day with the shift in public opinion that is even transcending cultural lines to Cuban Americans in Miami who believe the embargo is a failed policy. Since 1993, the Florida International University in Miami has polled Cuban Americans on their position with regard to the Cuba Policy. In 1993, forty two percent of Cuban Americans believed better relations with Cuba were needed. The most recent poll in 2002 indicates that number has grown to sixty-two percent who believe better relations are needed. However, the CANFs influence is still significant enough to prevent better relations and progres s. The U.S. strategic goal for Cuba should be a peaceful transition to a post embargo environment by gradually lifting the embargo with the
Castro. implementation of the full spectrum of the Diplomatic Instruments of Power illustrated below. Fidel Castro should be inconsequential to the transition: Diplomatic. Open dialogue with the government of Cuba. Fidel Castro says he wants to open negotiations with the U.S. The U.S. should capitalize on this new stance of openness and use it to its advantage. The U.S. has open dialogue with China; Cuba should be no different. This idea will also open doors to establish relationships with the progressive Cuban leadership willing to consider change. The Bush Administration should also consider supporting the Cuba Working Group s 9-Point Plan as a tool to initiate reform. Information. Reform

TV and Radio Marti by taking it out of the Cuban American National Foundations span of influence. Place it under the control of a non-partisan government organization that can develop a robust and
meaningful information campaign targeted towards the Cuban people and reform. Conduct an information campaign within our own borders to

educate the American public on the costs and benefits of helping the Cuban people. Military. Militarily

engage Cuba by

including it in one of the Unified Commands. Develop long term bilateral cooperation with the Cuban military and incorporate their armed forces in multilateral cooperation throughout the Caribbean region. Economic . Incrementally lift the embargo beginning with the lifting of the travel ban and the restrictions on the sale of food and medicine, followed by reforming the Torricelli Bill and the Helms-Burton Act. Attempt to undermine Cuban regime without promoting democracy will result in war Amash 12- Brandon Amash, writer at the Prospect Journal, (EVALUATING THE CUBAN EMBARGO, 7/23/12, http://prospectjournal.org/2012/07/23/evaluating-the-cuban-embargo/, 6/28/13, CAS)
3.3: The current policy may drag the United States into a military conflict with Cuba. Military conflict may be inevitable in the future if the embargos explicit goal creating an insurrection in Cuba to overthrow the government is achieved, and the United States may not be ready to step in. As Ratliff and Fontaine detail, Americans are not prepared to commit the military resources *+ (Fontaine 57), especially after unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Much like Americas current situation with isolated rogue states such as Iran and North Korea, Cubas isolation may also lead to war for other reasons, like the American occupation of Guantanamo Bay. These consequences are inherently counterproductive for the democratization of Cuba and the improvement of human rights.

Cuban instability results in Latin American instability, terrorism, democratic backsliding, and distracts the US from hotspots including Africa, the Caucus, and North Korea Gorrell 5- Tim Gorrell, Lieutenant Colonel (CUBA: THE NEXT UNANTICIPATED ANTICIPATED STRATEGIC CRISIS?
3/18/05, http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA433074, Accessed: 7/4/13, zs)

Regardless of the succession, under the current U.S. policy, Cubas problems of a post Castro transformation only worsen. In addition to Cubans on the island, there will be those in exile who will return claiming authority. And there are remnants of the dissident community within Cuba who will attempt to exercise similar authority. A power vacuum or absence of order will create the conditions for instability and civil war . Whether Raul or another successor from within the current government can hold power is debatable. However, that individual will nonetheless extend the current policies for an indefinite period, which will only compound the Cuban situation. When Cuba finally collapses anarchy is a strong possibility if the U.S. maintains the wait and see approach. The U.S. then must deal with an unstable country 90 miles off its coast. In the midst of this chaos, thousands will flee the island. During the Mariel boatlift in 1980 125,000 fled the island.26 Many were criminals; this time the number could be several hundred thousand flee ing to the U.S., creating a refugee crisis. Equally important, by adhering to a negative containment policy, the U.S. may be creating its next series of transnational criminal problems. Cuba is along the axis of the drug-trafficking flow into the U.S. from Columbia. The Castro government as a matter of policy does not support the drug trade. In fact, Cubas actions have shown that its stance on drugs is more than hollow rhetoric as indicated by its increasing seizure of drugs 7.5 tons in 1995, 8.8 tons in 1999, and 13 tons in 2000.27 While there may be individuals within the government and outside who engage in drug trafficking and a percentage of drugs entering the U.S. may pass through Cuba, the Cuban government is not the path of least resistance for the flow of drugs. If there were no Cuban restraints, the flow of drugs to the U.S. could be greatly facilitated by a Cuba base of operation and accelerate considerably. In the midst of an unstable Cuba, the opportunity for radical fundamentalist groups to operate in the region increases. If these groups can export terrorist activity from Cuba to the U.S. or throughout the hemisphere then the war against this extremism

gets more complicated . Such activity could increase direct attacks and disrupt the economies,

that are budding throughout the region. In light of a failed state in the region, the U.S. may be forced to deploy military forces to Cuba, creating the conditions for another insurgency . The ramifications of this action could very well fuel greater anti-American sentiment throughout the Americas. A proactive policy now can mitigate these potential future problems. U.S. domestic political support is also turning
threatening the stability of the fragile democracies
against the current negative policy. The Cuban American population in the U.S. totals 1,241,685 or 3.5% of the population.28 Most of these exiles reside in Florida; their influence has been a factor in determining the margin of victory in the past two presidential elections. But this election strategy may be flawed, because recent polls of Cuban Americans reflect a decline for President Bush based on his policy crackdown. There is a clear softening in the Cuban-American community with regard to sanctions. Younger Cuban Americans do not necessarily subscribe to the hard-line approach. These changes signal an opportunity for a new approach to

The U.S. can little afford to be distracted by a failed state 90 miles off its coast. The administration, given the present state of world affairs, does not have the luxury or the resources to pursue the traditional American model of crisis management. The President and other government and military leaders have warned that the GWOT will be long and protracted. These warnings were sounded when the administration did not anticipate operations in Iraq consuming so many military, diplomatic and economic resources. There is justifiable concern that Africa and the Caucasus region are potential hot spots for terrorist activity, so these areas should be secure. North Korea will continue to be an unpredictable crisis in waiting. We also cannot ignore China . What if China resorts to aggression to resolve the Taiwan situation? Will the U.S. go to war over Taiwan? Additionally, Iran could conceivably be the next target for U.S. pre-emptive action. These are known and potential situations that could easily require all or many of the elements of national power to resolve. In view of such global issues, can the U.S. afford to sustain the status quo and simply let the Cuban situation play out? The U.S. is at a crossroads: should the policies of
U.S.-Cuban relations. (Table 1) The time has come to look realistically at the Cuban issue. Castro will rule until he dies. The only issue is what happens then? the past 40 years remain in effect with vigor? Or should the U.S. pursue a new approach to Cuba in an effort to facilitate a manageable transition to post-Castro Cuba?

Democracy solves political stability and global conflict Griswold 07 --- Daniel Griswold is director of the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies (Trade, Democracy and Peace: The Virtuous Cycle, April 20, 2007, http://www.cato.org/publications/speeches/trade-democracy-peace-virtuous-cycle, accessed July 10, 2013, MY)
The good news does not stop there. Buried beneath the daily stories about suicide bombings and insurgency movements is an underappreciated but encouraging fact: The

world has somehow become a more peaceful place. A little-noticed headline on an Associated Press story a while back reported, War declining worldwide, studies say. In 2006, a survey by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found that the number of armed conflicts around the world has been in decline for the past half-century. Since the early 1990s, ongoing
conflicts have dropped from 33 to 17, with all of them now civil conflicts within countries. The Institutes latest report fo und that 2005 marked the second year in a row that no two nations were at war with one another. What a remarkable and wonderful fact. The

death toll from war has also been falling. According to the Associated Press report, The number killed in battle has fallen to its lowest point in the
post-World War II period, dipping below 20,000 a year by one measu re. Peacemaking missions, meanwhile, are growing in number. Current estimates of people killed by war are down sharply from annual tolls ranging from 40,000 to 100,000 in the 1990s, and from a peak of 700,000 in 1951 during the Korean War. Many causes

lie behind the good newsthe end of the Cold War and the

spread of democracy, among thembut expanding trade and globalization appear to be playing a major role in promoting world peace.
Far from stoking a World on Fire, as one misguided American author argued in a forgettable book, growing commercial ties between nations have had a dampening effect on armed conflict and war. I would argue that free trade and globalization have promoted peace in three main ways. First, as I argued a moment ago, trade and globalization have reinforced the trend toward democracy, and democracies

tend not to pick fights with each other. Thanks in part to globalization, almost two thirds of the worlds countries today are democraciesa record high. Some studies have cast doubt on the idea that democracies are less likely to fight wars. While its true that democracies rarely if ever war with each other, it is not such a rare occurrence for democracies to engage in wars with non-democracies. We can still hope that has more countries turn to democracy, there will be fewer provocations for war by non-democracies. A second and even

more potent way that trade has promoted peace is by promoting more economic integration. As national economies become more intertwined with each other, those nations have more to lose should war break out. War in a globalized world not only means human casualties and bigger government, but also ruptured trade and investment ties that impose lasting damage on the economy. In short, globalization has dramatically raised the economic cost of war. The 2005 Economic Freedom of the World Report contains an insightful chapter on Economic Freedom and Peace by Dr. Erik Gartzke, a professor of political science at Columbia University. Dr. Gartzke compares the prop ensity of countries to engage in wars and their level of economic freedom and concludes that economic freedom, including the freedom to trade, significantly decreases the probability that a country will experience a military dispute with another country. Through econometric analysis, he found that, Making economies freer translates into making countries more peaceful. At the extremes, the

least free states are about 14 times as

conflict prone as the most free. By the way, Dr. Gartzkes analysis found that economic freedom was a far more important variable in
determining a countries propensity to go to war than democracy. A third reason why free trade promotes peace is because it allows nations to acquire wealth through production and exchange rather than conquest of territory and resources. As economies develop, wealth is increasingly measured in terms of intellectual property, financial assets, and human capital. Such assets cannot be easily seized by armies. In contrast, hard assets such as minerals and farmland are becoming relatively less important in a high-tech, service economy. If people need resources outside their national borders, say oil or timber or farm products, they can acquire them peacefully by trading away what they can produce best at home. In short, globalization and the development it has spurred have rendered the spoils of war less valuable. Of course, free trade and globalization do not guarantee peace. Hot-blooded nationalism and ideological fervor can overwhelm cold economic calculations. Any relationship involving human beings will be messy and non-linier. There will always be exceptions and outliers in such complex relationships involving economies and governments. But deep trade and investment ties among nations make war less attractive. A Virtuous Cycle of Democracy, Peace and Trade The global trends weve witnessed in the spread of trade, democracy

and peace tend to reinforce each other in a grand and virtuous cycle. As trade and development encourage more representative government, those governments provide more predictability and incremental reform, creating a better climate for trade and investment to flourish. And as the spread of trade and democracy foster peace, the decline of war creates a more hospitable environment for trade and economic growth and political stability.

Ag Adv AT: Cuba not key to US Ag

Cuba markets key to U.S. agriculture Williams 02Graduate of University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture (MORE ASSISTANCE PLEASE:
LIFTING THE CUBAN EMBARGO MAY HELP REVIVE AMERICAN FARMS, Drake Journal of Agricultural Law, 1/2002, http://students.law.drake.edu/aglawjournal/docs/agVol07No2-Williams.pdf, Accessed 7/3/12, jtc)

American farmers are at a point where they desperately need to search for new avenues and alternatives to increase their profits and pull themselves out of financial difficulty. I believe that one such way is lifting the highly controversial Cuban embargo, thus granting American farmers entrance into the Cuban market. It is apparent that Cuba has a need for food and American farmers are looking to increase foreign markets. Therefore, lifting the Cuban
embargo may help to solve both countries problems. Recently, there has been widespread support for lifting the Cuban food and medicine embargo by American farmers and Congressmen because it is estimated that Cuba buys a little less than one billion dollars of food annually from countries such as Canada, Europe, and Latin America.110 Any well-trained businessman knows that a

billion-dollar market is a gold mine in the world of economics.111 And, any well-trained businessman knows that opening additional export markets, a billion dollar one at that, is vital to any industry that is in a severe economic crisis.112
Therefore, many American farmers and certain Congressman have taken steps to open the Cuban market to American Farmers.113 For example, Representative Nick Lampson of Texas, along with several rice farmers, traveled to Cuba in search of new export markets, in turn, they asked United States lawmakers to lift the restrictions on food and medicine sales to Cuba.114 Representative Lampson believes that the objectives for which [the embargo] was created no longer makes any sense in either political or economic terms.115 Furthermore, Representative Lampso n believes that the economic

sanctions specifically hurt two groups of people, the Cuban people who need our food, and United States farmers who can produce it in abundance.116 Other Congressmen have
also asked for lifting the embargo, mainly because of the rising interest and influence from agricultural and business groups who want to transact business with Cuba.117 For example, in March 2000, Senator Jesse Helms, an outspoken supporter of the embargo, passed a bill that would permit the sale of American food and medicine to the Cuban people.118 It is also believed that the American public is even changing its views about the embargo.119 Several polls showed that the Cuban embargo support of the past was beginning to fade because six of ten Americans backed the sanctions; today, forty-seven percent of the American public feel its time to remove Cubas sanctions.120 Furthermor e, at least thirtyeight powerful and influential farm groups and agribusiness companies support lifting the sanctions against Cuba.121 More support is soon to follow, especially since two ships carrying U.S. chicken arrived in Cuba, completing the first trade between the two nations since the embargo was first implemented.122 Moreover at that time, more shipments were expected to bring about $30 million dollars worth of American wheat, corn, soybeans, rice, and chicken.123 This magnitude of support clearly demonstrates the eagerness of American farmers and businesses to tap into the economic opportunities that are present in Cuba.124 But the recent food sales to Cuba will surely fuel the debate in the United States between American farmers and corporations who would like to see an end to the embargo, and Cuban exile groups who would like to make the sanctions tougher.125 If the United States government were to lift the Cuban embargo to provide assistance to the American farmer, then such a move will give them access to a new billion-dollar market in which to sell its food. More importantly, this new billion-dollar market will ultimately provide American farmers with some of the aid that they so desperately seek. Clearly, American farmers want, need, and feel that they should have the opportunity to tap into this market, just as farmers and businessmen from other nations have. Presently, other countries have a head start with Cuban investment.126 However, as a practical matter, tapping into this market could be beneficial to both countries because Cuba is so close to the United States.127 Therefore, this advantage afforded to other countries could shift to the United States simply because of the proximity between the two nations.128 B. The United States Proximity to Cuba Cuba is only ninety miles south of the United States.129 Thus,

American farmers products could be easily and quickly transported to Cuba if the embargo were lifted.131 C. The Cuban
both countries could save considerable amounts of time and money because of reduced transportation costs.130 Moreover, Economy The Cuban economy is in terrible shape.132 Presently, the Cuban economy has stagnated because its primary benefactor , the former Soviet Union, is no longer able to provide it significant financial support.133 Again, between 1989 and 1990, Cuba lost its major commercial markets together with the Soviet subsidies it had been receiving.134 Moreover, from 1959 to 1994, Cubas GNP fell from U.S. $32.5 billion to U.S. $ 18.6 billion.135 During that same time, the total worth of Cubas exports fell from U.S. $5.4 billion to U.S. $1.7 billion.136

AG Adv EXT: Removal key to Ag

Lifting the embargo benefits the US agricultural industry, USITC study Sullivan 3/29 --- Mark P. Sullivan, Specialist in Latin American Affairs for the Congressional Research Office (Cuba: U.S. Policy and Issues for the 113th Congress, March 29, 2013, FAS, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R43024.pdf, accessed June 28, 2013, MY) The U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) produced a study in 2007 analyzing the effects of both U.S. government financing restrictions for agricultural exports to Cuba and U.S. travel restrictions on the level of U.S. agricultural sales to Cuba.48 At the time of the study, the U.S. share of various Cuban agricultural imports was estimated to range from 0-99% depending on the commodity. If U.S. financing restrictions were lifted, the study estimated that the U.S. share of Cuban agricultural, fish, and forest products imports would rise to between one-half and two-thirds. According to the study, if travel restrictions for all U.S. citizens were lifted, the influx of
U.S. tourists would be significant in the short term and would boost demand for imported agricultural products, particularly high-end products for the tourist sector. If

both financing and travel restrictions were lifted, the study found that the largest gains in U.S. exports to Cuba would be for fresh fruits and vegetables, milk powder, processed foods, wheat, and dry beans. In 2009, the USITC issued a working paper that updated the agencys 2007 study on U.S. agricultural sales to Cuba. The update concluded that if U.S. restrictions on financing and travel were lifted in 2008, U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba would have increased between $216 million and $478 million and the U.S. share of Cubas agricultural imports would have increased from 38% to between 49% and 64%.49 Among the U.S. agricultural products that would have benefited the most were wheat, rice, beef, pork, processed foods, and fish products. In general, some groups favor further easing restrictions on agricultural exports to Cuba. U.S. agribusiness companies that support the removal of restrictions on agricultural exports to Cuba believe that U.S. farmers are unable to capitalize on a market so close to the United States. Those who support the lifting of financing restrictions contend such an action would help smaller U.S. companies increase their exports to Cuba more rapidly. Opponents
of further easing restrictions on agricultural exports to Cuba maintain that U.S. policy does not deny such sales to Cuba, as evidenced by the large amount of sales since 2001. In particular, some agricultural producers that export to Cuba support continuation of the provision requiring payment of cash in advance because it ensures that they will be paid.

Lifting Embargo key to Farm exports/ imports. Griswold 09 Daniel Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. (6/27/13, The US
Embargo of Cuba is a Failure, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/us-embargo-cuba-is-failure) Admitting Cuba to the OAS may be premature, given the organisations charter that requires its members to be democracies that respect human rights, but changes to the US economic embargo are long overdue. The embargo has been a failure by every measure. It has not changed the course or nature of the Cuban government. It has not liberated a single Cuban citizen. In fact, the embargo has made the Cuban people a bit more impoverished, without making them one bit more free. At the same time, it

has deprived Americans of their freedom

to travel and has cost US farmers and other producers billions of dollars of potential exports. Congress and President Barack Obama should act now to lift the embargo to allow more travel and farm exports to Cuba.As a tool of US foreign policy, the embargo actually enhances the Castro governments standing by giving it a handy excuse for the failures of the islands Carib bean-style socialism. Brothers Fidel and Raul can rail for hours about the suffering the embargo inflicts on Cubans, even though the damage done by their communist policies has been far worse. The embargo has failed to give us an ounce of extra leverage over what happens in Havana. In 2000, Congress approved a modest opening of the embargo. The Trade

Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act allows cash-only sales to Cuba of US farm products and medical supplies. The results of this modest
opening have been quite amazing. Since 2000, total sales of farm products to Cuba have increased from virtually zero to $691m in 2008. The top US exports by value are corn, meat and poultry, wheat and soybeans. From dead last, Cuba is now the number six customer in Latin America for US agricultural products. Last year, American farmers sold more to the 11.5 million people who live in Cuba than to the 200 million people in Brazil. According to the US international trade commission, US farm exports would increase another $250m if restrictions were lifted on export

financing. This should not be interpreted as a call for export-import bank subsidies. Trade with Cuba must be entirely commercial and market driven. Lifting the embargo should not mean that US taxpayers must now subsidise exports to Cuba. But neither should the government stand in the way. USITC estimates do not capture the long-term export potential to Cuba from normalised relations. The Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Guatemala spend an average of 2.8% of their GDP to buy farm exports from the US. If Cuba spent the same share of its GDP on

US farm exports, exports could more than double the current level, to $1.5bn a year.

Advocates of the embargo argue that trading with Cuba will only put dollars into the coffers of the Castro regime. And its true that t he government in Havana, because it controls the economy, can skim off a large share of the remittances and tourist dollars spent in Cuba. But of course, selling more US products to Cuba would quickly relieve the Castro regime of those same dollars. if more US tourists were permitted to visit Cuba, and at the same time US exports to Cuba were further liberalised, the US economy could reclaim dollars from the Castro regime as fast as the regime could acquire them. In effect, the exchange would be of agricultural products for tourism services, a kind of bread for beaches, food for fun trade relationship. Meanwhile, the increase in Americans visiting Cuba would dramatically increase contact between Cubans and Americans. The unique US-Cuban relationship that flourished before Castro could be renewed, which would increase US influence and potentially hasten the decline of the communist regime. Congress and President Barack Obama should act now to lift the embargo to allow more travel and farm exports to Cuba. Expanding our freedom to travel to, trade with and invest in Cuba would make Americans better off and would help the Cuban people and speed the day when they can enjoy the freedom they deserve.

Lifting Embargo Key to Agriculture

Danielson 13 Richard Danielson, covers city government and politics in Tampa. He grew up in Clearwater,
graduated from Vanderbilt University and joined the Times in 1987. (U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor: Lift Cuba embargo, travel limits, Tampa Bay Times, April 8, 2013, http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/us-rep-kathy-castor-liftcuba-embargo-travel-restrictions/2113828, Date Accessed: June 28, 2013, SD)

companies, except for computer and some high-tech companies, can sell to Cuba now for cash. What the embargo prevents, he said, is extending the regime credit, and he said it should since he doesn't believe the nation would repay its debts.
He also predicted opening Cuba to tourism would hurt Florida's economy. "If the travel ban is lifted, there ain't going to be a tourist in our neck of the woods for five years, because every tourist is going to go south," he said. While Fernandez said Castor's trip was valid and lawful, he contended her proposals do nothing but give credibility and propaganda points to a dictatorship. "She joins Beyonc, Flake and all the terrorists of the Western hemisphere in their expression of solidarity with the repression and tyranny of the Cuban regime," Fernandez said. Castor said such critics "need to recognize the fact that there are new, privately owned small businesses restaurants everywhere, hotels and motels. Reform is happening, and much of the money is not going to support the actual government. It is going to those individuals, just like the remittances. "Every American should be able to travel" to Cuba, she said, "including Beyonc and Jay-Z, and including the people in the Tampa Bay area and they should fly out of Tampa."

Lifting Embargo key to agriculture sector.

Lloyd 11 Delia Lloyd, PhD in political science.
(Ten Reasons to Lift the Cuba Embargo, Huffpost Politics, 2011, http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/08/24/ten -reasons-to-lift-the-cubaembargo, Date Accessed: June 28, 2013, SD)

It's good economics. It's long been recognized that opening up Cuba to American investment would be a huge boon to the
tourism industry in both countries. According to the Cuban government, 250 ,000 Cuban-Americans visited from the United
States in 2009, up from roughly 170,000 the year before, suggesting a pent-up demand. Lifting the embargo would also be an enormous

boon the U.S. agricultural sector. One 2009 study estimated that doing away with all financing and travel restrictions on U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba would have boosted 2008 dairy sales to that country from $13 million to between $39 million and $87 million, increasing U.S. market share from 6 percent to between 18
and 42 percent.

The embargo hurts the US agricultural industry. Grogg 06- Patricia Grogg; Cuban correspondent to IPS, studied Journalism in the University of Havana (Cuba
Embargos Boomerang Effect IPS, October 2006, http://havanajournal.com/politics/entry/cuba-embargosboomerang-effect/, accessed: 6/27/13, ML)

Washingtons embargo against Cuba also has an impact on the United States economy and prevents
millions of U.S. citizens from benefiting from Cuban medical progress, according to a report released by the Cuban foreign ministry. The text of the report will be presented at the United Nations General Assembly, which on Nov. 8 will be examining for the fifteenth consecutive year the need to end the embargo imposed by Washington on Havana more than four decades ago. The document states that because of t he blockade regulations it has been impossible to begin clinical trials in the U.S. with TheraCIM, a Cuban pharmaceutical produ ct for treating brain tumours in children. TheraCIM is produced by the Molecular Immunology Centre, which in 2004 made a deal with U.S. company CancerVax to develop and produce therapeutic vaccines against cancer. This medication is registered in Cuba and other countries for treating cancer of the head and neck, and has been proved to reduce tumour mass. It could benefit children in the United States and other countries with this type of cancer, the report points out. It also adds that were it not for the embargo, millions of people in the United States suffering from diabetes could benefit from Citoprot P, a unique product and treatment method that accelerates healing of diabetic foot ulcers, reducing the risk of lower extremity amputations. Citoprot P was developed by the Cuban Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. According to the foreign ministry report, about 20.8 million people in the United States suffer from diabetes, a chronic incurable disease. The restrictions that Cuba calls a blockade and the U.S. an embargo have cost this Caribbean country 86.1 billion dollars in total damages throughout the period, including four billion in 2005 alone, the document says. Last year the U.N. approved by 182 votes the Cuban motion in favour of lifting the embargo. The motion was first set before the U.N. General Assembly in 1992, when only 59 countries voted in favour of the resolution. The report states that the ban on U.S. tourism to Cuba causes tourist agents in the U.S. losses of 565 million dollars per million U.S. tourists who are prevented from visiting the country. An estimated 1.8 million U.S. tourists could have vacationed in this Caribbean island in 2005, but because of the ban, U.S. tourist agencies lost potential income of 996 million dollars, the report says. In addition, the U.S. imports about 148,000 tons of primary nickel and some 10,000 tons of cobalt annually from distant markets. But If the blockade did not exist, it could purchase these raw materials from Cuba, only 200 kilometres a way, the report notes. At present Cuba produces about 77,000 tons of nickel a year, and output is set to increase through an investment programme agreed with Canada in March 2005 for the expansion and modernisation of a joint venture company to exploit the mineral. Cuba has proven nickel reserves of 800 million tons, and potential reserves are estimated at two billion tons. The countrys cobalt reserves amount to approximately 26 percent of total world reserves, according to official sources. In presenting the report, Cuban deputy foreign minister Bruno Rodrquez said on Monday that the George W. Bush administration has created an inter-agency task force on Cuban nickel, to monitor and prevent sales of this strategic mineral. Energy is another good business that Havana says U.S. companies are missing out on, because they are forbidden to participate in prospecting for oil on Cubas undersea platform in the Gulf of Mexico, only 137 kilometres from Florida. The platform to the north of Cuba has an estimated potential of between one billion and 9.3 billion barrels of crude and between 1.9 trillion and 22 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. These estimates in the Cuban foreign ministrys report are attributed to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which said the possibilities of success are of the order of 95 percent. In 1999 Cuba opened up to tender 112,000 square kilometres of its waters in the Gulf of Mexico, divided into 51 blocks, for foreign exploration aimed at eventual exploitation. The Spanish-Argentine company Repsol YPF currently has a contract to drill in six of these blocks, with a total surface area of 10,700 square kilometres. This year, however it decided to spread the risk and has sold a 30 percent share in the venture to each of two other companies, from India and Norway, retaining 40 percent itself. The Canadian firm Sherritt International has also signed a contract for four blocks in this deep water drilling area.

Legislation approved in 2000 by the U.S. Congress permits the sale of foods to Cuba, an exception to the embargo that began to be implemented in 2001. Between late 2001 and 2004, Cuban purchases from U.S. firms totalled over one billion dollars in cash. In 2005, Cuba had earmarked between 700 and 800 million dollars to buy food from the United States. But Washington tightened its trading restrictions with Cuba, and the trade dropped to some 474 million dollars. Due to the obstacles to trade imposed by the blockade, U.S. agricultural exporters lost income of about 300 million dollars, which were used for purchases in other markets, the Cuban report said.

Ag Adv A2: Cuba Says No

Cuban farmers want the embargo liftedkey to agriculture trade Pulliam 12- John Pulliam, Senior Analyst, Risk Management at OneAmerica, Columbia University (Fa rmers
want Cuban Embargo Lifted, 6/8/12, Galesburg, http://www.galesburg.com/news/x1271220402/Farmers-wantCuban-embargo-lifted#axzz2Xzqoe8Ai, Accessed: 7/3/13, zs) Grant Strom, who farms near Williamsfield, and David Serven, a St. Augustine-area farmer, were among more than 20 Illinois Farm Bureau members and staff from across the state who traveled to Cuba on June 28 through July 2 in an effort to promote the resumption of normal trading relations with the country. Strom, who was impressed by the Cuban people, said U.S. farmers can sell their products to the

Caribbean nation, but there are a number of hurdles to jump to do so. For instance, the U.S. government will not allow Cuba to buy agriculture products on credit. If Cuba wants to buy a barge
load of wheat, they have to pay for it in cash, he said. While products such as coffee, rum and cigars are produced in Cuba and in demand in the U.S., They cant sell those things back to us, Strom said. He said those restrictions hurt farmers in the U.S., who cannot

readily sell their crops to the potential market, as well as the average Cuban, rather than government officials in the Communist country. Food shortage Theyre on the brink of a food shortage in Cuba, Strom said. Serven said each Cuban
has a food coupon book. They can go to market and buy their needs at subsidized costs, he said. Serven said Cubans used to be able to use coupons to buy household goods, as well, but those are no longer available. Restoring normal trade relations with Cuba is an important step in furthering Illinois farmers abilities to market their produce, including grains, meat and dairy products, said Tamara Nelsen, senior director of commodities for the Illinois Farm Bureau. Agriculture has been a bright spot in our nations and our states economy during the recent downturn. Improving our trade relations with Cuba will only help to ensure agriculture can continue to strengthen our state and national economies. While there may be some potential for renewed trade with Cuba if the embargo is lifted, Serven thinks it will help Cuba more than affecting U.S. farmers. As far as being a boon for U.S. agriculture, I dont think that will happen, he said. But its just the fact that were so close. Strom said the trade embargo has very real effects. For instance, rather than buying rice from Mississippi, which would take three days to get to the island nation, Cuba is forced to buy it from Vietnam, which takes 28 days to ship the nation, about 100 miles south of Florida.

Cuba will say yes high demand Gegg and Larose 7 Betty Valle Gegg and John Larose, Members of the MidAmerica
Farmer Grower, (Commodity Groups Exert Strong Push to Remove Cuban Embargo, Publication for the MidAmerica Farmer Grower Organization, NO DATE (most recent year referenced was 2007), http://www.mafg.net/Files/Commodity%20Groups%20Exert%20Strong%20Push%20To%20Lift %20Cuban%20EmbargogNfhoi.pdf, Accessed 6/28/13, AW)

We found the country very anxious to buy U.S. commodities . Unfortunately, the
restrictions that they pay cash before the product leaves the United States has hampered their ability to buy. Yet they have been buying a half million metric tons or 20 million bushels of corn annually from the United States for several years. He said theres been an effort for a long time in Congress, led by Congresswoman JoAnn Emerson, to dissolve the trade embargo with Cuba. There have been some modifications in the procedures, some loosening of the rules for

ob- taining licenses, but other measures have not been significantly improved, Hobbie said. Lob- byists from Florida and New Jersey work very hard to keep the current legislation in place. Hobbie said that while this administration has been less willing to consider changes in the law, other administrations have been unwilling to lift the ban as well. Neither Democrat nor Republican adminis- trations have shown a willingness to lift the ban, he said. Rice Producers Respond To Situation Since 2002, the U.S. Rice Producers Associa- tion (USRPA) has been to Cuba 10 to 12 times to foster trade there. However, it has become more difficult for U.S. citizens to get a Visa. People have been denied since then, said USRPA President and CEO Dwight Roberts. Hurricane Michelle in the fall of 2001 was the spur that opened trade with Cuba in the 21st Century. USRPA worked to get the U.S. government to allow rice shipments to aid the people. Our government allowed us to donate, Roberts continued, but the Cubans reacted with a thank you, but no thank you, but well be happy to buy food

products from you . So from that the U.S. government tweaked the em- bargo and allowed the sale of food products to Cuba on a cash basis
with a list of other re- strictions. We were off and running in moving rice into Cuba. At that time the rice sent to Cuba was milled rice, but Roberts said hes in favor of the sale of any type of rice to Cuba. Even Fidel Castro him- self said the country was better off buying milled rice because of a need to upgrade their mills. The mills are located in the interior of the country so purchasing rough rice adds the cost of transport. Its more cost effective for them; and with rice prices today, Pedro Alvarez (president and CEO of ALIMPORT, the government agency respon- sible for food imports to Cuba) told me recently when I was there that they paid $97 a ton for paddy rice. That was when they first started buying rice. Today prices of paddy rice are in the neighborhood of $500 a ton. Prices in Thailand and Vietnam on a milled basis are around $800 a ton. When you add $140 a ton freight rate, the United States can easily compete with that plan. They do not export paddy rice f rom Asia so the Cubans have to crunch the numbers to see which is the best deal for them, Roberts added. I think they will cont inue to buy a combination of the two, they know what their internal issues and costs are and when their harvest comes off. Maybe there are times of the year that their mills are too busy to take paddy rice, but other times paddy rice could be a better deal for them. Roberts said he learned in an email that Cuba bought 10,000 tons of U.S. rice for April ship - ment. They were looking for an additional 10,000, he said. Theyve just about stretched their credit in Vietnam, plus the type of rice they are getting out of Vietnam is just trash. Cubans know rice, I mean they really know. Americans dont even take the time to look at it but Cubans look at the color, the y smell it, they know their rice and how well it cooks. I have spoken at the U.S. Cuban trade talks that theyve had a time or two and were fixing to host our Second Annual Rice Congress of the Americas, Roberts said. Its going to be in Brazil later this month. Last year we had the first one in Cancun and we had people from 2 2 different countries there. Alvarez came and spoke and we have someone that covers the main markets. It was a very good presentation and weve kept Cuba very much inv olved in the Western Hemisphere. When I say we educated the Cubans, we also shared our opinions on the market with the Cubans. Our thoughts on the world market- place, western hemisphere, Asian influence and that type of thing and having them a part of this Rice Congress of The Americas has been real important because they rival Mexico as the number

Roberts and the USRPA found the people of Cuba very friendly and eager to deal with them. They know us and we know them well, Roberts said. Our efforts are to give them a bet- ter understanding of the U.S. rice industry, how we are structured and operate, our feelings on the western hemisphere and trade within the region, not just with Cuba but with their neigh- bors. We spent a lot of time in an education phase with the Cubans. For a country of 11 million people, Cuba eats about as much rice as Mexico. Mexico bought 800,000 tons of rice in 2007 from the United States, Cuba bought 600,000 or 700,000 tons. Brazil some years can approach 800,000 from Uruguay and Argentina and maybe a little bit from the United States so everyone falls off drastically after that, Roberts continued. Theyre one of the major importers and play- ers. Per capita consumption of rice in Cuba is probably the highest in Latin America. Haiti would be very high. The poorer countries have the higher per capita consumption. Roberts thinks the visits to Cuba have created the relationships that are necessary for trade to take place. I believe that if we did not have an embargo, we would immediately sell in the very first year several hundred tons more than were selling now, even if the Cubans did not like us, which is totally false, he said. They are as friendly a people as I have known, and buying rice from the United States is still a good deal because of the proximity, especially in these times of high oil prices and high freights. Cubas tourism
one importer of rice in the western hemisphere or close to Brazil on a shear volume basis.

industry is growing and Roberts feels that even if the entire embargo is not lifted, travel back and forth should be allowed. Tourists from Europe and other coun- tries regularly visit Cuba, but Americans cannot.

Ag Adv 2AC Famine Impact

Removing the embargo solves Cuban Famine Zimmerman 10 CHELSEA A. ZIMMERMAN, Fellow of the Center for The Study of the
Presidency and Congress, Member of The Juvenile Rights Project and the Legal Aid Society, Barnard College, (Rethinking The Cuban Trade Embargo: An Opportune Time To Mend a Broken Policy, The Presidency 2010 Fellows, NO DATE (Paper was written in 2010), http://www.thepresidency.org/storage/documents/Fellows2010/Zimmerman.pdf, Accessed 6/27/13, AW) Despite the U.S. governments attempts to promote democracy in Cuba through economic sanctions, Fidel Castro, the forme r leader of an underdeveloped nation of 11 million people, survived eight U.S. pr esidents and their attempts to oust him from office. With the recent resignation of Fidel Castro and the installation of his brother, 76-year-old Raul Castr o, as president, many observers in the U.S. and Cuba relish the opportunity to develop stronger trade ties. Although he has not signaled any major shift in Cubas econo mic system, in a speech given in July of 2007, Raul Castro acknowledged that structu ral changes were necessary to increase efficiency and the production of goods in Cuba. Castro recognizes the inherent

limitations on a country that imports more than 80 percent of its food, leaves half of its
arable land fallow, and depends on Venezuela for 90 million barrels of oil per day ( The Center for Democracy in the Americas) . During the several years he has acted as president, Raul Castr o has pursued reform measures to make the government more efficient and invigorate t he Cuban economy. He has opened unused state land to private farmers, allowe d private farmers to buy their own feed and fertilizer rather than have them assig ned by the state, permitted nationals to buy computers, cell phones and other a ppliances that previously were prohibited, reformed the state wage system by remov ing salary limits, and allowed Cubans to gain title to state-owned homes (Weissert , 1). Most experts believe that Raul Castro will not undertake dramatic economic re forms over the near term. Furthermore, due to the diversification of its econ omic relationships with other countries, particularly China and Venezuela, Cuba i s less reliant on the United States as a potential business partner. Cuba is recovering from a series of hurricanes and tropical storms that hit Cuba in the fall of 2008 that by some estimates hav e caused over $9 billion worth of damage to Cuban farms and industry. Because foo d shortages are a serious problem in Cuba, the trade embargo with Cuba has re sulted in increased suffering of the Cuban people. According to Peter Schwab, t he most explosive impact of the U.S. embargo, even worse than that on public he alth, is the effect on food and hunger (Schwab, 79). Food rationing began in Cuba in 1962, with the distribution of one rationing booklet for each Cuban household. Initially most food items were included in the rationing, but items such as fruits , vegetables, and eggs have been added and deleted based on their scarcity at the ti me (Alvarez, 1). The Cuban people have suffered from a crumbling eco nomy under Fidel Castros rule, and the embargo imposed by the U.S. government has only made on attempts to weaken the Castro regime.

AG Adv Specific Ag Exports

Removing embargo boosts soybean exports high Cuban demand Gegg and Larose 7 Betty Valle Gegg and John Larose, Members of the MidAmerica
Farmer Grower, (Commodity Groups Exert Strong Push to Remove Cuban Embargo, Publication for the MidAmerica Farmer Grower Organization, NO DATE (most recent year referenced was 2007), http://www.mafg.net/Files/Commodity%20Groups%20Exert%20Strong%20Push%20To%20Lift %20Cuban%20EmbargogNfhoi.pdf, AW) As a result of that, U.S. sales have in- creased. However, in 2005 some restrictions were placed on sales to Cuba, and if those were changed U.S. food exports would increase. This last calendar year of 2007, we exported about $114 million in terms of soybeans, soy- bean meal and soybean oil. It is a good market for us , he said. Since the restrictions were placed on the mar- ket in 2005, soybean sales to Cuba have been about the same while soybean meal value has gone up; however, the actual tonnage shipped has gone down. The 2005 interpretations did have a negative effect on trade with Cuba. The treasury departments reinterpretation of the rules in 2005 requiring cash in advance has disrupted trade, Censky said. When the legis- lation passed, the initial interpretation was to allow for the payment right before the goods were physically delivered. The treasury reinter- preted that and now they require payment be- fore shipment leaves the United States. Thats very highly restrictive . We dont have those re- quirements on any other country. The other re- striction is that no U.S. bank can be involved in the financial transaction. We see that as a hin- drance. That increases the overall banking costs, because U.S. exporters have to go to their bank, then their bank has to go to a third coun- try bank which then deals with Cuba to get the payment. It just increases the price of the trans- action by getting a third country bank in- volved. Another restriction Censky doesnt think should be in place is on the use of government credit guarantees or even U.S. market develop- ment funds. We receive funding from both the soybean checkoff as well as from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to carry out market devel- opment activities around the world, he ex- plained. We cant use a dime of either producers checkoff dollars or the money that comes from the USDA to do any kind of market development activities in Cuba. There are a few other countries like that, Iran and North Korea. Yet, Cuba is a unique situa- tion. For U.S. soybeans and soybean products the soybean association has a very high market share in Central America and throughout the Caribbean. In fact, before the embargo was in place, Cuba was the organizations biggest for- eign country market in the world for soybean meal. We were shipping the meal, given the prox- imity from the Gulf down to Cuba to support their livestock industry, Censky said. Of course, now they have gone to other suppliers, Brazil and Venezuela. We have been able to get some of that back since 2000 and we

would like to get even more back. Plan boosts rice exports status quo licensing prevents trade Gegg and Larose 7 Betty Valle Gegg and John Larose, Members of the MidAmerica
Farmer Grower, (Commodity Groups Exert Strong Push to Remove Cuban Embargo,

Publication for the MidAmerica Farmer Grower Organization, NO DATE (most recent year referenced was 2007), http://www.mafg.net/Files/Commodity%20Groups%20Exert%20Strong%20Push%20To%20Lift %20Cuban%20EmbargogNfhoi.pdf, Accessed 6/28/13, AW) U.S. Grain Council Comments The U.S. Grain Council, headed by President and CEO Kenneth Hobbie, promotes the expor- tation of corn, sorghum and barley products from the United States, and works to help de- velop export op- portunities. This organization has been very active in Cuba since 1997, actually traveling there before the first trading began. As an organization its structure is differ- ent from other commodity groups. The U.S. Grain Council has a contract with the USDA to enhance and carry out overseas trade. However, trade with Cuba is covered under national legislation. The main reason trade with Cuba is curtailed is we have a standing law currently that pre- vents any significant business relationships from developing between the two countries, said Hobbie. It requires licensing to travel. We need the permission of the Department of Com- merce to trade with them. We are not allowed to spend any government funding to enhance trade with Cuba, even though we are allowed to travel there, Hobbie said. Our members have to pay for that them- selves.

Ag Adv EXT: Economy Internal Link

Lifting the embargo would have a massive economic impactlarger than NAFTA Amnesty International 10 Amnesty International is a global movement of people fighting injustice and promoting human rights.
We work to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth and dignity are denied. Currently the worlds largest grassroots h uman rights organization, we investigate and expose abuses, educate and mobilize the public, and help transform societies to create a safer, more just world. We received the Nobel Peace Prize for our life-saving work. (Is the U.S. Embargo on Cuba a Form of Genocide?, Amnesty International, September 8, 2010, http://www3.sympatico.ca/danchristienses/CubaFAQ137.html , Accessed: July 2, 2013, SD) The restrictions imposed by the embargo help to deprive Cuba of vital access to medicines, new scientific and medical technology, food, chemical water treatment and electricity.... The impact of economic sanctions on health and health services is not limited to difficulties in the supply of medicine. Health and health services depend on functioning water and sanitation infrastructure, on electricity and other functioning equipment such as X-ray facilities or refrigerators to store vaccines. The financial burden and commercial barriers have led to shortages or intermittent availability of drugs, medicines, equipment and spare parts. It has also hindered the renovation of hospitals, clinics and care centres for the elderly. Source: "The US embargo against Cuba: Its impact on economic and social rights," Amnesty International, September 2009 In addition to blocking essential imports, the US embargo also continued to impose a significant drag on the development of the Cuban economy,

simply lifting the economic and financial restrictions imposed on Cuban farmers by the US embargo would have a dramatic impact on their production levels: Cuban agriculture has such a big potential that if it were to be totally developed it could
especially in the areas of agriculture and food production. According to at least one US agricultural expert, surpass the volume of production of the Free Trade Treaty [the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) presumed]. William A.

Messina Jr., of the University of Florida's Agriculture Science Institute, said, that the communist island "has such good soil and it represents a challenge of such magnitude that, with the end of the embargo, the agricultural market impact on the continent would be larger that of the Free Trade Treaty.'' Source: "Cuba's agriculture shows promise," Miami Herald, September 29, 2009 Follow-up, September 2010 Amnesty
International reiterates its condemnation of the US embargo: [The US embargo's is] negatively affecting Cubans access to med icines and medical technologies and endangering the health of millions. United Nations agencies and programs operating in Cuba, such as UNICEF, UNAIDS and UNFPA, have reported that the US embargo has undermined the implementation of programs aimed at improving the living conditions of Cubans. Source: "Amnesty International criticises President Obama's decision on Cuba," Amnesty International, September 8, 2010 Follow-up, October 2010 On October 26, 2010 the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly again to condemn the US embargo. Only Israel voted with the US against the resolution. Israel trades freely with Cuba, so even this single vote cannot be seen as support for these cruel and inhumane sanctions. On this the US is truly isolated on the world stage. The only abstentions were the tiny US-island colonies in the South Pacific: Palau (pop. 20,000), Micronesia (pop. 110,000) and the Marshall Islands (pop. 60,000).

OFAC 2AC Iran Adv A2 Hurts US Companies

OFAC only targets Iranian businesses supporting prolif protects US system Fitzpatrick 1/16 --- Mark Fitzpatrick directs the IISS Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme,
International Institute for Strategic Studies (US sanctions on Iran, January 16, 2013, IISS, www.iiss.org/~/media/Documents/.../US%20sanctions%20on%20Iran.pdf, accessed July 10, 2013, MY)
Financial institutions that provide financial support for the sensitive nuclear and missile programs are also targeted. As a derivative, OFAC

can target entities that are owned or controlled by the main entities. Whereas the UN has designated only two Iranian banks, the US blacklist includes about two dozen. The aim is to target financial institutions involved in any way that Iran moves money to finance proliferation. The 2011 CISADA provided authority to designate any bank that deals with designated Iranian banks. This is often said to be an extra-territorial application of US law. US officials describe it differently: if third-country banks deal with Iran banks that are involved in proliferation, the Treasury Department does not want US banks risking their own reputation by involved with them. In this way, the Treasury Dept protects the US financial system from taint by association with proliferation. Only
two third-country banks, in Iraq and China, have been so designated for helping Iranian banks evade sanctions.

OFAC 2AC Iran Adv A2 Sanctions Fail

Sanctions effective statistics prove more are needed Berman et al 13 - Ilan Berman, Vice President of the American Foreign Policy Council; Franois Delmas,
Political Counselor for strategic affairs at the French Embassy; Michael Howells, First Secretary for Middle East policy at the British Embassy; Kenneth Katzman, Specialist in Middle East Affairs at the Congressional Research Service, Orde Kittrie, Professor of Law at Arizona State University and Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies; and Michael Singh, Managing Director of the Washington Institute on Near East Policy. Mr. Katzman participated in this discussion in his capacity as an Iran expert, and not as a representative of the Congressional Research Service, the Library of Congress, or the United States Congress, (Are Sanctions Working?, Report of a discussion on 10/25/12 for Iran Watch for The Wisconsin Project of Nuclear Arms Control, 2/6/13, http://www.iranwatch.org/ourpubs/bulletin/sanctions-roundtable-020613.htm, Accessed 7/10/13, AW)

A tough new U.S. sanctions measure against Iran goes into effect today, restricting foreign governments from remitting payments for Iranian oil back to Tehran. The payments now must be kept within the banking system of the oil-importing country and can be used by Iran only to purchase local goods. If the local bank transfers the Iranian funds outside its national borders, it risks losing access to the U.S. financial systema serious threat. Limiting Tehrans hard cash in this manner is a smart escalation in the sanctions campaign, but will it be enough? Can any type of sanction curb Irans nuclear effort? During the past year, the United States, European Union, and others have put into place the strongest sanctions yet against Iran. Nevertheless, during this same period, Iran has expanded its uranium enrichment program and refused to address allegations that it conducted nuclear weapon-related work. U.S. officials say there is still time for sanctions to prevent Iran from emerging as a nuclear weapon power. If so, what, specifically, can be done? The Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control recently hosted a roundtable discussion by a panel of experts * that examined sanctions as a means of influencing nuclear decision-making by Irans leaders. The panelists identified three factors critical to influencing Tehrans nuclear ambitions: money, oil, and China. In addition, the panel raised concerns about incentivizing an Iranian sprint toward nuclear weapons. There was broad consensus among the panelists that sanctions are having an increasing impact on the Iranian economy. The sanctions implemented so far are causing economic strain that will worsen over time , despite efforts by Iran to mitigate their impact. The panelists also concluded that additional sanctions must be sought in order to hasten the unraveling of Irans economy, mainly by further diminishing its foreign exchange reserve and oil revenue. The full
moderator's report of the roundtable discussion is available here. Among the panels spec ific findings were: Sanctions limiting Irans oil sales are working and should be tightened . In 2012, the United States

and European Union took serious steps to restrict Irans ability to sell oil and other petrochemical products. The panelists agreed that the ripple effect of these sanctions, especially since July, has resulted in plummeting oil sales: from over two million barrels per day in 2011 to under one million barrels per day by the end of 2012. Declining oil sales have cut access to hard currency. It is quite important, the panelists noted, that these sanctions are still relatively new. Iran has yet to feel their full impact. The panelists found that the U.S. and its allies should seek even further reductions in Irans oil sales. One possible course of action:
make waivers and exceptions to U.S. sanctions more difficult to obtain. As additional steps, the United States also could deny government contracts to firms that continue to do business with Iran and bar vessels owned by companies that are transporting Iranian oil from docking in the United States. China is a key player. China currently absorbs about half of Irans oil exports. The time to encourage China to reduce Iranian oil purchases is now, before Tehran works out ways to mitigate the impact of sanctions or influence the price of oil. Similarly, additional pressure could be placed on the Chinese government to crack down on proliferation-sensitive exports to Iran by private Chinese firms. It is nevertheless wise to tread carefully. Unity on sanctions with China

also sends a valuable message to Tehran about the cohesiveness of the P5+1 group of countries that
are leading sanctions and negotiations.

Empirics prove Maloney 11 --- Suzanne Maloney studies Iran, the political economy of the Persian Gulf and Middle East energy
policy for the Brookings Institute and is a former U.S. State Department policy advisor (The Self -Limiting Success of Iran Sanctions, November 11, 2011, Brookings Institute, http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2011/11/iran-sanctions-maloney-takeyh, accessed July 10, 2013, MY)

After more than three decades of reliance on sanctions as the centrepiece of US policy towards Tehran, Washington can finally claim a measure of success, at least with respect to the breadth of multilateral cooperation, the potency of international implementation, and apparent costs imposed on Iran as a result of its defiance of UN mandates. The consequences of the sharpened sanctions regime can be seen across the board within Iran. Trade with Europe has declined precipitously, and sanctions have forced Tehran to recapitalize its banks and seek out creative mechanisms including barter instrumentsfor increasing proportions of
its considerable trade finance requirements. Indian imports of Iranian gasoline have gone unpaid for months, for lack of a legally viable payment process, while Iranian jets have been grounded in Europe as a result of US restrictions on sales of refined petroleum products.

OFAC 2AC Iran Adv A2 Squo Solves

Despite sanction success more are needed Maloney 11 --- Suzanne Maloney studies Iran, the political economy of the Persian Gulf and Middle East energy
policy for the Brookings Institute and is a former U.S. State Department policy advisor (The Self -Limiting Success of Iran Sanctions, November 11, 2011, Brookings Institute, http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2011/11/iran-sanctions-maloney-takeyh, accessed July 10, 2013, MY)
The consequences of the sharpened sanctions regime can be seen across the board within Iran. Trade with Europe has declined precipitously, and sanctions have forced Tehran to recapitalize its banks and seek out creative mechanisms including barter instrumentsfor increasing proportions of its considerable trade finance requirements. Indian imports of Iranian gasoline have gone unpaid for months, for lack of a legally viable payment process, while Iranian jets have been grounded in Europe as a result of US restrictions on sales of refined petroleum products.A

wide range of Iranian politicians, including Ayatollah Khamenei, have acknowledged the increasing hardships posed as a result of the restrictions. The argument in favour of sanctions is grounded in the historical evidence that Iranian policy is often shaped by a rational assessment of costs and benefits. And yet it is not apparent that the mounting costs of sanctions have brought the clerical leadership any closer to a meaningful process of dialoguemuch less serious compromiseson its nuclear programme or the other elements of its provocative policies. This reflects the formative influence of Irans domestic political
dynamics, and its unexpected evolution, on the regimes assessment of risks and rewards.

More specific sanctions needed Maberry and Riemer 6/6 --- J. Scott Maberry is an International Trade partner in the Government Contracts,
Investigations & International Trade Practice Group in the firm's Washington, D.C. office, JD from Georgetown Law, Matthew L. Riemer is an associate in the Government Contracts, Investigations & International Trade Practice Group in the firm's Washington, D.C. office, JD from University of Chicago (OFAC continues to expand the scope of Iranian sanctions, June 6, 2013, Lexology, http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=2db0d7ac-19654265-b1e5-5c43798bbca2, accessed July 10, 2013, MY)
Oil, Petrochemical, and Aircraft Industries. On May 31, the U.S. Department of Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control ( OFAC)

imposed sanctions on entities and individuals that are part of, or have done business with, Irans international procurement and proliferation operations. The targeted entities include branches of the Iranian government (e.g., the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Ministry of Defense for Armed Forces Logistics), several Iranian petrochemical companies, and a group of corporations and individuals in Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, and the United Arab Emirates that lease or sell aircraft to Iranian companies. The sanctions were imposed pursuant to Executive Orders 13,382 (targeting proliferators and supporters of Irans weapons of mass destruction) and 13,599 (targeting the government of Iran). As we reported here, these industry-based sanctions are further evidence of the U.S. Governments continued commitment to hindering Irans attempts at advancing its military and nuclear programs.

OFAC 2AC Iran Adv Multilat Ext

OFAC Iran sanctions get multilateral support Segall 12 Wynn H. Segall, ABA Export Controls and Economic Sanctions Committee Member (Enforcement
Of U.S. Sanctions Against Iran: Corporate Governance In A New World, 9/25/12, http://www.metrocorpcounsel.com/articles/20640/enforcement-us-sanctions-against-iran-corporate-governancenew-world, accessed: 7/10/13, ckr)

Global compliance trends are generally paralleling U.S. and international Iran sanctions enforcement. This trend is supported and, to some extent, equally driven by the fact that other countries including the U.S.s closest allies in Europe and other parts of the world have been adopting sanctions measures against Iran in keeping with UN sanctions resolutions and other multilateral arrangements that provide a self-sustaining legal grounding that is not simply reactive to U.S.
measures. Other countries sanctions enforcement officials and non -U.S. companies are now recognizing increased restrictions under the laws of countries in which they are operating. Norms of corporate governance and best practices for leading global companies are following these developments out of necessity. Under the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA), administered by the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. has also increasingly pursued extraterritorial sanctions measures against Iran that target Irans nuclear program, oil and gas industry, shipping and aviation sectors, banking system and entities associated with international concerns regarding Iranian involvement in international terrorism and weapons proliferation. While these measures have been implemented more through diplomacy than by overt punitive actions, they appear to be increasingly effective in leveraging the threat of intervention to cut off non-U.S. companies from access to U.S. capital, goods and technology as a means to influence commercial decisions of companies with their center of gravity in other countries. Similar measures

have been adopted by many other countries both in keeping with progressive tightening of multilateral sanctions resolutions and as part of coordinated diplomatic efforts. OFAC sanctions on Iran get multilateral support King and Spalding 10 King and Spalding, international law firm (OFAC Issues Iranian Financial Sanctions
Regulations, 10/1/2010, http://www.kslaw.com/imageserver/KSPublic/library/publication/ca100110.pdf, accessed: 7/10/13, ckr) On August 16, 2010, the U.S. Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Assets Control ( OFAC) published the Iranian Financial Sanctions Regulations, 31 C.F.R. Part 561, (IFSR) that implement sections 104(c) and 104(d) of the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010 (CISADA). CISADA, signed into law by President Obama on July 1, builds upon the recently adopted United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1929 and provides a foundation for new multilateral sanctions against those who assist Iran in the development of nuclear weapons and in the support of terrorism. CISADA also expands the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996 in an attempt to limit Irans ability to import and produce refined petroleum products and strengthens the U.S. Presidents authority to impose sanctions on companies that provide refined petroleum products to Iran or assist Iran in expanding its refining capacity. The IFSR prohibit (1) U.S. financial institutions (e.g., banks, depository institutions, savings banks, money service businesses, trust companies, insurance companies, etc.) from opening or maintaining a correspondent account or a payable-through account in the United States for a foreign financial institution that knowingly engages in activities that assist Iran with weapons proliferation or with its support of international terrorism and (2) any person owned or controlled by a U.S. financial institution from knowingly engaging in any transaction with or benefitting Irans Islamic Revo lutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) or any of its agents or affiliates. Both of these prohibitions and penalties for violations are described in more detail below

OFAC 2AC Iran Adv Prolif Ext

Nuclear proliferation causes extinction Viegas 9 - Jennifer Viegas, one of Discovery News first reporters, has covered a great variety of topics, an author of many books [Hum an
Extinction: How Could It Happen? Discovery News, 11/11/09, http://news.discovery.com/human/psychology/human-extinction-doomsday.htm, accessed: 7/2/13, JK] While any number and combination of doom-and-gloom happenings could destroy the human race, the researchers outlined four, more general types of events that may also serve as "signposts," or events that may signal the unfolding of a defined scenario.

In this case, that

defined scenario is human extinction. "The types were non-war human-caused -- whether accidental or intended or purposeful, natural-viral, natural-environmental, and finally nuclear or near nuclear war/engagement between any two nations," Lopes said. Should a launch of nuclear weapons, an outbreak of disease, an unforeseen side effect of technical and medical advancements, or unusual environmental changes occur, the researchers believe "serious consideration throughout the globe" is warranted. Side effects of technology and environmental changes "are slow to present themselves, and that's what makes those signposts the most dangerous, in my opinion," Lopes said.
"Unfortunately, as we've seen with the impassioned discussion regarding global warming, not everyone can agree on what it is they are seeing or what the data reveal, and that's where a great deal of danger lies."

OFAC 1AC Narcotics Advantage

Plan boosts OFAC sanctions on Iran reallocates resources Johnson, Spector and Lilac 10 - Andy Johnson, Director, National Security Program, Kyle Spector, Policy
Advisor, National Security Program, Kristina Lilac, National Security Program, Senior Fellows of The Third Way Institute, (End the Embargo of Cuba, Article for The Third Way Institute, 9/16/10, http://content.thirdway.org/publications/326/Third_Way_Memo_-_End_the_Embargo_of_Cuba.pdf, Accessed 7/02/13, AW)

Keeping the embargo in place requires that the US government devote time and resources to fighting a Cold War -8 era threat. Senator Chris Dodd argued in a 2005 op ed that the US spends extraordinary resources each year to enforce the sanctions instead of devoting such resources to the fight against terrorism. 4 While the financial resources dedicated to enforcing the embargo may be limited compared to resources dedicated to other causes, lifting the Cuban embargo could put the US in a better position to fight terrorist organizations by freeing up resources currently enforcing the embargo. For example, the Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which governs travel and trade between the US and Cuba, is also responsible for maintaining sanctions against truly problematic countries, including Iran and North Korea. OFAC also is responsible for responding to economic threats posed by terrorist organizations and narcotics traffickers. By ending OFACs need to regulate the Cuban embargo, OFAC could instead devote those resources to respond to the current threats posed by rogue states and terrorist networks OFAC key to solve narcotics empirics prove it solves crackdown Office of Foreign Assets Control 7, Office of Foreign Assets Control, U.S. Department of the Treasury
(Impact Report, Economic Sanctions Against Colombian Drug Cartels, March 2007, U.S. Department of the Treasury, http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Documents/narco_impact_report_05042007.pdf, accessed: 7/10/13, LR) Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)

integrates regulatory, national security, investigative, enforcement, and intelligence elements towards a single goal: effective implemen- tation of economic sanctions programs against foreign threats and adversaries. OFAC currently administers and
enforces more than 30 economic sanctions programs pursuant to Presidential and Congressional mandates,1

targeting select foreign countries and regimes, terrorist organiza- tions, proliferators of weapons of mass destruction, and narcotics traffickers . OFAC acts under general Presidential wartime and national emergency powers, as well as specific legislation, to prohibit transactions and freeze (or block) assets within
the United States or in possession or control of U.S. persons, including their foreign branches. These programs are administered in conjunction with diplomatic, law enforcement and occasionally military action. Since 1995, the Executive Branch has developed an array of targeted sanctions programs that focus on drug cartels and traffickers, international terrorist groups, proliferators of weapons of mass destruc- tion, members of hostile regimes, and other individuals and groups whose activities threaten U.S. interests. Narcotics traffickers operating on a global scale require an extensive support network, includ- ing procurement, logistics, transportation, communications, security, money laundering, and other facilitation. Disguising the sometimes vast profits derived from major drug operations requires the purchase of ostensibly legitimate enterprises capable of handling business on an international scale. These illicitly funded corporate empires can be extensive, complex, and undermine the integrity of financial systems. They are

also one of the drug cartels greatest vulnerabilities.

To combat the threats of violence, corruption, and harm posed by narcotics traffickers and their networks, President Clinton signed Executive Order 12978 in October 1995, declaring a nation- al emergency
with respect to significant foreign narcotics traffickers centered in Colombia. The impact of these sanctions has been significant and, at times, dramatic. When OFAC desig- nates an individual or entity, any assets within the United States or the possession or control of a U.S. person anywhere in the world, must be frozen. Trade with or through the United States is cut off. Moreover, many non-U.S. businesses and banks have voluntarily severed all ties with individuals and entities that OFAC has listed. As a result, designated persons may lose access to their bank accounts outside the United States, disrupting their operations and freedom of ac- cess. Finally, in many cases, Colombian authorities have taken law enforcement actions against designated companies or properties after OFAC listed them. Collectively, these actions have disrupted more than $1 billion worth of assets in blockings, seizures, forfeitures, and the fail- ure of enterprisesand economically isolated the individuals who own and manage the enter- prises. The Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), in fact, stated that OFACs efforts

have resulted in the forfeiture of billions of dollars worth of drug-related assets. Also deters narcotics sanctions send perceptions Office of Foreign Assets Control 7, Office of Foreign Assets Control, U.S. Department of the Treasury
(Impact Report, Economic Sanctions Against Colombian Drug Cartels, March 2007, U.S. Department of the Treasury, http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Documents/narco_impact_report_05042007.pdf, accessed: 7/10/13, LR)

Economic sanctions are employed to financially and commercially impair and impede, and to ultimately isolate and incapacitate narcotics traffickers, their supporters, and business empires. OFAC designations help publicly identify drug traffickers and their business empires and are often accompanied or followed by U.S. law enforcement actions and Government of Colombia asset seizures and forfeitures. Additionally, the threat of designation often deters top manage- rial talentneeded to operate and manage the often complex drug trafficking money launder- ing operations and business empiresfrom working for the drug traffickers and their business empires. As of December 2006, OFAC has identified drug
traffickers assets under the Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers program valued at more than $1 billion. Once designated, most narcotics traffickers try to evade and avoid the financial and commercial restrictions placed upon them and their businesses, by working through others or creating shell companies through which to control and conduct their business. Initially, sanctions impair and impede their ability to function; however, as OFAC continues to identify and designate sup- porters, businesses, and front companies, the drug cartel organizations face increasing isolation and incapacitation.

Narcotic trafficking undermines democracy around the globe Sabatini 04Christopher Sabatini, National Endowment for Democracy (Countering the Corrosive Effects of
Narcotics Trafficking and Organized Crime on Democratic Development: How Broader Civil Society Forces Can Help, 2004, http://www.wmd.org/assemblies/second-assembly/reports/topical-workshops/countering-corrosiveeffects-narcotics-traffick, Accessed: 7/10/13, zs) There are different types of illegal conduct that directly threaten democracies, and narco-trafficking is one of them. It mostly affects democracy through blackmail, corruption, and the use of violence,

and it works against the institutions of the state, by undermining public authorities and agencies, and also against the electoral process. Its intimidating effects gravely influence those in different sectors of civil society, especially journalists who investigate the problem. To the degree that narco-trafficking spreads to different countries, the growth of corruption and violence around the world threatens to debilitate the spread and growth of democracy. Big profit margins resulting from the process of drug

production and distribution are invested in arms to meet the demands of terrorists, organized crime, or armed groups that seek to seize power through violence.

OFAC 2AC Narcotics Solves Drugs Ext

Solves drug sanctions are sufficient Code of Federal Regulations 8 (Code of Federal Regulations, National Archives and Records
Administration, July 1, 2008, Published by the Office of the Federal Register National Archives and Records Administration, http://books.google.com/books?id=LyV3QJvfPfUC&pg=PA492&lpg=PA492&dq=ofac+narcotics+traffickers&sour ce=bl&ots=tbxFMvPH56&sig=dflsUzo4skATS51eQXF2jN0NEJw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=C2PdUdmZC6bj4AO4h4CA Dg&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAjgK#v=onepage&q&f=false, accessed: 7/10/13, LR)

OFAC administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions based on U.S. foreign policy and national security goals against targeted foreign countries, terrorists, inter- national narcotics traffickers, and those en-gaged in activities related to the prolifera-tion of weapons of mass destruction. OFACs Reporting Procedures and Penalties Regula-tions at 31 CPR part 501 require U.S. finan-cial institutions to block and file reports on accounts, payments, or transfers in which an OFACdesignated country, entity, or indi-vidual has any interest. These reports must be filed with OFAC
within ten business days of the blocking of the property. Prior Guidance

Transactions involving an individual or en-tity designated on OFAC's list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons as a global terrorist, terrorist, terrorist or-ganization, narcotics trafficking, or narcotics kingpin may be in in furtherance of a criminal act, and therefore relevant to a possible vio-lation of law. Thus, blocking reports related to such persons also describe potentially sus-picious activity. In
the November 2003 edi-tion of its SAR Activity Review, FinCEN instructed financial institutions to file sus picious activity reports on verified matches of persons designated by OFAC. While this guidance ensured that the relevant informa-tion would be available to law enforcement, it also resulted in financial institutions being required to make two separate filings with the Department of the Treasury one with OFAC pursuant to its Reporting, Procedures and Penalties Regulations, and one with FinCEN pursuant to its suspicious ac-tivity reporting rules.

OFAC 1AC NoKo Advantage

Plan boosts OFAC sanctions on North Korea reallocates resources Johnson, Spector and Lilac 10 - Andy Johnson, Director, National Security Program, Kyle Spector, Policy
Advisor, National Security Program, Kristina Lilac, National Security Program, Senior Fellows of The Third Way Institute, (End the Embargo of Cuba, Article for The Third Way Institute, 9/16/10, http://content.thirdway.org/publications/326/Third_Way_Memo_-_End_the_Embargo_of_Cuba.pdf, Accessed 7/02/13, AW)

Keeping the embargo in place requires that the US government devote time and resources to fighting a Cold War -8 era threat. Senator Chris Dodd argued in a 2005 op ed that the US spends extraordinary resources each year to enforce the sanctions instead of devoting such resources to the fight against terrorism. 4 While the financial resources dedicated to enforcing the embargo may be limited compared to resources dedicated to other causes, lifting the Cuban embargo could put the US in a better position to fight terrorist organizations by freeing up resources currently enforcing the embargo. For example, the Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which governs travel and trade between the US and Cuba, is also responsible for maintaining sanctions against truly problematic countries, including Iran and North Korea. North Korea Nuclear EMP kills Millions of Americans Instantly Maloof 13- F. Michael Maloof, staff writer for WND and G2Bulletin, is a former senior security policy analyst in
the office of the Secretary of Defense, NORTH KOREAN EMP ATTACK 'UNSTOPPABLE, WND, April 14, 2013, http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/north-korean-emp-attack-unstoppable/, Accessed July 10, 2013, KH)

If North Korea were to launch a preemptive nuclear attack on the United States, it could use a long-range missile to orbit a satellite over the South Pole, putting it in line to fly over Omaha, Neb., and explode it at a 300-mile altitude where U.S. Aegis anti-ballistic missile systems cannot reach, sources have told WND. In addition, these sources say, there is no way to determine whether a missile is
carrying a dummy or real nuclear warhead, obviating the need to shoot down any missile that is launched from North Korea, given the public warning by Pyongyang that it intends to launch a preemptive nuclear strike against the U.S. The U.S. has positioned Aegis ships near North Korea and Japan, but a political decision apparently has been made not to attempt to shoot it down if it is heading for open water. Sources say, however, that a missile to be launched toward the U.S. would take a trajectory over the South Pole, and it is questionable whether the U.S. has Aegis assets anywhere along the southerly path such a missile would take. In addition, the missile would need to be shot down almost after lift-off, since the missile would launch the satellite relatively quickly into an orbit of 300 miles, which was the altitude of its satellite launch last December. North Korea, meanwhile, announced in a statement that it has drawn the arrows for merciless retaliatory strikes at the U.S. mainland, U.S. military bases in the Pacific and all other bases where the U.S. imperialist aggression forces st ation. The powerful strike means of the revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] have been put in their places and the coordinates of targets put into the warheads, a North Korean statement said. Just pressing the button will be enough to turn the strongholds of the enemies into the sea of fire. North Korea in

December successfully orbited a satellite weighing 220 pounds so they could deliver against the United States, or against any nation on Earth, a small nuclear warhead, said Dr. Peter Vincent
Pry, who served as staff director on the a commission that looked into the effects of an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, on the national electrical grid system and other critical U.S. infrastructures. THIS is how an EMP event could bring the worlds remaining superpower to its knees. Read it in A Nation Forsaken. A nuclear weapon

designed specifically to generate a powerful electromagnetic pulse, or EMP a single such super-EMP warhead would be able to collapse the U.S. electric grid and other critical infrastructures, inflicting catastrophic consequences on the entire nation would probably be

deliverable by North Koreas so-called space launch vehicle over the United States, said Pry, who also worked for the Central Intelligence Agency. North Korea orbited its satellite on a trajectory and at an altitude ideal for making an EMP attack on the U.S. Pry pointed out that South Korean military intelligence has warned not only their government but also the U.S. that North Korea is developing super-EMP warheads with Russian help. In 2011, Pry pointed out, a military commentator
with the Peoples Republic of China stated that North Korea has super -EMP warheads. Data from North Koreas nuclear tests, he said, are consistent with a super-EMP warhead. Prys comments echo those of former U.S. Ambassador Henry Cooper, in which he said that North Korea could launch a nuclear weapon on a satellite, similar to satellites North Korea has previously launched southward over the South Pole. After all, Cooper said in an interview with WND, their previous satellites have been successfully placed in orbits that are optimum for executing an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, attack on the entire continental U.S. with a single nuclear burst. Cooper, chairman of the board of High Frontier, which is dedicated to warning the U.S. against a missile attack, developed the framework for President Ronald Reagans Strategic Defense Initiative. He also pushed for a workable missile defense system for the U.S. and later became director of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization under President George W. Bush. Cooper pointed out that the

satellite carrying a nuclear warhead could be detonated at an altitude of 300 miles. With a detonation over Omaha, he said, it would blanket the entire continental United States with EMP effects, the consequences of which could, within a year, lead to the death of hundreds of millions of Americans and end our way of life. Other sources have indicated that the 220-pound satellite would be
able to carry a 300 kiloton nuclear bomb, similar to the weight of warheads on U.S. missiles and would be sufficient to create an EMP effect from coast to coast if exploded at 300 miles above Omaha. North Korea, Iran and everyone else understands these points or certainly should if they have been awake, Cooper said. But have they connected the dots? Cooper said that if the satellite with a nuclear weapon in it were to come from the southern hemisphere, there may not be sufficient warning and tracking information to support an intercept attempt before North Korea detonates its nuclear device over Omaha. He said North Korea could launch a nuclear weapon on a satellite, similar to satellites North Korea has previously launched southward over the South Pole. After all, their previous satellites have been successfully placed in orbits that are optimum for executing an electromagnetic pulse attack on the entire continental U.S. with a single nuclear burst, Cooper said. Our current defense is focused on an attack from the north but if the attack came from the south via satellite, it might not be capable of intercepting the satellite before North Korea detonates its device, Cooper warned. Moreover, he added, where there are disp utes about whether North Korean ballistic missiles launched in a normal ballistic trajectory have sufficient range to reach the U.S. mainland, there can be no dispute about whether a nuclear weapon on a satellite can be detonated on orbit above the United States or anywhere else on the surface of the earth.

OFAC 1AC Terrorism Advantage Solves sanctions on terrorism reallocates resources Cuba is not a threat Johnson, Spector and Lilac 10 - Andy Johnson, Director, National Security Program, Kyle Spector, Policy
Advisor, National Security Program, Kristina Lilac, National Security Program, Senior Fellows of The Third Way Institute, (End the Embargo of Cuba, Article for The Third Way Institute, 9/16/10, http://content.thirdway.org/publications/326/Third_Way_Memo_-_End_the_Embargo_of_Cuba.pdf, Accessed 7/02/13, AW)

OFAC also is responsible for responding to economic threats posed by terrorist organizations and narcotics traffickers. By ending OFACs need to regulate the Cuban embargo, OFAC could instead devote those resources to respond to the current threats posed by rogue states and terrorist networks. Cuba also remains on the State Departments state sponsor of terrorism list along with Iran, Syria,
and Sudan, despite claims by experts such as former National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism Richard Clarke that Cuba is only on the list for domestic political reasons. 6 A 1998 report by the US

Intelligence Community determined that Cuba does not pose a threat to US national security, yet the State Department continues to keep Cuba on the list. By normalizing relations with Cuba and removing Cuba from the list, the State Department could better focus on actual state sponsors of terror and instead use resources in the Western Hemisphere bureau to initiate a new path for engaging Cuba.

OFAC 2AC A2 Politics

Plan is popular perceived as stopping Iran DeLeon et al 12 - Rudy deLeon, National and International Security, John F. Kennedy School of Government at
Harvard University, Recipient of The Defense Civilian Distinguished Service Award in 1994, 1995, and 2001, National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal in 2001, Former US Senior Department of Defense Official, Senior Vice President of National Security and International Policy at American Progress, With Brian Katulis, Peter Juul, Matt Duss and Ken Sofer, (Strengthening Americas Options on Iran, Report for The Center for Amer ican Progress, April 2012, http://www.americanprogress.org/wpcontent/uploads/issues/2012/04/pdf/iran_10questions_INTRO.pdf, Accessed 7/10/13, AW) Importantly, there is

a strong bipartisan consensus in America and within the inter national community on this single pointan Iranian nuclear weapon would destabilize the one of the worlds most important oil-producing regions at a critical point in the global economic recovery, would harm Israels security, and would severely undermine the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

OFAC internal link Iran and North Korea

Responsible for sanctions on Iran and North Korea Johnson, Spector and Lilac 10 - Andy Johnson, Director, National Security Program, Kyle Spector, Policy
Advisor, National Security Program , Kristina Lilac, National Security Program, Senior Fellows of The Third Way Institute, (End the Embargo of Cuba, Article for The Third Way Insti tute, 9/16/10, http://content.thirdway.org/publications/326/Third_Way_Memo_-_End_the_Embargo_of_Cuba.pdf, Accessed 7/02/13, AW) For example, the Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which governs travel and trade between the US an d Cuba, is also responsible for maintaining sanctions against truly problematic

countries, including Iran and North Korea.

Democracy Advantage 2AC

Economic growth in Cuba leads to democracy Amash 12-- Brandon Amash, Prospect Journal writer at UCSD (EVALUATING THE CUBAN EMBARGO,
Prospect Jounral of International Affairs at UCSD, 7/23/12, http://prospectjournal.org/2012/07/23/evaluating-thecuban-embargo/, Accessed 7/3/12, jtc)

Lifting economic sanctions will improve economic growth in Cuba, which correlates to democratization. Empirical evidence shows that a strong economy is correlated to democracy. According to the Modernization Theory of democratization, this correlation is a causal link: economic growth directly leads to democratization. Lifting the current economic sanctions on Cuba and working together to improve economic situations in the state will allow their economy to grow, increasing the likelihood of democracy in the state, and thus promoting greater freedom of expression, opinion and dissent. Lifting embargo opens way for democracy in Cuba Griswold 05 --Daniel Griswold, Director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute (Four
Decades of Failure: The U.S. Embargo against Cuba, 10/12/05, Cato Institute Speeches, http://www.cato.org/publications/speeches/four-decades-failure-us-embargo-against-cuba, Accessed 6/27/13 jtc)
Economic sanctions rarely work. Trade

and investment sanctions against Burma, Iran, and North Korea have failed to change the behavior of any of those oppressive regimes; sanctions have only deepened the deprivation of the very people we are trying to help. Our research at the Cato Institute confirms that trade and globalization till the soil for democracy. Nations open to trade are more likely to be democracies where human rights are respected. Trade and the development it creates give people tools
of communication-cell phones, satellite TV, fax machines, the Internet-that tend to undermine oppressive authority. Trade not only increases the flow of goods and services but also of people and ideas. Development also creates a larger middle class that is usually the backbone of democracy. President

Bush seems to understand this powerful connection between trade and democracy when he talks about China or the Middle East. In a speech on trade early in his first term, the president noted that trade was about more than raising incomes. Trade creates the habits of freedom, the president said, and those habits begin to create the expectations of democracy and demands for better democratic institutions. Societies that open to commerce across their borders are more open to democracy within their borders. And for those of us who care about values and believe in valuesnot just American values, but universal values that promote human dignitytrade is a good way to do that. The president has rightly opposed efforts in Congress to impose trade sanctions against China because of its poor human rights
record. In sheer numbers, the Chinese government has jailed and killed far more political and religious dissenters than has the Cuban government.

China has become our third largest trading partner while we maintain a blanket embargo on commercial relations with Cuba. President Bush understands that economic engagement with China offers the best hope for encouraging human rights and political reforms in that country, yet he has failed to apply that same, sound thinking to Cuba.
And China is arguably more of a national security concern today than Castros pathetic little workers paradise. Yet

Lifting the embargo would force the Cuban government to provide economic opportunity and supplies to its people, therefore promoting democracy. Cave 12 - Damien Cave, foreign correspondent for the New York Times who covers Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean [Easing
of Restraints in Cuba Renews Debate on U.S. Embargo, New York Times, 11/19/12, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/world/americas/changes-in-cuba-create-support-for-easing-embargo.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0, accessed: 7/4/13, JK] Still, in a country where Cubans resolve their way around government restrictions every day (private deals with customs age nts are common), many Cubans anticipate real benefits should the United States change course. Mr. Lpez, a meticulous mechanic who wears plastic gloves to avoid dirtying his fingers, said legalizing

imports and investment would create a flood of the supplies that businesses needed, overwhelming the governments controls while lowering prices and creating more work apart from the state. Other Cubans, including political dissidents, say softening the embargo

would increase the pressure for more rapid change by undermining one of the governments main excuses for fai ling to provide freedom, economic opportunity or just basic supplies. Last month, someone asked me to redo
their kitchen, but I told them I couldnt do it because I didnt have the materials, said Pedro Jos, 49, a licensed carpent er in Havana who did not want his last name published to avoid government pressure. Look aroun d Cuba colonial building blushing with circles of faded pink paint from the 1950s. There

is destroyed, he added, waving a hand toward a is a lot of work to be done.

Lifitng the embargo solves democracy and the economy Bandow 12 --- Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a former special assistant to former US president Ronald Reagan (Time to End the Cuba Embargo, December 11, 2012, Cato Institute, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/timeend-cuba-embargo, accessed July 4, 2013, MY) 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. Ending the embargo would have obvious economic benefits for both Cubans and Americans. The U.S. International Trade Commission estimates American losses alone from the embargo as much as $1.2 billion annually. Expanding economic opportunities also might increase pressure within Cuba for further economic reform. So far the regime has taken small steps, but rejected significant change. Moreover, thrusting more Americans into Cuban society could help undermine the ruling system. Despite Fidel Castros decline, Cuban politics remains largely static. A few human
rights activists have been released, while Raul Castro has used party purges to entrench loyal elites. Lifting the embargo would be no panacea. Other countries invest in and trade with Cuba to no obvious political impact. And the lack of widespread economic reform makes it easier for the regime rather than the people to collect the benefits of trade, in contrast to China. Still, more

U.S. contact would have an impact. Argued trade specialist Dan Griswold, 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. The Castro dictatorship ultimately will end up in historys dustbin. But it will continue to cause much human hardship along the way. The Heritage Foundations
John Sweeney complained nearly two decades ago that the United States must not abandon the Cuban people by relaxing or lifti ng the trade embargo against the communist regime. But the dead hand of half a century of failed policy is the worst breach of faith with the Cuban people.

As Griswold argued, commercial engagement is the best way to encourage more open societies abroad. Of course, there are no guarantees. But lifting the embargo would have a greater likelihood of success than continuing a policy which has failed. Some day the Cuban people will be free. Allowing more contact with Americans likely would make that day come sooner.
Lifting sanctions would be a victory not for Fidel Castro, but for the power of free people to spread liberty.

Democracy Advantage Extensions

Embargo strengthens the Cuba dictatorship Keenan 9 John Keenan, John Keenan is a freelance writer. His work has been published in the Guardian, New Statesman, Times
Literary Supplement, Literary Review and Catholic Herald, (Cubas embargo must go, theguardian, November 24 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/nov/23/embargo-cuba-human-rights, Accessed: 7/3/2013, EH) This month Europe celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the collapse of the iron curtain. Tribute was paid the role the US played in helping to speed the demise of totalitarian regimes. But just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, the

Cuban government continues to ruthlessly suppress any sign of dissent - and the US administration's misguided embargo merely strengthens the dictatorship's hand. Now Human Rights Watch (HRW), the New York-based NGO, has called for the US to scrap its failed
policy in favour of "more effective forms of pressure". HRW's new report, New Castro, Same Cuba, proves that Raul Castro shares his brother's extreme distaste for opposition. Since taking the reins of power from his ailing sibling in 2006, Raul

has deepened the repression of his opponents, particularly through the vigorous use of a provision in the criminal code which allows people to be jailed if it is suspected that they might commit a crime in the future. The catch-all
pre-criminal state of "dangerousness" is defined as any behaviour that contradicts socialist norms. HRW's report states that more than 40

people have been jailed for "dangerousness", including handing out copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, staging rallies, and attempting to form independent trade unions. HRW has called for the embargo to be scrapped and replaced by a multi-lateral coalition comprised of the US, the EU, Canada, and Latin American to pressure Cuba to
immediately and unconditionally release its political prisoners. The coalition, HRW says, should give the Cuban government six months to meet this demand or face sanctions, travel bans and asset freezes. The report was published in a week which saw the 64-year-old Cuban dissident Martha Beatriz Roque end her hunger strike over fears for her health. Roque and five other dissidents staged a sit-in protest 40 days ago, complaining that government agents stole a camera from her. A statement issued by the protesters explained: "The camera we want back is not the final purpose of this protest, it is a symbol of our rights and the rights of the people, which day after day are violated by government actions." And this weekend the husband of the dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez said he was attacked by government supporters as he waited to confront state security agents accused of detaining and beating his wife two weeks ago. The intimidation, persecution and incarceration of the Castro government's opponents is ignored by those who like to believe that Cuba is a plucky little island standing up to the might of Uncle Sam. This ignorant and patronising view allows the dictatorship to manipulate the policies of foreign governments in its favour. When

North Korea and Burma ruthlessly extinguish any dissent they are rightly castigated as pariah states. When Cuba does the same, the world looks away. The co-called Cuban exiles in Miami and New Jersey need to drop
their noisy support for the US policy of regime change - it serves only to shore up the government they despise. Anyone who cares about human rights should encourage their governments to take up HRW's call for a new unified approach to Cuba's human rights failures. The Cuban government will change its ways only if it is forced to. Cuba ratified the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in 1995. It has been allowed to flout that convention with impunity.

Lifting the Embargo does not benefit the dictatorship Taylor 13 (Steven L. Taylor, Professor and Chair of Political Science at Troy University. Has a Ph.D. from The University of Texas. More Evidence of the Silliness of US Policy Towards Cuba. Outside the Beltway. April 9 2013, http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/moreevidence-of-the-silliness-of-us-policy-towards-cuba/, accessed: 6/27/13, EH)
A visit to Cuba by US pop singer Beyonce and her rap star husband Jay-Z is coming under scrutiny in connection with the US economic embargo. [...] Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart, both members of Congress from Florida, asked the US treasury department to clarify what licence the two stars had obtained to travel to Cuba. "Cubas tourism industry is

wholly state-controlled; therefore, US dollars spent on Cuban tourism directly fund the machinery of oppression that brutally represses the Cuban people," they wrote. [...] Americans are not allowed to
visit Cuba and spend money there unless they have special US government permission, according to guidance on the US
treasury website. Granted:

it terms of the letter of the law, the Representatives have a point.

However ,

this just underscored the silliness of said law . US policy towards Cuba is one remarkable mix of

counter-productiveness and pettiness. Counter-productive because lifting the embargo would hasten liberalization in Cuba (so, we are helping perpetuate the repressive government in question) and petty because the Cold War ended over two decades ago and the Cuban Missile Crisis was half a century ago.2

Lifting the embargo now is key to creating a free-market Goodman 13 (Joshua Goodman, Staff Writer for Bloomberg.com, Obama Can Bend Cuba Embargo to Help Open Economy,
Groups Say, Bloomberg.com, Feb 20 2013, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-20/obama-should-bend-cuba-embargo-to-buoy-freemarkets-reports-say.html, Accessed: 6/27/13, EH)

President Barack Obama should break free of the embargo on Cuba and assert his authority to promote a free-market overhaul taking place on the communist island. The recommendation is contained in concurrent reports to be published today by the Cuba Study Group and the Council of the Americas, two groups seeking to end a decades-old deadlock on U.S. policy toward Cuba. Among steps Obama can take without violating sanctions passed by Congress are opening U.S. markets, as well as authorizing the sale of American goods and services, to the estimated 400,000 private entrepreneurs that have arisen since Cuban President Raul Castro started cutting state payrolls in 2011. The reports also recommend allowing U.S. credit card and insurance companies to provide basic financial services to licensed U.S. travelers to Cuba. Weve been sitting on the sidelines with our hands tied by an antiquated law thats being too strictly interpreted , said Chris Sabatini, an author of the report and senior policy director for the Council of the Americas, a business-backed group based in New York. Theres more Obama can do to be a catalyst for meaningful economic change . Obama in 2009 allowed companies for the first time to provide communications services to the Caribbean island of 11 million and lifted a travel ban for Cuban-Americans. The loosening of restrictions, while heralded by the White House as a way to undermine the Castro governments control of information, was seen as insufficient by potential investors including Verizon Communications Inc. an d AT&T Inc. Economic Overhaul Now, in a second term, and with private business expanding in Cuba, Obama has a freer hand to do more, said Sabatini. An exception to the embargo allowing U.S. businesses and consumers to trade with non-state enterprises in Cuba would be small in scale though help empower a growing, viable constituency for change on the island, he said. Since his brother Fidel started handing over power in 2006, Castro has relaxed state control of the economy in the biggest economic overhaul since the 1959 revolution. To

provide jobs for the 1 million state workers being laid off, the government began allowing the buying and selling of homes and the creation of farming cooperatives and other private businesses. The latest sign of change are new rules that took effect in January allowing most Cubans to bypass requirements they obtain an exit visa or invitation from abroad to leave the island. Castro in December said that he hopes that productivity gains will boost economic
growth this year to at least 3.7 percent. Gross domestic product expanded 3.1 percent in 2012. Repeal Legislation The Washington-based Cuba Study Group urges Obama to gain even more leverage by getting Congress to repeal the so-called Helms-Burton act of 1996 and other legislation that conditions the easing of sanctions on regime change.

Lifting embargo solves trade is key Lloyd 11 Delia Lloyd, Contributor for Politics Daily and Former Political Science professor at the University of Chicago (Ten
Reasons to Lift the Cuban Embargo, Politics Daily, 2011[no month/day given ], http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/08/24/ten-reasons-to-liftthe-cuba-embargo/?icid=main|aim|dl8|sec1_lnk3|166115 , Accessed: 6/28/13, EH) 2. It's good politics. Supporters

of the trade embargo -- like Cuban-American Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) -- have long argued that easing the restrictions would only reward Castro for the regime's ongoing repression of political dissidents. We need to keep up the economic pressure on Cuba, so this logic goes, in order to keep pressure on the regime
But there's a long-standing empirical relationship between trade and democracy. The usual logic put forth to explain this relationship is that trade creates an economically independent and politically aware middle class, which, in turn, presses for political reform. It's not clear that this argument actually holds
to do something about human rights. up when subjected to close causal scrutiny (although the reverse does seem to be true -- i.e., democratic reform creates pressure for trade liberalization). Still, it's difficult to disagree with the proposition that by enabling visiting scholars and religious groups to stay in Cuba for up to two years (as the presidential order would allow) rather than a matter of weeks (as is currently the case) we'd be helping, not hurting, democracy in Cuba. First, easing the current travel restrictions would allow for far deeper linkages between non-governmental organizations from both countries, which some see as a powerful mechanism for democratic reform. Second, because American visitors would be staying on the island longer, scholars and activists alike would gain much better insight into where the pressure points for democracy actually exist.

Doesnt link to pink tide and Lifting the embargo leads to democratization of Cuba Griswold 09 Daniel Griswold, director of the Cato Institutes Center for Trade Policy Studies (The US embargo of Cuba is a
Failure, theguardian, June 15 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/jun/15/cuba-us-trade-embargo-obama, Accessed: 7/2/13, EH) After nearly 50 years, America's cold war embargo against Cuba appears to be thawing at last. Earlier this spring, the Obama administration relaxed controls on travel and remittances to the communist island by Cuban Americans, and last week it agreed to open the door for Cuba's reentry to the Organisation of American States. Admitting Cuba to the OAS may be premature, given the organisation's charter that requires its members to be democracies that respect human rights, but changes to the US economic embargo are long overdue. The

embargo has been a failure by every measure. It has not changed the course or nature of the Cuban government. It has not liberated a single Cuban citizen. In fact, the embargo has made the Cuban people a bit more impoverished, without making them one bit more free . At the same time, it has deprived Americans of their freedom to
travel and has cost US farmers and other producers billions of dollars of potential exports. As a tool of US foreign policy, the embargo actually enhances the Castro government's standing by giving it a handy excuse for the failures of the island's Caribbean-style socialism. Brothers Fidel and Raul can rail for hours about the suffering the embargo inflicts on Cubans, even though the damage done by their communist policies has been far worse. The embargo has failed to give us an ounce of extra leverage over what happens in Havana. In 2000, Congress approved a modest opening of the embargo. The Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act allows cash-only sales to Cuba of US farm products and medical supplies. The results of this modest opening have been quite amazing. Since 2000, total sales of farm products to Cuba have increased from virtually zero to $691m in 2008. The top US exports by value are corn, meat and poultry, wheat and soybeans. From dead last, Cuba is now the number six customer in Latin America for US agricultural products. Last year, American farmers sold more to the 11.5 million people who live in Cuba than to the 200 million people in Brazil. According to the US international trade commission, US farm exports would increase another $250m if restrictions were lifted on export financing. This should not be interpreted as a call for export-import bank subsidies. Trade with Cuba must be entirely commercial and market driven. Lifting the embargo should not mean that US taxpayers must now subsidise exports to Cuba. But neither should the government stand in the way. USITC estimates do not capture the long-term export potential to Cuba from normalised relations. The Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Guatemala spend an average of 2.8% of their GDP to buy farm exports from the US. If Cuba spent the same share of its GDP on US farm exports, exports could more than double the current level, to $1.5bn a year. Advocates of the embargo argue that trading with Cuba will only put dollars into the coffers of the Castro

regime. And it's true that the government in Havana, because it controls the economy, can skim off a large share of the remittances and tourist dollars spent in Cuba. But of course, selling more US products to Cuba would quickly relieve the Castro regime of those same dollars. If more US tourists were permitted to visit Cuba, and at the same time US exports to Cuba were further liberalised, the US economy could reclaim dollars from the Castro regime as fast as the regime could acquire them. In effect,
the exchange would be of agricultural products for tourism services, a kind of "bread for beaches", "food for fun" trade relationship. Meanwhile, the increase in Americans visiting Cuba would dramatically increase contact between Cubans and Americans. The unique USCuban relationship that flourished before Castro could be renewed, which would increase US influence and potentially hasten

the decline of the communist regime. Congress

and President Barack Obama should act now to lift the embargo to allow more travel and farm exports to Cuba. Expanding our freedom to travel to, trade with and invest in Cuba would make Americans better off and would help the Cuban people and speed the day
when they can enjoy the freedom they deserve.

Embargo fails, lifting it is moral and defeats Cuban communism Kirkland 13 Rhiannon M. Kirkland, Intern at the Washington Monthly (Against the Pointless and Execrable Cuba Embargo, Washington monthly, April 15 2013, http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ten-miles-square/2013/04/against_the_pointless_and_exec044130.php , Accessed: 7/3/13, EH)
Jay-Z and Beyonce went to Cuba for their fifth wedding anniversary, causing a huge kerfuffle over whether or not they went there legally. Marco Rubio and others question how educational their trip really was, and why the Treasury Department might authorize such a trip. Thi s is dumb. What difference does it make if music royaltyor anyone else for that mattervisit Cuba and why is the embargo still going on? The policy is ineffective, after allthe Castros are still in power all these years later. Add to this the moral implications of

systematically impoverishing a nation because they happen to have a leader you disagree with.
The embargo became permanent on Feb. 7, 1962 and has existed in one form or another since then. In the past twenty years it has been strengthened and relaxed depending on the prevailing political tides. In 1992 and 1996 it was extended to countries that traded with Cuba in retaliation for the downing of two American civilian aircrafts by Cuba. In 2001 it was loosened to allow the sale of food to Cuba following Hurricane Michelle, a measure that remains in place and has build up a trading relationship worth $710 million by 2008. Otherwise restrictions were tightened under George Bush. Remittance allowances were decimated from $3,000 to $300, and family members were only allowed to visit for a maximum of two weeks every three years. President Obama has relaxed things somewhat by returning to the pre-Bush status quo. Now Americans can send remittances to non-family members and can visit for educational or religious purposes. In the time since Raul Castro replaced his more radical brother in 2008 he has undertaken over numerous reforms in areas including property rights, economics and travel. There are still human rights abuses including the holding of dissidents and journalist, but some forward progress is being made.

Historical warming that took place between in Vietnam-US relations and Sino-American relations provide good examples of how warming between the US and Cuba might unfold, and would be far more effective than the current policy. Vietnam and the U.S. had a gruesome relationship in the Cold War; despite these differences relations were normalized in 1995 and a trade deal was signed in 2000. Trade in 2012 totaled between $22-24 billion. Beijing and Washington spent the early years of the cold war at odds before a warming of relations that paved the way for tod ays relatively warm ties. President Richard Nixons visit in 1972 brought the Shanghai Communique, which was effectively an agree to disagree policy, and the s tart of the normalization of relations. Trade between the US and China went from $5 billion in 1980 to $536.2 billion in 2012. Imagine how different the world would beespecially for the average Chinese personif Sino-American relations were still almost non-existent? Most other countries dont have their own Cuba embargoes, with tourism from the EU and Canada pr oviding about $2.7 billion in revenue. There is no point in

The US will truly have won the battle against communism when Starbucks and McDonalds franchises line the streets of Havana the way they do Beijing. Ending the embargo is the first step. But fundamentally, no matter what other benefits there might be, it is morally sick to continue collectively punishing the Cuban people for such long-passed disputes. Its long since time they fully joined the community of nations
resisting anymore, and standing alone in the world for an old project that has failed.

Removing embargo impetus to democracy Huddelston 08Vicki Huddelston, former State Department official, Brookings Institution expert on Latin
America and Africa, and is the current Chief of the American Interests section in Cuba (Cuba's Road to Democracy?, CBN News, http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2008/March/Cubas-Road-to-Democracy-/, Accessed 7/4/13, jtc)
Brookings Institute's Huddleston disagrees. "The said. She instead says the

more you open up, the more you'll unbalance the regime," she U.S, should first end the travel and communication embargo. Allowing Americans to visit Cuba would promote the exchange of information and speed the spread of democratic ideals. "Anything that empowers the Cuban people. We're talking about building up democracy, so we want freedom of information, free flow of money, remittances to the Cuban people," Huddleston
said.

Cuba heading towards reformUS needs to help, link to democracy Cave 12Damien Cave, foreign correspondent for The New York Times in Mexico City, finalists for the 2008
Pulitzer Prize in international reporting (Easing of Restraints in Cuba Renews Debate on U.S. Embargo, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/world/americas/changes-in-cuba-create-support-for-easingembargo.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&, 11/19/12, Accessed 7/3/12, jtc) Even as defenders of the embargo warn against providing the Cuban government with economic lifelines, some Cubans and exiles are advocating a fresh approach. The Obama administration already showed an openness to engagement with Cuba in 2009 by removing restrictions on travel and remittances for Cuban Americans. But with Fidel Castro, 86, retired and President Ral Castro, 81, leading a bureaucracy that is divided on the pace and scope of change, many have begun urging President Obama to go further and

update American policy by putting a priority on assistance for Cubans seeking more economic independence from the government. Maintaining this embargo, maintaining this hostility, all it does is strengthen and embolden the hard-liners, said Carlos Saladrigas, a Cuban exile and cochairman of the Cuba Study Group in Washington, which advocates engagement with Cuba. What we should be doing is helping the reformers. Embargo leads to military conflictprevents democracy Amash 12-- Brandon Amash, Prospect Journal writer at UCSD (EVALUATING THE CUBAN EMBARGO,
Prospect Jounral of International Affairs at UCSD, 7/23/12, http://prospectjournal.org/2012/07/23/evaluating-thecuban-embargo/, Accessed 7/3/12, jtc)
The current

policy may drag the United States into a military conflict with Cuba. Military conflict may be inevitable in the future if the embargos explicit goal creating an insurrection in Cuba to overthrow the

government is achieved, and the United States may not be ready to step in. As Ratliff and Fontaine detail, Americans are not prepared to commit the military resources [] (Fontaine 57), especially after unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Much like Americas current situation with isolated rogue states such as Iran and North Korea, Cubas isolation may also lead to war for other reasons, like t he American occupation of Guantanamo Bay. These

consequences are inherently counterproductive for the democratization of Cuba and the improvement of human rights. Tourism promotes democracy in Cuba Sullivan 3/29 --- Mark P. Sullivan, Specialist in Latin American Affairs for the Congressional Research Office (Cuba: U.S. Policy and Issues for the 113th Congress, March 29, 2013, FAS, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R43024.pdf, accessed June 28, 2013, MY) The first people-to-people trips began in August 2011. In May 2012, the Treasury Department tightened its restrictions on people-to-people travel by making changes to its license guidelines. The revised guidelines require an organization applying for a people-to-people license to describe how the travel would enhance contact with the Cuban people, and/or support civil society in Cuba, and/or promote the Cuban peoples independence from Cuban authorities. The
revised guidelines also require specification on how meetings with prohibited officials of the Cuban government would advance purposeful travel by enhancing contact with the Cuban people, supporting civil society, or promoting independence from Cuban authorities. Major

arguments made for lifting the Cuba travel ban altogether are that it abridges the rights of ordinary Americans to travel; it hinders efforts to influence conditions in Cuba and may be aiding Castro by helping restrict the flow of information; and Americans can travel to other countries with communist or authoritarian governments. Major arguments in opposition to lifting the Cuba travel ban
are that more American travel would support Castros rule by providing his government with potentially millions of dollars in hard currency; that there are legal provisions allowing travel to Cuba for humanitarian purposes that are used by thousands of Americans each year; and that the President should be free to restrict travel for foreign policy reasons.

And its the most pragmatic approach Sullivan 3/29 --- Mark P. Sullivan, Specialist in Latin American Affairs for the Congressional Research Office (Cuba: U.S. Policy and Issues for the 113th Congress, March 29, 2013, FAS, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R43024.pdf, accessed June 28, 2013, MY) In light of Fidel Castros departure as head of government and the gradual economic changes being made by Ra l Castro, some observers called for a reexamination of U.S. policy toward Cuba. In this new context, two broad policy approaches have been advanced to contend with change in Cuba: a status-quo approach that maintains the U.S. dual-track policy of isolating the Cuban government while providing support to the Cuban people; and an approach aimed at influencing the attitudes of the Cuban government and Cuban society through increased contact and engagement. In general, those who advocate easing U.S. sanctions on Cuba make several policy arguments. They assert that if the United States moderated its policy toward Cubathrough increased travel, trade, and dialoguethen the seeds of reform would be planted, which would stimulate forces for peaceful change on the island. They stress the importance to the United States of avoiding violent change in Cuba, with the prospect of a mass exodus to the United States. They argue that since the demise of Cubas communist government does not appear imminent, even without Fidel Castro at the helm, the United States should espouse a more pragmatic approach in trying to bring about change in Cuba. Supporters of changing policy also point to broad international support for lifting the U.S. embargo, to the missed opportunities for U.S. businesses because of the unilateral nature of the embargo, and to the increased suffering of the Cuban people because of

the embargo. Proponents of change also argue that the United States should be consistent in its policies with the
worlds few remaining communist governments, including China and Vietnam.

Sanctions are a double standard and free trade promotes democracy 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) Economic sanctions rarely work. Trade and investment sanctions against Burma, Iran, and North Korea have failed to change the behavior of any of those oppressive regimes; sanctions have only deepened the deprivation of the very people we are trying to help. Our research at the Cato Institute confirms that trade and globalization till the soil for democracy. Nations open to trade are more likely to be democracies where human rights are respected. Trade and the development it creates give people tools of communication-cell phones, satellite TV, fax machines, the Internet-that tend to undermine oppressive authority. Trade not only increases the flow of goods and services but also of people and ideas. Development also creates a
larger middle class that is usually the backbone of democracy. President Bush seems to understand this powerful connection between trade and democracy when he talks about China or the Middle East. In a speech on trade early in his first term, the president noted that trade was about more than raising incomes. Trade

creates the habits of freedom, the president said, and those habits begin to create the expectations of democracy and demands for better democratic institutions. Societies that open to commerce across their borders are more open to democracy within their borders. And
for those of us who care about values and believe in valuesnot just American values, but universal values that promote human dignitytrade is a good way to do that. The president has rightly opposed efforts in Congress to impose trade sanctions against China because of its poor human rights record. In sheer numbers, the Chinese government has jailed and killed far more political and religious dissenters than has the Cuban government. And China is arguably more of a national security concern today than Castros pathetic little workers paradise. Yet China has become our third largest trading partner while we maintain a blanket embargo on commercial relations with Cuba. President Bush understands that economic

engagement with China offers the best hope for encouraging human rights and political reforms in that country, yet he has failed to apply that same, sound thinking to Cuba. In
fact, the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chavez is doing more to undermine Americas national interest today than either Cuba or China. Chavez shares Castros hatred for democratic capitalism, but unlike Castro he has the res ources and money to spread his influence in the hemisphere. Chavez is not only bankrolling Cuba with discounted oil but he is also supporting anti-Americans movements in Nicaragua and other countries in our neighborhood. Yet we buy billions of dollars of oil a year from Venezuelas state oil company, we allow huge Venezuelan investments in our own energy sector, and Americanslast time I checkedcan travel freely to Venezuela. The one big difference between Venezuela and Cuba is that we dont have half a mi llion politically active Venezuelan exiles living in a swing state like Ohio. This is not an argument for an embargo against Venezuela, but for greater coherence in U.S. foreign policy. In a world still inhabited by a number of unfriendly and oppressive regimes, there

is simply nothing special about Cuba that warrants the drastic option of a

total embargo.

The embargo has strengthened Castros ideological position and has prevented democratization in Cuba. Amash 12 - Brandon Amash, writer for the Prospect Journal of International Affairs at the University of California at San Diego
[Evaluating the Cuban Embargo, Prospect Journal, 7/23/12, http://prospectjournal.org/2012/07/23/evaluating-the-cuban-embargo/, accessed: 7/4/13, JK]

American sanctions during the Cold War strengthened Castros ideological position and created opportunities for involvement by the Soviet Union, thereby decreasing the likelihood of democratization and improvement in human rights.Cubas revolution could not have come at a worse time for America. The emergence of a communist state in the western hemisphere allowed the Soviet Union to extend its influence, and the United States rejection of Cuba only widened the window of opportunity for Soviet involvement. The embargo also became a scapegoat for the Castro administration, which laid blame for poor human rights conditions on the embargo policy itself (Fontaine 18 22). Furthermore, as Ratliff and Fontaine suggest, isolating Cuba as an enemy of

democracy during the Cold War essentially made the goals of democratization in the country unachievable (Fontaine 30). Only engaging in economic activity with Cuba will lead to democratization in Cuba. Dodd No Date - Christopher J. Dodd, US Senator of Connecticut [Should the U.S End its Cuba Embargo? Scholastic,
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/should-us-end-its-cuba-embargo, accessed: 7/4/13, JK]

The United States is the only nation that still has a trade embargo against Cuba. After four decades, it's clear that our policy has failed to achieve its goals: the end of Fidel Castro's regime and a peaceful transition to democracy. Today, Cuba remains under totalitarian rule, with Castro still firmly in power. The real victims of our policies are the 11 million innocent Cuban men, women, and children. Our
embargo has exacerbated already-miserable living conditions for Cuban citizens. Cuba's economy has suffered because it is prohibited from exporting goods to the U.S. In addition, most Cubans have very limited access to American products. Moreover, our policies restrict Americans' right to travel freely to Cuba, making exchange between our two cultures essentially impossible. There

are many other countries whose governments are not freely elected. Yet none of our policies toward these nations resemble our treatment of Cuba. With the Cold War over and Cuba posing no threat to the U.S.. there is no justification for our
outdated approach to Cuba. To make matters worse, we are spending extraordinary resources to enforce the embargo resources that could be used to secure our nation against terrorism. It's time for a fundamental change in our Cuba policy. We

can start by ending the trade embargo and by lifting the ban on travel to Cuba by American citizens. Only by engaging the Cuban people, and by building bridges between our citizens and theirs, will we succeed in bringing freedom and democracy to our neighbor.

Embargo does not encourage democracy or human rights.

Lewis 13 Bill Lewis, Digital Journalist based in Washington, DC, United States, United States. Joined on Sep 23, 2012
Expertise in Personal finance, Books, Politics, Automotive, Internet (Op-Ed: Why the United States should end its embargo on Cuba, Digital Journal, April 17, 2013, http://digitaljournal.com/article/348218, Date Accessed: June 28, 2013, SD) For over 50 years the United States has held firm on its embargo against Cuba, even as the world condemned it for doing so. It is now time that the United States accept that the embargo has failed and move on. When Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 and installed an authoritarian communist regime aligned with the Soviet Union, the United States began applying diplomatic and economic pressure to the small island nation 90 miles off of the Florida coast. After the Cuban Missile Crisis President John F. Kennedy took the pressure a step further by imposing a full trade embargo and urging US allies to do the same. At the time, the embargo seemed the logical thing to do in order to pressure Castro to make political reforms and to stop what many saw as an inevitable spread of communism during the height of the Cold War. Over 50 years later, however, many have begun to question the efficacy of the embargo and believe the time has come to end it. Before going over the many reasons why the United States should end the embargo on Cuba it is important to understand the goal of the embargo both past and present. The Council on Foreign Relations notes that the embargo was initially placed on Cuba in an attempt to pressure Havana into making democratic reforms and aligning itself with the United States, as opposed to the Soviet Union which it had allied with. In the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis fears of Cuba being used as a forward base for the Soviet Union to threaten the United States and to spread communism in the region seemed to be fully realized with some validity and it seemed prudent for the United States and its allies to squash any possible threat that Cuba might represent. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the

reason given for the continuation of the embargo has been twofold according to the Washington Times; a continued desire to put pressure on Havana to make democratic reforms and end human rights violations, and Cubas continued status as a supporter of terror organizations. Let us then review each of these in order to determine
if the embargo has been effective and if its continuation is justified. The first reason given for the continued embargo on Cuba is that it is the only way for the United States to put pressure on Havana to end human rights violations and make democratic reforms. Proponents further state that we have a moral responsibility to show our support for Cuban citizens through the embargo. While this seems to make sense on face value this argument falls apart under close scrutiny. To begin with, the embargo is not supported or enforced by the majority of the world. In fact, according to Brett Wilkins of the Digital Journal, Israel and the tiny Pacific island nation of Palau (population 20,000) were the only other nations to have voted against a resolution in the UN calling for an end to the embargo in 2012 (the 21st such annual resolution). This simple fact alone means that whatever effect we might hope the embargo would have toward pressuring Havana disappears. Cubas largest industry tourism is booming due to European and Canadian travelers who flock to the islands many beaches. Additionally, trade with countries like Venezuela ensure a steady supply of oil and the European Union has begun working on closer trade ties with Cuba. Even U.S. companies find it easy to circumvent the embargo by routing the trades through foreign branches. It cannot be denied, however, that Cub as economy has been affected by the embargo even if not to the point that we would hope. In fact, Havana reports that they have lost more than a trillion dollars since the implementation of the embargo. The issue is, however, that even if the embargo had been fully enforced

and crippling to the Cuban economy it would likely have failed because trade sanctions and embargoes are notoriously ineffectual at causing reform.

The sad reality is that the first people to be hurt by any embargo are the innocent civilians; the very people who we are purportedly trying to help by forcing reforms. When a country such as Cuba begins to feel the effect of an embargo they do not cut amenities for the leader or military readiness though Cuba did cut its military
slightly when the embargoes were first put in place it was never truly a military threat and its military was never a concern; a look at nations like North Korea whose military is at the core of concerns is an indicator of the effect of sanctions on a country's military.

Instead they slash programs that improve the lives of their citizens. Worse, they then blame the United States for causing all of their economic woes; thus relieving them of the need to show action toward improving the situation. Therefore, rather than weakening Castros government through the sanctions as we had hoped, we in fact strengthen it by allowing it to use the United States as a
scapegoat. It is for this reason that human rights groups have actually called for an end to the embargo pointing to the hardship it causes the Cuban people without any real effect on the control the government has over them. As for the moral responsibility that we have to stand with the citizens of Cuba against an oppressive regime, to put it simply, what a bunch of hogwash. If we really want to stand with the citizens of Cuba, then rather than imposing an embargo that has hurt the people while strengthening the government we should take the same stance we did with the Marshal Plan which was used in post World War II Europe. Faced with the same potential problem the potential spread of communism we poured millions of dollars of aid and trade into European nations to help them rebuild and get their economies strong again. We used the same tactic in South Korea and several other countries since; and it has continued to work gloriously. While the issue has changed since the fall of the USSR the solution remains the same. By allowing trade with Cuba and ensuring that the people gain access to the many great things that capitalism and democracy allow we give the best chance that the people will call for reforms. It wont happen overnight and it wont be easy ; however, it will surely be more effective than an embargo that has been in place for over 50 years with no success whatsoever. Furthermore, given that Raul Castro has already begun making some reforms albeit small ones the time seems ripe for the US to make a move. The final argument given for continuing the embargo is the fact that Cuba remains on the United State's list as a state sponsor of terrorist organizations for their supposed support of groups like FARC and the ELN. There are, however, a few issues with this line of thought. First of all, as the Council on Foreign Relations indicates many experts state that there is no proof that Cuba has supported these organizations. Second, while the United States labels these organizations terrorist groups others call them freedom fighters and would point out that the government they are fighting against Columbia is incredibly corrupt and has been accused of supporting drug cartels. In the end, however, both of these points are moot because of the third; which happens to be the same argument made above. If in fact Cuba is supporting these groups, and if in fact these groups are terrorist organizations our embargo against Cuba does nothing to stop them from supporting these groups and in fact may even prevent reforms that would lead to them ending any support currently given. There are two more important reasons that we should end the embargo against Cuba. First, as I mentioned earlier in this article the United States stands alone outside of the support of Israel and Palau in enforcing this embargo; but more importantly we

stand

alone in seeing any justification for it. When we first began the embargo many nations stood with us because of the Cold
War and the threat from the Soviet Union, however, since the fall of the USSR it has become a black eye for the United States. Rather than looking like a nation protecting its national interest as is the right of any nation the United States looks like a larger nation bullying a smaller neighbor because it doesnt like their politics and the US has in fact been condemned by the UN for doing so. While this has yet to cause us any serious issues it does detract from the United States' international image which is an important part of any diplomatic effort they undertake. Second, is the extreme cost of continuing the embargo. According to the CATO Institute the, U.S. International Trad e Commission estimates American losses alone from the embargo [are] as much as $1.2 billion annually. Further, Forbes reports that accor ding 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 further increasing the cost. Thats a lot of money to be throwing at a policy that isnt actually working. No one will argue that reforms dont need to take place in Cuba, however, the method w e are choosing to use is not only ineffectual but actually hurts those we are trying to help. It is high time that we recognize the embargo for what it is failed policy and move on.

Lifting Embargo key to democracy and human rights.

Perez 10 Louis A. Perez Jr., Louis A. Prez, Jr., Ph.D. Louis A. Prez Jr. is the J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of History in the College of
Arts and Sciences. His principal teaching fields include twentieth-century Latin America, the Caribbean, and Cuba. Professor Prez has written and edited fifteen books, and his articles have appeared in the principal journals of the profession. (Want Change in Cuba? End U.S. Embargo, CNN, September 21, 2010, http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/09/20/perez.cuba.embargo/index.html, Accessed: July 2, 2013, SD) CNN) -- In April 2009, the White House released a presidential memorandum declaring that democracy and human rights in Cuba were "national interests of the United States." Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela repeated the message in May of this year to the Cuban-American National Foundation in Miami. The Obama administration, he said, wanted "to promote

respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms ... in ways that will empower the Cuban people and advance our national interests." Fine words. But if the administration really wanted to do something in the national interest, it would end the 50-year-old policy of political and economic isolation of Cuba. The Cuban embargo can no longer even pretend to be plausible. On

the contrary, it

has contributed to the very conditions that stifle democracy and human rights there. For 50 years, its brunt has fallen mainly on the Cuban people. This is not by accident. On the contrary, the embargo was designed to impose suffering and hunger on Cubans in the hope that they would rise up and overturn their government. "The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support," the Department of State insisted as early as April 1960, "is
through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship." The United States tightened the screws in the postSoviet years with the

Torricelli Act and the Helms-Burton Act -- measures designed, Sen. Robert Torricelli said, "to wreak havoc on that island." The post-Soviet years were indeed calamitous. Throughout the 1990s, Cubans faced growing
scarcities, deteriorating services and increased rationing. Meeting the needs of ordinary life took extraordinary effort. And therein lies the problem that still bedevils U.S. policy today.

Far from inspiring the Cuban people to revolution, the embargo keeps them down and distracted. Dire need and urgent want are hardly optimum circumstances for a people to contemplate the benefits of democracy. A people preoccupied with survival have little interest or inclination to bestir themselves in behalf of anything else. In Cuba, routine household errands and chores consume overwhelming amounts of time and energy, day after day: hours in lines at the local grocery store or waiting for public transportation. Cubans in vast numbers choose to emigrate. Others burrow deeper into the black market, struggling to make do and carry on. Many commit suicide. (Cuba has one of the highest suicide rates in the world; in 2000, the latest year for which we have statistics, it was 16.4
per 100,000 people.) A June 2008 survey in The New York Times reported that less than 10 percent of Cubans identified the lack of political freedom as the island's main problem. As one

Cuban colleague recently suggested to me: "First necessities, later democracy." The United States should consider a change of policy, one that would offer Cubans relief from the all-consuming ordeal of daily life. Improved material circumstances would allow Cubans to turn their attention to other aspirations. Ending the embargo would also imply respect for the Cuban people, an acknowledgment that they have the vision and vitality to enact
needed reforms, and that transition in Cuba, whatever form it may take, is wholly a Cuban affair. A good-faith effort to engage Cuba, moreover, would counter the common perception there that the United States is a threat to its sovereignty. It would deny Cuban

leaders the chance to use U.S. policy as pretext to limit public debate and stifle dissent -- all to the good of democracy and human rights. And it would serve the national interest. The embargo hurts US soft power Franks 12- James Franks, VP of franchising and reporter at Reuters,( Cuba says ending U.S. embargo would help
both countries, Reuters.com, September 20, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/20/us-cuba-usa-embargoidUSBRE88J15G20120920, Accessed: July 3, 2013, KH) 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. Obama, who said early in his presidency that he wanted to recast long-hostile U.S.-Cuba relations, has been a disappointment to the Cuban government, which expected him to do more to dismantle the embargo. He has lifted some restrictions on travel and all on the sending of remittances to the island, but Rodriguez said he has broadened the embargo and its enforcement in other areas. Fines against U.S. and foreign companies and individuals who have violated the embargo have climbed from $89 million in 2011 to $622 million so far this year, he said. U.S.-Cuba relations thawed briefly under Obama, but progress came to a halt when Cuba arrested U.S. contractor Alan Gross in Havana in December 2009. Gross was subsequently sentenced to 15 years in prison for setting up Internet networks in Cuba under a controversial U.S. program that Cuba views as subversive. Rodriguez dodged questions about how U.S. policy toward Cuba might change if Obama is re-elected in November or if Republican candidate Mitt Romney wins the presidency, but said whoever is in office will have a chance to make history. "Any American president would have the opportunity to make a historic change," he said. "He would go into history as the man who rectified a policy that has failed."

Embargo does not promote democracy --- decades of failure disprove. Bandow, 2012. Doug Bandow, Senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a former special assistant to former US president Ronald Reagan. (Time to End the Cuba Embargo, National Interest, 12/11/2012, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/time-end-cuba-embargo. Accessed: July 4, 2013, KH)
The policy in Cuba obviously has failed. The regime remains in power. Indeed, it has consistently used the embargo to justify its own mismanagement, blaming poverty on America . Observed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: It is my personal belief that the Castros do not want to see an end to the embargo and do not want to see normalization with the United States, because they would lose all of their excuses for what hasnt happened in Cuba in the last 50 years. Similarly, Cuban exile Carlos Saladrigas of the Cuba Study Group argued that keeping the embargo, maintaining this hostility, all it does is strengthen and embolden the hardliners . Cuban human rights activists also generally oppose sanctions . A decade ago I (legally) visited Havana, where I met Elizardo Sanchez Santa Cruz , who suffered in communist prisons for eight years. He told me that the sanctions policy gives the government a good alibi to justify the failure of the totalitarian model in Cuba. Indeed, it is only by posing as an opponent of Yanqui Imperialism that Fidel Castro has achieved an international reputation. If he had been ignored by Washington, he never would have been anything other than an obscure authoritarian windbag. Unfortunately, embargo supporters never let reality get in the way of their arguments . In 1994, John Sweeney of the Heritage Foundation declared that the embargo rem ains the only effective instrument available to the U.S. government in trying to force the economic and democratic concessions it has been demanding of Castro for over three decades. Maintaining the embargo will help end the Castro regime more quickly. The latters collapse, he wrote, is more likely in the near term than ever before. Almost two decades later, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, retains faith in the embargo : The sanctions on the regime must remain in place and, in fact, should be strengthened, and not be altered. One of the best definitions of insanity is continuing to do the same thing while expecting to achieve different results .

Lifting embargo would empower democratic groups Bandow 12,. Doug Bandow, Senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a former special assistant to former US president Ronald Reagan. (Time to End the Cuba Embargo, National Interest, 12/11/2012, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/time-end-cuba-embargo. Accessed July 4, 2013, KH)
Ending the embargo would have obvious economic benefits for both Cubans and Americans . The U.S. International Trade Commission estimates American losses alone from the embargo as much as $1.2 billion annually. Expanding economic opportunities also might increase pressure within Cuba for further economic reform. So far the regime has taken small steps, but rejected significant change . Moreover, thrusting more Americans into Cuban society could help undermine the ruling system . Despite Fidel Castros decline, Cuban politics remains largely static. A few human rights activists have been released, while Raul Castro has used party purges to entrench loyal elites. Lifting the embargo would be no panacea. Other countries invest in and trade with Cuba to no obvious political impact. And the lack of widespread economic reform makes it easier for the regime rather than the people to collect the benefits of trade, in contrast to China. Still, more U.S. contact would have an impact. Argued trade specialist Dan Griswold, 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 . The Castro dictatorship ultimately will end up in historys dustbin. But it will continue to cause much human hardship along the way. The Heritage Foundations John Sweeney complained nearly two decades ago that the United States must not abandon the Cuban people by relaxing or lifting the trade embargo against the communist regime. But the dead hand of half a century of failed policy is the worst breach of faith with the Cuban people. Lifting sanctions would be a victory not for Fidel Castro, but for the power of free people to spread liberty. As Griswold argued, commercial engagement is the best way to encourage more open societies abroad . Of course, there are no guarantees. But lifting the embargo would have a greater likelihood of success than continuing a policy which has failed . Some day the Cuban people will be free. Allowing more contact with Americans likely would make that day come sooner.

Ending the Cuban embargo allows travel and ag tradekey to democracy and economic growth
Griswold 09- Daniel Griswold, is the director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute in
Washington, D.C (6/15/09, The US embargo of Cuba is a failure, Cato, Accessed 6/27/13, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/us-embargo-cuba-is-failure)

Obama should lift the embargo. Allowing more travel and farm exports to Cuba will be good for democracy and the economy After nearly 50 years, Americas cold war embargo against Cuba appears to be thawing at last. Earlier this spring, the Obama administration relaxed controls on travel and
remittances to the communist island by Cuban Americans, and last week it agreed to open the door for Cubas re entry to the Organisation of American States. Admitting Cuba to the OAS may be premature, given the organisations charter that requires its members to be democracies that re spect human rights, but changes to the US economic embargo are long overdue. The embargo has been a failure by every measure. It has not changed the course or nature of the Cuban government. It has not liberated a single Cuban citizen. In fact, the

embargo has made the Cuban people a bit more impoverished, without making them one bit more free. At the same time, it has deprived Americans of their freedom to travel and has cost US farmers and
other producers billions of dollars of potential exports. Congre ss and President Barack Obama should act now to lift the embargo to allow more travel and farm exports to Cuba. As a tool of US foreign policy, the embargo actually enhances the Castro governments standing by giving it a handy excuse for the failures of the islands Caribbean-style socialism. Brothers Fidel and Raul can rail for hours about the suffering the embargo inflicts on Cubans, even though the damage done by their communist policies has been far worse. The embargo has failed to give us an ounce of extra leverage over what happens in Havana. In 2000, Congress approved a modest opening of the embargo. The Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act allows cash-only sales to Cuba of US farm products and medical supplies. The results of this modest opening have been quite amazing. Since 2000, total sales of farm products to Cuba have increased from virtually zero to $691m in 2008. The top US exports by value are corn, meat and poultry, wheat and soybeans. From dead last, Cuba is now the number six customer in Latin America for US agricultural products. Last year, American farmers sold more to the 11.5 million people who live in Cuba than to the 200 million people in Brazil. According to the US international trade commission, US farm exports would increase another $250m if restrictions were lifted on export financing. This should not be interpreted as a call for export-import bank subsidies. Trade with Cuba must be entirely commercial and market driven. Lifting the embargo should not mean that US taxpayers must now subsidise exports to Cuba. But neither should the government stand in the way. USITC estimates do not capture the long-term export potential to Cuba from normalised relations. The Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Guatemala spend an average of 2.8% of their GDP to buy farm exports from the US. If Cuba spent the same share of its GDP on US farm exports, exports could more than double the current level, to $1.5bn a year. Advocates of the embargo argue that trading with Cuba will only put dollars into the coffers of the Castro regime. And its true that the government in Havana, because it controls the economy, can skim off a large share of the remittances and tourist dollars spent in Cuba. But of course, selling more US products to Cuba would quickly relieve the Castro regime of those same dollars. If more US tourists were permitted to visit Cuba, and at the same time US

exports to Cuba were further liberalised, the US economy could reclaim dollars from the Castro regime as fast as the regime could acquire them. In effect, the exchange would be of agricultural products for tourism services, a kind of bread for beaches, food for fun trade relationship. Meanwhile, the increase in
Americans visiting Cuba would dramatically increase contact between Cubans and Americans. The unique USCuban relationship that flourished before Castro could be renewed, which would increase US influence and potentially hasten the decline of the communist regime. Congress and President Barack Obama should

act now to lift the embargo to allow more travel and farm exports to Cuba. Expanding our freedom to travel to, trade with and invest in Cuba would make Americans better off and would help the Cuban people and speed the day when they can enjoy the freedom they deserve. Trade helps promote democracy empirics prove Lloyd 11 Delia Lloyd, writer featured in New York Time and Politics Daily (Ten Reasons to Lift the Cuba
Embargo, Politics Daily, Year = 2011 (no date specified), http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/08/24/ten-reasonsto-lift-the-cuba-embargo/, accessed: 6/28/13, ckr) 1. It's good economics. It's long been recognized that opening up Cuba to American investment would be a huge boon to the tourism industry in both countries. According to the Cuban government, 250,000 Cuban-Americans visited from the United States in 2009, up from roughly 170,000 the year before, suggesting a pent-up demand. Lifting the embargo would also be an enormous boon the U.S. agricultural sector. One 2009

study estimated that doing away with all financing and travel restrictions on U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba would have boosted 2008 dairy sales to that country from $13 million to between $39 million and $87 million, increasing U.S. market share from 6 percent to between 18 and 42 percent.

2. It's good politics. Supporters of the trade embargo -- like Cuban-American Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) -have long argued that easing the restrictions would only reward Castro for the regime's ongoing repression of political dissidents. We need to keep up the economic pressure on Cuba, so this logic goes, in order to keep pressure on the regime to do something about human rights. But there's a long-standing empirical relationship between trade and democracy . The usual logic put forth to explain this relationship is that trade creates an economically independent and politically aware middle class, which, in turn, presses for political reform. It's not clear that this argument actually holds up when subjected to close causal scrutiny (although the reverse does seem to be true -- i.e., democratic reform creates pressure for trade liberalization). Still, it's difficult to disagree with the proposition that by enabling visiting scholars and religious groups to stay in Cuba for up to two years (as the presidential order would allow) rather than a matter of weeks (as is currently the case) we'd be helping, not hurting, democracy in Cuba. First, easing the current travel restrictions would allow for far deeper

linkages between non-governmental organizations from both countries, which some see as a powerful mechanism for democratic reform. Second, because American visitors would be staying on the
island longer, scholars and activists alike would gain much better insight into where the pressure points for democracy actually exist.

Embargo prevents change to democracy in Cuba Caribbean News 12 (Should the United States maintain its embargo against Cuba?, Caribbean News Now!,
12/22/12, http://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/headline-Should-the-United-States-maintain-its-embargo-againstCuba%3F-13864.html, accessed: 6/28/13, ckr) Opponents of the Cuba embargo argue that it should be lifted because the failed policy is a Cold War relic and has clearly not achieved its goals. They say the sanctions harm the US economy and Cuban citizens, and prevent opportunities to promote change and democracy in Cuba. They say the embargo hurts international opinion of the United States. In addition to in-depth research on the pros and cons of maintaining the Cuba embargo, the new ProCon.org website contains a historical background section, videos, images, over 60 footnotes and sources, and Did You Know? facts including: 1. President John F. Kennedy sent his press secretary to buy 1,200 Cuban cigars the night before he signed the embargo in February 1962. 2. Estimates place the cost of the Cuban embargo to the US economy between $1.2 and $4.84 billion annually. A 2010 study by Texas A&M University calculated that 6,000 American jobs could be created by lifting the embargo. 3. There are an estimated 65,000 to 70,000 political prisoners incarcerated in Cuba as of May 2012, which is among the world's highest on a per capita basis. 4. The United Nations has denounced the US embargo against Cuba for 21 straight years. The vote against the embargo was 188-3 in 2012, with only Israel and Palau supporting the United States. 5. The United States began exporting food to Cuba following a devastating hurricane in 2001 and is now the island's second-largest food supplier. Annual food sales to Cuba peaked at $710 million in 2008.

Embargo thwarts democracy engagement required to solve Tucker 4/14 Cynthia Tucker, American columnist and blogger for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, syndicated
by Universal Press Syndicate, Pulitzer Prize for commentary (Cuban Embargo Has Far Outlived Its Usefulness, The National Memo, April 13th, 2013, http://www.nationalmemo.com/cuban-embargo-has-far-outlived-itsusefulness/?author_name=cynthiatucker, accessed: 7/2/13, ckr) That just goes to show you that Fidel Castros

efforts to wall off the island nation from his powerful enemy to the north have failed miserably. He and his brother have perfected the dark arts of the dictatorship

 jailing dissidents, stifling protest, controlling internal news media, severely restricting travel abroad but the lights of the outside world shine brightly through the cracks. Castros long-running tyranny has not managed the thoroughgoing isolation of, say, North Korea, where citizens have little realistic knowledge of the rest of the world. Still, Castro has his accomplices here in the United States fanatics who would help him wall off

Cuba, restrict the access its citizens have to American culture and generally thwart a hoped-for transition from dictatorship to democracy. Bizarrely, those accomplices consider themselves Castros
biggest enemies. They have dedicated themselves to his demise. Indeed, if you know about the recent trip to Cuba by Americas First Couple of Pop, you probably heard about it through the controversy ginned up by a handful of Florida Republicans: Sen. Marco Rubio and U.S. Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart. Without waiting to investigate the trip, Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart, especially, began complaining that it was likely a violation of the antediluvian U.S. embargo. As it turns out, Beyonc and Jay-Z entered Cuba legally. They went as part of a cultural and educational exchange arranged under the auspices of a group called Academic Arrangements Abroad and approved by the U.S. Treasury Department, according to Reuters. But the Florida pols didnt want facts; they wanted to embarrass President Obama by implicating two high-profile political supporters in something nefarious. Its the anti-Castro faction who should be embarrassed. The Cuban embargo is dumb, one of the most antiquated and least sensible federal laws remaining on the books. Enacted in the early 1960s, it is a

remnant of a different time an era of bobby socks, segregation and a serious threat emanating from the Soviet Union.
The Cuban embargo makes no more sense today than laws requiring white and colored water fountains. It is kept alive by a handful of powerful politicians of Cuban heritage, who cling to their parents and grandparents bitterness toward Castro. Many members of Cubas affluent classes fled the island after Castros 1959 revolution, when he began nationalizing private industries and strengthening ties with the Soviets.

His long-running dictatorship has been an economic disaster and a catastrophe for civil liberties. But with the Soviets long gone, Castro represents absolutely no threat to the United States. Further, the most promising avenue for changing Cuba lies in courting it, not cutting it off.
When Richard Nixon visited China in 1972, ending a 25-year breach, he did so with a similar notion in mind.

China remains a Communist country. It has a totalitarian government; it restricts human rights; as a nuclear power with a huge military, it could pose a threat to the United States and its allies. Yet, no reasonable politician suggests that the U.S. government should restrict travel or commerce with China. For decades, our government has believed the best way to change China is through engagement. Using that standard, President Bill Clinton sought to weaken the Cuban embargo during his term by encouraging educational and cultural exchanges. Though President George W. Bush stopped them, Obama has revived the trips. While the sensible policy would be to end the embargo, the cultural exchanges are at least a step in the right direction. Embargo bad helps Castro and hurts Cuban people Karon 10 Tony Karon, senior editor at TIME (Do We Really Need an Embargo Against Cuba?, TIME,
4/21/10, http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,48773,00.html, 7/2/13, ckr) It actually helps keep Castro in power Never mind the fact that it's failed to dislodge him after 38 years, the

embargo is now Castro's catchall excuse for every ill that plagues his decaying socialist society. It helps him paint the U.S. as hostile and an imminent threat in the eyes of the Cuban people, which is how he rationalizes his authoritarian politics. Opening the floodgates of trade will leave Castro with no excuses, and interaction with the U.S. will hasten the collapse of his archaic system.
What's good for China is good for Cuba

China is a lot more repressive than Cuba, and yet we've normalized trade relations with Beijing on the argument that trade will hasten reform and democratization. We're even lifting sanctions against North Korea despite the fact that their missile program is supposedly a threat to our skies, whereas the Pentagon has long since concluded that Cuba represents no threat to U.S. security. It's nonsensical to argue that
trade induces better behavior from communist regimes in China and North Korea, but will do the opposite in Cuba. It mostly hurts the people it's supposed to help You can be sure Fidel Castro isn't going to bed hungry and or suffering through a headache because

there's no Tylenol to be had. Yet millions of his people are suffering all manner of deprivations that the could be eased by lifting an embargo that's never going to overthrow him anyway. Stopping Cubans from benefiting from trade with the U.S. and interaction with American tourists leaves Castro unscathed, but it deprives the Cuban people of a taste of freedom that could only undermine a repressive regime. Embargo helps Castro Regime US politicians too scared to oppose Stern 12 Scott Stern, Branford College at Yale (Lift the Cuba embargo, Yale Daily News, 2/10/12,
http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2012/02/10/stern-lift-the-cuba-embargo/, accessed: 7/3/13, ckr)

The embargo has stunted the Cuban economy and limited Cubans access to good food, modern technology and useful medicine. It has also hurt the United States relationships with other countries the European Parliament actually passed a law making it illegal for Europeans to comply with certain parts of the embargo. The purpose of the embargo was undeniably to make life so
difficult for Cubans that they would see the error of their ways and expel Castro and communism. The United States government has maintained for 50 years that it will not do business with Cuba until it learns to respect human rights and liberty. There is a pretty serious problem with this plan: It hasnt worked. Beyond the fact that Castro is still in

power and Cuba is still not a democracy, the embargo has not truly succeeded in sewing resentment into the hearts and minds of the Cuban people. The embargo allows Castro to make the United States and the embargo the scapegoats for all of Cubas ills. It also forces Cuba to rely on countries like the former USSR, China and Venezuela for trade. The appalling hypocrisy of the
embargo is that the United States nearly always maintained diplomatic and economic relationships with countries like Russia, China and Vietnam even during the heart of the Cold War. Numerous influential people have come out against the Cuban embargo, including Pope John Paul II, Jesse Jackson and George Schultz. They all claim that the embargo hurts the Cuban people, not the Cuban government. Democratic politicians Gary Hart, George McGovern and Jimmy Carter have also expressed this view. It is interesting to note, however, that Hart and McGovern only became vocal enemies of the embargo long after their presidential runs. Politicians are scared openly to oppose the embargo. The Cuban-American population is an exceptionally powerful and vocal voting bloc, and many CubanAmericans support the embargo out of sheer hatred of Castro. These Cuban exiles whose

votes are so important, particularly in Florida have pushed nearly every major politician away from normalizing relations with Cuba. As Hart wrote on his blog last year - years after leaving politics, of
course the embargo is a straight-jacket whereby first-generation Cuban-Americans wielded inordinate political power over both parties and constructed a veto over rational, mature diplomacy. It would be highly inaccurate, however, to foist the blame for the embargos persistence upon the Cuban -American population. American politicians across the political spectrum are to blame for their intransigence

and their unwillingness to challenge the status quo. The embargo is not a major political issue, so politicians are just too apathetic to engage with it.

Embargo promotes poverty in Cuba gives Castro more power Henderson 08 David Henderson, research fellow at Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution and is also
associate professor of economics at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California (End the Cuban Embargo, AntiWar, 2/21/08, http://antiwar.com/henderson/?articleid=12395, accessed: 7/4/13, ckr) Which brings us to the second argument for the embargo, which seems to go as follows.

By squeezing the Cuban economy enough, the U.S. government can make Cubans even poorer than Fidel Castro has managed to over the past 48 years, through his imposition of Stalin-style socialism.
Ultimately, the theory goes, some desperate Cubans will rise up and overthrow Castro. There are at least three problems with this "make the victims hurt more" strategy. First, it's

profoundly immoral. It could succeed only by making average Cubans already living in grinding poverty even poorer. Most of them are completely innocent and, indeed, many of them already want to get rid of Castro. And consider the irony: A defining feature of socialism is the prohibition of voluntary exchange between people. Proembargo Americans typically want to get rid of socialism in Cuba. Yet their solution prohibiting trade with Americans is the very essence of socialism.
The second problem is more practical: It hasn't worked. To be effective, an embargo must prevent people in the target country from getting goods, or at least substantially increase the cost of getting goods. But competition is a hardy weed that shrugs off governmental attempts to suppress it. Companies in many countries, especially Canada, produce and sell goods that are close substitutes for the U.S. goods that can't be sold to Cuba. Wander around Cuba, and you're likely to see beach umbrellas advertising Labatt's beer, McCain's (no relation) French fries, and President's Choice cola. Moreover, even U.S. goods for which there are no close substitutes are often sold to buyers in other countries, who then resell to Cuba. A layer of otherwise unnecessary middlemen is added, pushing up prices somewhat, but the price increase is probably small for most goods.

Some observers have argued that the very fact that the embargo does little harm means that it should be kept because it's a cheap way for U.S. politicians to express moral outrage against Castro. But arguing for a policy on the grounds that it's ineffective should make people question the policy's wisdom. Third, the policy is politically effective, but not in the way the embargo's proponents would wish. The embargo surely makes Cubans somewhat more anti-American than they would be otherwise, and it makes them somewhat more in favor of or at least less against Castro. Castro has never talked honestly about the embargo: he has always called it a blockade, which it manifestly is not. But he has gotten political mileage by blaming the embargo, rather than socialism, for Cuba's awful economic plight and reminds his subjects ceaselessly that the U.S. government is the instigator.
Some Cubans probably believe him.

Ending Cuban embargo boosts human rights and develops democracy Johnson 08 - Roger Johnson, North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner (Cuba: Snuff Out the Embargo,
Bloomberg BusinessWeek, 2008 (no specific date), http://www.businessweek.com/debateroom/archives/2008/06/cuba_snuff_out_the_embargo.html, accessed: 7/4/13, ckr)

American policy toward Cuba is an abject failure. Nine U.S. Presidents have come and gone (and a 10th is
about to depart); Fidel Castro has just resigned, yet his closest supporters remain in power.

The real victims of this misguided policy are the two generations of Cubans who have grown up under the U.S. embargo that has deprived them of access to U.S. consumer products. More important, it has isolated them from the ideals of democracy and freedom, the very things we most want for them.

In the meantime, other nations, including most of our closest allies, are openly trading with and sending tourists to Cuba. There is a substantial market there, especially for our agricultural products, and we are missing out on much of it. Embargoes are almost meaningless when the rest of the world ignores them. Since 2002, North Dakota has exported nearly $40 million in agricultural commodities mostly pulse crops (peas, chickpeas, lentils, etc.)to Cuba, despite the competitive disadvantage imposed on us by our own government restrictions. Lifting those restrictions would mean greater trade opportunities. Cubas government is much like those of China and Vietnam, Communist nations that enjoy tra de, tourism, and even the friendship of the U.S. Yet we treat Cuba, a tiny nation with virtually no political, economic,

or military power, as a pariah. The U.S. should end the trade and business embargo with Cuba and move quickly to allow tourism between our two countries. Most important, we should restore full diplomatic relations with Havana. Only then will we have the leverage to press the new Cuban leadership to restore human rights, establish a free market-based economy, and move to democracy.
Until we do these things, however, we will watch as others enjoy the benefits of trade with Cuba and play an active role in the development of the island. The U.N. General Assembly has voted repeatedly for an end to the embargo against Cuba, most recently by a margin of 183 to 4. It is time to admit we are wrong; it is time to change our policyfor ourselves and for the people of Cuba.

Embargo blocks US from preventing socialism in Cuba Heuvel 7/2 Katrina vanden Heuven, editor, publisher, and part-owner of the magazine The Nation (The US
Should End the Cuban Embargo, The Nation, 7/2/13, http://www.thenation.com/blog/175067/us-should-end-cubanembargo#axzz2Y7Hs619u, 7/4/13, ckr) Is there a greater example of utter folly than Americas superannuated policy toward Cuba? During more than 50 years corrupted by covert actions, economic sabotage, travel bans and unending embargo, the United States

managed to make Castro and Cuba an international symbol of proud independence. Intent on isolating Cuba, Washington has succeeded only in isolating itself in its own hemisphere. Intent on
displacing Fidel Castro, the US enmity only added to his nationalist credentials. A recent visit reveals a Cuba that is already beginning a new, post-Castro era. That only highlights the inanity of the continuing U.S. embargo, a cruel relic of a Cold War era that is long gone.

Cuba is beginning a new experiment, driven by necessity, of trying to build its own version of market socialism in one country. Just as populist movements in the hemisphere looked to Castro and Cuba for inspiration, now Cuba is learning from its allies as it cautiously seeks to open up its economy. Ending the genocidal policy opens up freedom and democracy AP 12 (50 Years After Kennedys Ban, Embargo on Cuba Remains, The New York Times, 2/7/12,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/world/americas/american-embargo-on-cuba-has-50th-anniversary.html?_r=0, accessed: 7/4/13, ckr) HAVANA (AP) The world is much changed since the early days of 1962, but one thing has remained constant: The United States economic embargo on Cuba, a near-total trade ban that turned 50 on Tuesday. Supporters say it is a justified measure against a repressive Communist government that has never stopped being a thorn in Washingtons side. Critics call it a failed policy that has hurt ordinary Cubans instead of the

government. All acknowledge that it has not accomplished its core mission of toppling Fidel Castro or his brother and successor, Ral.

All this time has gone by, and yet we keep it in place, said Wayne Smith, who was a young American diplomat in Havana in 1961 when relations were severed and who returned as the chief American diplomat after they were partially re-established under President Jimmy Carter. We talk to the Russians, we talk to the Chinese, we have normal relations even with Vietnam, Mr. Smith said. We trade with all of them. So why not with Cuba? In the White House, the first sign of the looming total embargo came when President John F. Kennedy told his press secretary to buy him as many H. Upmann Cuban cigars as he could find. The aide came back with 1,200. Although trade restrictions had been imposed by his predecessor, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mr. Kennedy announced the total embargo on Feb. 3, 1962, citing the subversive offensive of Sino-Soviet Communism with which the government of Cuba is publicly aligned. It went into effect four days later at the height of the cold war, a year removed from the failed C.I.A.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion meant to oust Communism from Cuba and eight months before the Soviet attempts to put nuclear missiles on the island brought the two superpowers to the brink of war. Little was planned to observe Tuesdays anniversary, but Cuban-American members of Congress issued a joint statement vowing to keep the heat on Cuba. Supporters of the policy acknowledge that many American strategic concerns from the 1960s are now in the past, such as curbing Soviet influence and keeping Fidel Castro from exporting revolution throughout Latin America. But they say that other justifications remain, such as the confiscation of United States property in Cuba and the need to press for greater freedoms on the island. We have a hemispheric commitment to freedom and democracy and respect for human rights, said Jos Crdenas, a former National Security Council staff member on Cuba under President George W. Bush. I still think that those are worthy aspirations.

With just 90 miles of sea between Florida and Cuba, the United States would be a natural No. 1 trade partner and source of tourism. The embargo is a constant talking point for island authorities, who blame it for shortages of everything from medical equipment to the concrete needed for highway construction. Cuba frequently fulminates against the blockade at the United Nations and demands the United States end its genocidal policy. Every fall, a vast majority of nations back a resolution condemning the
embargo.

Embargo allows Castro to steal Cuban property Salazar 3/25 William De Salazar, writer at Suite (U.S. Embargo Against Cuba, Suite, 3/25/12,
http://suite101.com/article/us-embargo-against-cuba-a23463, accessed: 7/4/13, ckr)

Recently there have been many requests by American farmers and businessman to lift the embargo against Cuba. Due to harder economic times in the U.S. especially farmers; one can sympathize with them to have an increase business market to sell their crops, and products also. However, most Americans are not aware that Castro put himself in power through military force not democracy.
Castro confiscated all properties on the island. He made it illegal for anyone but the government to own property. In this manner in 1959, he stole all the properties and businesses owned by both Cubans and businessmen from all over the world, the majority being Americans. Castro took over all private assets which then became Cuban government assets. Many U.S. companies with offices in buildings built with U.S. money, manufacturing plants, and many other types of business places throughout the island were forced to leave the country. Castro confiscated all the infrastructure left behind. In essence, Castro stole all Cuban properties as well as U.S. businesses

with whatever these companies built as well as whatever machinery they used to operate those businesses. In 1995, those confiscated assets were estimated by the Foreign Settlement Commission in the U.S.
Department of Justice to be worth approximately six billion dollars.

Embargo fails lifting it solves free rights Seattle Times 09 (End the U.S. Embargo of Cuba, The Seattle Times, 12/22/09,
http://seattletimes.com/html/editorials/2010571248_edit23cuba.html, accessed: 7/4/13, ckr)

SEN. Maria Cantwell calls our attention to a law, signed by President Obama, allowing Cuba to buy U.S. farm produce and pay after the goods are shipped. The law reverses a Treasury ruling during
the Bush years that Cuba had to pay in advance a ruling that stopped the trade altogether. This page favors the new law, which will allow a few of our state's farmers to make a little bit of money. But we would go much further. We would end altogether the embargo, which was imposed under President Kennedy almost a half-century ago.

We would allow Cuba to buy U.S. foodstuffs, and most other products, under normal commercial rules. We would allow Americans to visit Cuba without threatening them with fines under the Trading With the Enemy Act. We would repeal the Helms-Burton Act and allow Americans to invest in Cuba, and we would allow some Cuban investment here. We would allow the importation of Cuban sugar and other lawful products. We suggest this not because we support the system in Cuba, but because we support the rights of Americans to make their own decisions about it. For almost half a century, the United States has restricted the rights of Americans in order to bring down Castro and communism. The policy has done neither. It doesn't seem to have done any good at all. Certainly it has harmed ordinary people in Cuba.
Fifty years is enough. Sens. Cantwell and Patty Murray, who support trade and travel with Cuba, can afford to be much bolder on this issue. Only one state loves the embargo, and it is time Florida was outvoted.

Cuba is reforming its socialist waysnew reforms prove Sweig and Bustamante 13- Julia E. Sweig, Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America
Studies and Director for Latin America Studies; Michael Bustamante, PhD candidate specializing in Latin American and Caribbean History at Yale, dissertation about the cultural politics of Cuban collective and historical memory, on and off the island, in the wake of the 1959 Revolution, served as Research Associate for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. (Cuba After Communism, Council on Foreign Relations, http://www.cfr.org/cuba/cuba-after-communism/p30991, July/August 2013, accessed: 7/3/13, ML) Three years ago, Castro

caused a media firestorm by quipping to an American journalist that "the Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore." Tacitly embracing this assessment, Fidel's brother Ral Castro, the current president, is leading a gradual but, for Cuba, ultimately radical overhaul of the relationship between the state, the individual, and society, all without cutting the socialist umbilical cord. So
far, this unsettled state of affairs lacks complete definition or a convincing label. "Actualization of the Cuban social and economic model," the Communist Party's preferred euphemism, oversells the degree of ideological cohesion while smoothing over the implications for society and politics. For now, the emerging Cuba might best be characterized as a public-private hybrid in which multiple forms of production, property ownership, and investment, in addition to a slimmer welfare state and greater personal freedom, will coexist with military-run state companies in strategic sectors of the economy and continued one-party rule.

A new migration law, taking effect this year, provides a telling example of Cuba's ongoing reforms. Until recently, the Cuban government required its citizens to request official permission before traveling abroad, and doctors, scientists, athletes, and other professionals faced additional obstacles. The state still regulates the exit and entry of professional athletes and security officials and reserves the right to deny anyone a passport for reasons of national security. But the new migration law eliminates the need for "white cards," as the expensive and unpopular exit permits were known; gives those who left the country illegally, such as defectors and rafters, permission to visit or possibly repatriate; and expands from 11

months to two years the period of time Cubans can legally reside abroad without the risk of losing their bank accounts, homes, and businesses on the island. This new moment in Cuba has arrived not with a bang but rather on the heels of a series of cumulative measures -- most prominent among them agricultural reform, the formalization of a progressive tax code, and the government's highly publicized efforts to begin shrinking the size of state payrolls by allowing for a greater number of small businesses. The beginnings of private credit, real estate, and wholesale markets promise to further Cuba's evolution. Still, Cuba does not appear poised to adopt the Chinese or Vietnamese blueprint for market liberalization anytime soon.
Cuba's unique demographic, geographic, and economic realities -- particularly the island's aging population of 11 million, its proximity to the United States, and its combination of advanced human capital and dilapidated physical infrastructure -- set Cuba apart from other countries that have moved away from communism. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that Cuba's ongoing changes do not resemble the rapid transition scenario envisioned in the 1996 Helms-Burton legislation, which conditioned the removal of the U.S. embargo on multiparty elections and the restitution of private property that was nationalized in the 1960s. In this respect, Washington remains more frozen in time than Havana.

Lifting the embargo undermines the government creation of middle class Kinzer 6/1/13 Stephen Kinzer, Stephen Kinzer is a United States author and newspaper reporter. He is a
veteran New York Times correspondent who has reported from more than fifty countries on five continents. During the 1980s he covered revolution and social upheaval in Central America. In 1990, he was promoted to bureau chief of the Berlin bureau and covered the growth of Eastern and Central Europe as they emerged from Soviet rule. He was also New York Times bureau chief in Istanbul (Turkey) from 1996 to 2000. He currently teaches journalism and United States foreign policy at Boston University. Kinzer has written several non-fiction books about Turkey, Central America, Iran, the US overthrow of foreign governments from the late 19th century to the present and, most recently, about Rwanda's recovery from genocide. (A specter is haunting Cuba, Alaska Dispatch, 6/1/13, http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20130601/specter-haunting-cuba, accessed: 6/28/13, amf)

Legalizing larger-scale private business in Cuba would have profound political consequences. It would lead to the emergence of a middle class, and eventually a wealthy class. Such classes always seek to transform their economic power into political power. Cuban leaders are acutely aware that an open economy could be the greatest long-term threat to their revolutionary order. This makes the US trade embargo on Cuba even more self-defeating than it has been for the last half-century. It is among the most bizarre American foreign policies. No other country in the world has cut itself off from Cuba. Lifting the embargo would hasten the kind of change most Americans and most Cubans would like to see in Cuba. Paralyzed by fear of the Cuban vote in
Florida, however, generations of American politicians have refused to take this eminently logical step.

Embargo props up the regime Bandow 12/11/12 Doug Bandow, Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special
Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is the author of several books, including Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire. (Time to End the Cuban Embargo, The National Interest, 12/11/12, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-pointless-cuba-embargo-7834?page=1, accessed: 7/3/13, amf) Three years ago, President Barack Obama loosened regulations on Cuban Americans, as well as telecommunications between the United States and Cuba. However, the law sharply constrains the president's discretion.

Moreover, UN Ambassador Susan Rice said that the embargo will continue until Cuba is free. It is far past time to end the embargo.
During the Cold War, Cuba offered a potential advanced military outpost for the Soviet Union. Indeed, that role led to the Cuban missile crisis. With the failure of the U.S.-supported Bay of Pigs invasion, economic pressure appeared to be Washingtons best strategy for ousting the Castro dictatorship.

However, the

end of the Cold War left Cuba strategically irrelevant. It is a poor country with little ability to harm the United States. The Castro regime might still encourage unrest, but its survival has no measurable impact on any important U.S. interest.
The regime remains a humanitarian travesty, of course. Nor are Cubans the only victims: three years ago the regime jailed a State Department contractor for distributing satellite telephone equipment in Cuba. But Havana is not the only regime to violate human rights. Moreover, experience has long demonstrated that it is virtually impossible for outsiders to force democracy. Washington often has used sanctions and the Office of Foreign Assets Control currently is enforcing around 20 such programs, mostly to little effect.

The policy in Cuba obviously has failed. The regime remains in power. Indeed, it has consistently used the embargo to justify its own mismanagement, blaming poverty on America.
Observed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: It is my personal b elief that the Castros do not want to see an end to the embargo and do not want to see normalization with the United States, because they would lose all of their excuses for what hasn't happened in Cuba in the last 50 years. Similarly, Cuban exile Carlos Saladrigas of

the Cuba Study Group argued that keeping the embargo, maintaining this hostility, all it does is strengthen and embolden the hardliners. Cuban human rights activists also generally oppose sanctions. A decade ago I (legally) visited Havana, where I met Elizardo Sanchez Santa Cruz, who suffered in communist prisons for eight years. He told me that the "sanctions policy gives the government a good alibi to justify the failure of the totalitarian model in Cuba." Indeed, it is only by posing as an opponent of Yanqui Imperialism that Fidel Castro has achieved an international reputation. If he had been ignored by Washington, he never would have been anything other than an obscure authoritarian windbag. Lifting the embargo spurs mutual economic growth, which undermines the Castro regime Bandow 12 - 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/thepointless-cuba-embargo-7834?page=1, accessed: 6/27/13, LR)

Ending the embargo would have obvious economic benefits for both Cubans and Americans. The U.S. International Trade Commission estimates American losses alone from the embargo as much as $1.2 billion annually. Expanding economic opportunities also might increase pressure within Cuba for further economic reform. So far the regime has taken small steps, but rejected significant change. Moreover, thrusting more Americans into Cuban society could help undermine the ruling system. Despite Fidel Castros decline,
Cuban politics remains largely static. A few human rights activists have been released, while Raul Castro has used party purges to entrench loyal elites. Lifting the embargo would be no panacea. Other countries invest in and trade with Cuba to no obvious political impact. And the lack of widespread economic reform makes it easier for the regime rather than the people to collect the benefits of trade, in contrast to China. Still, more U.S. contact would have an impact. Argued trade specialist Dan Griswold, 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. Lifting the embargo facilitates the spread of democracy by empowering the Cuban people 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/thepointless-cuba-embargo-7834?page=1, accessed: 6/27/13, LR)

Castro dictatorship ultimately will end up in historys dustbin. But it will continue to cause much human hardship along the way.
The The Heritage Foundations John Sweeney complained nearly two decades ago that the United States must not abandon the Cuban people by relaxing or lifting the trade embargo against the communist regime. But the dead hand of half a century of failed policy is the worst breach of faith with the Cuban people. Lifting sanctions would be a victory not for Fidel Castro, but for the power of free people to spread liberty. As Griswold argued, commercial engagement is the best way to encourage more open societies abroad. Of course, there are no guarantees. But lifting the embargo would have a greater likelihood of success than continuing a policy which has failed. Some day the Cuban people will be free. Allowing more contact with Americans likely would make that day come sooner.

Embargo fails helps the regime Sujanani 12 Ramesh Sujanani, contributor to The Gleaner, Bachelor of Science; Diploma management studies, Diploma Diamond Grading, UWI Mona (Lifting The Cuban Embargo, The Gleaner, Nov. 24, 2012, http://jamaicagleaner.com/gleaner/20121124/cleisure/cleisure6.html, accessed: 6/27/13, LR)
Sometime ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly shared the view that the United States' embargo against Cuba helps the Castros, noting, "It is my personal belief that the Castros do not want to see an end to the embargo, and do not want to see normalisation with the United States." Clinton said in the same interview that "we're open to changing with them," though the US government maintains its strong position against lifting the embargo. The fact is that Cuban-Americans, most of whom reside in Miami, had their property and other assets confiscated by Fidel Castro, worth almost US$6 billion. Should the embargo be lifted, these persons will require compensation for personal assets seized. Who will make good that claim by the Cuban migrants? Many are protesting Castro's reasons for becoming the dictator, and are not satisfied Castro will honour his obligations. These Cuban-Americans have supported Obama's Florida campaign, and it seems that as long as it takes to recover their assets, they will continue to support him.

The embargo represents a failed strategy that the Cuban government uses to their advantage

Chapman 4/15 Steve Chapman, columnist and editorial writer for the Chicago Tribune. His twice-a-week column on national and international affairs, distributed by Creators Syndicate, appears in some 50 papers across the country. (Its Time To End The U.S. Embargo of Cuba, Reason.com, April 15, 2013, http://reason.com/archives/2013/04/15/itstime-to-end-the-us-embargo-of-cuba, accessed: 6/27/13, LR) The boycott adheres to the stubborn logic of governmental action. It was created to solve a problem: the existence of a communist government 90 miles off our shores. It failed to solve that problem. But its failure is
taken as proof of its everlasting necessity. If there is any lesson to be drawn from this dismal experience, though, it's that the economic quarantine has been either 1) grossly ineffectual or 2) positively helpful to the regime. The first would not be surprising, if only because economic sanctions almost never work. Iraq under Saddam Hussein? Nope. Iran? Still waiting. North Korea? Don't make me laugh. What makes this embargo even less promising is that we have so little help in trying to apply the squeeze. Nearly 200 countries allow trade with Cuba. Tourists from Canada and Europe flock there in search of beaches, nightlife and Havana cigars, bringing hard currency with them. So even if starving the country into submission could work, Cuba hasn't starved and won't anytime soon. Nor is it implausible to suspect that the boycott has been the best thing that ever happened to the Castro brothers, providing them a scapegoat for the nation's many economic ills. The implacable hostility of the Yankee imperialists also serves to align Cuban nationalism with Cuban communism. Even Cubans who don't like Castro may not relish being told what to do by the superpower next door.

Embargo theory no longer applies weve adjusted our stance on other countries with a history of bad relations Chapman 4/15 Steve Chapman, columnist and editorial writer for the Chicago Tribune. His twice-a-week column on national and international affairs, distributed by Creators Syndicate, appears in some 50 papers across the country. (Its Time To End The U.S. Embargo of Cuba, Reason.com, April 15, 2013, http://reason.com/archives/2013/04/15/itstime-to-end-the-us-embargo-of-cuba, accessed: 6/27/13, LR) When it comes to sending money to a "cruel, repressive, murderous regime," Rubio's outrage is strangely selective. The same accusation could be laid against anyone who travels to China, Vietnam or Burma -- all of which are open to American visitors, as far as Washington is concerned. Our willingness to trade with them stems from the belief that economic improvement and contact with outsiders will foster liberalization rather than retard it. But the opposite approach is supposed to produce this
kind of progress in Cuba. Do trade and tourism work to weaken repression? The evidence is mixed. But our attempted economic strangulation of Cuba has been an emphatic bust. We keep trying it, and the communist government remains in full control, making a mockery of our strategy. The U.S. government has been tireless in pursuing a policy that does not look better with time. It could benefit from the advice of W.C. Fields, who said, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then give up.

No use being a damned fool about it."

Embargo counterproductive other countries engage, deprives American workers, gives the regime a scapegoat, and facilitates dangerous Cuban politics Haass 9 Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, this countrys preeminent independent, nonpartisan institution devoted to thinking about Americas role in the world. Haass was director of policy planning for the Department of State, where he was a principal advisor to Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2001 to 2003, as well as special assistant to President George H.W. Bush and senior director on the staff of the National Security Council from 1989 to 1993 (Forget About Fidel, The Daily Beast, March 6, 2009, http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/03/06/forget-aboutfidel.html, accessed: 6/28/13, LR)
The American policy of isolating Cuba has

failed. Officials boast that Havana now hosts more diplomatic missions than any other country in the region save Brazil. Nor is the economic embargo working. Or worse: it is working, but for countries like Canada, South Korea and dozens of others that are only too happy to help supply Cuba with food, generators and building materials. Those in Congress who complain about the "offshoring" of American jobs ought to consider that the embargo deprives thousands of American workers of employment. The policy of trying to isolate Cuba also worksperversely enoughto bolster the Cuban regime. The U.S. embargo provides Cuba's leaders a convenient excusethe country's economic travails are due to U.S. sanctions, they can claim, not their own failed policies. The lack of American visitors and investment also helps the government maintain political control.
There is one more reason to doubt the wisdom of continuing to isolate Cuba. However slowly, the country is changing. The question is whether the United States will be in a position to influence the direction and pace of this change. We do not want to see a Cuba that fails, in which the existing regime gives way to a

repressive regime of a different stripe or to disorder marked by drugs, criminality, terror or a humanitarian crisis that prompts hundreds of thousands of Cubans to flee their country for the United States.
Rather, Washington should work to shape the behavior and policy of Cuba's leadership so that the country becomes more open politically and economically.

Lifting sanctions key to Cuban economy and democracy empirically proven Amash 12 Brandon Amash, contributing writer to the Prospect Journal of International Affairs at UCSD (Evaluating the Cuban Embargo, Prospect Journal of international Affairs, July 23, 2012, http://prospectjournal.org/2012/07/23/evaluating-the-cubanembargo/, accessed: 6/28/13, LR)
4.3: Lifting economic

sanctions will improve economic growth in Cuba, which correlates to democratization. Empirical evidence shows that a strong economy is correlated to democracy. According to the Modernization Theory of democratization, this correlation is a causal link: economic growth directly leads to democratization. Lifting the current economic sanctions on Cuba and working together to improve economic situations in the state will allow their economy to grow, increasing the likelihood of democracy in the state, and thus promoting greater freedom of expression, opinion and dissent. 4.4: A policy of engagement will be a long-term solution to promoting democracy and improving human rights in Cuba. This proposal, unique in that it is simply one of abandoning an antiquated policy and normalizing relations to be like those with any other country, does not present any large obstacles to
implementation, either in the short run or the long run. The main challenge is in continuing to support such a policy and maintaining the normal diplomatic, economic and social relations with a country that has been isolated for such

a long period of time. Although effects of such a policy may be difficult to determine in the short term, promoting democracy and improving human rights in Cuba are long-term solutions. As discussed above, engagement with the Cuban government and society, along with support from the international community, will provide the spark and guidance for the Cuban people to support and promote democracy, and thus give greater attention to human rights violations.

Plan promotes good politics and boosts democracy 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)
2. It's good politics. Supporters of the trade embargo -- like Cuban-American Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) -have long argued that easing the restrictions would only reward Castro for the regime's ongoing repression of political dissidents. We need to keep up the economic pressure on Cuba, so this logic goes, in order to keep pressure on the regime to do something about human rights. But there's a long-standing empirical relationship between trade and democracy. The usual logic put forth to explain this relationship is that trade creates an

economically independent and politically aware middle class, which, in turn, presses for political reform. It's not clear that this argument actually holds up when subjected to close causal scrutiny (although the
reverse does seem to be true -- i.e., democratic reform creates pressure for trade liberalization). Still, it's difficult to disagree with the proposition that by enabling visiting scholars and religious groups to stay in Cuba for up to two years (as the presidential order would allow) rather than a matter of weeks (as is currently the case) we'd be helping, not hurting, democracy in Cuba. First, easing the current travel restrictions would allow for far deeper linkages between non-governmental organizations from both countries, which some see as a powerful mechanism for democratic reform. Second, because American visitors would be staying on the island longer, scholars and activists alike would gain much better insight into where the pressure points for democracy actually exist.

The embargo fails outdated and counter-productive 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)
5. It doesn't work. Of course, if the embargo were the last outpost of Cold War politics and it produced results, that might be an argument for continuing it. But scholars and analysts of economic sanctions have repeatedly questioned the efficacy of economic statecraft against rogue states unless and until there's been regime change. And that's because, as one scholar put it, "interfering with the market (whether using sanctions, aid, or other government policies) has real economic costs, and we rarely know enough about how the target economy works or how to manipulate the political incentives of the target government to achieve our goals." 6. It's counter-productive. Isolating Cuba has been more than ineffective. It's also provided the Castro brothers with a convenient political scapegoat for the country's ongoing economic problems, rather than drawing attention to their own mismanagement. Moreover, in banning the shipment of information-technology

products, the United States has effectively assisted the Cuban government in shutting out information from the outside world, yet another potential catalyst for democratization.

Embargo prevents true democratization our evidence assumes insufficient status quo reforms Cuba Study Group 2/20 Cuba Study Group, a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization, that aims to facilitate change, help empower individuals and promote civil society development. (Restoring Executive Authority Over U.S. Policy Toward Cuba, Cuba Study Group, February 20, 2013, http://www.cubastudygroup.org/index.cfm/files/serve?File_id=45d8f827-174c-4d43-aa2fef7794831032, accessed: 7/3/13, LR)
The codification of the U.S. embargo against Cuba has failed to accomplish its objectives, as stated in Helms-Burton, of causing regime change and restoring democracy in Cuba. Continuing to ignore this obvious truth is not only coun- terproductive to the interests of the United States, but also increasingly damaging to Cuban civil society, including the more than 400,000 Cubans now working as licensed private entrepreneurs, because it places the burden of sanc- tions squarely on their shoulders to bear. At a time when Cuba seems headed toward a path of change and reforms, albeit slower than desired, and a real debate seems to be emerging within Cubas elite regarding its future, the inflexibility of U.S. policy has the ironic effect of hurt- ing and delaying the very changes it seeks to produce by severely

limiting Cubas ability to implement major economic reforms and strengthening the hand of the reactionaries, rather than the reformers, within the Cuban government.
Moreover, Helms-Burton and related statutory provisions in Torricelli and TSRA deny the United States the flexibility to address dynamic conditions in Cuba in a strategic and proactive way. They effectively tie the Presidents hands in responding to developments on the Island, placing the impetus for taking advantage of the processes of change in Cuba in hands of hard-liners among Cubas ruling elites, whose interests are best served by the perpetuation of the embargo. The Cuba Study Group is publishing this whitepaper to acknowledge that a Cuba policy fundamentally based on blan- ket unilateral sanctions and isolation has been grossly ineffective for more than half a century; it disproportionately hurts the Cuban people and is counterproductive to the creation of an enabling transitional environment in Cuba where civil society can prosper and bring about the desired

social, political and economic changes for which we long. Embargo fails Castro uses it as a scapegoat for Cubas problems, continuing economic repression Bandow 12 Doug Bandow, senior fellow at Cato Institute, J.D. from Stanford University (Time to end the
Cuba embargo, Cato Institute, 12/11/12, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/time-end-cuba-embargo, Accessed 6/27/13)

The U.S. government has waged economic war against the Castro regime for half a century. The policy may have been worth a try during the Cold War, but the embargo has failed to liberate the Cuban people. It is time to end sanctions against Havana. Decades ago the Castro brothers lead a revolt against a nasty authoritarian, Fulgencio Batista. After coming to power in 1959, they created a police state, targeted U.S. commerce, nationalized American assets, and allied with the Soviet Union. Although Cuba was but a small island nation, the Cold War magnified its perceived importance.

Washington reduced Cuban sugar import quotas in July 1960. Subsequently U.S. exports were limited, diplomatic ties were severed, travel was restricted, Cuban imports were banned, Havanas American assets were frozen, and almost all travel to Cuba was banned. Washington also pressed its allies to impose sanctions. These various measures had no evident effect, other than to intensify Cubas reliance on the Soviet Union. Yet the collapse of the latter nation had no impact on U.S. policy. In 1992, Congress banned American subsidiaries from doing business in Cuba and in 1996, it penalized foreign firms that trafficked in expropriated U.S. property. Executives from such companies even were banned from traveling to America. On occasion Washington relaxed one aspect or another of the embargo, but in general continued to tighten restrictions, even over Cuban Americans. Enforcement is not easy, but Uncle Sam tries his best. For instance, according to the Government Accountability Office, Customs and Border Protection increased its secondary inspection of passengers arriving from Cuba to reflect an increased risk of embargo violations after the 2004 rule changes, which, among other things, eliminated the allowance for travelers to import a small amount of Cuban products for personal consumption. Lifting sanctions would be a victory not for Fidel Castro, but for the power of free people to spread liberty. Three years ago, President Barack Obama loosened regulations on Cuban Americans, as well as telecommunications between the United States and Cuba. However, the law sharply constrains the presidents discretion. Moreover, UN Ambassador Susan Rice said that the embargo will continue until Cuba is free. It is far past time to end the embargo. During the Cold War, Cuba offered a potential advanced military outpost for the Soviet Union. Indeed, that role led to the Cuban missile crisis. With the failure of the U.S.-supported Bay of Pigs invasion, economic pressure appeared to be Washingtons best strategy for ousting the Castro dictatorship. However, the end of the Cold War left Cuba strategically irrelevant. It is a poor country with little ability to harm the United States. The Castro regime might still encourage unrest, but its survival has no measurable impact on any important U.S. interest. The regime remains a humanitarian travesty, of course. Nor are Cubans the only victims: three years ago the regime jailed a State Department contractor for distributing satellite telephone equipment in Cuba. But Havana is not the only regime to violate human rights. Moreover, experience has long demonstrated that it is virtually impossible for outsiders to force democracy. Washington often has used sanctions and the Office of Foreign Assets Control currently is enforcing around 20 such programs, mostly to little effect. The policy in Cuba obviously has failed. The regime remains in power. Indeed, it has consistently used the embargo to justify its own mismanagement, blaming poverty on America. Observed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: It is my personal belief that the Castros do not want to see an end to the embargo and do not want to see normalization with the United States, because they would lose all of their excuses for what hasnt happened in Cuba in the last 50 years. Similarly, Cuban exile Carlos Saladrigas of the Cuba Study Group argued that keeping the embargo, maintaining this hostility, all it does is strengthen and embolden the hardliners. Cuban human rights activists also generally oppose sanctions. A decade ago I (legally) visited Havana, where I met Elizardo Sanchez Santa Cruz, who suffered in communist prisons for eight

years. He told me that the sanctions policy gives the government a good alibi to justify the failure of the totalitarian model in Cuba. Indeed, it is only by posing as an opponent of Yanqui Imperialism that Fidel Castro has achieved an international reputation. If he had been ignored by Washington, he never would have been anything other than an obscure authoritarian windbag. Unfortunately, embargo supporters never let reality get in the way of their arguments. In 1994, John Sweeney of the Heritage Foundation declared that the embargo remains the only effective instrument available to the U.S. government in trying to force the economic and democratic concessions it has been demanding of Castro for over three decades. Maintaining the embargo will help end the Castro regime more quickly. The latters collapse, he wrote, is more likely in the near term than ever before. Almost two decades later, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, retains faith in the embargo: The sanctions on the regime must remain in place and, in fact, should be strengthened, and not be altered. One of the best definitions of insanity is continuing to do the same thing while expecting to achieve different results. The embargo survives largely because of Floridas political importance. Every presidential candidate wants to win the Sunshine States electoral votes, and the Cuban American community is a significant voting bloc. 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.

Ending the embargo would have obvious economic benefits for both Cubans and Americans. The U.S. International Trade Commission estimates American losses alone from the embargo as much as $1.2 billion annually. Expanding economic opportunities also might increase pressure within Cuba for further economic reform. So far the regime has taken small steps, but rejected significant change. Moreover, thrusting more Americans into Cuban society could help undermine the ruling system. Despite Fidel Castros decline, Cuban politics remains largely static. A few human rights activists have been released, while Raul Castro has used party purges to entrench loyal elites. Lifting the embargo would be no panacea. Other countries invest in and trade with Cuba to no obvious political impact. And the lack of widespread economic reform makes it easier for the regime rather than the people to collect the benefits of trade, in contrast to China. Still, more U.S. contact would have an impact. Argued trade specialist Dan Griswold, 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. The Castro dictatorship ultimately will end up in historys dustbin. But it will continue to cause much human hardship along the way. The Heritage Foundations John Sweeney complained nearly two decades ago that the United States must not abandon the Cuban people by relaxing or lifting the trade embargo against the communist regime. But the dead hand of half a century of failed policy is the worst breach of faith with the Cuban people. Lifting sanctions would be a victory not for Fidel Castro, but for the power of free people to spread liberty. As Griswold argued, commercial engagement is the best way to encourage more open societies abroad. Of course, there are no guarantees. But lifting the embargo would have a greater likelihood of success than continuing a policy which has failed. Some day the Cuban people will be free. Allowing more contact with Americans likely would make that day come sooner.

Lifting restrictions on Cuba creates a free, political atmosphere that supports the flow of information and goods Pascual et. al. 09 Carlos Pascual, director of foreign policy at Brookings Institution ( Gustavo Arnavat
Attorney at law Ann Louise Bardach Author/Journalist University of California Santa Barbara dr. ramon Cols Co-Director Center for the Understanding of Cubans of African Descent dr. Jorge i. domnguez Vice-provost for international Affairs Antonio Madero professor of Mexican and latin American politics and Economics Harvard University daniel erikson Senior Associate for U.S. policy Director of Caribbean programs inter-American Dialogue dr. Mark falcoff resident Scholar Emeritus American Enterprise institute dr. damin J. fernndez provost and Executive Vice president purchase College dr. Andy s. Gomez Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings institution Assistant provost, University of Miami Senior Fellow, institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies Jess Gracia Former Spanish Ambassador to Cuba paul hare Former British Ambassador to Cuba francisco J. (pepe) hernndez president Cuban American National Foundation dr. William LeoGrande Dean, School of public Affairs American University dr. Marifeli prez-stable Vice president for Democratic Governance inter-American Dialogue Jorge r. pin Energy Fellow Center for Hemispheric policy University of Miami dr. Archibald ritter Distinguished research professor Emeritus Department of Economics and Norman paterson School of international Affairs Carleton University Andrs rozental Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings institution Former Deputy Foreign Minister of Mexico Carlos saladrigas CoChairman Cuba Study Group, Cuba: A New Policy of Critical and Constructive Engagement Brookings, April 2009,

Accessed 6/26/13, http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2009/4/cuba/0413_cuba.pdf)

The more open travel and remittance measures put in place by the Clinton administration in 1998 and continued by the Bush administration until 2003 contributed to creating the conditions that brought about a more open political atmosphere. During the period now known as the Cuban Spring, Oswaldo pay, leader of the Varela project, worked with Cubas human rights activists to collect 11,000 signatures on a petition that requested a referendum on the Cuban constitution. Former president Jimmy Carter gave a speech at the University of Havana in Spanish in which he asked Fidel Castrowho was sitting in the front rowto permit the vote; the speech was broadcast live throughout the island. Martha Beatriz roque, an important dissident leader, held a national assembly to advocate reforms to the Cuban government. religious groups, with help from their American counterparts, provided equipment, food, and medicines to sister organizations that bolstered outreach to their communities. Students from colleges throughout the United States studying in Cuba were engaged in a lively discussion with students, academics, and people across the island. The presence of licensed American and Cuban American visitors provided moral support, advice, and assistance to diverse civil society institutions, allowing them to expand and more effectively assist their membership. And,

interventions by U.S. government and private sector personalities with high-level Cuban officials resulted in reducing repression against dissidents, human rights activists, independent journalists, and librarians. This more fluid and open atmosphere was essential to the growth of civil society
and to the freedoms and creation of spaces in which human rights activists and dissidents could operate. president Obama should replicate these conditions through unilateral and unconditional actions that promote enhanced human contact by generously licensing all categories of travel permitted in the TSrA. He should, first, follow his campaign promise to grant[ing] Cuban Americans unrestricted rights to family travel and to send

remittances to the island, since Cuban American connections to family are our best tool for helping fto foster the beginnings of grass-roots democracy on the island. Further, the president should expand travel for all American citizens and permanent residents by instructing the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to license people-to-people travel for educational, cultural, and humanitarian purposes.
Cuban citizens should also be permitted to travel to the United States for a variety of purposes including family, academic and cultural visitsin order to enhance their understanding of our open and democratic society. The Secretary of State should instruct the Department of State and the United States interests Section (USiNT) in Havana to use standard criteria applied around the world for awarding non-immigrant visas to Cubans. This more tolerant approach would strengthen the bonds of family and culture, while helping the Cuban people improve their lives and grow the social organizations necessary for a democratic civil society .

Diplomatic travel and interaction must be reciprocally expanded so that our diplomats in Havana have the knowledge, access, and expertise needed to predict, evaluate, and deal with any eventuality in Cuba. This requires permitting comparable opportunities to Cuban diplomats posted in
Washington. There is little the United States has to fear by allowing Cuban diplomats to see for themselves the realities of American life. To reduce illegal migration, enhance our security, and conserve our fisheries, the State Department should resume migration talks at the Deputy Assistant Secretary level and begin a dialogue between the respective heads of the interests Sections on other issues of mutual concern, including the environment, health, and counter-narcotics. The devastation caused by hurricanes that struck Cuba in 2008 generated considerable concern among Cubans in the United States and among the broader American public. Unfortunately,

disagreements and distrust between our governments prevented the United States from assisting with relief efforts. in order to avoid a recurrence of this impasse, the Department of State should seek an understanding or agreement with the Cuban government that would permit U.S. assistance to Cuba for natural disasters. Measures are now in place to ensure that public resources that provide support to
the Cuban people are well used by USAiD grantees. However, large contracts concluded in the final months of the Bush administration with non-profit organizations and private companies that are said to promote or manage a transition in Cuba may not reflect the current administrations objectives. A review should be conducted to determine whether these contracts should be continued, modified, or canceled. Additionally, although OFAC has always had the authority to license the importation of lifesaving medicines developed in Cuba for testing by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), it has made the process cumbersome and lengthy. The sad conclusion is that OFAC has been more concerned with the financial benefits that might accrue to Cuba than with the potential

of these medicines to treat children with brain tumors and adults with lung cancer or meningitis. To

reduce bureaucratic hurdles and permit the speedy entry of life-saving medications into the United States, OFAC regulations should be modified or reinterpreted so that the only barrier to the entry of Cuban manufactured medicines is that they meet FDA standardsthe same criteria that apply to all medical imports. The president should also seek to promote the free flow of ideas and information, including the creation of music, films, and other works of art as embodied in representative
Howard Bermans 1988 Free Trade in ideas Act. Despite the prohibition against the U.S. government restricting the importation of all informational materials, successive administrations have narrowly interpreted the Berman Act in order to prohibit Americans from creating music, films, and other artistic works with Cubans. These prohibitions were not intended by the statutes and should be removed. The aforementioned initiatives are noncontroversial and widely supported by the American public. More controversialalthough still enjoying widespread public supportwould be licensing the sale and donation of all communications equipment, including radios, televisions, and computers. The CDA recognized the importance of expanding access to ideas, knowledge, and information by authorizing the licensing of telecommunications goods and services. U.S. government financing of books and radios that are distributed to Cubans throughout the island demonstrates a belief that breaking down the barriers to the flow of information

is critical to promoting change in Cuba. The president should therefore instruct the Department of Commerce
and OFAC to internally change their respective licensing policies with regard to Cuba from a presumption of denial to a presumption of approval with respect to items deemed to be in the U.S. national interest for Cuba to receive, including laptops, cell phones and other telecommunications equipment, computer peripherals, internet connection equipment, as well as access to satellite and broadband communications networks. The following initiatives that would provide assistance for civil society and for activities that help the Cuban people become agents for change would require, in some cases, a formal understanding with the Cuban government, and, in others, at least a willingness to permit the activity. We believe that if these activities were permitted by the United States and the Cuban governments, they would help to prepare the Cuban people for assuming a greater role in their governance. The U.S. government should act to enhance the flow of resources to the Cuban people. it

should license U.S. non-governmental organizations and private individuals to transfer funds to individuals and civil society organizations in Cuba that work to foster a more open society. The United States should also encourage the creation of multilateral funds that promote the same objective. Such
assistance should not be subject to an ideological test but rather be available to Cuban civic entities in the form of microcredit for small businesses and for salaries of persons engaged by civil society to provide community services, among others. Although the U.S. government currently manages an assistance program for Cuba, it is limited by sanctions regulations and is narrowly focused. Much of the assistanceamounting principally to inkind goodsis difficult to deliver due to the opposition of the Cuban government either to the type of assistance or to the groups or individuals receiving it. in order to better serve the needs of civil society in Cuba, the U.S. government should seek to obtain the approval of the Cuban government for an assistance program

that would provide financial and in-kind assistance for activities that advance human rights and the rule of law, encourage microenterprise, and promote educational, and professional exchanges. The issue of whether Cuba should be classified by the U.S. government as a terrorist state has
many supporters and detractors. However, the reasons listed for Cubas inclusion on the list appear to be insufficient, thus leading to charges that the list is a political tool for appeasing domestic constituencies. in order to ensure that this important vehicle in U.S. policy is used appropriately, a review of the evidence should be conducted. if Cuba is legitimately found to be a terrorist state based on the evidence over the last five years, it should remain on the list; if not, it should be removed. Finally, it is in our interest to see Cuba reintegrated into the Organization of American States (OAS) if it meets membership standards of democracy, human rights, and transparency. To this end, and in order to provide incentives for reform, the United Sates should not

object to the OAS Secretary General discussing with Cuba the requirements for reinstatement as a full member. in addition, the United States should not object to Cubas participation in OAS specialized and technical agencies. Medium-Term Initiatives The second basket of initiatives is distinct from the first because it
moves beyond enhancing the ability of Cubans to take a more proactive and informed part in their society and

government. The initiatives in the second basket seek to build a foundation for reconciliation by beginning a process of resolving long-standing differences. A number of these initiatives could serve as incentives or rewards for improved human rights, the release of political prisoners, and greater freedom of assembly, speech and rights for opposition groups and labor unions. initiatives that fall within this category include allowing Cuba access to normal commercial instruments for the purchase of goods from the United States. None of the initiatives, however, should be publicly or privately tied to specific Cuban actions. As the Cuban government is on record as rejecting any type of carrot-and-stick tactic, it would be counterproductive to do so. rather, the United States should decide the actions that it wishes to take and when to carry them out. Doing so will give the president maximum flexibility in determining how and when to engage.

Embargo causes democratization China proves Harding and Rojas-Ruiz 12 Andrew Harding and Jorge Rojas-Ruiz, research associates on the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (An Economic Analysis of the Cuban Embargo, Council on the Hemispheric Affairs, 8/24/12, Proquest, Accessed 7/3/13, AM) Washington's decision to continue the embargo against Cuba is, at best, hypocritical. China, another nominally communist country with even more backward human rights policies than Cuba, has reaped the benefits of free trade with the U.S. since in 2001. The 2011 report from conservative think tank Freedom House gave low scores in political rights and in civil liberties to both Cuba and China, listing the two countries among the most repressive in the world. Yet China has had the opportunity to trade with the United States and has used it to foster economic development within its borders. As a result of significant increases in agricultural output, the percentage of the population living below the poverty line declined from 63 percent in 1981 to 10 percent in 2004, bringing five-hundred million people above the poverty line within 23 years. While China's protection of civil and political liberties remains far from desirable, according to the National Center for Policy Analysis, through the development of a legal system in China that encourages property rights, " trade is anchoring the process of democratization ". The correlation between trade and the development of durable legal institutions provides an example that Cuban and U.S. officials should consider. Reflections Clearly, Cuba has plenty of potential for economic development and trade, but nothing will be realized unless United States repeals the embargo. Recent moves by Cuba's Raul Castro indicate that the government is willing and able to sit down with the U.S. and discuss differences in order to achieve consensus. In recent remarks, Castro emphasized that the discourse must be "a conversation between equals," and that "any day they [the United States] want, the table is set," signaling an important step towards more conciliatory interactions. The U.S. should act upon Senator Richard Lugar' s February 2009 report from the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations and implement his recommended policy changes by "seizing the initiative... [which] would relinquish a conditional posture that has made any policy changes contingent on Havana, not Washington." Conclusions The world has fundamentally changed since Castro's coup in 1959. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the weak arguments behind the embargo became completely illogical, as the so-called communist threat no longer exists. Additionally, Cuba's revolutionary leaders are dead or dying and the country has made steps towards reform. Even America's staunchest allies have realized the folly of the sanction and have disregarded the policy. Moreover, the United Nations has passed repeated resolutions against the embargo. In 201 1, for the 20th consecutive year, the UN

General Assembly reiterated its call for an end to the U.S. embargo on Cuba that has restricted economic, commercial and financial flow for over fifty years. All told, there exists no solid political or economic logic for Washington to continue the embargo. The United States risks being left behind as the world moves on and does business with a nation only 90 miles from its soil. It is worth re-examining the basic motivations of the American people and the interests that lie closest to their hearts. Calvin Coolidge, the 30th US president, summed up these motivations best when he stated, "After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world." The US would be wise to follow his advice. Embargo ineffective at promoting democracy Amash 12- Brandon Amash, writer at the Prospect Journal, (EVALUATING THE CUBAN EMBARGO, 7/23/12, http://prospectjournal.org/2012/07/23/evaluating-thecuban-embargo/, 6/28/13, CAS) 3.1: The American embargo is not sufficient to democratize Cuba and improve human rights.
Without the help and support of multilateral institutions, economic sanctions on Cuba have been ineffective. As other states trade and interact freely with Cuba, the lack of partnership with America is only a minor hindrance to Cubas economy. Moreover, the sanctions are detrimental to the United States economy, as Cuba could potentially be a geostrategic economic partner. More importantly, since economic sanctions are not directly related to the goal of improved human rights, the effect of these sanctions is also unrelated; continued economic sanctions against Cuba create no incentive for the Cuban government to promote better human rights, especially when the sanctions do not have international support. Empirically, it is clear that since its inception, the policy has not succeeded in promoting democratization or improving human rights. Something

more must be done in order to improve the situation.

Embargo strengthens Castro and stops democracy Amash 12- Brandon Amash, writer at the Prospect Journal, (EVALUATING THE CUBAN EMBARGO, 7/23/12, http://prospectjournal.org/2012/07/23/evaluating-thecuban-embargo/, 6/28/13, CAS) 3.2: American sanctions during the Cold War strengthened Castros ideological position and created opportunities for involvement by the Soviet Union, thereby decreasing the likelihood of democratization
and improvement in human rights. Cubas revolution could not have come at a worse time for America. The emergence of a communist state in the western hemisphere allowed the Soviet Union to extend its influence, and the United States rejection of Cuba only widened the window of opportunity for Soviet involvement . The embargo also became a scapegoat for the Castro administration, which laid blame for poor human rights conditions on the embargo policy itself (Fontaine 18 22). Furthermore, as Ratliff and Fontaine suggest, isolating Cuba as an enemy of democracy during the Cold War essentially made the goals of democratization in the country unachievable (Fontaine 30). While the embargo may have been strategic during the Cold War as a bulwark against communism, the long-term effects of the policy have essentially precluded the possibility for democracy in Cuba. Even after the end of the Cold War, communism persists in Cuba and human rights violations are systemic; Americas policy has not achieved its goals and has become a relic of the Cold War era. The

prospects for democracy and improvement in human rights seem as bleak as ever.

Lifting the embargo promote liberalization in Cuba McElvaine 11- Robert McElvaine, professor of history at Millsaps college, (Lift the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba, 9/8/11, http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/08/opinion/la-oemcelvaine-cuba-20110908, 7/4/13, CAS) Make no mistake: Cuba is not a free country. Conditions have improved, though, and we have been able to walk
about on our own and talk with anyone we meet. Many Cubans take a justified pride in the accomplishments of their country since the revolution, particularly in healthcare and education. But it is obvious that there is substantial discontent with the status quo under the Castro brothers. Over the last decade, a two-class system has developed in which those who can work in the tourist industry make much more than other Cubans do. Many professionals who, in order to earn a decent living, are obliged to work as bellmen, waiters, bartenders, elevator operators and the like are seething with anger. So, clearly, is a difficult-to-gauge percentage of the much larger number of Cubans who have no opportunity to get those jobs. Cubans we meet on the streets are very curious about the United States. Ending the embargo would also mean U.S. citizens could travel to Cuba without restrictions. The more Americans who come here, the greater the desire of the Cuban people for more freedom will become. Fidel Castro is 85 and ailing; Raul is 80. An influx of Americans is almost certain to strengthen the forces for liberalization in Cuba.

Embargo hurts Cubans and helps Castros Griswold 09- Daniel Griswold, director of the Cato center for trade policies, (Obama Should Lift Embargo on Cuba Immediately, 6/16/09, http://www.opposingviews.com/i/obama-should-lift-embargo-on-cuba-immediately, 7/4/13, CAS) The embargo has been a failure by every measure. It has not changed the course or nature of the Cuban government. It has not liberated a single Cuban citizen. In fact, the embargo has made the Cuban people a bit more impoverished, without making them one bit more free. At the same time, it has deprived Americans of their freedom to travel and has cost US farmers and other producers billions of dollars of potential exports. As a tool of US foreign policy, the embargo actually enhances the Castro government's standing by giving it a handy excuse for the failures of the island's Caribbean-style socialism. Brothers Fidel and Raul
can rail for hours about the suffering the embargo inflicts on Cubans, even though the damage done by their communist policies has been far worse. The embargo has failed to give us an ounce of extra leverage over what happens in Havana. In 2000, Congress approved a modest opening of the embargo. The Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act allows cash-only sales to Cuba of US farm products and medical supplies. The results of this modest opening have been quite amazing. Since 2000, total sales of farm products to Cuba have increased from virtually zero to $691m in 2008. The top US exports by value are corn, meat and poultry, wheat and soybeans. From dead last, Cuba is now the number six customer in Latin America for US agricultural products. Last year, American farmers sold more to the 11.5 million people who live in Cuba than to the 200 million people in Brazil. According to the US international trade commission, US farm exports would increase another $250m if restrictions were lifted on export financing. This should not be interpreted as a call for export-import bank subsidies. Trade with Cuba must be entirely commercial and market driven. Lifting the embargo should not mean that US taxpayers must now subsidise exports to Cuba. But neither should the government stand in the way. USITC estimates do not capture the long-term export potential to Cuba from normalised relations. The Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Guatemala spend an average of 2.8% of their GDP to buy farm exports from the US. If Cuba spent the same share of its GDP on US farm exports, exports could more than double the current level, to $1.5bn a year.

Advocates of the embargo argue that trading with Cuba will only put dollars into the coffers of the Castro regime. And it's true that the government in Havana, because it controls the economy, can skim off a large share of the remittances and tourist dollars spent in Cuba. But of course, selling more US products to Cuba would quickly relieve the Castro regime of those same dollars.
If more US tourists were permitted to visit Cuba, and at the same time US exports to Cuba were further liberalised, the US economy could reclaim dollars from the Castro regime as fast as the regime could acquire them. In effect, the exchange would be of agricultural products for tourism services, a kind of "bread for beaches", "food for fun" trade relationship. Meanwhile, the increase in Americans visiting Cuba would dramatically increase contact between Cubans and Americans. The unique US-Cuban relationship that flourished before Castro could be renewed,

which would increase US influence and potentially hasten the decline of the communist regime. Congress and President Barack Obama should act now to lift the embargo to allow more travel and farm exports to Cuba. Expanding our freedom to travel to, trade with and invest in Cuba would make Americans
better off and would help the Cuban people and speed the day when they can enjoy the freedom they deserve.

Embargo helps Castro and hurts economy Walther 12- Nick Walther, graduate of Emerson college, (The Cuba Embargo Is Hurting Men, 12/7/12, http://goodmenproject.com/politics-2/the-cuba-embargo-is-hurting-men/, 7/4/13, CAS) The continuation of the embargo was meant to weaken Fidel Castros communist regime and make the
lives of Cubans so unbearable that the government would have no choice but to respond to the pressure of the United States and the Cuban people to liberalize their economy and democratize their politics. The embargo has failed miserably to achieve this objective. In fact, the embargo has likely strengthened the Castro regime, by providing an easy scapegoat for state propaganda to blame all of Cubas ills on. The embargo has served to validate Castros portrayal of the United States as the neocolonial hegemony of the region: determined to subjugate the people of Cuba and Latin America and reincarnate the tyranny of Batista, the pre-revolutionary tyrant backed by the United States because of his friendly relations with American business. Cubans dont blame their own government for the stranglehold pl aced on them by the most powerful country in the world. The embargo has also served to aimlessly punish the Cuban people, even complicating, with its archaic rules, the availability of medical supplies in the country. Although American medical exports are permitted, the red tapedesigned to thwart a nonexistent military threathas proven insurmountable for the hospitals, clinics, and offices where they are most needed. This undermines Americas reputation as a humanitarian nation. The only thing that the embargo has done successfully is cost the American economy $1.2 billion every year in lost sales and exports. With the economy still struggling, it is unacceptable for American companies to lose the chance to create jobs and expand business with a country ni nety miles from Florida. Whats more, with men having lost a disproportionate number of the jobs in the present recession, ending the embargo would encourage trade, helping shore up the manufacturing and shipping sectors, traditionally male jobs that have suffered severe cutbacks. Every year since 1992,The United Nations General Assembly has condemned the embargo as illegal, with the only two nations regularly voting against such a condemnation being America and Israel. Doesnt this annual denunciation complicate our countrys reputation as one run by the rule of law?

Lifting the embargo rushes changes Cave 12- Damien Cave, foreign correspondent for the New York Times, (Cuban embargo: Should U.S. loosen it? 11/22/12,

http://www.denverpost.com/entertainment/ci_22042074/cuban-embargo-should-u-sloosen-it, 7/4/13, CAS)

Still, in a country where Cubans "resolve" their way around government restrictions every day (private deals with customs agents are common), many Cubans anticipate real benefits should the U.S. change course. Lopez, a meticulous mechanic who wears plastic gloves to avoid dirtying his fingers, said legalizing imports and investment would create a flood of the supplies that businesses needed, overwhelming the government's controls while lowering prices and creating more work apart from the state. Other Cubans, including political dissidents, say softening the embargo would increase the pressure

for more rapid change by undermining one of the government's main excuses for failing to provide freedom, economic opportunity or just basic supplies. Embargo will not solve democracy empirics Johnson, Spector and Lilac 10 - Andy Johnson, Director, National Security Program, Kyle Spector, Policy Advisor, National Security Program , Kristina Lilac, National Security Program, Senior Fellows of The Third Way Institute, (End the Embargo of Cuba, Article for The Third Way Institute, 9/16/10, http://content.thirdway.org/publications/326/Third_Way_Memo__End_the_Embargo_of_Cuba.pdf, Accessed 7/02/13, AW) Peter Hakim, President of the Inter - American Dialogue, has rightly argued that a democratic society in Cuba should be the objective of U.S. engagement, not a precondition. 11 Vietnam and China both fall under the rule of communi st leadership, yet the US has taken steps to establish formal diplomatic relations and open trade with both countries. Cuba should not

continue to be the exception . Others have argued that US - Cuba cooperation on issues
cou ld benefit both countries and initiate trust - building among the two countries. Policymakers on both sides of the aisle can agree that the embargo has failed to meet its stated purpose of bringing change to Cubas communist government, making a change in c ourse a necessary next step. Lifting the antiquated embargo would help to move Cuba into the 21 st century, removing the barriers currently preventing the US from engaging Cuba and presenting the US with an opportunity to bring about change in Cuba through economic and diplomatic channels. By opening Cuba, the US could finally achieve the change it has been seeking for nearly fifty years.
such as counter - narcotics efforts

Solves democracy trade makes countries more democratic studies prove Zimmerman 10 CHELSEA A. ZIMMERMAN, Fellow of the Center for The Study of the
Presidency and Congress, Member of The Juvenile Rights Project and the Legal Aid Society, Barnard College, (Rethinking The Cuban Trade Embargo: An Opportune Time To Mend a Broken Policy, The Presidency 2010 Fellows, NO DATE (Paper was written in 2010), http://www.thepresidency.org/storage/documents/Fellows2010/Zimmerman.pdf, Accessed 6/27/13, AW) A policy environment open to international trade and investment is a necessary i ngredient to sustain higher rates of economic growth and to promote political freedom through exposure to new technology, communications, and democratic ideas (G riswold, 1; Sachs and Warner). Allowing Cuba to more freely import U.S. food is a means of lowering domestic prices and increasing incomes of the poor, food availability and domestic production. U.S. companies

will introduce new tech nologies and production methods, while raising wages and labor standards as a result of trading with Cuba. The additional creation of wealth will help to adva nce social, political, and economic conditions independent of the governing au thorities in Cuba. The most economically open countries today are more than thr ee times as likely to enjoy full political and civil freedoms as those that are rela tively closed (Griswold, 1).

Human Rights Credibility extns.

Embargo is a systemic violation of human rights and an act of genocide UNGA 12 United Nations General Assembly,(Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the
United States of America against Cuba,cubavsbloqueo.cu,5/12,http://www.cubavsbloqueo.cu/informebloqueo2012/Idiomas/1206%20 informe%20bloqueo%202012%20Ingles.pdf,Accessed:7/3/13,JW)

The policy of blockade against Cuba persists and has been intensified despite the attempts of and growing protests by the international community to have the US government change its policy towards Cuba, lift the blockade and normalize bilateral relations between the two countries. The blockade violates International Law; it is contrary to the
purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter and constitutes a violation39 of the right to peace, development and security of a sovereign State. Its

objectives are an act of mass, flagrant and systematic violation of the human rights of an entire people and qualifies as an act of genocide by virtue of the Geneva Convention of 1948
essence and
on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. It

also violates the constitutional rights of the American people, since it puts restrictions on their freedom to travel to Cuba. Moreover, given its extraterritorial character, it violates the sovereign rights of many other States. The economic damage caused to the Cuban people by the application of the economic, commercial and financial blockade of the United States against Cuba until December of 2011, taking into account the devaluation of the dollar vis--vis the price of gold and the world market, amounts to 1 trillion 66 billion (1,066,000,000,000) dollars. At current prices, and based on a very conservative estimate, this figure exceeds 108 billion (108,000,000,000) dollars. The blockade continues to be an absurd, obsolete, illegal and morally unsustainable policy; it has not

succeeded, nor will it succeed, in its attempt to subjugate the patriotic decision of the Cuban people to preserve their
sovereignty, independence and right to free selfdetermination. But

it generates shortages and sufferings for the population, it imposes limitations on and delays the development of the country and seriously damages the economy of Cuba . It is
the main obstacle to the economic and social development of the Island. The blockade is a unilateral policy, rejected both inside the United States and by the international community. The United States must lift it, immediately and unconditionally. Once again, Cuba appreciates and requests the support of the international community in order to put an end to this unfair, illegal and inhuman policy.

Lifting trade embargo key to human rights improves US image Franks 12 Jeff Franks, writer at Reuters (Cuba says ending U.S. embargo would help both countries, Reuters,
9/20/12, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/20/us-cuba-usa-embargo-idUSBRE88J15G20120920, accessed: 6/27/13, ckr)

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.

(Reuters) - Both the

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.
Obama, who said early in his presidency that he wanted to recast long-hostile U.S.-Cuba relations, has been a disappointment to the Cuban government, which expected him to do more to dismantle the embargo.

Embargo oppresses Cuban peopleUS double standard Stephens 09Sarah Stephens, Director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas (U.N. Vote to Condemn
(Obama's?) Embargo on Cuba , Huff Post WORLD, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-stephens/un-vote-tocondemn-obamas_b_333722.html, Accessed 7/4/13, jtc)

Our policy is especially controversial in our own hemisphere, where the U.S. alone is without diplomatic relations
with Cuba, and where forum after forum -- including the Rio Group, the Ibero-American Summit, the Heads of State of Latin America and the Caribbean, and CARICOM -- has rejected the embargo and called for its repeal. Beyond our diplomatic interests, the report forces us to move beyond the stale, political debate in which the embargo is most often framed (where every problem on the island is blamed on either Cuba's system or U.S. policy) and to confront the significant injuries this policy inflicts on ordinary Cubans. It reminds us: The

embargo stops Cuba from obtaining diagnostic equipment or replacement parts for equipment used in the detection of breast, colon, and prostate cancer. The embargo stops Cuba from obtaining patented materials that are needed for pediatric cardiac surgery and the diagnosis of pediatric illnesses. The embargo prevents Cuba from purchasing antiretroviral drugs for the treatment of HIV-AIDS from U.S. sources of the medication. The embargo stops Cuba from obtaining needed supplies for the diagnosis of Downs' Syndrome. Under the embargo, Cuba cannot buy construction materials from the nearby U.S. market to assist in its hurricane recovery. While food sales are legal, regulatory impediments drive up the costs of commodities that Cuba wants to buy from U.S. suppliers, and forces them in many cases to turn to other more expensive and distant sources of nutrition for their people. Because our market is closed to their goods, Cuba cannot sell products like coffee, honey, tobacco, live lobsters and other items that would provide jobs and opportunities for average Cubans. This list, abbreviated for space, is actually much longer, more vivid and troubling, as the
report documents case after case of how our embargo affects daily life in Cuba. And for what reason? Because it will someday force the Cuban government to dismantle its system? As a bargaining chip? These arguments have proven false and futile over the decades and what the UN has been trying to tell us since 1992 is that they should be abandoned along with a policy that has so outlived its usefulness. And yet, it is now the Obama administration supporting and enforcing the embargo -- still following Bush-era rules that thwart U.S. agriculture sales; still levying stiff penalties for violations of the regulations; still stopping prominent Cubans from visiting the United States; still refusing to use its executive authority to allow American artists, the faith community, academics, and other proponents of engagement and exchange to visit Cuba as representatives of our country and its ideals. To his credit, President Obama has taken some useful steps to change U.S. policy toward Cuba. He repealed the cruel Bush administration rules on family travel that divided Cuban families. He joined efforts by the OAS to lift Cuba's suspension from that organization. He has opened a direct channel of negotiations with Cuba's government on matters that include migration, resuming direct mail service, and relaxing the restrictions that Cuban and U.S. diplomats face in doing their jobs in each of our nation's capitals. This is a start, but more -- much more

-- needs to be done. Not because the UN says so, but because our country needs to embrace the world not as we found it in 1959 -- or in 2008 -- but as it exists today. President Obama can do this.
Our times demand that he do so.

Embargo is unpopular and violates human rights Fox 11 Michael Fox, Michael Fox is a former editor of NACLA Report on the Americas, he is the co-author of the new book Latin Americas Turbulent Transitions: The Future of 21st Century Socialism (The UN and Human Rights: Condemning the U.S. Embargo of Cuba, North American Congress on Latin America, Oct 26 2011, https://nacla.org/news/2011/10/26/un-andhuman-rights-condemning-us-embargo-cuba, Accessed: 7/3/2013, EH)
On Tuesday, the UN General Assembly again voted overwhelming to condemn the U.S. embargo of Cuba. This was the 20th consecutive vote against the U.S. embargo. The final result was 186-2 in favor of the resolution. Like last year, only Israel and the United States voted against the measure while the island nations Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands abstained. 517 The United Nations (credit: CNN U.S.)Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said yesterday that the sanctions over the last five decades have caused the Cuban people nearly $1 trillion in economic damages. After a surprise visit to Cuba in April, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter also called for an end of the embargo. But as William M. LeoGrande, the Dean of the American University School of Public Affairs, wrote in the July/August 2011 NACLA Report, a profound change in U.S. policy toward Cuba isnt likely any time soon. This is partially due to the fact that since the end of the Cold War the United States has justified its embargo against Cuba as a policy of human rights. The embargo is one aspect of U.S. policy toward Cuba, whose overarching goal is to encourage a more open environment in Cuba and increased respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, said Ronald D. Godard, U.S. Senior Area Adviser for Western Hemisphere Af fairs, recently. However, according to international relations scholar Arturo Lpez-Levy in the most recent NACLA Report, the embargo itself actually

violates basic principles of the human rights model established by the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
[T]he problem with the embargo is that human rights as a whole have never been an essential consideration in its design, writes Lpez -Levy in his piece, " Chaos and Instability: Human Rights and U.S. Policy Goals in Cuba. One right above all others takes prece dence in U.S. Cuba policy: the right of Cuban exiles to reclaim their private properties that were nationalized during Cubas revolutionary proc ess after 1959. The embargo furthermore reflects Cuban exiles desire to punish those who do not accept them as the rulers of Cuba by including measures to purify the island of the current governments upper echelons and many of its followers.

The embargo causes human rights issues in Cuba, changing policy solves March 13 William March- Tribune Staff, quotes Rep. Kathy Castor of Tampa, (Castor to Obama: Reform outdated Cuba embargo, travel ban, The Tampa Tribune, April 23 2013, http://tbo.com/article/20130423/SERVICES02/130429992/1438, Accessed: 6/28/13, EH)
U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor of Tampa, fresh back from a trip to Cuba, has told President Barack Obama in a letter that the U.S. travel ban and trade embargo against Cuba are outdated, unproductive and harmful and should be reformed. In the four-page letter, Castor never quite says lift the embargo or end the travel ban, but she comes very close. America's policy of isolation toward Cuba, i.e. the travel ban and embargo of the last 50 years, has resulted in little change, she writes. It is time to refresh America's relationship with Cuba and develop a more humane and smarter approach than the outdated Cold War policies of the past. Castor also quotes the Human Rights Watch organization saying the embargo continues to impose indiscriminate hardship

on the Cuban people and has done nothing to improve human rights in Cuba.
She asks Obama to heed the words of many of the Cuban dissidents I have spoken to who urge America to give greater attention to its island neighbor, lift the embargo and promote modernization of civil society in Cuba. As she has before, Castor argues in the letter that Cuba has made significant changes in allowing free enterprise for its c itizens; that the travel restrictions violate the rights of Americans; that Cuba is not a state sponsor of terrorism; and that a policy of engagement would improve America's diplomatic standing in the region. She also notes Cuba's quick return of the two Hakken children abducted by their father in Tampa recently, and her own constituents' frequent need for help in making visits and contacts with family members in Cuba in instances of family emergencies.

Cuban embargo is inhumane DNO 12(Cuba makes case for lifting of US embargo, Dominica News Online, October 10 2012, http://dominicanewsonline.com/news/homepage/news/international-relations/cuba-makes-case-for-lifting-ofus-embargo/, Accessed: 7/4/13, EH)

The Cuban government is once again calling on the international community to support its call for the lifting of the trade embargo imposed by the United States. At a press conference, to garner local support, Cuban ambassador to Dominica Joanna Elena Ramos on Wednesday

described the embargo as an act of genocide.

The increased persecution of Cubas international financial transactions has been one of the distinctive features in the implementation of the blockade policy under the current US administration, she argued. For the 21st consecutive time Cuba on November 13th, 2012 will submit for the consideration of the UN General Assembly the draft resolution entitled Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba. Since its conception the resolution has been steadily gaining support from nations around the globe. Last year 186 member states voted in favor of the resolution, which according to Cuba is irrefutable proof that the battle for the lifting of the blockade has the recognition and support of the vast majority of the international community. But calls for lifting the embargo have fallen on deaf ears. In 2012 the US imposed a $619-million fine on the Dutch bank ING for making transactions with Cuba, in dollars. Actions like these due to the embargo are described by the Cuban ambassador as criminal and inhumane. The blockade

continues to be a criminal, inhumane and morally unsustainable policy that has not succeeded and will never succeed in fulfilling the purpose of breaking the political will of the Cuban people to preserve its sovereignty,
independence and right to self-determination, she stated. She said the embargo is having a devastating impact on Cuba. The direct economic damage to the Cuban people by the implementation of the economic, commercial and financial blockade of the United States against Cuba until December 2011 based on the current prices and calculated in a very conservative way, amount to over 108 billion dollars (108,000,000,000), she said. Taking into consideration the depreciation of the US dollar against the price of gold in the international financial m arket, the damages cost to the Cuban economy would exceed one trillion 66 thousand million dollars ($1,066,000,000,000). She also thanked the Dominican government for its continued support on the matter.

Cuban embargo is an extreme human rights abuse, medicine, development, and disaster relief Mingxin 10 Bi Mingxin, editor and columnist for xinhuanet.com (U.S. embargo denies right of Cubans to development: Venezuela, English.news.cn, 2010-10-27, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-10/27/c_13576914.htm, Accessed: 7/4/13, EH)
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Venezuela said here Tuesday that the U.S. embargo against Cuba is "a repeated and unilateral denial" of the right of the Caribbean island country and its people to development , and criticized the United States for continuing to "ignore the voice of the peoples of the world that demand the end of this genocidal policy." The statement came as Jorge Valero, Venezuela's permanent representative to the United Nations, was taking the floor at an open debate of the UN Security Council on "the necessity of ending economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States against Cuba." "The blockade is, in short, a repeatedly and unilateral denial, by a signatory to the United Nations Charter, of the right to development of another member states," he said. Valero, who also described the U.S. blockade as "criminal," said, "The blockade affects the legitimate interests of any sovereign state that legitimately decides to become a business partner of the Republic of Cuba, through the extraterritorial application of the U.S. legal system." The United States imposed the trade embargo on Cuba in early 1960s when both countries severed diplomatic ties. "The devastating collateral damage inflicted each day to the brotherly people of the island by the policy of the blockade, are unjustifiable," he said. "It would cause a massive humanitarian disaster in Cuba -- as recognized by the American Association of World Health -- if this nation did not have an extraordinary system of public health." "The blockade against Cuba has diverse impacts on the daily lives of women and men, children and the elderly," he said. " It manifests itself -- crudely -- in the way it affects the quality of life of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia,

which must do without the standard treatment for this disease ."
"The blockade also manifests in the difficulties of the people to have access to the enjoyment of housing rights," he said. "It

hinders the import of building materials needed to replace and repair the huge number of buildings affected by the hurricanes."
"The blockade generates millions in losses each year in Cuba 's basic industries: sugar, steel work and tourism," he said. Meanwhile, he said that the new U.S. government did nothing to change its policy towards Cuba and continued to ignore the voice of the world for an end to such an embargo.

"The change of government in the United States generated great expectations regarding a new policy respecting the sovereignty of nations," he said. "There is nothing that suggests, however, that there have been substantial changes in the foreign policy of the United States, in particular, in regards to the blockade against Cuba." "The U.S. government continues to ignore the voice of the peoples of the world that demand the end of this genocidal policy which represents a violation of human rights," he said.

Lifting the embargo improves the US humanitarian image, UN support Amnesty International 11 --- Amnesty International, world-renowned organization that addresses humanitarian issues (Amnesty International Annual Report 2011 Cuba, May 13, 2011, RefWorld, http://www.fln.dk/NR/rdonlyres/4858E8BD-DCC2-4AB8-AE3549EED9AE3222/0/cuba018_udg130511_opt080711.pdf, accessed June 27, 2013, MY) US embargo against Cuba The US embargo continued to affect the economic, social and cultural development of the Cuban people and in particular the most vulnerable groups. According to the UN Population Fund, treatments for children and young people with bone cancer and for patients suffering from cancer of the retina were not readily available because they were commercialized under US patents. The embargo also affected the procurement of antiretroviral drugs used to treat children with HIV/AIDS. Under the terms of the US embargo, medical equipment and medicines manufactured under US patents cannot be sold to the Cuban government. In September, US President Barack Obama renewed the extension of economic and financial sanctions against Cuba as
provided for in the Trading With the Enemy Act. In August, he relaxed travel restrictions on academic, religious and cultural groups under the "people-to-people" policy. For

the 19th consecutive year, a resolution calling on the USA to end its embargo against Cuba was adopted by an overwhelming majority (187 votes to two) in the UN General Assembly.

The embargo fails and causes humanitarian issues Bandow 12 --- Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a former special assistant to former US president Ronald Reagan (Time to End the Cuba Embargo, December 11, 2012, Cato Institute, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/time-end-cuba-embargo, accessed July 4, 2013, MY) The U.S. government has waged economic war against the Castro regime for half a century. The policy may have been worth a try during the Cold War, but the embargo has failed to liberate the Cuban people. It is time to end sanctions against Havana. Decades ago the Castro brothers lead a revolt against a
nasty authoritarian, Fulgencio Batista. After coming to power in 1959, they created a police state, targeted U.S. commerce, nationalized American assets, and allied with the Soviet Union. Although Cuba was but a small island nation, the Cold War magnified its perceived importance. Washington reduced Cuban sugar import quotas in July 1960. Subsequently U.S. exports were limited, diplomatic ties were severed, travel was restricted, Cuban imports were banned, Havanas American assets were frozen, and almost all travel to Cuba was banned. Washin gton also pressed its allies to impose sanctions. These various measures had no evident effect, other than to intensify Cubas reliance on the Soviet Union. Yet the collapse of the latter nation had no impact on U.S. policy. In 1992, Congress banned American subsidiaries from doing business in Cuba and in 1996, it penalized foreign firms that trafficked in expropriated U.S. property. Executives from such companies even were banned from traveling to America. On occasion Washington relaxed one aspect or another of the embargo, but in general continued to tighten restrictions, even over Cuban Americans. Enforcement is not easy, but Uncle Sam tries his best. For instance, according to the Government Accountability Office, Customs and Border Protection increased its secondary inspection of passengers arriving from Cuba to reflect an increased risk of embargo violations after the 2004 rule changes, which, among other things, eliminated the allowance for travelers to import a small amount of Cuban products for personal consumption. Lifting

sanctions would be a victory not for Fidel Castro, but for the power of free people to spread liberty. Three years ago, President Barack Obama loosened regulations on Cuban
Americans, as well as telecommunications between the United States and Cuba. However, the law sharply const rains the presidents discretion. Moreover, UN Ambassador Susan Rice said that the embargo will continue until Cuba is free. It

is far past time to end the embargo. During the Cold War, Cuba offered a potential advanced military outpost for the Soviet Union. Indeed, that role led to the Cuban
missile crisis. With the failure of the U.S.-supported Bay of Pigs invasion, economic pressure appeared to be Washingtons best strategy for

ousting the Castro dictatorship. However,

the end of the Cold War left Cuba strategically irrelevant. It is a poor country with little ability to harm the United States. The Castro regime might still encourage unrest, but its survival has no measurable impact on any important U.S. interest. The regime remains a humanitarian travesty, of course. Nor are Cubans the only victims: three years ago the regime jailed a State Department contractor for distributing satellite telephone equipment in Cuba. But Havana is not the only regime to violate
human rights. Moreover, experience has long demonstrated that it is virtually impossible for outsiders to force democracy. Washington often has used sanctions and the Office of Foreign Assets Control currently is enforcing around 20 such programs, mostly to little effect. The

policy in Cuba obviously has failed. The regime remains in power. Indeed, it has consistently used the embargo to justify its own mismanagement, blaming poverty on America. Observed Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton: It is my personal belief that the Castros do not want to see an end to the embargo and do not want to see normalization with the United States, because they would lose all of their excuses for what hasnt happened in Cuba in the last 50 years. Similarly, Cuban exile Carlos Saladrigas of the Cuba Study Group argued that keeping the embargo, maintaining this hostility, all it does is strengthen and embolden the hardliners.

Cuban human rights activists also generally oppose sanctions. A decade ago I (legally) visited Havana, where I met Elizardo Sanchez Santa Cruz, who suffered in communist prisons for eight years. He told me that the sanctions policy gives the government a good alibi to justify the failure of the totalitarian model in Cuba.

The embargos cost on Cuban people is immense 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 cost to the Cuban people has been huge. Besides the violence visited upon them by their repressive regime, there is also the economic and quality of life costs of isolation. Castroite resistance to democratic and economic reforms combines with the deleterious effects of the embargo. The Cuban people, who enjoyed one of the largest economies in the Western Hemisphere in 1959, suffer from poverty stemming from a paucity of jobs and medical problems caused by a lack of protein and vitamins in their diet. The one reason that no one mentions is that the embargo provides an excuse for the regimes tyranny. Dissidence is punished
by jail or execution. The 75 dissidents who met with the head of the U.S. interest section in Havana were imprisoned for sentences that averaged 17 years.

The government maintains a relatively large Ministry of the Interior to provide internal security. It also for the Defense of the Revolution [CDR]), which makes neighbors spy on neighbors and family members spy on each other. The government
maintains the Comits para la Defensa de la Revolucin (Committees points to U.S. actions as the reason for that internal security.

The embargo has hurt the Cuban people and caused a human rights violation AAWH 97 - American Association for World Health, private national organization in the U.S. dedicated to funneling a broad spectrum of
critical national and international health information to Americans [Denial of Food and Medicine: The Impact of the U.S. Embargo On The Health And Nutrition In Cuba, American Association for World Health, 3/1997, http://www.cubasolidarity.net/aawh.html, accessed: 6/27/13, JK] After a year-long investigation, the American Association for World Health has determined that the U.S. embargo of Cuba has

dramatically harmed the health and nutrition of large numbers of ordinary Cuban citizens. As documented by the attached report, it is our expert medical opinion that the U.S. embargo has caused a significant rise in suffering-and even deaths-in Cuba. For several decades the U.S. embargo has imposed significant financial burdens on the Cuban health care system. But since 1992 the number of unmet medical needs patients going without essential drugs or doctors performing medical procedures without adequate equipment-has sharply accelerated. This trend is directly linked to the fact that in 1992 the U.S. trade embargo-one of the most stringent embargoes of its kind, prohibiting the
sale of food and sharply restricting the sale of medicines and medical equipment-was further tightened by the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act. A humanitarian catastrophe has been averted only because the Cuban government has maintained a high level of budgetary support for a health care

system designed to deliver primary and preventive health care to all of its citizens. Cuba

still has an infant mortality rate half

that of the city of Washington, D.C.. Even so, the U.S. embargo of food and the de facto embargo on medical supplies has wreaked havoc with the island's model primary health care system. The crisis has been compounded by the
country's generally weak economic resources and by the loss of trade with the Soviet bloc.

Status quo is inhumane. Lloyd, 2011 [Delia Lloyd, Delia, freelance writer and political science professor at the University of Chicago,
Ten Reasons to Lift the Cuba Embargo, Politics Daily, 2011 , http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/08/24/ten reasons-to-lift-the-cuba-embargo/, Accessed: June 28, 2013, KH) It's inhumane. If strategic arguments don't persuade you that it's time to end the embargo, then perhaps humanitarian arguments will. For as anyone who's traveled to the island knows, there's a decidedly enclave-like feel to those areas of the economy where capitalism has been allowed to flourish in a limited sense (e.g. tourism) and the rest of the island, which feels very much like the remnant of an exhausted socialist economic model . When I went there in the 1990s with my sister, I remember the throngs of men who would cluster outside the tourist haunts. They'd hope to persuade visitors like me to pretend to be their escort so they could sneak into the fancier hotels and nightclubs, which they could not enter otherwise. Horse -- yes, horse-- was a common offering on menus back then. That situation has apparently eased in recent years as the government has opened up more sectors of the economy to ordinary Cubans. But the selective nature of that deregulation has only exacerbated economic inequalities. Again, one can argue that the problem here is one of poor domestic policy choices, rather than the embargo. But it's not clear that ordinary Cubans perceive that distinction. Moreover, when you stand in the airport and watch tourists disembark with bucket-loads of basic medical supplies, which they promptly hand over to their (native) friends and family, it's hard not to feel that U.S. policy is perpetuating an injustice.

Embargo currently violating human rights Charbonneau 12-Louis Charbonneau, is a journalist working for the Reuters news agency. He is
currently posted at the United Nations. He has been working for Reuters since 2001. He previously worked for BridgeNews (formerly Knight-Ridder Financial) and United Press International.(U.N. urges end to U.S. Cuba embargo for 21st year,reuters.com, Nov 13, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/13/us-cuba-embargo-un-idUSBRE8AC11820121113, June 28, 2013, KH) Rodriguez said the "extraterritoriality" of the blockade measures - the fact that Washington pressures other countries to adhere to the U.S. embargo - violates international law. He added that the blockade is not in U.S. interests and harms its credibility. "It leads the U.S. to adopt costly double standards," he said, adding that the embargo has failed to achieve its objectives of pressuring the government to introduce economic and political freedoms and comply with international human rights standards. "There is no legitimate or moral reason to maintain this embargo that is anchored in the Cold War," he said. He said it qualified as a "act of genocide" against Cuba and was a "massive, flagrant and systematic violation of the human rights of an entire people."

Embargo bad hurts Cuban people Karon 10 Tony Karon, senior editor at TIME (Do We Really Need an Embargo Against Cuba?, TIME,
4/21/10, http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,48773,00.html, 7/2/13, ckr) It actually helps keep Castro in power Never mind the fact that it's failed to dislodge him after 38 years, the embargo is

now Castro's catchall excuse for every ill that plagues his decaying socialist society. It helps him paint the U.S. as hostile and an imminent threat in the eyes of the Cuban people, which is how he rationalizes his

authoritarian politics. Opening the floodgates of trade will leave Castro with no excuses, and interaction with the U.S. will hasten the collapse of his archaic system.
What's good for China is good for Cuba

China is a lot more repressive than Cuba, and yet we've normalized trade relations with Beijing on the argument that trade will hasten reform and democratization. We're even lifting sanctions against North Korea despite the fact that their missile program is supposedly a threat to our skies, whereas the Pentagon has long since concluded that Cuba represents no threat to U.S. security. It's nonsensical to argue that
trade induces better behavior from communist regimes in China and North Korea, but will do the opposite in Cuba. It mostly hurts the people it's supposed to help You can be sure Fidel Castro isn't going to bed hungry and or suffering through a headache because

there's no Tylenol to be had. Yet millions of his people are suffering all manner of deprivations that the could be eased by lifting an embargo that's never going to overthrow him anyway. Stopping Cubans from benefiting from trade with the U.S. and interaction with American tourists leaves Castro unscathed, but it deprives the Cuban people of a taste of freedom that could only undermine a repressive regime.

Embargo hurts our international standing and Cuban human rights RT 12- (Condemnedagain: 'Genocidal' US embargo on Cuba slammed by UN for 21st year, 11/14/12, http://rt.com/news/cuba-embargo-un-vote-635/, 7/2/13, CAS) The UN has urged the US to lift the 52-year trade embargo with Cuba in an almost-unanimous vote. Cuba likened the blockade to genocide and said it was disappointed that Obama had not taken measures to
lift the disputed embargo. Of the 193 members of the UN assembly, 188 voted to abolish what is widely perceived as an illegal blockade. The only two nations that got behind the US were Israel and the Pacific nation of Palau, while two countries abstained from the vote. This is the 21st year running that the UN has decried the American economic sanctions against the island nation. Cubas Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez addressed the assembly, voicing Cuban disappointment that despite Obamas pledge to open a new chapter in Cuban -American relations on assuming office four years ago, no steps had been taken the lift the crippling embargo. "The reality is that the last four years have been characterized by the persistent tightening of the embargo," he said. The Cuban government has calculated that since the blockade was enforced in 1960 the total financial

damage to Cubas economy is around US$3 trillion. Rodriguez qualified the maintenance of the embargo as tantamount to genocide and a massive, flagrant and systematic violation of the human rights of the people of Cuba.

Embargo fails, and hurts Cuban human rights and global relations Ratliff 09- William Ratliff, Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Institutes Center on Global Prosperity, (Why and How to Lift the U.S. Embargo on Cuba, 5/7/09, http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2496, 7/3/13, CAS) The embargo made sense during the Cold War, but no longer. A majority of Americans and Cubans
now oppose it, including a majority of Cuban dissidents in Cuba and Cuban-Americans in Miami. Only the U.S. Congress still wont move as a body, bound as it is by inertia and domestic political calculations. Al as, its role is critical since the passage of the 1996 Helms Burton Act, which codifies the embargo.

How has the embargo failed? It

has not brought down the Castro brothers, advanced democracy, freedom, human rights or prosperity in Cuba, or gotten compensation for Americans whose assets Cuba seized decades ago. It largely denies Americans the freedom to travel to Cuba, or to trade freely and otherwise interact Cubans on the island. And in recent decades it has given Fidel the scapegoat he needsusto excuse his economic utopianism and brutality. Supporters of the embargo see it as an expression of Americas moral indignation at Castros brutal policies. By limiting the flow of dollars to Cuba we deny some funds to Cuban security forces, as they argue, but we simultaneously withhold support for the daily lives of the Cuban people.
For twenty years the embargo placated the very noisy Cuban American community in Florida, but by late 2008 even a majority of Cuban Americans, according to a Florida International University poll, had turned against it. It isnt that Cuban Americans are going soft on Fidel, but that a majority finally see or admit that this policy is more harmful than positive to its own interests. And it is harmful to U.S. interests as well, which ought to be our primary concern, alienating the

Hemisphere and the world as a whole while having only negative impacts in Cuba. The embargo only strengthens Castro- lifting it will bring change Estevez 12- Carlos Estevez, staff columnist at nyunews.com, (Ending embargo means real freedome for Cuba, 10/22/12, http://nyunews.com/2012/10/22/estevez-3/, Accessed: 6/28/13, CAS) The Cold War has faded into history, but the embargo still haunts the lives of Cubans. More importantly, it breathes life into the Castro regime. A quick glance at the different interest groups vying for and against the embargo reveals
why the status quo persists and how it has divided Cuba. Democrats generally oppose the embargo, advocating compromise and discourse with Cuba. Republicans insist that the embargo is a crucial tool in negotiating a democratic transition within the island. The U.S. political system has essentially transformed this human rights issue into a choice between two diametrically opposed viewpoints. Both sides seek the same goal of attaining freedom for the Cuban people from their government, and both share a common ignorance as to the impact of the embargo on Cubans or on the regime. Politicians have taken strategic stances on this issue for the sake of elections, mainly appeasing the Cuban-American voting bloc with little regard to the people affected by the embargo.

Cuban-Americans have ruled the discourse on the embargo, as they are among the few citizens with an interest in Cuban politics. The unacquainted observer might note that they stand united for keeping the embargo. A closer inspection reveals a highly divided community as diverse as the term Cuban-American, which more accurately describes
50 years of continuous migration rather than a given ethnic group. Many Cubans left at the onset of the revolution, leaving behind all of their belongings. Others left in Operation Peter Pan, in which parents sent their children to the United States due to rumors that the Castro regime would ship kids to the Soviet Union. These politically active groups mainly vote in favor of the embargo, directly influenced by their personal experiences.

Younger generations of Cubans, those who left in the Mariel boatlift of 1980 and the Rafter movement of the 90s, have slowly shifted the Cuban-American stance on the embargo. Perhaps because they lived
through the hardships of the Cuban reality, they see little benefit in keeping the embargo. Even within Cuba, the ruling elite benefits from the embargo while the average citizen suffers. Cuban Communism has made most citizens equally poor, and these poor Cubans oppose the embargo, while the government uses it as an excuse for all of Cubas dilemmas, including frequent electricity, f ood and Internet shortages. For this very reason, the Cuban government would face significant questions if the embargo ended. In fact, the word embargo rarely figures in Cuban politics. Instead, the Castro regime refers to it as a blockade. This implies that the United States blocks Cuba from contact with the outside world, which greatly overestimates the embargos impact on the Cuban economy. This ruling elite does not significantly suffer from the embargo. They enjoy a high standard of living, profiting from Cubas resources. Instead, the embargo only serves to legitimize Cubas revolution as a force struggling against the United States.

Those who seek true freedom for Cubans and the end of the Castro regime should advocate repealing the embargo. Both the Castro regime and U.S. politicians benefit from the status quo at the expense of dividing and subjugating the Cuban people at home and abroad.

Lifting embargo contributes to humanitarian, diplomatic, and economic strength Trani, 6/23 Eugene P. Trani, president emeritus and University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. (Trani: End the embargo on Cuba, Richmond Times -Dispatch, June 23, 2013, http://www.timesdispatch.com/opinion/their-opinion/columnists-blogs/guest-columnists/end-the-embargoon-cuba/article_ba3e522f-8861-5f3c-bee9-000dffff8ce7.html, accessed: 7/4/13, LR)
What we heard was puzzlement about the embargo and strong feelings that it was hurting the people of Cuba. In fact, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the absolute poverty rate has increased significantly in Cuba. It was also evident that there is visible decline in major infrastructure areas such as housing. Today, there seem to be both humanitarian and economic factors, particularly with the significant growth of the non-governmental section of the economy that could factor in a change in American policy. There is

also a major diplomatic factor in that no other major country, including our allies, follows our policy. What a positive statement for American foreign policy in Latin America and throughout the world it would be for the United States to end its embargo and establish normal diplomatic relations with Cuba. We would be taking both a humanitarian course of action and making a smart diplomatic gesture. The time is right and all our policy makers need is courage to bring about this change.

Travel is a basic human right that we are denied by the embargo. Paul 13 (Ron Paul, Why Cant We All Travel To Cuba?, Antiwar.com, April 16 2013, http://original.antiwar.com/paul/2013/04/15/why-cant-we-all-travel-to-cuba/, Accessed: 7/3/13, EH)
Earlier this month, entertainers Jay-Z and Beyonc were given a license by the US government to travel to Cuba. Because it is not otherwise legal for Americans to travel to Cuba, this trip was only permitted as a cultural exchange by the US Treasury Department. Many suspect that the permission was granted at least partly due to the fame, wealth, and political connections of the couple. Some Members of Congress who continue to support the failed Cuba embargo, demanded that the Administration explain why these two celebrities were allowed to visit Cuba. The trip looked suspiciously like tourism, they argued in a letter to the White House, and American tourism is still not allowed in Cuba. They were photographed eating at the best restaurants, dancing, and meeting with average Cubans, which these Members of Congress frowned on. Perhaps it is true that this couple used their celebrity status and ties to the White House to secure permission to travel, but the real question is, why cant the rest of us go? The Obama administration has lifted some of the most onerous restrictions on travel to Cuba imposed under the previous Bush administration, but for the average American, travel to the island is still difficult if not impossible. However, even those who are permitted to go to Cuba are not allowed to simply engage in tourist activities to spend their money as they wish or relax on a beach. The US government demands that the few Americans it allows to travel to Cuba only engage in what it deems purposeful travel, to support civil society in Cuba; enhance the free flow of information to, from, and among the Cuban people; and help promote their independence from Cuban authorities. They must prove that they maintain a full -time schedule of educational activities, according to Treasury guidelines for people-to-people travel. Leave it to the federal government to make the prospect of visiting that sunny Caribbean island sound so miserable. The reason the US so severely restricts and scripts the activities of the few Americans allowed to travel to Cuba is that it believes travel must promote the goal of taking important steps in reaching the widely shared goal of a Cuba that respects the basic rights of all its citizens. Although I have no illusions about the Cuban government or any government for that matter it is ironic that the US chose to locate a prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba because the indefinite detention and torture that took place there would have been illegal on US soil. Further, the US government continues to hold more than 100 prisoners there indefinitely even though they have not been found guilty of a crime and in fact dozens are cleared for release but not allowed to leave. Does the administration really believe that the rest of the world is not annoyed by its do as we say, not as we do attitude ? We are told by supporters of the Cuba embargo and travel ban that we must take such measures to fight the communists in charge of that country. Americans must be prohibited from traveling to Cuba, they argue, because tourist dollars would only be used to prop up the unelected Castro regime. Ironically, our restrictive travel policies toward Cuba actually mirror the travel policies of the communist countries past and present. Under communist rule in the former

Soviet Union and elsewhere it was only the well-connected elites who were allowed to travel overseas people like Jay-Z and Beyonc. The average citizen was not permitted the right. Although the current administrations slight loosening of the restrictions is a small step in the right direction , it makes no sense

to continue this nearly half-century old failed policy. Freedom to travel is a fundamental right. Restricting this fundamental right in the name of human rights is foolish and hypocritical.

Embargo promotes poverty in Cuba gives Castro more power Henderson 08 David Henderson, research fellow at Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution and is also
associate professor of economics at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California (End the Cuban Embargo, AntiWar, 2/21/08, http://antiwar.com/henderson/?articleid=12395, accessed: 7/4/13, ckr) Which brings us to the second argument for the embargo, which seems to go as follows.

By squeezing the Cuban economy enough, the U.S. government can make Cubans even poorer than Fidel Castro has managed to over the past 48 years, through his imposition of Stalin-style socialism.
Ultimately, the theory goes, some desperate Cubans will rise up and overthrow Castro. There are at least three problems with this "make the victims hurt more" strategy. First, it's

profoundly immoral. It could succeed only by making average Cubans already living in grinding poverty even poorer. Most of them are completely innocent and, indeed, many of them already want to get rid of Castro. And consider the irony: A defining feature of socialism is the prohibition of voluntary exchange between people. Proembargo Americans typically want to get rid of socialism in Cuba. Yet their solution prohibiting trade with Americans is the very essence of socialism.
The second problem is more practical: It hasn't worked. To be effective, an embargo must prevent people in the target country from getting goods, or at least substantially increase the cost of getting goods. But competition is a hardy weed that shrugs off governmental attempts to suppress it. Companies in many countries, especially Canada, produce and sell goods that are close substitutes for the U.S. goods that can't be sold to Cuba. Wander around Cuba, and you're likely to see beach umbrellas advertising Labatt's beer, McCain's (no relation) French fries, and President's Choice cola. Moreover, even U.S. goods for which there are no close substitutes are often sold to buyers in other countries, who then resell to Cuba. A layer of otherwise unnecessary middlemen is added, pushing up prices somewhat, but the price increase is probably small for most goods.

Some observers have argued that the very fact that the embargo does little harm means that it should be kept because it's a cheap way for U.S. politicians to express moral outrage against Castro. But arguing for a policy on the grounds that it's ineffective should make people question the policy's wisdom. Third, the policy is politically effective, but not in the way the embargo's proponents would wish. The embargo surely makes Cubans somewhat more anti-American than they would be otherwise, and it makes them somewhat more in favor of or at least less against Castro. Castro has never talked honestly about the embargo: he has always called it a blockade, which it manifestly is not. But he has gotten political mileage by blaming the embargo, rather than socialism, for Cuba's awful economic plight and reminds his subjects ceaselessly that the U.S. government is the instigator.
Some Cubans probably believe him.

Empirics prove- trade helps human rights Farrell 09- Chris Farrell, graduate of Stanford and the London School of Economics and economics editor of Marketplace Money, (Benefits of lifting the Cuban embargo, 4/16/09, https://www.marketplace.org/topics/world/benefits-lifting-cuban-embargo, 7/3/13, CAS)

Farrell: I think the real lesson that you take from this is that trade is

revolutionary, commerce is revolutionary. And trade is not just money and entrepreneurial opportunities. It also means exposing an economy to different ideas, and ideas that are an anathema to a bureaucracy that is in power. And we have a very good counter-example. Remember in the 1990's, the Clinton administration came under a lot of pressure to set up trade embargoes with China because a lot of the human rights violations. And I'm
not minimizing, by the way -- I am not minimizing human rights violations in China, I am not minimizing human rights violations in Cuba. But the administration continued the trade with China, and it was the right move -- China is now more integrated into the global economy, there's a lot more information in that economy, it's moving in the right direction. And so that's what I want to see trade with Cuba. I think that's the real lesson to take here.

Embargo a form of Genocide Sympatico 10 (Is the U.S. Embargo on Cuba a Form of Genocide?, Amnesty International, September 8, 2010,
http://www3.sympatico.ca/danchristienses/CubaFAQ137.html, Accessed: July 2, 2013, SD)

What is genocide? To answer this question, we must define what is meant by genocide. According to Oxford English Dictionary, genocide is

"the mass extermination of human beings, esp. of a particular race or nation." The Law Under

international law the legal definition is given in Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention and covers a much wider range of crimes. Article
2 states: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a)

Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Item (c) would seem to be the most relevant in the case of the US embargo on Cuba. It tells us that, to prove the
perpetrators of these sanctions are guilty of genocide, we do not need to prove that any deaths were directly attributable to these sanctions. We are

required only to prove that the perpetrators deliberately inflicted on the Cuban people conditions of life calculated to bring about the group's physical destruction in whole or in part. This is relatively easy to prove. A Brief History The US embargo first came into effect during the Kennedy administration in 1962. Thirty years later in
1992, shortly after the collapse of Cuba's main trading partner, the former USSR, the US regime moved in for the kill with intensified trade sanctions under its so-called Cuban Democracy Act, also known as the Torricelli Act. Four years later in 1996, with the Cuban people having weathered the worst of the economic collapse and as defiant as ever, the US embargo was tightened further still with the introduction of the socalled Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, also known as the Helms-Burton Act. Today, while there have since been limited openings in one-way trade in food and medicine, these two laws form the

legislative underpinning of the US embargo, a master plan to wreck the Cuban economy and thereby deprive the population of many of the essentials of life. The all too predictable outcomes have been documented by various international humanitarian and human rights groups. From "The
US attack on Cuba's health," Canadian Medical Association Journal, August 1, 1997: In 1992 Cuba was in a severe economic depression, largely resulting from a loss of preferential trade with the Soviet bloc. Cuba turned to US foreign subsidiaries, from whom it received $500-600 million per year in imports -- 90% of which was food and medicine. The American Public Health Association warned the US government that tightening the embargo would lead to the abrupt cessation of this supply of essential goods and result in widespread famine. Indeed, 5 months after passage of the CDA [Cuba Democracy Act] , food shortages in Cuba set the scene for the worst epidemic of neurologic disease this century. More than 50,000 people suffered from optic neuropathy, deafness, loss of sensation and pain in the extremities, and a spinal cord disorder that impaired walking and bladder control. That the US embargo has harmed the Cuban people has also been documented by the American Association for World Health. It performed a year-long review of the implications of embargo restrictions which included on-site visits to 46 treatment centers and related facilities, 160 interviews with medical professionals and other specialists, government officials, representatives of non-governmental organizations, churches and international aid agencies. Their 300 page report, "Denial of Food and Medicine: THE IMPACT OF THE U.S. EMBARGO ON HEALTH AND NUTRITION IN CUBA," dated March 1997, concluded: After a year-long investigation, the American Association for World Health has determined that the U.S. embargo of Cuba has dramatically harmed the health and nutrition of large numbers of ordinary Cuban citizens. As documented by the attached report, it is our expert medical opinion that the U.S. embargo has caused a significant rise in suffering -- and even deaths -- in Cuba. For several decades the U.S. embargo has imposed significant financial burdens on the Cuban health care system. Clearly then these sanctions were meant to kill. It was only thanks to the renowned fighting spirit of the Cuban people, and countless acts of international solidarity, that the death count was kept to a minimum. Despite these cruel sanctions, Cuba's health care system actually continued to improve and is widely regarded as the best in Latin America. This in no way, however, diminishes the criminal responsibility of the US regime. In 2003, even Amnesty

International, after years of dithering, was finally forced to

concede in a report actually critical of Cuba that, yes, the US embargo is: (a) "highly detrimental to Cubans' enjoyment of a range of economic, social and cultural rights... (b) "has had a very significant negative impact on the overall performance of the national economy, diverting the optimal allocation of resources from the prioritized areas and affecting the health programmes and services... (c) "compromises the quality of life of the population, specifically the children, the elderly and the infirm... (d) "is used to harm the most vulnerable members of society." And how did the Bush regime respond to these shocking revelations at the time? Had it immediately lifted the embargo, it
might be argued that these outcomes were unintentional. But the regime did just the opposite -- in 2004 they actually moved to intensify these cruel sanctions! Remittances and family visits were severely curtailed in hopes of cutting off an important source of hard currency and material support for Cuban families, along with unprecedented financial restrictions on payments for shipments of food and medicine bound for Cuba. The amount of food exported to Cuba from the US declined each year for several years immediately afterward. In another report critical of Cuba in 2004 (and reiterated in March 2005), the UN Human Rights Commission, as well, was forced to concede that, "It is also impossible to ignore the disastrous and lasting economic and social effects of the embargo imposed on the Cuban population over 40 years ago." In January of 2005 (and 2006), Human Rights Watch reiterated that, "The U.S. economic embargo on Cuba, in effect for more than four decades, continues to impose indiscriminate hardship on the Cuban people." In September, 2006, Christine Chanet,

the Personal Representative of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, in another of her reports critical of Cuba, explicitly criticized the "severe restrictions caused by a disastrous embargo, exacerbated in 2004 by unbearable restrictions on the movement of persons and goods." She also said that the US embargo, which she "deplores," was "not a path to democracy (sic), and should not continue." (UN HRC discussion) In November, 2006, the Miami Herald gleefully reported: The Bush administration's vow to
enforce U.S. regulations is stifling Cuba's ability to operate in international markets... U.S. companies are allowed to export agricultural products to Cuba, provided they receive cash payments before the goods are delivered. But even cash payments must move through banks, so the restrictions are giving U.S. corporations headaches... ''It's the hassle factor,'' said John Kavulich, senior policy advisor with the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, which tracks bilateral economic relations. "They've coupled rhetoric with enforcement, and it's worked!'' In January 2007, Amnesty International confirmed again that: Amnesty International has called for the US embargo against Cuba to be lifted, as it is highly detrimental to Cubans' enjoyment of a range of economic, social and cultural rights, such as the right to food, health and sanitation -- particularly affecting the weakest and most vulnerable members of the population. Conclusion The

genocidal intent of the Bush regime had never been more clear. Therefore, under the terms of the of the UN Genocide Convention, the US embargo does indeed appear to be a form of genocide. Follow-up, March 2009 Amnesty International reiterates its condemnation of the
US embargo two months into the mandate of the new Barack Obama administration: Amnesty International urges the US government to lift the nearly five-decade long economic and trade embargo against Cuba as it is detrimental to the fulfillment of the economic and social rights of the Cuban people. It obstructs and constrains efforts by the Cuban government to purchase essential medicines, medical equipment and supplies, food and agricultural products, construction materials and access to new technologies. Source: "Cuba and the Fifth Summit of the Americas," Amnesty International, March 2009 Follow-up, September 2009 By September 2009, very little seemed to have actually changed as far as the US embargo was concerned. Eight months into President Obama's mandate, it seemed to this writer that Amnesty International had all but called for the arrests of the perpetrators of these crimes against the Cuban people! Citing the continued blocking and constraining of vital imports of medicines, supplies and technology, Amnesty called called these cruel and inhumane sanctions "immoral" and demanded that it be "lifted without further delay": The US embargo against Cuba is immoral and should be lifted. Its preventing millions of Cubans from benefiting from vital medicines and medical equipment essential for their health. Source: "President Obama should take lead in lifting embargo against Cuba," Amnesty International, September 2009 Amnesty International calls on the US Congress to take, without further delay, the necessary steps towards lifting the economic, financial and trade embargo against Cuba.... The UN General Assembly has repeatedly condemned the US embargo as contrary to the Charter of the United Nations and international law.... The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has also reiterated its position regarding the impact of such sanctions on the human rights of the Cuban people and, therefo re, insists that the embargo be lifted...." [E]xports of food and agricultural products to Cuba remain regulated by the Department of Commerce and require a licence for export or re-export. The export of medicines and medical supplies continues to be severely limited.... The restrictions imposed by the embargo help to deprive Cuba of vital access to medicines, new scientific and medical technology, food, chemical water treatment and electricity.... The impact of economic sanctions on health and health services is not limited to difficulties in the supply of medicine. Health and health services depend on functioning water and sanitation infrastructure, on electricity and other functioning equipment such as X-ray facilities or refrigerators to store vaccines. The financial burden and commercial barriers have led to shortages or intermittent availability of drugs, medicines, equipment and spare parts. It has also hindered the renovation of hospitals, clinics and care centres for the elderly. Source: "The US embargo against Cuba: Its impact on economic and social rights," Amnesty International, September 2009 In addition to blocking essential imports, the US embargo also continued to impose a significant drag on the development of the Cuban economy, especially in the areas of agriculture and food production. According to at least one US agricultural expert, simply

lifting the economic and financial restrictions imposed on Cuban farmers by the US embargo would have a dramatic impact on their production levels: Cuban agriculture has such a big potential that if it were to be totally developed it could surpass the volume of production of the Free Trade Treaty [the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) presumed]. William A. Messina Jr., of the University of Florida's Agriculture Science Institute, said, that the communist island "has such good soil and it represents a challenge of such magnitude that, with the end of the embargo, the agricultural market impact on the continent would be larger that of the Free Trade Treaty.'' Source: "Cuba's agriculture
shows promise," Miami Herald, September 29, 2009 Follow-up, September 2010 Amnesty International reiterates its condemnation of the US embargo: [The US embargo's is] negatively affecting Cubans access to medicines and medical technologies and endangering the health of

millions. United Nations agencies and programs operating in Cuba, such as UNICEF, UNAIDS and UNFPA, have reported that the US embargo has undermined the implementation of programs aimed at improving the living conditions of Cubans. Source: "Amnesty International criticises President Obama's decision on Cuba," Amnesty International, September 8, 2010 Follow-up, October 2010 On October 26, 2010 the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly again to condemn the US embargo. Only Israel voted with the US against the resolution. Israel trades freely with Cuba, so even this single vote cannot be seen as support for these cruel and inhumane sanctions. On this the US is truly isolated on the world stage. The only abstentions were the tiny US-island colonies in the South Pacific: Palau (pop. 20,000), Micronesia (pop. 110,000) and the Marshall Islands (pop. 60,000).

The US has a moral obligation to uphold human rights around the world-especially Cuba Edghill 12- Michael W. Edghill, teaches courses in US Government and in Latin America & the Caribbean in
Fort Worth, Texas. He is a contributor to Caribbean Journal. His work has also appeared in the Yale Journal of International Affairs, Diplomatic Courier, and others,(The Moral Obligation Next Door, International Policy Digest, June 29, 2012, http://www.internationalpolicydigest.org/2012/06/29/the-moral-obligation-next-door/, Accessed: June 28, 2013, KH) But the

US is still the most powerful nation in the world. With that power often comes the expectation that the US should be the great force for peace and justice globally. If American
exceptionalism is still the modus operandi, then the US should be venturing to solve grand problems. The idea that great power brings with it a moral obligation to help those who are helpless is widely accepted in both domestic policy and in foreign policy. Much of the coming campaign will revolve around what our priorities should be and how the government can best help the American people. Additionally, the time has come for the US to reprioritize its foreign policy.
US foreign policy over the last 30 years has been dominated by a series of interventions, diplomatically and militarily, in the Middle East with cursory glances towards the trouble spots in the world at that time. That focus has translated into a disproportionate amount of American resources being tied up in that region for a full generation.

It is not to say that the United States does not have an obligation to come to the aid of those that are being oppressed. Assisting in the removal of violent and dangerous dictators can be seen as a just cause and something that only the US has the ability to do. There is a role for the US to play in stopping the assault on Syrian citizens by the Assad regime. There is a role for the US in standing up for pro-democracy forces in the Middle East. There is absolutely a role for the US to play when large scale humanitarian crises are present from the horn of Africa to the Hindu Kush.
Unfortunately, as the riots aimed at the US by angry Afghan citizens prove, the blood and treasure spent by the United States in the Middle East may only be marginally effective. The problem, and the need to reprioritize, lay in the fact that while the State Department has been intensely focused on the Middle East, the problems of the Western Hemisphere have been largely ignored. While the moral obligation to aid the humanitarian crises in east Africa have been well documented, the humanitarian crisis of Haiti has fallen off of the radar since the immediate response after the earthquake. The UNDP Human Development Index, which ranks countries based on citizen education, life expectancy, and standard of living, consistently ranks Haiti in the bottom tier of nations along with Afghanistan and many African countries. At a time when government officials are talking of budget cuts and debt reduction, the need to have American aid dollars go towards meeting a need in a productive way is paramount. And unlike some other foreign policy investments, investments in Haiti appear to be productive according to USAID statistics which show a 6% growth in Haitian GDP in 2011. While the US government wrestles with how to effectively end the government assault on citizens in Syria, many in and out of government speak passionately about the obligation that the US has to aid in this blatant violation of human rights. Yet we rarely hear of the continued human rights abuses that occur on a daily basis just across the Florida Straits.

The governmental assault on the people of Cuba is well-hidden by Castros government. The principle is the same though. The people that oppose the government are assaulted and in many cases, taken away to be abused in a myriad of inhumane ways in Cuban prisons. The government that holds high the banner of defending human rights should be beating the drum every day and relentlessly calling for an end to human rights abuses in Cuba. Dissident bloggers and groups like the Ladies in White should know that they have the
attention of the US government and that the continued violation of human rights 90 miles from US shores is at least as important as human rights violations halfway around the world. While the inability to provide for citizen security in many areas of the world leads to the acute fear of a failed state, similar conditions in the Western Hemisphere very rarely receive mention. Over the last decade, the American public has grown weary of nation-building and would be very reluctant to support the rebuilding of a failed state. It would be wise to be proactive in ensuring that this does not happen, especially in the Americas. The most common cause of a failed state is when the government loses the ability to maintain order and protect the security of its citizens. While the US has been deploying assets to the Middle East over the last 10 years to help secure those populations, there has been a disturbing trend in

the Caribbean. The 2012 UNDP Caribbean Human Development Report cited that while most parts of the world show decreasing or stable homicide rates, the trend of violent crime in the Caribbean is increasing. Outside of war torn Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean is the most violent region in the world. A good percentage of the violence that takes place regionally is a result of drug cartel activity. Few other foreign policy issues present themselves on the streets of the United States on a daily basis in the same way that the inability of Latin American and Caribbean governments to effectively combat narcotics traffickers does. Drug consumption is linked to violence and poverty in American cities and drug trafficking is responsible for extreme violence and political instability in Latin America and the Caribbean. Yet, by way of financial assistance and directed attention, it appears that US foreign policy neglects to sincerely address these issues. The argument of whether or not the US has a moral obligation to help the vulnerable in the world is one that will continue to engage American politicians and policy makers for years to come.

If we assume however, that a moral obligation does exist, then the United States should not focus so intensely on humanitarian issues halfway around the world that they miss the moral obligations that exist right next door.

Human rights Oppression Extns.

Embargo fails nowsanctions dont promote human rights Amash 12-- Brandon Amash, Prospect Journal writer at UCSD (EVALUATING THE CUBAN EMBARGO,
Prospect Jounral of International Affairs at UCSD, 7/23/12, http://prospectjournal.org/2012/07/23/evaluating-thecuban-embargo/, Accessed 7/3/12, jtc)

The American embargo is not sufficient to democratize Cuba and improve human rights. Without the help and support of multilateral institutions, economic sanctions on Cuba have been ineffective.
As other states trade and interact freely with Cuba, the lack of partnership with America is only a minor hindrance to Cubas economy. Moreover, the sanctions are detrimental to the United States economy, as Cuba could potentially be a geostrategic economic partner. More importantly,

since economic sanctions are not directly related to the goal of improved human rights, the effect of these sanctions is also unrelated; continued economic sanctions against Cuba create no incentive for the Cuban government to promote better human rights, especially when the sanctions do not have international support.
Empirically, it is clear that since its inception, the policy has not succeeded in promoting democratization or improving human rights. Something more must be done in order to improve the situation.

Lifting the embargo solves Cuban human rights violations Perez 10 Louis A. Perez Jr. Professor of history and the director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (Want change in Cuba? End U.S. embargo, CNN, September 21 2010, http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/09/20/perez.cuba.embargo/index.html , Accessed: 7/3/13, EH)
In April 2009, the White House released a presidential memorandum declaring that democracy and human rights in Cuba were "national interests of the United States." Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela repeated the message in May of this year to the Cuban-American National Foundation in Miami. The Obama administration, he said, wanted "to promote respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms ... in ways that will empower the Cuban people and advance our national interests." Fine words. But if the administration really wanted to do something in the national interest, it would end the 50year-old policy of political and economic isolation of Cuba. The Cuban embargo can no longer even pretend to be plausible. On the contrary, it has contributed to the very conditions that stifle democracy and human rights there . For 50 years, its brunt has fallen mainly on the Cuban people. This is not by accident. On the contrary, the embargo was designed to impose suffering and hunger on Cubans in the hope that they would rise up and overturn their government. "The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support," the Department of State insisted as early as April 1960, "is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship." The United States tightened the screws in the post-Soviet years with the Torricelli Act and the Helms-Burton Act -- measures designed, Sen. Robert Torricelli said, "to wreak havoc on that island." The post-Soviet years were indeed calamitous. Throughout the 1990s, Cubans faced growing scarcities, deteriorating services and increased rationing. Meeting the needs of ordinary life took extraordinary effort. And therein lies the problem that still bedevils U.S. policy today. Far from inspiring the Cuban people to revolution, the embargo keeps them down and distracted. Dire need and urgent want are hardly optimum circumstances for a people to contemplate the benefits of democracy. A people preoccupied with survival have little interest or inclination to bestir themselves in behalf of anything else. In Cuba, routine household errands and chores consume overwhelming amounts of time and energy, day after day: hours in lines at the local grocery store or waiting for public transportation. Cubans in vast numbers choose to emigrate. Others burrow deeper into the black market, struggling to make do and carry on. Many commit suicide. (Cuba has one of the highest suicide rates in the world; in 2000, the latest year for which we have statistics, it was 16.4 per 100,000 people.) A June 2008 survey in The New York Times reported that less than 10 percent of Cubans identified the lack of political freedom as the island's main problem. As one Cuban colleague recently suggested to me: "First necessities, later democracy." The United States should consider a change of policy, one that would offer Cubans relief from the all-consuming ordeal of daily life. Improved material circumstances would allow Cubans to turn their attention to other aspirations. Ending the embargo would also imply respect for the Cuban people , an acknowledgment that they have the vision and vitality to enact needed reforms, and that transition in Cuba, whatever form it may take, is wholly a Cuban affair.

A good-faith effort to engage Cuba, moreover, would counter the common perception there that the United States is a threat to its sovereignty. It would deny Cuban leaders the chance to use U.S. policy as pretext to limit public debate and stifle dissent -- all to the good of democracy and human rights.
And it would serve the national interest.

Cuba is a massive violator of human rights. Perales 2010 [ 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 community 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] Whether or not one agrees with the U.S. embargo against Cuba, what must be kept in mind is the fact that the embargo

is there for reasons of human rights, argued Christopher Sabatini, policy director at the Council of the Americas, and that has been how the embargo been defended. And in this we cant lose sight of the fact that Cubas record on human rights is abysmal. The regime currently has detained over 200 political prisoners, many of whom have been arrested for the vague charge of dangerousness. Cuba violates freedom of association, strictly limits freedom of expression, and systematically violates the core covenants of the International Labour Organization (ILO). When the debate strays from this
central issue of rights, Sabatini stated, we lose sight of the real issues facing Cuba and Cuban citizens today. For this reason, any and all changes to the U.S. embargo must first and foremost be geared toward strengthening the hand of the islands independent sectors. According to Sabatini, there is broad scope in the United States for the executive to make regulatory changes that can give U.S. businesses and institutional actors greater scope to begin developing closer relations inside Cuba.This is important because any change to the status quo in bilateral economic relations will start with the executives authority over the embargos regulations. Indeed, a quick perusal of past efforts at dismantling U.S. embargoesin particular, against Vietnamreveals that terminating an embargo has never been the result of a straight up-or-down congressional vote. Instead, this has been the result of slight, incremental regulatory changes that have served to allow independent actors to develop their own contacts with counterparts on the island and empower people. These made the incentives for change easier to recognize, built an active, vested coalition supporting broader change, and made dismantling more palatable to political audiences.

Human rights Solvency Extns.

Lifting the embargo solves Cuban human rights violations Perez 10 Louis A. Perez Jr. Professor of history and the director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (Want change in Cuba? End U.S. embargo, CNN, September 21 2010, http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/09/20/perez.cuba.embargo/index.html , Accessed: 7/3/13, EH)
In April 2009, the White House released a presidential memorandum declaring that democracy and human rights in Cuba were "national interests of the United States." Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela repeated the message in May of this year to the Cuban-American National Foundation in Miami. The Obama administration, he said, wanted "to promote respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms ... in ways that will empower the Cuban people and advance our national interests." Fine words. But if

the administration really wanted to do something in the national interest, it would end the 50-year-old policy of political and economic isolation of Cuba. The Cuban embargo can no longer even pretend to be plausible. On the contrary, it has contributed to the very conditions that stifle democracy and human rights there.
For 50 years, its brunt has fallen mainly on the Cuban people. This is not by accident. On the contrary, the embargo was designed to impose suffering and hunger on Cubans in the hope that they would rise up and overturn their government. "The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support," the Department of State insisted as early as April 1960, "is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship." The United States tightened the screws in the post-Soviet years with the Torricelli Act and the Helms-Burton Act -- measures designed, Sen. Robert Torricelli said, "to wreak havoc on that island." The post-Soviet years were indeed calamitous. Throughout the 1990s, Cubans faced growing scarcities, deteriorating services and increased rationing. Meeting the needs of ordinary life took extraordinary effort. And therein lies the problem that still bedevils U.S. policy today. Far from inspiring the Cuban people to revolution, the embargo keeps them down and distracted. Dire need and urgent want are hardly optimum circumstances for a people to contemplate the benefits of democracy. A people preoccupied with survival have little interest or inclination to bestir themselves in behalf of anything else. In Cuba, routine household errands and chores consume overwhelming amounts of time and energy, day after day: hours in lines at the local grocery store or waiting for public transportation. Cubans in vast numbers choose to emigrate. Others burrow deeper into the black market, struggling to make do and carry on. Many commit suicide. (Cuba has one of the highest suicide rates in the world; in 2000, the latest year for which we have statistics, it was 16.4 per 100,000 people.) A June 2008 survey in The New York Times reported that less than 10 percent of Cubans identified the lack of political freedom as the island's main problem. As one Cuban colleague recently suggested to me: "First necessities, later democracy." The United States should consider a change of policy, one that would offer Cubans relief from the all-consuming ordeal of daily life. Improved material circumstances would allow Cubans to turn their attention to other aspirations.

Ending the embargo would also imply respect for the Cuban people, an acknowledgment that they have the
vision and vitality to enact needed reforms, and that transition in Cuba, whatever form it may take, is wholly a Cuban affair.

A good-faith effort to engage Cuba, moreover, would counter the common perception there that the United States is a threat to its sovereignty. It would deny Cuban leaders the chance to use U.S. policy as pretext to limit public debate and stifle dissent -- all to the good of democracy and human rights.
And it would serve the national interest.

Lifting tourism ban supports human rights Schlesinger 09-- Robert Schlesinger, managing editor for opinion at U.S. News and World Report, author of
"White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters." (It's Time to End the Cuba Travel Ban (the Embargo Too), U.S. News, 4/1/2009, http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/robert-schlesinger/2009/04/01/its-time-to-endthe-cuba-travel-ban-the-embargo-too, Accessed 7/3/13, jtc)
To be clear: The trade embargo would still be in place, but tourism would be good to go. So a company couldn't do business in Cuba, but any of us could fly down there and flood the place with dollars. It's a start, and I'll take it. Speaking of floods of dollars, the L.A. Times cites a

2002 study that estimates lifting the travel ban would produced between $1.2 billion and $1.6 billion annually and create as many as 23,000 new jobs. I'll take that too. Of course, much like their nemesis, the anti-Castro hard-liners in Congress hold

on: Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) strongly opposes the measure. He warned that flooding Cuba with tourists and dollars would only sustain the Castro regime. ... Martinez accused the Chamber of Commerce and business interests of seeking profits at the expense of freedom and democracy. "They are not acting from a moral standpoint," he said. "They are simply acting from an economic advantage standpoint." Three points here: The

embargo does more to help the Castro regime than hurt it, by giving the Cuban government a standing excuse for whatever troubles the country has and an enemy against which to rally their citizens. Second, since Senator Martinez is so concerned about morality of international trade, I assume that he plans to introduce legislation imposing a similar trade and travel embargo on China, right? Third, speaking of oppressive governments, Kevin Drum makes a great point about the travel ban: The trade embargo against Cuba has long outlived whatever usefulness it might have had. It accomplishes nothing and has turned us into an international joke. Still, it's well within the bounds of normal international relations. I don't like it,
but it's not fundamentally antidemocratic or an assault on basic freedoms. The travel ban has always been in a separate class. Autocracies and dictatorships control the movements of their subjects, but free America, not North Korea.

citizens of a liberal democracy should be able to travel wherever they want. So whatever happens with the trade embargo, removing the travel ban should be a no-brainer. This is

US Should lift embargo to improve Cuban human rights Amash 12-- Brandon Amash, Prospect Journal writer at UCSD (EVALUATING THE CUBAN EMBARGO,
Prospect Jounral of International Affairs at UCSD, 7/23/12, http://prospectjournal.org/2012/07/23/evaluating-thecuban-embargo/, Accessed 7/3/12, jtc) Although Americas previous policies of intervention, use of force and economic sanctions have all failed at achieving democratization in Cuba, not all options have been exhausted. One policy alternative for promoting democracy and human rights in Cuba that the United States has not attempted is the exact opposite of the approach it has taken for the past half century. Namely, the United States should

lift the embargo on Cuba and reopen diplomatic relations in order to work internationally on improving human rights in Cuba. Unless Cuba, as a rogue state, is isolated internationally, rather than merely
by the United States, the human rights situation in Cuba may never improve. A fresh policy of engagement towards Cuba has been delayed long enough.

Improved relations leads to international promotion of human rights in Cuba Amash 12-- Brandon Amash, Prospect Journal writer at UCSD (EVALUATING THE CUBAN EMBARGO,
Prospect Jounral of International Affairs at UCSD, 7/23/12, http://prospectjournal.org/2012/07/23/evaluating-thecuban-embargo/, Accessed 7/3/12, jtc)

With diplomatic relations in place, the United States may directly promote human rights in the country through negotiations, conferences, arbitration and mediation. Providing the support, resources, and infrastructure to promote democratic systems in Cuba could produce immense improvements to the human rights situation in the nation. Normalizing diplomatic relations with the state will also allow America to truly support freedom of opinion and expression in Cuba, which it cannot currently promote under the isolationist policy. Furthermore, through diplomatic relations and friendly support, Cuba will be more willing to participate in the international system, as well as directly with the United States, as an ally. As the United States, along with the international community as a whole, helps and supports Cubas economic growth, Cuban society will eventually push for greater protection of human rights.

Lifting travel restrictions is key to more human rights Sullivan 3/29 --- Mark P. Sullivan, Specialist in Latin American Affairs for the Congressional Research Office (Cuba: U.S. Policy and Issues for the 113th Congress, March 29, 2013, FAS, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R43024.pdf, accessed July 3, 2013, MY) A U.S. State Department spokesman said that it welcomes any changes that would allow Cubans to depart from and return to their country freely. According to the State Department, Cubas announced change is consistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in that everyone should have the rights to leave any country, including their own, and return.86 At the same time, however,
Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson cautioned that it is uncertain yet how the changes are to be implemented. She raised questions regarding whether Cuba would impose some controls on p assports and whether everyone would be free to travel.87 As noted above, Internet blogger Yoani Snchez, who had been denied an exit permit for several years, received a n ew passport under the new policy and in February 2013 began a multi-nation trip that brought her to the United States in mid-March 2013. A number of dissidents,

In light of Cubas new travel policy, some analysts have raised the question as to whether the United States should review its policy toward Cuban migrants, as set forth in the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 (P.L. 89-732), in which those Cubans arriving in the United States are allowed to apply for permanent resident status in one
however, including those political prisoners who have been released on parole, have been restricted from traveling abroad. year.88

US trade restrictions are halting political and economic revolution HelmsBurtan feeds Cuban fascism and repression Bilbao 13 Tomas Bilbao(Executive Director of the Cuba Study Group. Prior to joining the CSG, Mr. Bilbao served as Director of Transition
for Senator-elect Mel Martinez and Director of Operations for Mel Martinez for U.S. Senate),Restoring Executive Authority Over U.S. Poli cy Toward Cuba,cubastudrygroup.org,2/13,http://www.cubastudygroup.org/index.cfm/files/se rve?File_id=7f2193cf-d2ef-45c8-91de-0b1f88d30059

Helms-Burton has failed to advance the cause of freedom and prosperity for the Cuban people. This is not
surprising, since never in modern history has there been a democratic transition in a country under a unilateral sanctions framework
as broad and severe as the one codified in Helms-Burton. Its

blanket sanctions lack ethical or moral consideration since they indiscriminately impact all levels of Cuban society, from senior Cuban officials to democracy advocates and private entrepreneurs. While it is no secret that Cuban government policies are primarily to blame for the Islands economic crisis, their impact has only been exacerbated and made disproportionately greater among the most vulnerable segments of the population by the blanket sanctions codified under Helms-Burton. In addition, these sanctions deny Cuba access to the international financial institutions it would need to implement the type of macroeconomic reforms that U.S. policy has sought for more than 50 years. Helms-Burton preconditions the lifting of its blanket sanctions on sweeping political change in Cuba. In practice, this waiting game has strengthened the relative power of the Cuban government vis--vis the Cuban people while simultaneously giving the former a convenient scapegoat for its oppressive practices and economic
blunders. Cuban blogger and democracy advocate Yoani Sanchez best illustrated the impact of the waiting game enabled by Helms-Burton

five decade prolongation of the blockade [as the embargo is referred to in Cuba] has allowed every setback weve suffered to be explained as stemming from it, justified by its effects...To make matters worse, the economic fence has helped to fuel the idea of a place besieged, where dissent comes to be equated with an act of treason. The exterior blockade has strengthened the interior blockade.ix Former political prisoner and independent economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe agrees,
when she wrote: The writing that Helms-Burtons blanket sanctions have only served to give the Cuban government an alibi to declare Cuba a fortress under siege, to justify repression and to (pass) the blame for the economic disaster in Cuba.x Conditioning

our policy of resource denial on sweeping political reforms strengthens the Cuban state because the scarce resources available in an authoritarian Cuba have been and will continue to be allocated primarily based on political priorities, thereby increasing the states relative power and its ability to control its citizens. History has
shown that the negative effects of such isolation can be long lasting and counterproductive to change. During the Cold War, U.S. policy toward Eastern Europe was not based on isolation or resource denial. Indeed, an analysis of these transitions reveals an extraordinary correlation between the degree of openness toward former communist countries and the success of their transitions to democracies and market

economies.xi In recent years, ongoing political and economic reforms in Burma suggest that U.S. policy toward this Asian country could offer a viable model for the United States to follow in its policy approach toward Cuba. Since their enactment in 1990, Burma sanctions have allowed for unrestricted travel by U.S. citizens and travel-related financial services.xii Burma sanctions have also allowed for the export of most U.S. goods and services and offer broad discretion to the President on which Burmese products it allows to be imported into the United States. The broad political reforms taking place in Burma today offer a sharp contrast to the narrow reforms that have taken place in Cuba during the same period and underscore the ineffectiveness of blanket unilateral sanctions.

Human rights - Poverty Impact

Embargo promotes poverty in Cuba gives Castro more power Henderson 08 David Henderson, research fellow at Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution and is also
associate professor of economics at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California (End the Cuban Embargo, AntiWar, 2/21/08, http://antiwar.com/henderson/?articleid=12395, accessed: 7/4/13, ckr) Which brings us to the second argument for the embargo, which seems to go as follows.

By squeezing the Cuban economy enough, the U.S. government can make Cubans even poorer than Fidel Castro has managed to over the past 48 years, through his imposition of Stalin-style socialism.
Ultimately, the theory goes, some desperate Cubans will rise up and overthrow Castro. There are at least three problems with this "make the victims hurt more" strategy. First, it's

profoundly immoral. It could succeed only by making average Cubans already living in grinding poverty even poorer. Most of them are completely innocent and, indeed, many of them already want to get rid of Castro. And consider the irony: A defining feature of socialism is the prohibition of voluntary exchange between people. Proembargo Americans typically want to get rid of socialism in Cuba. Yet their solution prohibiting trade with Americans is the very essence of socialism.
The second problem is more practical: It hasn't worked. To be effective, an embargo must prevent people in the target country from getting goods, or at least substantially increase the cost of getting goods. But competition is a hardy weed that shrugs off governmental attempts to suppress it. Companies in many countries, especially Canada, produce and sell goods that are close substitutes for the U.S. goods that can't be sold to Cuba. Wander around Cuba, and you're likely to see beach umbrellas advertising Labatt's beer, McCain's (no relation) French fries, and President's Choice cola. Moreover, even U.S. goods for which there are no close substitutes are often sold to buyers in other countries, who then resell to Cuba. A layer of otherwise unnecessary middlemen is added, pushing up prices somewhat, but the price increase is probably small for most goods.

Some observers have argued that the very fact that the embargo does little harm means that it should be kept because it's a cheap way for U.S. politicians to express moral outrage against Castro. But arguing for a policy on the grounds that it's ineffective should make people question the policy's wisdom. Third, the policy is politically effective, but not in the way the embargo's proponents would wish. The embargo surely makes Cubans somewhat more anti-American than they would be otherwise, and it makes them somewhat more in favor of or at least less against Castro. Castro has never talked honestly about the embargo: he has always called it a blockade, which it manifestly is not. But he has gotten political mileage by blaming the embargo, rather than socialism, for Cuba's awful economic plight and reminds his subjects ceaselessly that the U.S. government is the instigator.
Some Cubans probably believe him.

Embargo increases poverty in Cuba Trani 6/23 Eugene Trani, University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University (End the
embargo on Cuba, Times Dispatch, 6/23/13, http://www.timesdispatch.com/opinion/their-opinion/columnistsblogs/guest-columnists/end-the-embargo-on-cuba/article_ba3e522f-8861-5f3c-bee9-000dffff8ce7.html, accessed: 7/4/13, ckr) My own trip to Cuba reinforced the call for such actions. We spent four days visiting with many different kinds of groups in Havana, community projects, senior citizens, a health clinic, youth programs, artist and recording facilities, musical ensembles, historic sites such as Revolution Square and the Ernest Hemingway house and an environmental training facility, and not once did we hear anger toward the United States or the American people.

What we heard was puzzlement about the embargo and strong feelings that it was hurting the people of Cuba. In fact, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the absolute poverty rate has increased significantly in Cuba. It was also evident that there is visible decline in major infrastructure areas such as housing. Today, there seem to be both humanitarian and economic factors, particularly with the significant growth of the non-governmental section of the economy that could factor in a change in American policy. There is also a major diplomatic factor in that no other major country, including our allies,
follows our policy.

What a positive statement for American foreign policy in Latin America and throughout the world it would be for the United States to end its embargo and establish normal diplomatic relations with Cuba. We would be taking both a humanitarian course of action and making a smart diplomatic gesture. The time is right and all our policy makers need is courage to bring about this
change.

Embargo toll high affects Cuban citizens and US trade Brown 3/16 Jamila Brown, Social entrepreneur, political commentator, and freelance writer skilled in international relations as it relates to human rights, development, community empowerment, corporate social responsibility, and government accountability. Specializes in congressional lobbying, grant and proposal writing and development, translation services, conflict mediation, public relations, international trade and development, risk assessment analysis, and corporate social responsibility. (El Momento Es Ahora End The Cuban Embargo, The Village, April 16, 2013, http://www.cbcfinc.org/thevillage/?p=297, accessed: 7/4/13, LR) Even Cubans in opposition to the communist government, among them dissident blogger Yoani Snchez, support an end to the U.S. embargo against Cuba saying the embargo is anti-Cuban and not antiCastro.
When I traveled to Cuba in 2010 with the US Women and Cuba Collaboration to meet with Afro-Cuban women to discuss gender and racial equality, signs of the embargo were evident even before arriving at our destination. CubanAmerican families brought with them an abundance of gifts for their relatives mainly clothing and household items many of us take for granted. On the island itself universal healthcare is juxtaposed by the lack of access to high-quality medical equipment and medicines (most of which carry U.S. patents and therefore are prohibited) and the benefit of free education comes at a cost of limited school supplies. American policy is not only aberrant in comparison to the rest of the world that regularly trades with Cuba, but it highlights the stark contradictions in U.S. foreign policy. As Jay-Z rhymed, the United States has normalized, albeit at times contentious, relations with communist China. Moreover, its vow to penalize Cuba for its humanitarian record brings into question its relationship with other noted oppressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain whom the American government counts as close allies. After five decades the US-Cuban embargo has only succeeded in pushing residents of the island deeper into poverty and with American economic constraints unable to sway Cuban political will, it is time for a new approach to Cuba. While visiting a school in Matanzas, Cuba that trains students to become art, music, and dance teachers in efforts to preserve Cuban culture, I was struck by the talent of this singer and composer who performed his song El Momento Es Ahora (The Moment Is Now). Indeed it is.

Poverty causes nuclear war. Caldwell 2000 - Joseph George Caldwell, PhD (Statistics) Consultant in Statistics and Information Technology (On Human Population, Global Nuclear War and the Survival of Planet Earth, Foundation Website 10/26/00, http://www.foundationwebsite.org/arti1000.htm Accessed 7/10/13 AT) It would appear that global nuclear war will happen very soon, for two main reasons, alluded to above. First, human poverty and misery are increasing at an incredible rate. There are now three billion more desperately poor people on the planet than there were just forty years ago. Despite decades of industrial development, the number of wretchedly poor people continues to soar. The pressure for war mounts as the population explodes. Second, war is motivated by resource scarcity -- the desire of one group to acquire the land, water, energy, or other resources possessed by another. With each passing year, crowding and misery increase, raising the motivation for war to higher levels. Poverty kills millions and outweighs nuclear war Abu-Jamal 98 Mumia Abu-Jamal, prominent social activist and author, quotes James Gilligan, American psychiatrist and author, director of mental health for the Massachusetts prison system, President of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy. (A Quiet and Deadly Violence, Al-Ahram Online Sept 19 1998, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/1998/400/in5.htm Accessed 7/10/13 AT) We live, equally immersed, and to a deeper degree, in a nation that condones and ignores wide-ranging "structural' violence, of a kind that destroys human life with a breathtaking ruthlessness. Former Massachusetts prison official and writer, Dr. James Gilligan observes; By
"structural violence" I mean the increased rates of death and disability suffered by those who occupy [at] the bottom rungs of society, as contrasted by those who are above them. Those excess deaths (or at least a demonstrably large proportion of them) are a function of the class structure; and that structure is itself a product of society's collective human choices, concerning how to distribute the collective wealth of the society. These are not acts of God. I am contrasting "structural" with "behavioral violence" by which I mean the non-natural deaths and injuries that are caused by specific behavioral actions of individuals against individuals, such as the deaths we attribute to homicide, suicide, soldiers in

This form of violence, not covered by any of the majoritarian, corporate, ruling-class protected media, is invisible to us and because of its invisibility, all the more insidious. How dangerous is it--really? Gilligan notes: [E]very fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed in a nuclear war that caused 232 million deaths; and every single year, two to three times as many people die from poverty throughout the world as were killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating, thermo nuclear war, or genocide on the weak and poor every year of every decade, throughout the world.
warfare, capital punishment, and so on. --(Gilligan, J., MD, Violence: Reflections On a National Epidemic (New York: Vintage, 1996), 192.)

Human rights - Trade Solves

Privatization creates competitive labor markets that solves government exploitation Seiglie 01 Carlos Seiglie - Associate Professor of Economics at Rutgers University,(Cubas Road to
Serfdom,cato.org,winter/2001,http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/2001/1/cj20n3-6.pdf,Accessed:7/3/13,JW)

Creating a free labor market in Cuba would benefit Cuban workers by increasing their real wages and increasing the number of jobs . The net gain to society from this change in policy would be quite large. As the
government permited workers to deal directly with foreign firms, the equilibrium wage and the level of employment would rise, which would increase production. The net gain to society is measured by the difference between this increase in output and the opportunity cost of the incremental workers hired (see Harberger 1971). Stated differently, the

Cuban governments current policy of not permitting Cuban workers to deal directly with foreign firms imposes a deadweight loss on society. The size of the deadweight loss can be estimated as follows. Suppose that the average monthly wage received by the Cuban
government per worker employed in joint ventures is $500.00 as reported. At the current exchange rate, the average Cuban worker receives approximately $14.00 a month of this from the state. The most conservative estimate is that 75,000 workers are employed in joint enterprises. Furthermore, suppose the uncompensated wage elasticity of hours worked (elasticity of labor supply) is 0.5. Then, assuming the supply and demand for labor are linear, the

loss in production is $16 million dollars a month or $192 million dollars a year below where it would be if the government permitted a competitive labor market to exist that resulted in Cuban wages rising to $50 a month or to a $600 annual salary. The deadweight loss to society is
$170 million dollars a year. If competitive labor market conditions raised average Cuban wages to $100 a month or to a $1,200 annual salary, the estimates

for the loss in production from failing to enact this policy rises to $27.5 million a month or $331 million dollars annually. This amount is twice the annual amount invested in Cuba by foreigners over the last decade. The social welfare losses from continuing the current policy would be $268 million dollars annually. These estimates rise dramatically if we assume that the wage elasticity of hours
worked is higher than 0.5. It is clear that Cuba is paying a high price for regressing to serfdom. Yet, as large as this cost may be, it is only a fraction of the total cost that the governments policy imposes on society. The reason is that for

the state to remain a monopsonist in the labor market and, therefore, to continue to extract the rents granted by having this privileged position, it has been essential for the state to deny Cubans the right to freedom of contract in the labor market and the right to own private property. If the government enacted the economically sound policy of massive privatization, labor markets would become competitive. The governments monopsony
power would break down since each worker would have the option of either working at the governments lower wageseeking individually or collectively to buy out some state-owned firm and become the recipient of the residual incomeor instead work for some other domestic private firm that offers them higher compensation, possibly in the form of an equity stake in the enterprise. The

power of the Cuban government to exploit the workers would therefore be eliminated. Finally, it should be pointed out that since the
current policy reduces the level of employment, the marginal productivity of capital and return to capital (net of risk) is currently lower in Cuba than it would be if the Castro government initiated the appropriate reforms. Cuba

cannot develop economically if it continues to permit only foreigners, and not its citizens, to own private property. Granting workers the right to own property will result in an increase in saving and development of the capital markets. Equally, reforming the capital markets so that all Cubans may borrow and lend will lead to the development of small businesses which are so essential in achieving a high level of development.

Empirics prove- trade helps human rights Farrell 09- Chris Farrell, graduate of Stanford and the London School of Economics and economics editor of Marketplace Money, (Benefits of lifting the Cuban embargo, 4/16/09, https://www.marketplace.org/topics/world/benefits-lifting-cuban-embargo, 7/3/13, CAS)

Farrell: I think the real lesson that you take from this is that trade is

revolutionary, commerce is revolutionary. And trade is not just money and entrepreneurial opportunities. It also means exposing an economy to different ideas, and ideas that are an anathema to a bureaucracy that is in power. And we have a very good counter-example. Remember in the 1990's, the Clinton administration came under a lot of pressure to set up trade embargoes with China because a lot of the human rights violations. And I'm
not minimizing, by the way -- I am not minimizing human rights violations in China, I am not minimizing human rights violations in Cuba. But the administration continued the trade with China, and it was the right move -- China is now more integrated into the global economy, there's a lot more information in that economy, it's moving in the right direction. And so that's what I want to see trade with Cuba. I think that's the real lesson to take here.

Human rights - Turns Foreign Policy

US International Human Rights policy key to success of foreign policy Moravcsik 02-- Andrew Moravcsik, Professor of Politics and director of the European Union Program at
Princeton University (Why Is U.S. Human Rights Policy So Unilateralist? in Multilateralism and U.S. Foreign Policy: Ambivalent Engagement edited by Stewart Patrick and Shepard Forman, Lynne Rienner Publishers, http://books.google.com/books?id=z_w3DkdSdhsC&pg=PA345&lpg=PA345&dq=Why+Is+U.S.+Human+Rights+ Policy+So+Unilateralist?+Andrew+Moravcsik&source=bl&ots=sgoPuAs4XW&sig=mIsfmf9uJ0E_FS346bhWUr14 PUo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=dm3dUZiJA8fe4AONk4CIAQ&ved=0CEcQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Why%20Is%20U.S. %20Human%20Rights%20Policy%20So%20Unilateralist%3F%20Andrew%20Moravcsik&f=false, Print, accessed 7/10/13, jtc) One common argument for multilateral commitments is that human rights ideology is required to legitimate U.S. foreign policy, in particular, U.S. in- ternational human rights policy. The idea underlying such arguments is that full adherence to multilateral treaties is in the national interest.59 The international promotion of human rights, we often read, expresses core U.S. values; indeed, public opinion demands it.60 This tendency is in- dependent of partisan attachment. Patrick Anderson, Carters chief speech- writer during the 1976 campaign, observed that liberals liked human rights because it involved political freedom and getting liberals out of jail in dic- tatorships, and conservatives liked it because it involved criticisms of Rus- sia.al Hence advocates of a human rights policy, liberal and conservative, tend to agree, in the words of Jeanne Kirkpatrick (a trenchant critic of Jimmy Carters human rights policy), not only that human rights [should] play a central role in U.S. foreign policy, but also that no U.S. foreign policy can possibly succeed that does not accord them a central role.62 The Reagan administration, which began with outright opposition to any human rights policy, except that aimed at the Soviet Union, ended up adopting many human rights policies and exploiting human rights rhetoric.63

Human rights - Turns Democracy

International Human rights enforcement strengthens democracy Moravcsik 02-- Andrew Moravcsik, Professor of Politics and director of the European Union Program at
Princeton University (Why Is U.S. Human Rights Policy So Unilateralist? in Multilateralism and U.S. Foreign Policy: Ambivalent Engagement edited by Stewart Patrick and Shepard Forman, Lynne Rienner Publishers, http://books.google.com/books?id=z_w3DkdSdhsC&pg=PA345&lpg=PA345&dq=Why+Is+U.S.+Human+Rights+ Policy+So+Unilateralist?+Andrew+Moravcsik&source=bl&ots=sgoPuAs4XW&sig=mIsfmf9uJ0E_FS346bhWUr14 PUo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=dm3dUZiJA8fe4AONk4CIAQ&ved=0CEcQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Why%20Is%20U.S. %20Human%20Rights%20Policy%20So%20Unilateralist%3F%20Andrew%20Moravcsik&f=false, Print, accessed 7/10/13, jtc) A second factor contributing to U.S. ambivalence toward multilateral human rights commitments is the exceptional stability of democratic governance inside its borders. This assertion may seem puzzling at first glance. It is widely believed that well-established democracies are the strongest supporters of inter national human rights enforcement. Most interpretations of international human rights regimes stress the spread of democratic ideas outward from liberal societies through the actions of NGOs and public opinion, as well as the direct exercise of state power by established democracies.ts In the broad sweep of history, to be sure, enforcement of human rights is closely linked to the spread of liberal democracy. Publics and politicians in established democracies have long encouraged and assisted democracy abroad, and even fought bitter wars to uphold that very institution, both for idealistic reasons and because they tend to view democracycorrectly so, it now ap- pears-as integrally linked to world peace.17 Yet the relationship between stable democratic governance and intemational human rights regimes is more ambivalent than this simple account sug- gests. Established democracies are often skeptical of effective enforcement of Why Is U.S. Human Rights Policy So Unilateralist? 351 international human rights norms. This underlying ambivalence, I have argued elsewhere, was particularly evident at the founding moment of the major postwar international human rights regimes under the European Con- vention on Human Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights, and the UN system. In each case, the most stable and established democracies consistently opposed

effective enforcement of international norms, a posi- tion that led them into alliances with their most repressive neighbors.

Human rights - Spreads US Interests

US Human Rights leadership spreads US interests Griffey 11 Brian Griffey, human rights researcher and communications specialist, who has worked for the
United Nations, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International USA and as an investigative journalist [U.S. leadership on human rights essential to strengthen democracy abroad, The Hill, 3/18/11, http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/150667-us-leadership-on-human-rights-essential-tostrengthen-democracy-abroad, accessed: 7/10/13, JK]

U.S. leadership on human rights offers clear opportunities to advance not only international peace and security a fundamental purpose of the U.N. but also conjoined US political and economic interests at home and abroad. The U.S. is presently demonstrating exactly how crucial such involvement is as an elected member of the Human Rights Council, participating in vital negotiations on how best to
Nonetheless, mitigate widespread abuses responding to ongoing unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, including by strategic US allies in global security and trade. As

, joining the Council has proven to be a good decision, because weve been able to influence a number of actions that we otherwise would have been on the outside looking in. In its first submission to the body, the U.S. likewise recognized that
Secretary Clinton expressed en route to Geneva to participate in recent talks on human rights violations in Libya participation in the Councils peer-review system allows the U.S. not only to lead by example and encourage others to strengthen their commitments to human

By leading international discourse on human rights, the U.S. will be in a better position both to advance observation of human rights abroad, and to take on new treaty commitments that demonstrate adherence of our own system to the vaulting principles we identify with our democracy. While the U.S. is party to more than 12,000 treaties, it has dodged most human rights
rights, but also to address domestic human rights shortcomings. treaties drafted since World War II through the U.N., and has ratified only a dozen. Upon transmission of four core human rights treaties to the Senate in 1978, President Carter observed: Our failure to become a party increasingly reflects upon our attainments, and prejudices United States participation in the development of the international law of human rights. The Senate ratified two of those treaties 15 years later. The others con tinue to languish in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, still awaiting ratification after 32 years. It likewise took the Senate almost 40 years to approve a treaty punishing genocide, after signing it in 1948 following the Holocaust. Other human rights treaties U.S. presidents have signed but the Senate has yet to agree to include U.N. conventions protecting the rights of women, children, and persons with disabilities. The U.S. is the only nation in the world that hasnt ratified the Conventi on on the Rights of the Child, with the

As we watch the contours and nature of power being reshaped in the Middle East and North Africa, the U.S. must have a singular message on human rights both at home and abroad: Human rights go hand-in-hand with a healthy democracy, and demand a concerted and collective effort to be upheld, especially in times of crisis. Greater U.S. participation in U.N. human rights treaties would ensure that the country has not only a seat at the table, but also an authoritative voice on matters vital to advancing democracy abroad, and our national security. A welcome consequence would be a more prominent place for the human rights lens in our vision of U.S. democracy and perhaps a stronger resolve to ameliorate the plights of those least well off in our own society.
exception of war-torn Somalia, which lacks a functioning government and control over much of its territory.

US-Cuba Relations 1AC

Embargo and terror list kill US-Cuba cooperation Haven, Armario, and Lee 6/21- PAUL HAVEN, Christine Armario, and Matthew Lee, Paul Have: the Associated Press
bureau chief in Havana, Cuba , Christine Armario: Education-Reporter, Associated Press, Mathew Lee: Education-Reporter, Associated Press, (US haltingly move to thaw? Associated Press, Published: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 9:30 a.m, http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20130621/WIRE/130629941/2055/NEWS?p=4&tc=pg, Accessed: 6/28/13 MC) 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

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
happened. President

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."

Among the things that have changed, John Kerry has taken over as U.S. secretary of state after being an outspoken critic of Washington's policy on Cuba while in the Senate. President Barack Obama no longer has re-election concerns while dealing with the Cuban-American electorate in Florida,
where there are also indications of a warming attitude to negotiating with Cuba.

Castro, meanwhile, is striving to overhaul the island's Marxist economy with a dose of limited free-market capitalism and may feel a need for more open relations with the U.S. While direct American investment is still barred on the island, a rise in visits and money transfers by CubanAmericans since Obama relaxed restrictions has been a boon for Cuba's cash-starved economy.
Under the table, Cuban-Americans are also helping relatives on the island start private businesses and refurbish homes bought under Castro's limited free-market reforms. Several prominent dissidents. Likewise, a

Cuban dissidents have been allowed to travel recently due to Castro's changes. The trips have been applauded by Washington, and also may have lessened Havana's worries about the threat posed by U.S. federal judge's decision to allow Cuban spy Rene Gonzalez to return home was met with only muted criticism inside the United States, perhaps emboldening U.S. diplomats to seek further openings with Cuba. To be sure, there is still far more that separates the long-time antagonists than unites them. The State Department has kept Cuba on a list of state sponsors of terrorism and another that calls into question Havana's commitment to fighting human trafficking. The Obama administration continues to
demand democratic change on an island ruled for more than a half century by Castro and his brother Fidel.

For its part, Cuba continues to denounce Washington's 51-year-old economic embargo. Now key to US-Cuban rapprochement Castros efforts to improve econ and support from Cuban-Americans Padgett 7/3 - Tim Padgett, Bureau Chief of Mexico for Newsweek and of Latin America for Time (Why This
Summer Offers Hope For Better U.S.-Cuba Relations WLRN Miami Herald News, 7/3/13, http://wlrn.org/post/why-summer-offers-hope-better-us-cuba-relations, Accessed 7/4/13, AM) 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 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 plan is key to relationseven if Castro steps down in 2018 it wont be sufficient to solve relations Allam 2/25- Hannah Allam, writer for the McClatchy newspaper, (Even if Raul Castro steps down in 2018, U.S. Cuba relations may not thaw, 2/25/13, http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/25/3253690_p2/even-if-raulcastro-steps-down.html, Accessed: 2/25/13, zs) 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. After meeting Castro, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., told reporters that it was time to move on from the U.S. Cold War mentality toward Cuba. The State Department was publicly resistant Monday to calls for a softening of the U.S. stance toward Cuba, with a spokesman bluntly dismissing Raul Castros promise to step down as not a fundamental change for Cuba because it lacked concrete measures toward democratic rule. We remain hopeful for the day that the Cuban

people get democracy, when they can have the opportunity to freely pick their own leaders in an open democratic process and enjoy the freedoms of speech and association without fear of reprisal,

State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell told reporters Monday . Were clearly not there yet. In the 35minute speech he gave when he was ratified for a second term as president, Raul Castro made clear that he had no intention of moving away from his socialist roots. I was not chosen to be president to restore capitalism to Cuba. I was elected to defend, maintain and continue to perfect socialism, not destroy it, Castro told Parliament, according to a translation published in news reports. That message is why longtime Cuba observers find it hard to swallow that such an entrenched regime would willingly push reforms that could hasten the demise of Communist Party rule. Critics say Cubans are less likely to see a shift in U.S. policy than a rise in domestic unrest that forces change from within as Cubans grow impatient for promised reforms. Its political kabuki and Im not sure it can hold together for another five years, said Jason Poblete, a Cuban-American attorney in Washington and an outspoken critic of the Castro regime.

Cuban instability results in Latin American instability, terrorism, democratic backsliding, and distracts the US from hotspots including Africa, the Caucus, and North Korea Gorrell 5- Tim Gorrell, Lieutenant Colonel (CUBA: THE NEXT UNANTICIPATED ANTICIPATED STRATEGIC CRISIS?
3/18/05, http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA433074, Accessed: 7/4/13, zs)

Regardless of the succession, under the current U.S. policy, Cubas problems of a post Castro transformation only worsen. In addition to Cubans on the island, there will be those in exile who will return claiming authority. And there are remnants of the dissident community within Cuba who will attempt to exercise similar authority. A power vacuum or absence of order will create the conditions for instability and civil war . Whether Raul or another successor from within the current government can hold power is debatable. However, that individual will nonetheless extend the current policies for an indefinite period, which will only compound the Cuban situation. When Cuba finally collapses anarchy is a strong possibility if the U.S. maintains the wait and see approach. The U.S. then must deal with an unstable country 90 miles off its coast. In the midst of this chaos, thousands will flee the island. During the Mariel boatlift in 1980 125,000 fled the island.26 Many were criminals; this time the number could be several hundred thousand flee ing to the U.S., creating a refugee crisis. Equally important, by adhering to a negative containment policy, the U.S. may be creating its next series of transnational criminal problems. Cuba is along the axis of the drug-trafficking flow into the U.S. from Columbia. The Castro government as a matter of policy does not support the drug trade. In fact, Cubas actions have shown that its stance on drugs is more than hollow rhetoric as indicated by its increasing seizure of drugs 7.5 tons in 1995, 8.8 tons in 1999, and 13 tons in
2000.27 While there may be individuals within the government and outside who engage in drug trafficking and a percentage of drugs entering the U.S. may pass

the Cuban government is not the path of least resistance for the flow of drugs. If there were no Cuban restraints, the flow of drugs to the U.S. could be greatly facilitated by a Cuba base of operation and accelerate considerably. In the midst of an unstable Cuba, the opportunity for radical fundamentalist groups to operate in the region increases. If these groups can export terrorist activity from Cuba to the U.S. or throughout the hemisphere then the war against this extremism gets more complicated . Such activity could increase direct attacks and disrupt the economies, threatening the stability of the fragile democracies that are budding throughout the region. In light of a failed state in the region, the U.S. may be forced to deploy military forces to Cuba, creating the conditions for another insurgency . The ramifications of this action could very well fuel greater antiAmerican sentiment throughout the Americas. A proactive policy now can mitigate these potential future problems. U.S.
through Cuba, domestic political support is also turning against the current negative policy. The Cuban American population in the U.S. totals 1,241,685 or 3.5% of the population.28 Most of these exiles reside in Florida; their influence has been a factor in determining the margin of victory in the past two presidential elections. But this election strategy may be flawed, because recent polls of Cuban Americans reflect a decline for President Bush based on his policy crackdown. There is a clear softening in the Cuban-American community with regard to sanctions. Younger Cuban Americans do not necessarily subscribe to the hard-line approach. These

changes signal an opportunity for a new approach to U.S.-Cuban relations. (Table 1) The time has come to look realistically at the Cuban issue. Castro will rule until

The U.S. can little afford to be distracted by a failed state 90 miles off its coast. The administration, given the present state of world affairs, does not have the luxury or the resources to pursue the traditional American model of crisis management. The President and other government and military leaders have warned that the GWOT will be long and protracted. These warnings were sounded when the
he dies. The only issue is what happens then? administration did not anticipate operations in Iraq consuming so many military, diplomatic and economic resources. There is justifiable concern that

Africa

region are potential hot spots for terrorist activity, so these areas should be secure. North Korea will continue to be an unpredictable crisis in waiting. We also cannot ignore China . What if China resorts to aggression to resolve the Taiwan situation? Will the U.S. go to war over Taiwan? Additionally, Iran could conceivably be the next target for U.S. pre-emptive action. These are known and potential situations that could easily require all or many of the elements of national power to resolve. In view of such global issues, can the U.S. afford to sustain the status quo and simply let the Cuban situation play out? The U.S. is at a crossroads: should the policies of the past 40 years remain in effect with vigor? Or should the U.S. pursue a new
and the Caucasus
approach to Cuba in an effort to facilitate a manageable transition to post-Castro Cuba?

U.S-Cuba relations key to solve TB Juventud Rebelde 11 Juventud Rebelde, The Newspaper for Cuban Youth. (Cuba Denounces US Seizure of Health Funds, Juventud Rebelde, 2011-03-12, http://www.juventudrebelde.co.cu/international/2011-03-12/cuba-denounces-us-seizure-ofhealth-funds, Accessed: July 10, 2013, SD)
Havana, March 11. On Friday, Cuba denounced another outrage committed by the United States as part of its half-century long blockade, this time the

seizure by US officials of more than 4 million dollars in funds allocated to Cuba by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for the first quarter of 2011. Sadly, this latest disgrace is just one example of a long list of extraterritorial application of the US economic, commercial and financial blockade
against Cuba, said Orlando Hernandez, Cuban vice minister of Foreign Trade and Investment, reported Prensa Latina. The US Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Assets Control froze the funds granted to the Cuban healthcare system in January, according to a January report by the United Nations Development Program, said Hernandez. This annual financing had been allocated by the World Fund against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for projects in Cuba The

seizure of funds is an illegal act that seriously obstructs the international cooperation provided by the UN system through its funds and programs. Worse still, the seized funds are for combating and preventing pandemics that the Cuban government and international community are devoting their greatest efforts to eradicate, said Hernandez. The official statement emphasized that this unilateral measure by the US would affect the implementation and continuation of social projects focused on vulnerable groups of the Cuban population, as well as the universal nature of UN agencies, funds and programs. The Global Fund is a unique
global public/private partnership dedicated to attracting and disbursing additional resources to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. This partnership between governments, civil society, the private sector and affected communities represents a new approach to international health financing. The Global Fund works in close collaboration with other bilateral and multilateral organizations to supplement existing efforts dealing with the three diseases. Since its creation in 2002, the

Global Fund has become the dominant

financier of programs to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, with approved funding of US$ 21.7 billion for more than 600 programs in
150 countries. To date, programs supported by the Global Fund have saved 6.5 million lives through providing AIDS treatment for 3 million people, anti-tuberculosis treatment for 7.7 million people and the distribution of 160 million insecticide-treated bed nets for the prevention of malaria. Global Fund financing is enabling countries to strengthen health systems by, for example, making improvements to infrastructure and providing training to those who deliver services. The Global Fund remains committed to working in partnership to scale up the fight against the diseases and to realize its vision a world free of the burden of AIDS, TB and malaria.

TB kills millions

Global Alliance for TB Drug Development 13 Global Alliance for TB Drug Development, The Global Alliance for
TB Drug Development (TB Alliance) was established in 2000 as a not-for-profit product development partnership to lead the search for new TB regimens and catalyze global efforts for new TB regimens that can bring hope, and health, to millions. (The TB Pandemic, TB Alliance, 2013, http://www.tballiance.org/why/the-tb-pandemic.php, Accessed: July 10, 2013, SD) Tuberculosis (TB)

is a global pandemic, killing someone approximately every 25 seconds nearly 1.4 is second only to HIV as the leading infectious killer of adults worldwide. It is among the three greatest causes of death of women aged 15-44 and is the leading infectious cause of death among people with HIV/AIDS.
million in 2010 alone. TB TB is global. The WHO estimates that two billion people one third of the world's population are infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb), the bacillus that causes the disease. M.tb's unique cell wall, which has a waxy coating primarily composed of mycolic acids, allows the bacillus to lie dormant for many years. The body's immune system may restrain the disease, but it does not destroy it. While some people with this latent infection will never develop active TB, five to 10 percent of carriers will become sick in their lifetime. TB

KILLS: 1.4 MILLION PEOPLE EVERY YEAR OVER 3,800 EVERY DAY ONE PERSON EVERY 25 SECONDS Once active, TB attacks the respiratory system and other organs, destroying body tissue. The disease is contagious, spreading through the air by coughing, sneezing, or even talking. An estimated nine million new active cases develop each year. At any given moment, more than 12 million people around the world are suffering from an active infection. Despite enormous advances in provision of services in recent years, TB's deadly synergy with HIV/AIDS and a surge in drug-resistant strains are threatening to destabilize gains in TB control. While incidence is stable or falling in many regions of the world, global rates of new infections are still rising
in many navar areas where TB goes hand-in-hand with HIV/AIDS and the effects of poverty.

US-Cuba Relations Caribbean Insecurity Impact

US Cuba relations key to Caribbean security Birns 13 Larry Birns, Council on Hemispheric Affairs Director *Best Time for U.S. Cuba Rapprochement Is Now, COHA, 1/30/13,
http://www.coha.org/best-time-for-u-s-cuba-rapprochement-is-now/, accessed: 7/4/13, JK] The Obama Administration should

be prepared to take, in quick progression, three important initial steps to trigger a speedy rapprochement with Cuba: immediately phase out the embargo, free the Cuban five, and remove Havana from the spurious State Department roster of nations purportedly sponsoring terrorism. These measures should be seen as indispensable if Washington is to ever mount a credible regional policy of mutual respect among nations and adjust to the increased ideological diversity and independence of the Latin American and Caribbean regions. Caribbean insecurity causes bioterrorism, LNG explosions, terrorism Bryan 1 - Anthony T. Bryan, Director of the Caribbean Program North/South Center, and Stephen E. Flynn, Senior Fellow Council on
Foreign Relations [Terrorism, Porous Borders, and Homeland Security: The Case for U.S. -Caribbean Cooperation, CFR, 11/21/01, http://www.cfr.org/publication/4844/terrorism_porous_borders_and _homeland_ security.html, accessed: 7/4/13, JK]

Terrorist acts can take place anywhere. The Caribbean is no exception. Already the linkages between drug

trafficking and terrorism are clear in countries like Colombia and Peru, and such connections have similar potential in the Caribbean. The security of major industrial complexes in some Caribbean countries is vital. Petroleum refineries and major industrial estates in Trinidad, which host more than 100 companies that produce the majority of the worlds methanol, ammonium sulphate, and 40 percent of U.S. imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), are vulnerable targets. Unfortunately, as experience has shown in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, terrorists are likely to strike at U.S. and European interests in Caribbean countries. Security issues become even more critical when one considers the possible use of Caribbean countries by terrorists as bases from which to attack the United States. An airliner hijacked after departure from an airport in the northern Caribbean or the Bahamas can be flying over South Florida in less than an hour. Terrorists can sabotage or seize control of a cruise ship after the vessel leaves a Caribbean port. Moreover, terrorists with false passports and visas issued in the Caribbean may be able to move easily through passport controls in Canada or the United States. (To help
counter this possibility, some countries have suspended "economic citizenship" programs to ensure that known terrorists have not been inadvertently granted such citizenship.) Again, Caribbean countries are as

vulnerable as anywhere else to the clandestine manufacture and deployment of biological weapons within national borders. EXTENSION: Caribbean insecurity leads to corruption, violence Brown 9 Evan Brown, member of University of Pittsburgh, Matthew B. Ridgway Center for International Security Studies *DRUG
TRAFFICKING, VIOLENCE, AND INSTABILITY IN MEXICO, COLOMBIA, AND THE CARIBBEAN: IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY, Strategic Studies Institute, 10/30/09, http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB968.pdf, accessed: 7/4/13, JK]

the Caribbean has been the victim of extremely imbalanced relationships with the United States. One panelist pointed out that the islands were a minor consumer of drugs but a major transit
Panelists noted that

point to the United States; with the attendant increase in corruption and violence, the Caribbean governments are ill-suited to combat it.

US-Cuba relations Now key extension

Now is uniquely key to boost US-Cuba relations 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, for Newsweek as its Mexico City bureau chief from 1990 to 1996, and for Time as its Latin America bureau chief, first in Mexico from 1996 to 1999 and then in Miami, where he also covered Florida and the U.S. Southeast, from 1999 to 2013. (Why This Summer Offers Hope For Better US-Cuba Relations, WLRN, 7/3/13 http://wlrn.org/post/why-summer-offers-hope-better-us-cuba-relations-Accessed-7-4-13-RX)
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. 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-obstacles19457659#.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."

US-Cuba relations Current barriers to relations Extensions

US-Cuba relations low nowrefusal to release Gross and political conflict Franks 10Jeff Franks, five-year writer for Reuters on Cuban relations and politics (U.S.-Cuba relations under
Obama fall to lowest point, Reuters, 3/31/10, http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/03/31/us-cuba-usaidUSTRE62U34W20100331, Accessed 7/10/13, jtc) (Reuters) - U.S.-Cuban relations have fallen to their lowest point since Barack Obama became U.S.

president and are in danger of getting worse unless the two countries take serious steps toward ending five decades of hostility, according to Cuba experts. After a brief warming last year, both countries appear to be falling back into old, antagonistic ways, obscuring whatever progress that has been made and hindering further advances, the experts said this week. "The past year has proven that when it comes to U.S.-Cuba relations, old habits die hard," said Dan Erikson of the Inter-American
Dialogue think tank in Washington. Obama, who took office in January 2009 and has said he wanted to recast U.S.-Cuban relations, lifted restrictions on travel by Cuban Americans to the communist-ruled island and initiated talks on migration issues and direct postal service. Since then, Cuban Americans have flooded the island and the two longtime ideological foes have held their first high-level discussions in years. But recent developments have been mostly negative. Cuba jailed U.S. contractor Alan Gross in December on suspicion of spying and continues to hold him without charges. Cuba's government has been condemned internationally for its treatment of opponents, including imprisoned dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who died in February from a hunger strike, and the "Ladies in White," wives and mothers of imprisoned dissidents, were shouted down by government supporters during protest marches this month. Obama rebuked the Cuban government in a strongly worded statement on March 24, saying Cuba continues "to respond to the aspirations of the Cuban people with a clenched fist." U.S. officials think they have done enough to elicit a more positive response from Cuba, while Cuba complains that Obama has done too little. 'GENUINE GOODWILL' Miami attorney Timothy Ashby, a former U.S. Commerce Department official in charge of trade with Cuba, said neither has done what is necessary to overcome 50 years of bitterness. "Neither government is willing to take a significant step that would serve as a demonstration of genuine goodwill," he said. Both nations have taken actions that have not helped the fragile improvement begun by Obama. Obama angered the Cuban government in November when he responded to questions via email from dissident Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, who Cuban leaders view as at least complicit with their enemies in Europe and the United States. In February, Assistant Secretary of State Craig Kelly provoked a bitter Cuban reaction when he met with dissidents following migration talks with Cuban officials in Havana. Cuba, in turn, has soured the political climate by harshly criticizing Obama for his lack of action while taking little of its own. Its detention of Gross, which U.S. officials say Cuba has refused to discuss, has called into question its desire for change even among those who want better relations. In a letter last week to Cuba's top diplomat in Washington, 41 members of the U.S. House of Representatives said the

detention of Gross "has caused many to doubt your government's expressed desire to improve relations with the United States." "We cannot assist in that regard while Mr. Gross is detained in a Cuban
prison," said the legislators, who included sponsors of pending legislation to end a U.S. ban on travel to Cuba.

Appointment of Diaz Canel does not mean normalization of relations. Alam 2013 [Hannah Alam. Hannah is a writer for the Miami herald. Even if Raul Castro ste ps 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.

US-Cuba Relations Possibility for improvement

Current political climate in Latin America gives Obama the chance to repair ties with Cuba and Latin America Tisdall 3/5- Simon Tisdall, Simon Tisdall is an assistant editor of the Guardian and a foreign affairs columnist. He
was previously a foreign leader writer for the paper and has also served as its foreign editor and its US editor, based in Washington DC. (Death of Hugo Chavez brings chance of fresh start for US and Latin America, Guardian Newspaper, 3/5/13, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/05/hugo-chavez-dead-us-latin-america-Accessed-627-13-RX) Hugo Chvez's departure furnishes Barack Obama with an opportunity to repair US ties with Venezuela, but also with
other Latin American states whose relations with Washington were adversely affected by Chvez's politics of polarisation and the Bush administration's viscerally unintelligent reaction. In particular, the change of leadership in Caracas could unlock the deadlock over Cuba , if the White House can summon the requisite political will. Possibly anticipating a transition, Washington quietly engineered a diplomatic opening with Caracas last November after a lengthy standoff during which ambassadors were withdrawn. Roberta Jacobson, assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, telephoned Nicols Maduro, Venezuela's vice-president and Chvez's preferred successor, and discussed, among other things, the restoration of full diplomatic relations. "According to US officials, the Venezuelan vice-president offered to exchange ambassadors on the occasion of the beginning of President Barack Obama's second term. Jacobson, in turn, is said to have proposed a step-by-step approach to improve bilateral relations, starting with greater co-operation in counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism and energy issues," Andres Oppenheimer reported in the Miami Herald. There is much ground to make up. "Relations between the United States and Venezuela have ranged from difficult to hostile since Chvez took office in 1999 and began to implement what he calls 21st-century socialism," wrote a former US ambassador to Caracas, Charles Shapiro. "Chvez blamed a failed 2002 coup against him on the United States (not true), nationalised US companies, insulted the president of the United States and blamed 'the empire' his term for the United States for every ill In foreign affairs, the government actively supports the Assad regime in Syria, rejects sanctions on Iran and generally opposes the US at every turn." Despite such strains, economic self-interest always prevented a complete rupture. The US remained Venezuela's most important trading partner throughout Chvez's presidency, buying nearly half its oil exports. Caracas is the fourth largest supplier of oil to the US. In fact, the US imports more crude oil annually from Mexico and Venezuela than from the entire Persian Gulf. This shared

commerce

now provides a formidable incentive and a launch platform for a fresh start.
Whether the opportunity is grasped depends partly on Maduro, a Chvez loyalist but a reputed pragmatist with close ties to Ral Castro in Cuba. Yet it depends even more on Obama,

whose first term, after a promising start, ended up perpetuating Washington's historical neglect of Latin America. He now has a chance to do better. The political climate seems propitious. Economic and cultural ties are also strengthening dramatically. Trade between the US and Latin America grew by 82% between 1998 and 2009. In 2011 alone, exports and imports rose by
a massive 20% in both directions. "We do three times more business with Latin America than with China and twice as much business with Colombia [as] with Russia," an Obama official told Julia Sweig of the US Council on Foreign Relations. Latinos now comprise 15% of the US population; the US is the world's second largest Spanish-speaking country (after Mexico). Despite this convergence, high-level US strategic thinking about the region has continued to lag, Sweig argued. "For the last two decades, US domestic politics have too often driven Washington's Latin America agenda whether on issues of trade, immigration, drugs, guns or that perennial political albatross, Cuba, long driven by the supposedly crucial 'Cuban vote' in Florida," she said. Obama could change this dynamic if he tried and one way to do it would be to unpick the

Cuban problem, which continues to

colour the way Latin Americans view Washington.

"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.

A move by Obama to end travel restrictions and the trade embargo on Cuba would be applauded across the region, explode old stereotypes about gringo oppressors, and help build confidence with Venezuela, the Castro regime's key
backer, she suggested.

US Should start dialogue to lift embargoleads way to solving tensions Duran 09-- Alfredo Duran, Cuban Committee for Democracy, lawyer and an advocate for dialogue as a way to
bring regime change in Cuba (in an interview with Duran, Possible Cuba Policy Changes Spark Debate, PBS Newshour, 4/8/9, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june09/cubadebate_04-08.html, Accessed 7/3/12, jtc) Oh, I believe so. I believe that it's about time that the United States and Cuba starts in the process of dialogue on this tension. We have been maintaining this policy of embargo for the past 50 years, and it has not worked. It's not working now, and it won't work for the next 50 years. It's about time that we bring about a change. The status quo is what we need to change in Cuba. We have a whole dynamic of generational changes in Cuba. We have the historicals who are all above 80 years of age. And the only way that we're going to bring

about a future of prosperity, of liberty, of democracy in Cuba is if we can send a strong message that the United States is not the enemy of the Cuban people , that the United States is prepared to sit
down and try to resolve the differences and hopefully, in that same table, we can have the Cuban opposition sit down and discuss the future of Cuba. We need to have national reconciliation. We need to have the people starting to talk to each other in order to bring about a transition, a peaceful transition, towards democracy in Cuba. I think it was helpful...

Cuba open to relations with US recent actions show News24 6/27/13 News24: Breaking News. First. (Cuba not safe for Snowden analysts, News24, 6/27/13,
http://www.news24.com/World/News/Cuba-not-safe-for-Snowden-analysts-20130627, accessed: 7/4/13, amf)

US-Cuban relations have also been strained by the case of Alan Gross, a US government subcontractor who was convicted of spying and sentenced in 2011 to 15 years in prison. But now, with Raul Castro introducing timid economic reforms, a greater political pragmatism is seen as gaining ground.
Economic reform

A recent reform made it easier for Cubans to travel abroad. And Cuba is discussing migration-related questions with the United States, where hundreds of
thousands of Cubans have sought exile over the decades.

Cuba is on the US black list of states protecting terrorists, and the two countries have no extradition
treaty.

But that did not hamper swift co-operation in early April, when it took Havana just 48 hours to repatriate a US couple, which had abducted its own children after losing custody over them and fled to Cuba. The case reflects an interest in Havana in not straining relations with Washington, even if Cuba still does not want to make "unilateral and definitive concessions" without receiving anything in return, Lopez Levy told dpa. Cuba wants relations with the US Snow 10- Anita Snow, Editor on Latin America regional desk at Associated Press, (Cuba embargo: UN vote urges US to lift embargo, 10/26/10, http://www.csmonitor.com/World/LatestNews-Wires/2010/1026/Cuba-embargo-UN-vote-urges-US-to-lift-embargo, 7/3/13, CAS) Last year's U.N. vote was 187-3 to end the embargo, with only Israel and the tiny Pacific island nation of
Palau supporting the United States.

"This is about a cruel and aggressive policy," Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told the body, "absolutely contrary to international law, that this government insists on maintaining knowing that

it causes harm, hardships and violates the human rights of an entire people." "This is not a bilateral issue, as is commonly repeated by the U.S. representatives," Rodriguez added,
complaining about the sanctions' "remarkable extraterritorial character." Nevertheless, Cuba "will continue to be ready to establish peaceful and respectful relations with the United States," Rodriguez said. American Ambassador Ronald D. Godard, U.S. Senior Area Adviser for Western Hemisphere Affairs, insisted that the embargo is a bilateral issue "and part of a broader set of relations meant to encourage a more open environment in Cuba and increased respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms." "We should not lose sight of that in a debate mired in rhetorical arguments of the past and focused on tactical differences, a debate that does nothing to help the Cuban people," he said.

Cuba wants relations with the US embargo blocks it Snow 10- Anita Snow, Editor on Latin America regional desk at Associated Press (Cuba embargo: UN vote urges
US to lift embargo, 10/26/10, http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2010/1026/Cuba-embargoUN-vote-urges-US-to-lift-embargo, 7/10/13, ckr)

Last year's U.N. vote was 187-3 to end the embargo, with only Israel and the tiny Pacific island nation of
Palau supporting the United States. "This is about a cruel and aggressive policy," Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told the body, "absolutely contrary to international law, that this government insists on

maintaining knowing that it causes harm, hardships and violates the human rights of an entire people." "This is not a bilateral issue, as is commonly repeated by the U.S. representatives," Rodriguez added, complaining about the sanctions' "remarkable extraterritorial character." Nevertheless, Cuba "will continue to be ready to establish peaceful and respectful relations with the United States, "
Rodriguez said. American Ambassador Ronald D. Godard, U.S. Senior Area Adviser for Western Hemisphere Affairs, insisted that the embargo is a bilateral issue "and part of a broader set of relations meant to encourage a more open environment in Cuba and increased respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms." "We should not lose sight of that in a debate mired in rhetorical arguments of the past and focused on tactical differences, a debate that does nothing to help the Cuban people," he said.

Baby steps towards US and Cuba increased relations Haven 6/22/13- Paul Haven, former Associated Press bureau chief in Havana, deputy Latin America and
Caribbean editor (Cuba, U.S. try talking, but still face many obstacles, Daily Star, http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/International/2013/Jun-21/221161-cuba-us-try-talking-but-face-manyobstacles.ashx#axzz2XX13hW88, accessed: 6/28/13, ML) Theyve 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, Cubas top diplomat for North American affairs, recently traveled to Washington and
met twice with State Department officials. Washington has also granted visas to prominent Cuban officials, including the daughter of Cubas 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 na tional security adviser on Latin America during the Carter administration. These are tiny, incremental gains, and
the prospects of going backward are equally high.

US-Cuba Relations Tech Transfers Good

Transfer of technology would strengthen US-Cuba relationships Lacey 9 Marc Lacey,Marc was The Timess Mexico bureau chief, responsible for covering Mexico, Central America
and the Caribbean. From 2006 to 2010, he led the newspapers coverage of Mexicos drug war, Cubas transition from Fidel Castro and Haitis struggle for stability, among other issues in more than 30 countries large and small.,The New York Times, 8/20/2009,http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/world/americas/21storm.html?_r=0,6/27/13,MH) The first tropical storms of the season have begun raging across the Atlantic, bringing with them all manner of panic and potential destruction and, behind the scenes, a little boost in United States-Cuba relations. . Weve had a close working relationship in regard to tropical cyclones that goes back to the 70s and 80s, said Max Mayfield, who retired in 2007 after seven years as director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Any storm that goes toward Florida goes over Cuba, so we need their observations. And they need our data from the aircraft. With coastal communities in both countries vulnerable, meteorology could bring the longtime adversaries closer together , especially with the policy of increased engagement pushed by President Obama, experts argue. Wayne Smith, a former American diplomat in Havana who is now a fellow at the Washington-based Center for International Policy, has brought an array of American officials to Cuba in recent years to look at how Cuban disaster preparedness programs manage to keep the number of hurricane deaths on the island so low.

US-Cuba Relations Internal Links

Lifting embargo improves health and economy Burns and Mills 1/30 Larry Birns ,Council on Hemispheric Affairs Director and Frederick B. Mills, COHA
Senior Research Fellow (Best Time for U.S. Cuba Rapprochement Is Now, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 1/30/13, http://www.coha.org/best-time-for-u-s-cuba-rapprochement-is-now/, Accessed 7/3/12, jtc)

The Obama Administration should be prepared to take, in quick progression, three important initial steps to trigger a speedy rapprochement with Cuba: immediately phase out the embargo, free the Cuban five, and remove Havana from the spurious State Department roster of nations purportedly sponsoring terrorism. These measures should be seen as indispensable if Washington is to ever mount a credible regional policy of mutual respect among nations and adjust to the increased ideological diversity and independence of the Latin
American and Caribbean regions. Washingtons path towards an urgently needed rehabilitation of its hemispheric policy ought t o also include consideration of Cubas own pressing national interests. A

thaw in USCuba relations would enhance existing security cooperation between the countries, amplify trade and commercial ties, and guarantee new opportunities for citizens of both nations to build bridges of friendship and cooperation . For
this to happen, the Obama Administration would have to muster the audacity to resist the anti-Castro lobby and their hardline allies in Congress, whose Cuba bashing has no limits. Nevertheless, it is time to replace belligerency with dtente. This essay argues that the embargo against Cuba is blatantly counterproductive, immoral, and anachronistic. If the initial purpose of this measure was to punish Havana for expropriating U.S. property and to bring about fundamental political and economic reforms, Washington has had more than 50 years to see that the status quo is flawed. Over

the years, invasion, embargo, and covert psychological operations against Cuba have only served to reinforce a circle the wagons mentality in Havana. The island also
has been subject to a relentless barrage of propaganda and terrorist assaults organized by militant anti-Castro zealots to advance their cause. These attacks include the 1997 bombing of three hotels in Havana which resulted in the death of Italian tourist Fabio Di Celmo, and the deadly 1976 downing of a Cuban civilian jet. Rather than succumbing to pressure, all of these incidents have given the majority of Cuban nationals good reason to raise defensive barricades in the face of repeated threats to the survival of their homeland. Besides being counter-productive, there are also strong moral arguments for ending the embargo. From a utilitarian point of view, the

policy is objectionable because it has brought about needless suffering without convincing evidence of praiseworthy results. One illustration of this is what happened during what Havana calls the special period in time of peace. This refers to the economic
crisis, hydrocarbon energy shortages, and food insecurity that followed the collapse of Soviet Bloc (1989 1991) which was Cubas main trading partner and the source of vital subsidies. The embargo took an especially harsh toll during the special period. According to a 1997 report Denial of Food and Medicine: The Impact of the Embargo on Health and Nutrition in Cuba by The American Association for World Health: the

U.S.

embargo of Cuba has dramatically harmed the health and nutrition of large numbers of ordinary Cuban citizens. The report also observed that the U.S. embargo has caused a significant rise in sufferingand even deaths-in Cuba. The special period, including a serious food shortage in 1993, did not lead to the countrys surrender,
but to the decisive restructuring of the agricultural sector, a number of economic reforms, and the diversification of trade.

Stronger US-Cuba Relations enhance security cooperation Burns and Mills 1/30 Larry Birns, Council on Hemispheric Affairs Director and Frederick B. Mills, COHA
Senior Research Fellow (Best Time for U.S. Cuba Rapprochement Is Now, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 1/30/13, http://www.coha.org/best-time-for-u-s-cuba-rapprochement-is-now/, Accessed: 7/10/13, ckr)

The Obama Administration should be prepared to take, in quick progression, three important initial steps to trigger a speedy rapprochement with Cuba : immediately phase out the embargo, free
the Cuban five, and remove Havana from the spurious State Department roster of nations purportedly sponsoring terrorism. These measures should be seen as indispensable if Washington is to ever mount a credible regional policy of mutual respect among nations and adjust to the increased ideological diversity and independence of the Latin American and Caribbean regions. Washingtons path towards an urgent ly needed rehabilitation of its hemispheric policy ought to also include consideration of Cubas own pressing national interests. A thaw in

USCuba relations would enhance existing security cooperation between the countries, amplify trade and commercial ties, and guarantee new opportunities for citizens of both nations to build bridges of friendship and cooperation. For this to happen, the Obama Administration
would have to muster the audacity to resist the anti-Castro lobby and their hardline allies in Congress, whose Cuba bashing has no limits. Nevertheless, it is time to replace belligerency with dtente. This essay argues that the embargo against Cuba is blatantly counterproductive, immoral, and anachronistic. If the initial purpose of this measure was to punish Havana for expropriating U.S. property and to bring about fundamental political and economic reforms, Washington has had more than 50 years to see that the status quo is flawed. Over the years, invasion, embargo, and covert psychological operations against Cuba have only served to reinforce a circle the wagons mentality in Havana. The island also has been subject to a relentless barrage of propaganda and terrorist assaults organized by militant anti-Castro zealots to advance their cause. These attacks include the 1997 bombing of three hotels in Havana which resulted in the death of Italian tourist Fabio Di Celmo, and the deadly 1976 downing of a Cuban civilian jet. Rather than succumbing to pressure, all of these incidents have given the majority of Cuban nationals good reason to raise defensive barricades in the face of repeated threats to the survival of their homeland.

US-Cuba ties key to economic competitiveness and preventing conflict, particularly in Latin America Honda 10 Representative Mike Honda, U.S. Representative for California's 17th congressional district,
encompassing western San Jose and Silicon Valley, has served in Congress since 2001. (Honda: Embargo on Cuba No Longer Makes Sense, Roll Call, May 4, 2010, http://www.rollcall.com/issues/55_126/45782-1.html, accessed: 7/3/13, LR)

Politically, now that Latin America stands beside Cuba as evidenced by diplomatic reinstatements with holdouts El Salvador and Costa Rica, and the reintegration of Cuba into the Organization for American States and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States the U.S. risks ruinous relations with countries that see the blockade as backward. The U.S. is already marginalized: CLACS explicitly bars U.S. participation. The impact of this Latin tack toward insularity is not insignificant. Consider grandstanding by Brazilian President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva, who rebuffed Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clintons efforts to bring Brazil on Iran sanctions while courting Cubas leadership. Lula, capitalizing on Cubas appetite for growth, proposed investments in industrial, agriculture and infrastructure projects, including ports and hotels, and an agreement with Brazils oil company. We will see more of this. The Cubans are seeking suitors. Like the Bank of the South, Latin Americas attempt to wean countries off U.S. institutions like the World Bank, the longer we keep Cuba at arms length, the more likely Brazil and others will take our place. Removing embargo solves narcotics cooperation key Johnson, Spector and Lilac 10 - Andy Johnson, Director, National Security Program, Kyle Spector, Policy Advisor, National Security Program , Kristina Lilac, National Security Program, Senior Fellows of The Third Way Institute, (End the Embargo of Cuba, Article for The Third Way Institute, 9/16/10, http://content.thirdway.org/publications/326/Third_Way_Memo__End_the_Embargo_of_Cuba.pdf, Accessed 7/02/13, AW) Others have argued that US - Cuba cooperation on issues such as counter - narcotics efforts cou ld benefit both countries and initiate trust - building among the two countries. Policymakers on both sides of the aisle can agree that the embargo has failed to

meet its stated purpose of bringing change to Cubas communist government, making a change in c ourse a necessary next step. Lifting the antiquated embargo would help to move Cuba into the 21 st century, removing the barriers currently preventing the US from engaging Cuba and presenting the US with an opportunity to bring about change in Cuba through economic and diplomatic channels. By opening Cuba, the US could finally achieve the change it has been seeking for nearly fifty years.

Hurricane Assistance
Hurricanes will spread oil spill
Sosnowksi 10 Alex Sosnowski, Senior Meterologist (Hurricanes Could Spill Gulf Oil Inland, Washingtons Blog, May 14,
2010, http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2010/05/hurricanes-could-spread-gulf-oil-inland.html, Accessed: July 3, 2013, SD) AccuWeather.com's Senior

Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski points out today that hurricanes may spread the Gulf oil inland: While the oil leak disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is bad enough, many people have been wondering what could happen if a hurricane were to slam into the region. AccuWeather.com hurricane expert Joe Bastardi is concerned by multiple threats from storms throughout the season in the Gulf of Mexico. [According to predictions for an active hurricane
season this year], much of the central and western Gulf of Mexico could be one of several targets for potential multiple tropical storm and/or hurricane landfalls this year. Depending on the approach of a tropical storm or hurricane, increasing winds and building, massive

seas would first halt containment operations. Rough seas would dislodge or destroy protective booms, rendering them useless as the storm draws closer. Next, as the storm rolls through, high winds on the right flank of a hurricane making landfall would cause some oil to become airborne in blowing spray. A storm surge could carry contaminants inland beyond bays, marshes and beaches to well developed locations. Even a
glancing blow from a hurricane passing to the west of the oil slick could be enough for winds and wave action to drive the goo nearby onshore, or to more distant fishing and recreation areas, perhaps in foreign waters. During the age of sail, winds occasionally blew ships hundreds of miles off course. The wind could have the same effect on the oil slick. Now, imagine several storms during the season doing the same thing. Hurricanes are powered by the heat released when moist air rises. As McClatchy notes, it is possible that the oil might slow down the hurricane formation process in the oil spill zone itself by reducing the evaporation of seawater: Oil wouldn't have an effect on the track of the storm or the intensity, said Dennis Feltgen, spokesman for the National Hurricane Center in Miami. He added, though, that a hurricane or tropical storm might have trouble forming in or near an oil slick. "Oil itself suppresses evaporation of the ocean's water," Feltgen said. "Tropical cyclones require a good amount of that moisture for those deep thunderstorms to develop, so it could slow down the genesis process." Masters said while there are different theories on what happens when storms and oil mix, it's difficult to tell until it happens. "It's kind of an open question," he said. "We don't know what would happen, but if they don't clean up the oil spill by September, then we definitely could see some hurricane and oil spill interaction. In other words, it may be less likely that a hurricane could spill right in the spill zone; but hurricanes could easily form outside of the spill zone and then interact with oil as they moved towards shore. Oil is toxic for humans, containing many different compounds: Oil contains a mixture of chemicals. The main ingredients are various hydrocarbons, some of which can cause cancer (eg. the PAHs or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons); other hydrocarbons can cause skin and airway irritation. There are also certain volatile hydrocarbons called VOCs (volatile organic compounds) which can cause cancer and neurologic and reproductive harm. Oil also contains traces of heavy metals such as mercury, arsenic and lead. The oil in the Gulf is also unrefined, unlike the stuff you pour into your car. It also comes from the deepest oil well ever drilled, and it is possible that the chemistry is different at such great depths due to pressure, heat or other factors. So it is hard to tell at this point whether it is more or less toxic than standard, refined oil (Coast Guard chemists have tested the oil, but - to date - no reports have been made public.) In addition, highly toxic dispersants have been used to try to break up the oil. See this and this. Not only are dispersants being released underwater, but the air force is also dropping dispersants on the slick from above. The official information for the dispersant reveals problems: OSHA requires companies to make Material Safety Data Sheets, or MSDSs, available for any hazardous substances used in a workplace, and the ones for these dispersants both contain versions of a disturbing statement. *** Both data sheets include the warning "human

health hazards: acute." The MSDS for Corexit 9527A [the dispersant apparently being used in the Gulf] states that may cause central nervous system effects, nausea, vomiting, anesthetic or narcotic effects," and "repeated or excessive exposure to butoxyethanol [an active ingredient] may cause injury to red blood cells
"excessive exposure (hemolysis), kidney or the liver." It adds: "Prolonged and/or repeated exposure through inhalation or extensive skin contact with EGBE [butoxyethanol] may result in damage to the blood and kidneys." The bottom

line is that hurricanes could very well

spread the damage from the Gulf oil spill. In the best case scenario, the gusher will have been capped and some cleanup commenced by the time the first hurricane hits the Gulf, the hurricane will be small, and the effects minimal. In the worst case scenario, a major hurricane could spread toxic compounds inland onto crops. It could also aerosolize and then spread toxic chemicals, causing serious health problems for local residents - especially children, the elderly and those already at
risk.

Caribbean area increasingly vulnerable to hurricanes AOML 3 Atlantic Oceanographic Meteorological Laboratory, AOML, a federal research laboratory, is part of
NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research , located in Miami, Florida. AOML's research spans hurricanes, coastal ecosystems, oceans and human health, climate studies, global carbon systems, and ocean observations,(Hurricane Vulnerability in Latin America and The Caribbean: Normalized Damage and Loss Potentials,Aoml.noaa.gov,8/9/2003,http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/NHR-Cuba.pdf,6/28/13,MH)

In recent years, the

documented variability of hurricanes in the region suggests the beginnings of a more active regime. Goldenberg et al. ~2001! provide evidence from Atlantic Ocean sea surface temperatures,
atmospheric circulation patterns, and the time series of Atlantic hurricanes themselves that 1995 marked a distinct switch back to active conditions last seen in the 1940s to 1960s. If conditions persist as they did last century, high levels of hurricane activity may prevail for the next two to three decades. Such a change would be most evident in the Northern Caribbean ~1.3 hurricanes per year in the active era versus only 0.4 hurricanes per year that occurred in the quiet era of 1971 1994! and the Southern Caribbean ~0.4 versus 0.2 hurricanes per year!, but would not cause a signicant change in Central American hurricanes ~0.2 hurricanes per year in both regimes!.

Current foreign aid funds for hurricane relief in Cuba are stolen from the people-diverted to government and military facilities Tamayo 6/25-(Juan O. Tamayo,former Foreign Editor and Chief of Correspondents at The Miami Herald and for
many years the newspapers lead person in its coverage of Cuban affairs, a Research Associate, Miami Herald, 6.25.13, http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/25/3470187/priest-alleges-that-foreign-hurricane.html, 6/27/13, MH) Outspoken Cuban priest Jose Conrado Rodriguez alleged that foreign aid sent to his native Santiago de Cuba

province after Hurricane Sandy last year was diverted to government, military and tourism facilities but denied to private homes. The situation in Santiago is very grave because many of the more than 100,000 homes damaged by the storm have not been repaired, Rodriguez told El Nuevo Herald on
Tuesday. The aid has not reached the people. Rodriguez first made the allegations in a public letter to the head of the Communist Party in the province, Lzaro Expsito, urging him to crack down on the diversion of the aid and the corruption that surrounds you. We have watched with astonishment the theft of the assistance that so many countries sent to our people, he wrote, how that aid was sold at inflated prices in flagrant violation of the intentions of the donors. We have watched with astonishment as government or armed forces installations were repaired in record time, while the people remain without roofs, he wrote in the letter, dated June 16. Warning of possible civil unrest, he added, We are witnesses to the peoples frustrations, to their desperation and impotence, to a threatening silence that makes us think that it could explode at any time with justified and uncontrollable fury. Rodriguez told El Nuevo that foreign diplomats who visited him after Sandy noted a very high degree of exasperation in the city of Santiago de Cuba, due to host the July 26 celebrations this year that mark the start of the Castro revolution. Sandy pummeled eastern Cuba in October, killing 11 people and causing $2 billion in damages. Many of the homes belonging to 100,000 families remain without roofs or the families are jammed into the one or two rooms that have roofs, Rodriguez said.

Plan would innovate new hurricane prevention and precaution technologies Lacey 9 Marc Lacey,Marc was The Timess Mexico bureau chief, responsible for covering Mexico, Central
America and the Caribbean. From 2006 to 2010, he led the newspapers coverage of Mexicos drug war, Cubas transition from Fidel Castro and Haitis struggle for stability, among other issues in more than 30 countries large and small.,The New York Times, 8/20/2009,http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/world/americas/21storm.html?_r=0,6/27/13,MH) Ivor van Heerden, a hurricane expert at Louisiana State University who visited Cuba last year, contends that

American policies should be loosened to allow a transfer of technology to Cuba to help bolster its oceanographic and weather data collection. The United States could learn from Cubas evacuation plans, post-disaster medical support and citizen disaster education programs, he said.

Cuban Embargo fails Hurricane impacts are devastating Haass 09 Richard N. Haass, Richard N. Haass is president of the Council on Foreign Relations (Forget About
Fidel, The Daily Beast, 3/6/2009, http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/03/06/forget-about-fidel.html, accessed: 6/28/13, ckr) There are signs that change may finally be coming to Cuba, 50 years after the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power. In a major shakeup, Ral Castro, Fidel's brother, fired several high-level officials last week. While Ral did more to raise expectations than living standards in his first year as president, he may now be positioning the government to go beyond the tentative reforms so far introduced. Then again, he might merely be installing loyalists who share his view that the regime should keep a tight grip on society.

What's more certain is the need for change in Cuba. Last year's hurricanes cost the already poor island nation $10 billion, 20 percent of its GDP. The global economic slowdown has dampened tourism. The population of 11 million is shrinking, in part because of a housing shortage that's leading many families to have fewer children. Cuba's people, the lion's share of whom were born after 1959, face a future that promises little in the way of either prosperity or freedom.
Some American conservatives maintain that all this is reason enough for the United States to persist in its policy of ignoring Cuba diplomatically and sanctioning it economically. At least in principle, one could argue that the revolution is running out of steam and that regime change from within may finally be at hand. The problem is that this argument ignores Cuban reality. The country is not near the precipice of collapse. To the contrary, the intertwined party, government and military have matters well in hand. The population, ensured basic necessities along with access to education and health care, is neither inclined to radical change nor in a position to bring it about. The American policy of isolating Cuba has failed. Officials boast that Havana now hosts more diplomatic missions than any other country in the region save Brazil. Nor is the economic embargo working. Or worse: it is working, but for countries like Canada, South Korea and dozens of others that are only too happy to help supply Cuba with food, generators and building materials. Those in Congress who complain about the "offshoring" of American jobs ought to consider that the embargo deprives thousands of American workers of employment. The policy of trying to isolate Cuba also worksperversely enoughto bolster the Cuban regime. The U.S. embargo provides Cuba's leaders a convenient excusethe country's economic travails are due to U.S. sanctions, they can claim, not their own failed policies. The lack of American visitors and investment also helps the government maintain political control. There is one more reason to doubt the wisdom of continuing to isolate Cuba. However slowly, the country is changing. The question is whether the United States will be in a position to influence the direction and pace of this change. We do not want to see a Cuba that fails, in which the existing regime gives way to a repressive regime of a different stripe or to disorder marked by drugs, criminality, terror or a humanitarian crisis that prompts hundreds of thousands of Cubans to flee their country for the United States. Rather, Washington should work to shape the behavior and policy of Cuba's leadership so that the country becomes more open politically and economically. Fifty years of animosity cannot be set aside in a stroke, but now is the time for Washington to act. Much of the initiative lies with the new president. President Obama, could, for example, make good on campaign promises to allow Cuban-Americans to freely remit funds to relatives in Cuba and to visit them regularly, and could loosen travel restrictions for others as well. (Some of these measures can be found in legislation currently working its way through Congress.) Obama could also initiate technical contacts. Each country already maintains an "interests section," a small embassy by another name, in the other's capital. They also share information about weather. But they could resume exchanges on such common challenges as migration and drug interdiction, and initiate them on homeland security and counterterrorism.

Famine
Cuban embargo prevents food supply and results in massive disease outbreaks Kirkpatrick 96 Anthony Kirkpatrick, After nearly twenty years of dedicated service to the University of South Florida
College of Medicine in Tampa, Anthony F. Kirkpatrick, MD, PhD, left to establish the RSD / CRPS Treatment Center and Research Institute, the world's first institute of its kind, dedicated exclusively to RSD / CRPS. The Institute opened its Center in February 2008 and is headquartered in Tampa. (Role of the USA in shortage of food and medicine in Cuba, The

Lancet Vol. 348, 11/30/1996, http://www.cubasolidarity.net/Kirkpatrick-lancet.pdf, accessed: 6/27/13, ckr)

The US Government acknowledges that there is no exemption for food items; it simply notes that
there are ample suppliers of foodstuffs elsewhere, that Cuba receives donations of food, and that the food shortages are not due to the embargo, but, rather, are caused by the Regimes failure to alter Cubas inefficient centralized economic system.10 This argument rings hollow. First, even if Cuba can buy food elsewhere, the inclusion of food in the US trade embargo remains in violation of international law. Second, a small amount of food is donated by US organisations,4,10 but that is a poor substitute for removing provisions that prohibit its sale. Third, although Cuba can buy food elsewhere, it must often pay higher transportation costs than would be the case with the nearby USA. Fourth, in 1992, the US Government ignored the warning of the American Public

Health Association that the tightening of the embargo would lead to an abrupt cessation of supplies of food and medicine to Cuba resulting in widespread famines.4 In fact, 5 months after the passage of the Act the worst epidemic of neurological disease this century due to a food shortage became widespread in Cuba. 12 More than 50 000 of the 11 million inhabitants were suffering from optic neuropathy, deafness, loss of sensation and pain in the extremities, and a spinal disorder that impaired walking and bladder control.1113 Furthermore, as recently as November, 1995, WHO reported more people with neurological disease in Cuba due to malnutrition.14 In June, 1993, a delegation sponsored by the American Public Health Association travelled to Cuba to assess the impact of the embargo on the public health of the Cuban people. The Associations report
notes that the policies of the Castro regime give a high priority for health care, which has contributed to a large reduction in infant mortality and improvements in health. However, the Association found that the

tightening US embargo, through the enactment of the CDA, has been associated with a decline in the health of the Cuban people.15 The US Government often speaks of violations of human rights in Cuba. Such claims should perhaps be viewed against the background of an Amnesty International report, which
catalogues human-rights abuses in the USA, such as torture, ill-treatment of prisoners, and excessive use of force by police.16 In addition, it should be noted that Washington has been deemed to have exaggerated Cubas abuses of human rights, to the extent of codifying such claims into US law.17 These reports should be borne in mind when the US blockade of food and medicine to Cuba is considered.

Embargo causes malnutrition in Cuba Amnesty International 09 Amnesty International is a global movement of 2.2 million people in more than
150 countries and territories, who campaign on human rights (The US Embargo against Cuba, Amnesty International, 2009 (no spec. date), http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR25/007/2009/en/51469f8b-73f847a2-a5bd-f839adf50488/amr250072009eng.pdf, accessed: 7/4/13, ckr)

The negative impact of the US embargo on the Cuban health care system and on the right to health of Cubans during the 1990s has been documented in a 1997 report by the American Association for World Health (AAWH).45 The 300-page document is still the most comprehensive study on the issue. Based on a fact-finding mission to Cuba, the AAWH identified that the embargo contributed

particularly to malnutrition affecting especially women and children, poor water quality, lack of access to medicines and medical supplies, and limited the exchange of medical and scientific information due to travel restrictions and currency regulations. The AAWH found that a humanitarian
catastrophe has been averted only because the Cuban government has maintained a high level of budgetary support for a health care system designed to deliver primary and preventive health care to all of its citizens Even so, the

U.S. embargo of food and the de facto embargo on medical supplies has wreaked havoc with the island's model primary health care system.46
During the first three decades of the embargo, the export of medicines was allowed for humanitarian reasons only. In 1992, with the passage of the CDA, the sales of medicines were exempt from the embargo. However, access to medicines became virtually impossible for Cuba. Every export of medicine required that the President of the USA certify, through on-site inspections approved by the President, that all components of a shipment of medical products to Cuba were used for the purpose intended. 47 The tightening of the US embargo

during the 1990s exacerbated the economic crisis in Cuba as the country had lost the economic support from the Soviet Union.48 This affected the capacity of the Cuban health system to deliver to the population the same standards of health care as before the economic crisis Lack of imports due to the embargo means Cuba doesnt have enough food Garfield 99 Richard Garfield, Richard Garfield, nurse and epidemiologist, is professor of clinical international
nursing at Columbia University. He is the co-chair of the Human Rights Committee of the American Public Health Association and director of a PAHO/WHO collaborating centre at Columbia University. He worked in the ministry of health in Nicaragua. (The Impact of Economic Sanctions on Health and Well-being, Relief and Rehabilitation Network Paper, November 1999, http://www.essex.ac.uk/armedcon/story_id/The%20Impact%20of%20Econmoic%20Sanctins%20on%20Health%20 abd%20Well-Being.pdf, accessed: 7/2/13, amf) Cuba About

half of all proteins and calories in Cuba were imported prior to sanctions. Importation of foodstuffs declined by about 50 per cent from 1989 to 1993 and milk production declined by 55 per cent from 1989 to 1992 due to loss of imported feed and fuel. Reduced imports and a shift toward lower quality protein products are significant health threats: a daily glass of milk used to be provided to all children in schools and daycare centres through age 13; it was subsequently provided only up to age six. It is estimated that sanctions on Cuba create a virtual tax of 30 per cent on all imports. These have higher purchase and shipping costs because they have to be purchased from more expensive and more distant markets.

Embargo interferes with Cubas food and economy Jolly 8- Schona Jolly, internationalhuman rights and equalities lawyer and writer, (Of Demons and Hurricanes : Cuba's Embargo Must Be Lifted Immediately, 2/08,

http://www.cubaabsolutely.com/AboutCuba/article_economic.php?id=Of-Demons-andHurricanes, 7/3/13, CAS)

A 2007 report [PDF] by the UN special rapporteur on the right to food highlights the devastating impact that the embargo has had on Cuba's food production and importation. The report states, by
way of example: Over 80% of dairy imports to Cuba consist of milk powder for use in the social programme, imported from New Zealand and the European Union. Rice is shipped from China and Vietnam, taking 45 days to reach Cuba. By way of comparison, it would cost one-third of the price to ship from the United States and would only take two days. Increased transaction costs also affect the import of food.

US products must be paid for in advance in cash or through letters of credit drawn on third country banks. The [Cuban] government estimates that incremental (transaction) costs for food and agricultural imports

incurred in 2006 due to the embargo amounted to $62.8m.

An embargo "to bring democracy" is a tool of warfare, and needs to be recognised as such. Cuba, however, is dealing with enough of her own demons at present. Whirling winds have wreaked a war-like devastation on a land that has stayed determined to seek its own course through history. It is high time the embargo is lifted, not just for 90 days, but for good. According to the Cuban government, the embargo has cost the Cuban

economy over $89bn since its introduction and resulted in $258m of losses in the food sector from May 2006 to April 2007.

Internet Adv 1AC

Government conditioning restricts internet access to .01% of the population
TAMAYO 6-7 JUAN O. TAMAYO, Writer at The Miami Herald, Former: Andean Bureau Chief at Miami Herald, Foreign Editor at
Miami Herald, Latin desk editor at UPI Foreign desk, Marquette University, School of Journalism (Cubas new Internet locales remain conditioned, Miami Herald, 6/7/13, http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/07/3439494/cubas -new-internet-locales-remain.html, Accessed: 6/27/13 MC)

Users marveled at the relatively high speeds of the connections and their access to some Web pages once blocked by the government. Others, like Radio/TV Marti, the U.S. government broadcaster that transmits to the island,
remain blocked.

But access to the Web at the cyberpuntos remained tightly conditioned even chillingly so. Users must show their national ID cards and sign an agreement that they will not use the service for anything that could be considered as damaging or harmful to the public security a vague term that presumably can include political dissidence. And when users try to send out any attachments, ETECSAs own NAUTA interface system greets them with a pop-up window that certainly appears to be a reminder that Big Brother is watching.
When you send information to the Internet, other people may see what you are sending. Do you wish to continue? the message says. Click yes or no. The pop-up window is marked Internet Explorer and is known to be a real if infrequent message generated by that search engine. Yet several Cuban cybernauts said they never see that message when they use Internet cafes in Havanas tourist hotels. Havana

journalist and blogger Ivan Garcia said he didnt know what to make of the message. It would be really sloppy for the authorities to allow the message to pop-up, he said, although the whole world knows everything can be monitored here. Most Cubans believe that the governments security apparatus watches over virtually all Internet traffic into and out of the island, reads any private emails and steals passwords so that it can hack into accounts abroad, such as Gmail, Facebook and Twitter.
Most of the complaints so far against the 118 new Web access points opened on Cuban ruler Ra l Castros 82nd birthday have been not about the possible monitoring but about the high costs.
The $5 charged for one hour of surfing on the World Wide Web amounts to a weeks salary for the average government employee. Surfing the Cuba-only Intranet costs about 70 U.S. cents and access to a Cuban email account goes for about $1.65 per hour.

Cubans have one of the worst Internet access rates in the Western Hemisphere, with only 4 percent saying they had access to the Web and email in a public opinion survey by the International Republican Institute taken in January and February. The International Telecommunications Union ranked Cuba in last place in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2011 when measured by broadband subscribers per 100 people and secure Internet servers for every 1 million people.

Scenario 1 is the Public Sphere: Without internet the Cuban public sphere is bound to regime control Hoffmann 11- Bert Hoffmann, Senior Researcher GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies ( Civil Society 2.0?: How the
Internet Changes State-Society Relations in Authoritarian Regimes: The Case of Cuba, GIGA Research Programme: Legitimacy and Efficiency of Political Systems, January 2011 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gigahamburg.de%2Fdl%2Fdownload.php%3Fd%3D%2Fcontent%2Fpublikationen%2Fpdf%2Fwp156_hoffmann.pdf&ei=D93SUbinBNi4AOfwoHoDw&usg=AFQjCNGPPcalsf1La5yMENpZb7PxMV2i3Q&sig2=cSL3cBqrRtpr1ysxnhEqzQ Accessed: 7/3/13 MC)

The forms and degree of the limits various authoritarian regimes impose on the public articulation of voice vary, but no matter which regime is in question, the regime's reach is largely limited to the territorial boundaries of the nation-state in which it exercises power. As traditional media, too, were bound to the nation-state, widening the public sphere hence needed to be thought of as an "opening," "thaw," "decompression" or "liberalization" of the regime (e.g. O'Donnnell/Schmitter 1986: 26). The Internet era forces us to rethink this understanding. The inherently trans-border character of web-based communication and media technologies challenges established "fil- ters" to access and patterns of regulation in any state. However, our thesis is that the political impact is all the stronger the more a state is at odds with political pluralism and the more it relies on control over media and the public sphere in the national arena. Cuba certainly has been such a case ever since the early years after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, when the government of Fidel Castro adopted socialism as the country's political model. While the regime survived the collapse of Soviet-style socialism in Eastern Europe, it was reluctant to take up Internet-based technologies. The island became the last of all Latin American countries to join the Internet, having done so as recently as 1996 (Valdes 1997). Since then, computer use and digital communication technologies have spread, but control- ling and limiting access to the Internet and web-based media has been a crucial concern for state authorities.
Its condition as a latecomer to the Internet, combined with the overarching continuity of
the political regime, makes Cuba an ideal case for a diachronic empirical comparison, an ap- proach often underestimated in comparative politics.

compare civil society dynamics in the pre-Internet period-Cuba in the early to mid-1990s, when the Cold War alignment had already become history but web-based technologies did not yet have a major presence on the island-with the dynamics of a decade later, when web-based media entered the island for the first time. Empirically, this study is based on approximately one
Thus, this paper sets out to dozen field trips over the past two decades that included numerous formal and informal interviews both with actors from within Cuba's political establishment and those outside of it. These interviews are combined with an intensive study of publications and declarations, both in print and on the web.

Following this introduction, I will analyze Cuba's

civil society debate of the 1990s, which focused on the quest for associational autonomy as a means of pluralization within the statesocialist context. Next, I sketch Cuba's late and reluctant acceptance of the Internet and the state's efforts to assure itself a maximum amount of control. I then turn to the different ways in which societal actors have since come to use digital and web-based media to raise their voice and claim participation as one of their rights of
citizenship. The paper concludes with a discussion about the democratizing potential of these new civil society dynamics.

Web-based communication inherently challenges state regulation- widen the public sphere Hoffmann 11- Bert Hoffmann, Senior Researcher GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies ( Civil Society 2.0?: How the
Internet Changes State-Society Relations in Authoritarian Regimes: The Case of Cuba, GIGA Research Programme: Legitimacy and Efficiency of Political Systems, January 2011 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gigahamburg.de%2Fdl%2Fdownload.php%3Fd%3D%2Fcontent%2Fpublikationen%2Fpdf%2Fwp156_hoffmann.pdf&ei=D93SUbinBNi4AOfwoHoDw&usg=AFQjCNGPPcalsf1La5yMENpZb7PxMV2i3Q&sig2=cSL3cBqrRtpr1ysxnhEqzQ Accessed: 7/3/13 MC)

The forms and degree of the limits various authoritarian regimes impose on the public articulation of voice vary, but no matter which regime is in question, the regime's reach is largely limited to the territorial boundaries of the nation-state in which it exercises power. As traditional media, too, were bound to the nation-state, widening the public sphere hence needed to be thought of as an "opening," "thaw," "decompression" or " liberalization" of the regime (e.g. O'Donnnell/Schmitter
1986: 26).

The Internet era forces us to rethink this understanding. The inherently trans-border character of web-based communication and media technologies challenges established "fil- ters" to access and patterns of regulation in any state. However, our thesis is that the political impact is

all the stronger the more a state is at odds with political pluralism and the more it relies on control over media and the public sphere in the national arena. Cuba certainly has been such a case ever since the early years after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, when the government of Fidel Castro adopted socialism as the country's political model. While the regime survived the collapse of Soviet-style socialism in Eastern Europe, it was reluctant to take up Internet-based technologies. The island became the last of all Latin American countries to join the Internet, having done so as recently as 1996 (Valdes 1997). Since then, computer use and digital communication technologies have spread, but control- ling and limiting access to the Internet and web-based media has been a crucial concern for state authorities.
Its condition as a latecomer to the Internet, combined with the overarching continuity of the political regime, makes Cuba an ideal case for a diachronic empirical comparison, an ap- proach often underestimated in comparative politics. Thus, this paper sets out to compare civil society dynamics in

the pre-Internet period-Cuba in the early to mid-1990s, when the Cold War alignment had already become history but web-based technologies did not yet have a major presence on the island-with the dynamics of a decade later, when web-based media entered the island for the first time.
Empirically, this study is based on approximately one dozen field trips over the past two decades that included numerous formal and informal interviews both with actors from within Cuba's political establishment and those outside of it. These interviews are combined with an intensive study of publications and declarations, both in print and on the web. Following this introduction, I will analyze Cuba's civil society debate of the 1990s, which

focused on the quest for associational autonomy as a means of pluralization within the statesocialist context. Next, I sketch Cuba's late and reluctant acceptance of the Internet and the state's efforts to assure itself a maximum amount of control. I then turn to the different ways in which societal actors have since come to use digital and web-based media to raise their voice and claim participation as
one of their rights of citizenship. The paper concludes with a discussion about the democratizing potential of these new civil society dynamics.

Technological management of society objectifies human life Rayner 01- Tim Rayner (PhD) teaches Philosophy for Change and mentors at the Centre for Sustainability Leadership, Sydney, Australia
He is the writer of the award-winning short film, Coalition of the Willing (2010), Biopower and Technology: Foucault and Heideggers Way of Thinking Contretemps 2, May 2001, http://sydney.edu.au/contretemps/2may2001/rayner.pdf

The themes and concerns that define the argument of the present work derive from Heidegger and Foucaults respective interpretations of the relationship between technology and power in the contemporary age. Heidegger

and Foucault share the view that individuals in modern society are to some extent determined by technological structures pervading that society. Both develop the idea that the basic character of these structures is to objectify and order the forces of life. Both argue that the view of human beings as a kind of manipulable resource is essential to the technological management of society, and both suggest that liberation from this state of affairs requires a radical renegotiation of the nature of human being as presently construed. Given these parallels, it is interesting to consider how far we
might co-ordinate Foucault and Heideggers accounts. To what extent does Foucaults critique of modern biopower recapitulate Heideggers critique of modern technology?

Embargo prevents Cuban internet access Miroff 12 Nick Miroff, contributer to NPR, has written for the Washington ost, Masters degree in
Journalism from Berkeley, Bachelors degree in Spanish and Latin American literature at the University of Califorina at Santa Cruz (How the US keeps Cuba offline, Global Post, June 27 2012,

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/cuba/120627/us-embargo-google-analytics-cubaninternet-access, Accessed: 7/10/13, EH)

HAVANA, Cuba Fear not, web-deprived Cubans. The US government has a new plan to breach the firewall of communist censorship and let free data flow through. First though, it needs to block your access to some really cool software. That was the scrambled message of the past week. First, Cubans found themselves barred from using Google Analytics a free, web-traffic analysis tool by the US trade embargo. A few days later, they learned that American officials are spending millions on new programs to boost the free and decentralized flow of information to the island. A reminder, once more, that the Great Software Maker of the North giveth, and also taketh away. Both developments may end up deepening the frustrations of would-be web users in Cuba, who are often trapped between an internet-fearing government and US policies that seem to be making matters worse. Compared to other nations in the region, Cuba is a cyber desert , a technological Brigadoon stuck in the pre-AOL era, where millions of young people have never even been online. A limited number of Cubans manage to connect to the internet through their workplaces or by paying a premium for exasperatingly slow dial-up connections, but they web browsing a test of patience and videostreaming an impossib[le]ility. Cuban government statistics show that the island of 11 million has the lowest internet penetration rate in the Western Hemisphere. Though mobile phone ownership is growing fast and now tops 1.3 million, that also remains the lowest in Latin America. Even Cubans who have the money arent allowed to contract internet service at home. The Cuban government insists there isnt enough bandwidth to go around, yet it hasnt said a word about the status of a much-touted undersea fiber-optic cable to Venezuela that was supposed to fix the problem when it was completed last year. Internet-starved islanders who do manage to get online face an obstacle course set by both the Castro government and Washington, which directs American technology companies to enforce sanctions on popular software. Cuban web users are blocked from the chat service Microsoft Messenger, and have been cut off from sites such as Sourceforge, a source-code repository used by software developers. Google Earth and Google Toolbar were already denied to Cubans before the company announced last week that it was adding Google Analytics to the blacklist. No matter that the software is free and no money changes hands between Google and Cuba. As a US company, we comply with US export controls and trade sanctions that limit us from offering certain services in certain countries, a Google spokesperson told AFP. The Cuban government called it outrageous censorship. For its part, Cuba blocks access on its servers to US-funded broadcaster Radio Marti, along with online classifieds site Revolico.com and voiceover-internet services such as Skype. Other sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are accessible from Cuba, though cumbersome to use. And Cuba remains a black hole to other corners of the web, like travel sites even those not based in the US which often dont list the country as a destination, even though the major European and Latin American airlines fly to Havana. Some US products, such as the iPad, dont even include Cuba as one of the countries for first -time users to register. If the software sanctions are meant to punish the Cuban government and its one-party socialist state, its not clear that they achieve anything more than making cyber orphans of ordinary Cubans. If anything, the US restrictions seem to play into arguments made by Cuban government hardliners who seem eager to bypass the internet and create a closed, Orwellian copy, free from outside contamination.

Internet Solvency
Developing internet technology can circumvent state censorship Kalathil & Boas 01- Shanthi Kalathil is an independent consultant on media and development. Shanthi is an expert on media, civil
society, and political transitions. Previously, she was a Senior Democracy Fellow based in the Office of Democracy and Governance at the U.S. Agency for International Development, where she served as an advisor on civil society and independent media development for Washingtonbased programs and planning, as well as for various USAID missions around the world. She holds a B.A. in Communications from U.C. Berkeley and a M.Sc. in Comparative Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Shanthi is particularly interested in issues of voice and accountability and their impact on political transitions. Taylor C. Boas, The Internet and State Control in Authoritarian Regimes: China, Cuba, and the Counterrevolution,

Moreover, the experiences of China and Cuba are likely to shed light on other authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes strategies regarding the Internet. In the Middle East, several
governments have begun to promote widespread Internet access but remain even more committed than the Chinese to censoring content available on the World Wide Web. In Asia, the strictest regimes have mimicked Cuba in selectively granting access to the medium. Almost all

of these regimes are attempting to benefit from proactive approaches toward the Internet, harnessing technology for economic development, e-government, and other purposes. Singapore
and the United Arab Emirates stand out in their respective regions as success stories of proactive Internet strategy, and many of their neighbors are looking to them as examples to emulate. Ongoing research at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace will place Cuba and China in comparative perspective with a wider variety of authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes in Asia and the Middle East. In doing so we hope to reach more generalizable conclusions about the impact of the Internet on authoritarian rule.

In the long term, of course, we can only speculate about the continued viability of state strategies for controlling the Internet. Internet technology will continue to evolve over time, as will the myriad nontechnological factors that shape the environment in which Internet use takes place; as such, our observations act as snapshots of moving targets. Authoritarian regimes will
have to continually adapt their measures of control if they want to counter effectively the challenges of future variations in information and communication technologies. It is quite

possible that this task will prove too difficult and that use of ICTs will eventually play a role in the democratic revolution that has been so widely predicted. Over time, however, authoritarian
regimes have weathered innumerable challenges posed by changing technologies, and they may prove up to the current challenge as well.

Internet can prompt the move toward liberal political systems Fontaine and Rogers 11- Richard Fontaine is the President of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). He served as a
Senior Advisor and Senior Fellow at CNAS from 2009-2012. He previously served as foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain for more than five years. He has also worked at the State Department, the National Security Council and on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Will Rogers, is the Bacevich Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). At CNAS, Mr. Rogers researc h focus is on science, technology and national security policy. He has authored or co-authored a range of publications on energy, climate change, environmental cooperation in Asia and cybersecurity. ( Internet Freedom A Foreign Policy Imperative in the Digital Age, CNA S, JUNE 2011, http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_InternetFreedom_FontaineRogers_0.pdf, Accessed: 7/4/13, MC)

The Internet does not automatically promote democratization; Irans Twitter revolution led to no reforms while
Egypts Facebook revolution toppled the Mubarak regime. Furthermore, the technology itself is agnostic; the same online Exper ts from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development have estimated that Egypts fiveday Internet shutdown cost the country at least 90 million dollars, a figure that does not include e-commerce, tourism or other businesses that rely on Internet connectivity. tools

that empower dissidents can aid dictators in their oppression. In the short run, at least, a freer Internet does not automatically translate into more liberal political systems.

Yet some case studies do demonstrate the Internets profound potential: that access to an open Internet can help countries slide away from authoritarianism and toward democracy. Events in Iran, Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere suggest that the Internet and related technologies (such as SMS) have indeed served as critical tools for organizing protests, spreading information among dissident parties and transmitting images and information to the outside world some of which moved onto satellite television channels, further boosting their influence.64 And while experts continue to argue about the precise effect, they tend to agree that social media tools have made revolutions in the Middle East easier and speedier than they would have otherwise been.65Perhaps the most compelling link between a free Internet and democratization is also the simplest: Both dissidents and dictatorships abroad seem to believe that the Internet can have a transformative role, and they act on that basis. Dictatorships expend enormous time and resources to clamp down on online activity, and more than 40 countries actively censor the Internet or engage in other forms of significant Internet repression.66 Meanwhile, millions of individuals use proxy servers and other circumvention and anonymity tools to evade censorship and monitoring. During the 2009 presidential campaign in Iran, for example,
both President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his opponent, Mir-Hussein Mousavi, cited the Internet as a tool through which the liberal opposition could mobilize support.67 It is unlikely they were
both wrong. While

the effect of the Internet will depend on local conditions, there are indeed reasonable grounds for believing that a free Internet can help empower individuals to press for more liberal political systems. Precedent for Internet freedom in place Fontaine and Rogers 11- Richard Fontaine is the President of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). He served as a
Senior Advisor and Senior Fellow at CNAS from 2009-2012. He previously served as foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain for more than five years. He has also worked at the State Department, the National Security Council and on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Will Rogers, is the Bacevich Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). At CNAS, Mr. Rogers researc h focus is on science, technology and national security policy. He has authored or co-authored a range of publications on energy, climate change, environmental cooperation in Asia and cybersecurity. ( Internet Freedom A Foreign Policy Imperative in the Digital Age , CNAS, JUNE 2011, http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_InternetFreedom_FontaineRogers_0.pdf, Accessed: 7/4/13, MC)

Principle 1: embrace a Comprehensive approach U.S. policymakers should incorporate Internet freedom into their decision-making (especially on cyber security and economic diplomacy issues); convene private sector professionals, export controls experts, diplomats and others to explore new ways of promoting Internet freedom; and use traditional diplomacy to promote Internet freedom. Principle 2: build an International Coalition to Promote Internet Freedom The U.S. government should convene a core group of democratic governments to advocate Internet freedom in key international fora; urge governments to encourage foreign companies to join the Global Network Initiative (GNI);
and ensure that the Secretary of State gives her next major address on Internet freedom in a foreign country, possibly in Europe alongside key European Union (EU) commissioners.

Principle 3: Move beyond Circumvention Technologies The U.S. government should continue to fund technologies other than firewall-evasion tools, including those that help dissidents maintain digital security, ensure mobile access and reconstitute websites after a cyber attack. The U.S. government should offer financial awards to foster technological innovation, require that any online tool receiving U.S. funding be subjected to an independent security audit and expand the
sources of technology funding to include foreign governments, foundations and the private sector.

Principle 4: Prioritize Training The State Department, along with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), should continue to foster Internet freedom through targeted training programs, including education on online safety.

Principle 5: lead the effort to build International norms The U.S. government should promote a liberal concept of Internet freedom in all relevant fora, and reject attempts by authoritarian states to promote norms that restrict freedoms of information and expression online. It should also pursue an international transparency initiative to encourage
governments to publicize their policies on restricting online information. Principle 6: Create economic Incentives to support Internet Freedom

U.S. officials should continue to articulate the economic case for Internet freedom, backed wherever possible by solid quantitative evidence, and push for Internet censorship to be recognized as a trade barrier. Principle 7: strengthen the Private sectors Role in supporting Internet Freedom Congress should adopt laws that prohibit American corporations from giving autocratic governments the private data of dissidents when the request is clearly intended to quash legitimate freedom of expression, and that require companies to periodically disclose requests it receives for such data to the U.S. government.
U.S. officials should continue to urge companies to join the GNI, but also encourage them to develop broad unilateral codes of conduct consistent with the GNI. They should also publicly highlight specific business practices, both positive and negative.

Principle 8: Reform export Controls The U.S. government should relax controls on technologies that would permit greater online freedom while protecting American national security, and educate companies on the precise nature of export
control restrictions so that companies do not overcomply and deny legal technologies to dissidents abroad. In addition, we offer several recommendations for technology companies, including providing

dissidents basic technical assistance to better use built-in security functions for software and hardware; better informing users and the public about who may access the data they control and under what conditions; increasing corporate
transparency about foreign government requests; and advocating for increased Internet freedom.

US can connect Cuban- little squo public access Mirof 10 Nick Miroff, Nick Miroff covers Cuba for GlobalPost., Miroff was part of the Washington Post reporting team that won a
Pulitzer prize for breaking news coverage of the massacre at Virginia Tech. His story in the Washington Post on coal miners and painkiller addiction in Appalachian southwest Virginia was the recipient of a 2008 Nancy Dickerson Award for Excellent in Reporting on Drug and Alcohol Problems. In 2006, he traveled to Northern Manitoba as part of a radio series on climate change, Early Signs: Report s from a Warming Planet that won a 2006 George Polk Award. Miroff grew up in Albany, N.Y., and earned a bachelor's degree in Spanish and Lati n American literature at University of California Santa Cruz. He holds a master's degree from the Berkeley Graduate Schoo l of Journalism. (Cuba: No deal with US telecoms,globalpost.com, October 18, 2009 17:11Updated May 30, 2010 13:11, http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/cuba/091018/cuba-says-no-deal-us-telecoms?page=0,1, Accessed: 6/27/13, MC)

Cuba currently ranks among the least-connected countries in the hemisphere, with 12.6 phones per 100
people, according to United Nations data. A limited number of Cuban professionals have access to the internet, but mostly in their workplaces, where communications are often monitored. An hour of achingly slow web access at a tourist hotel can cost more than a weeks salary for the average Cuban worker.

Cuban mobile phone communications arent much better. Though President Raul Castro overturned a ban on ordinary Cubans owning mobile phones last year, rates for local calls are roughly $0.50 per minute. A call to the U.S. costs more than a dollar a minute, and theres little alternative for keeping in touch with relatives in Miami or Spain, since the popular voice-over-internet program Skype was blocked by the Cuban government
over the summer.

The Obama administrations move gave permission to American telecommunications companies to install fiber-optic cable and satellite links between the United States and Cuba. It also allows for roaming agreements between U.S. and Cuban mobile phone providers, while enabling U.S. residents to
pay for American satellite radio and television services for Cubans, which are generally illegal on the island.

Its possible- Cuban internet Guerillas circumvent internet blocking WILSON 01- SCOTT WILSON, Scott Wilson is the chief White House correspondent for the Washington Post. Previously, he
was the papers deputy Assistant Managing Editor/Foreign News after serving as a correspondent in Latin America and in the Middle East. He was awarded an Overseas Press Club citation and an Interamerican Press Association award for his work abroad. For his coverage of the Obama administration, he received the 2011 Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency and the 2012 Aldo Beckman Award given by the White House Correspondents Association. He joined the Post in 1997. (Cuban Guerrillas Scale the Cyber Walls WASHINGTON POST, January 01, 2001, http://articles.latimes.com/2001/jan/01/business/fi-7096, Accessed: 7/4/13, MC)

After watching the flow of information help fuel the Soviet Union's disintegration, the Cuban government has clamped down on Internet technology even as the number of users throughout the rest of Latin America doubles each year. Controlling what Cubans read and hear has been part of President Fidel
Castro's rule from the beginning. In theory, Cubans have access only to state-run newspapers and government television and radio, but many listen regularly to foreign news broadcasts.

That the Internet poses a serious threat to the information monopoly has not eluded the leadership: Cuba has one of the lowest per capita rates of computer and telephone ownership in the hemisphere. Only a select few Cubans, mostly those with access to U.S. dollars, can afford a computer even with the deep discounts
that come with government approval. Buying them on the black market is illegal. But, according to computer enthusiasts and dissidents, thousands of young Cubans do so, and the practice is well known.

Internet connections are prohibited without government permission. Only about 40,000 officials, businesses and foreigners in a country of 11 million people have been authorized to link up, the
government estimates. But thousands more have found a way to plug into the official links without permission.

The government is just beginning to test the waters of the Information Age after years of blaming the U.S. trade embargo for depriving Cuba of the resources to prepare for it. Cuba plans to spend $100 million annually to bring in digital phone lines, wireless technology and other advances that could expand Internet availability.
Across the capital, signs of a "dot-com" world are sprouting. Computer courses offered at youth clubs are jammed with students ranging in age from 4 to 40. A new breed of Internet entrepreneur has arrived, helping the government create Web pages mostly designed to lure tourists. And streets are being torn up to install digital phone lines and cable.

Advocates: The USFG should enable internet freedom within repressive regimes Fontaine 10- Richard Fontaine is the President of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). He served as
a Senior Advisor and Senior Fellow at CNAS from 2009-2012. He previously served as foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain for more than five years. He has also worked at the State Department, the National Security Council and on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. (America Needs an Internet Agenda, The Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2010, 1:59 p.m. ET, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704896104575140513805720790.html Accessed: 7/3/13, MC)
Google's announcement that it has stopped censoring results from its Chinese search engine has captured global attention, but

developments on the Internet freedom front are coming fast and furious. In recent months, the U.S. administration removed sanctions on Internet-related exports to Iran, Sudan, and Cuba; Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton gave an important speech on cyberfreedom; and Congress gave funding assistance to cyberdissidents in Iran and China. This week the Senate will launch a Global Internet Freedom Caucus, and more such efforts are likely in coming months. All this is premised on the hypothesis that more Internet freedom leads to more political freedom. Does it? Autocracies certainly seem to think so. During last year's protests in Iran, the regime not only blocked opposition Web sites and engaged in online

China famously censors Web sites through the so-called "Great Firewall," and other countriesincluding Tunisia, Burma and Cubahave followed Beijing's lead. Many dissidents agree that the Internet has the potential to help open closed societies. Ahead of the 2004 Orange Revolution, the Ukrainian student group Pora used cell phones, text messages, and Internet communications to organize tens of thousands of
efforts to track down dissidents, but also slowed down all Internet service throughout the country.

protestors. Last year, millionsincluding the American presidentsaw the YouTube video of Neda Agha-Soltan's brutal murder in the
streets of Tehran. In supporting Internet freedom, the U.S. is placing a bet essentially the same wager it made during the Cold Warthat supporting access to information and encouraging the free exchange of ideas is good for America. And indeed, by

making new tools available to mass publics overseasfrom offshore servers and satellite Internet service to anonymous software and social networking sitesthe U.S. can provide the platforms through which human rights, freedom of speech and other universal values can be freely debated and discussed.
At the same time, we must understand the limitations and complications that surround these efforts. Supporting Internet freedom represents one tool in the kit, but is no panacea, as current conditions in Iran and other Web-suppressing countries demonstrate so vividly. In addition, there is often a tension between cybersecurity, which depends on knowing who is doing what online, and cyberfreedom, which relies on anonymous activity. Americans both want online users to work ensure that we are not the target of Internet-coordinated terrorist plots.

free of a repressive regimes' watchful eyes and

The U.S. could play a greater role in two areas in particular. First, the government and private sector can expand their efforts to establish international norms governing the use of cyberspace, attempting thereby to inculcate freedom of expression and basic human rights in online behavior.
This effort should include bringing onboard our allies and partners who at times engage in their own forms of censorship.

Second, the U.S. can take more active steps to provide the hardware and software that would enable such freedom to flourish. Along the lines of recent legislation, and as suggested by Secretary of State Clinton, these efforts could include providing anonymizing and encryption software to dissidents, expanding local language tools (such as photo and social networking sites) that enable communications with the outside world, training social activists and diplomatic personnel in the use of Internet technologies, and urging companies to protect dissident accounts and identities. All of these efforts must be coupled with old-fashioned diplomacy. When regimes crack down on online dissidentsas they will continue to dothe U.S. should be prepared to advocate for their rights and, when necessary, their release from prison. When regimes use the Internet to actively target protesters, organizations or other governments, America should be ready to take a stand. US should lift restrictions on Cuban economic development- key to ICT development CSG et. Al.- 10- The Cuba Study Group (CSG) is a non-prot, non-partisan organization comprised of business and community leaders
of Cuban descent who share a common interest and vision of a free and prosperous Cuba. The CSG mission is to facilitate a peaceful reunication of the Cuban nation that would lead to a free and open society with respect for human rights, the rule of law and a market-based economy. Americas Society (AS) is the premier forum dedicated to education, debate and dialogue in the Americas. Council of the Americas (COA) is the premier international business organization whose members share a common commitment to economic and social development, open markets, the rule of law and democracy throughout the Western Hemisphere. The Latin America Initiative at Brookings focuses on the most critical economic, political and social issues facing the region. Research activities center on a wide range of topics, inclu ding Cubas political transition. The initiative is led by Senior Fellow Mauricio Crdenas and is a joint effort of the Global Economy and Development and Foreign Policy programs at Brookings. The Brookings Institution is a nonprot public policy organization based in Washington, DC., E mpowering the Cuban People through Technology: Recommendations for Private and Public Sector Leaders, JULY 2010, http://www.ascoa.org/sites/default/files/styles/Empowering_the_Cuban_People_through_Technology.pdf, Accessed: 7/7/13, MC)

It is unreasonable to wish for the development of other forms of ICT in Cuba, such as the Internet and social media, without economic models to make them work. Thus, the challenge for U.S. policy-makers consists not only of effecting targeted reforms to its sanctions for Cuba, but also of broadly lifting all restrictions that hinder the development of an economic model capable of sustaining the requisite investments in ICT on the island and the
corresponding consumer demand for the services. A piecemeal approach will not do the job. Current U.S. regulations restrict the very access necessary to make this happen. Expanding the opportunity for U.S. telecom investors and companies to provide cell phone and Internet service to the island will help ensure that Cuban citizens possess the tools to become productive economic citizens once the shackles of political and economic state control are removed. To say this does not deny or minimize the real controls that the Cuban

government places on its own citizens access to the Internet. But expanding citizens access to even the most rudimentary technology in Cuba would be a giant step forward in economically empowering a new, independent generation of Cuban citizens. Laying an effective ICT infrastructure foundation is essential for the long-term economic prospects of the Cuban people. The following three steps would greatly facilitate getting there:

1 More explicit and exible U.S. regulations governing the export and investments in ICT infrastructure in Cuba. 2 More exible and explicit U.S. regulations to allow for the development of an ICT consumer market in Cuba. 3 Scalable donation efforts from outside of Cuba of ICT materials, equipment and software to Cubans on the island. An external force is necessary for broader political change Hoffmann 11- Bert Hoffmann, Senior Researcher GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies ( Civil Society 2.0?: How the
Internet Changes State-Society Relations in Authoritarian Regimes: The Case of Cuba, GIGA Research Programme: Legitimacy and Efficiency of Political Systems, January 2011 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gigahamburg.de%2Fdl%2Fdownload.php%3Fd%3D%2Fcontent%2Fpublikationen%2Fpdf%2Fwp156_hoffmann.pdf&ei=D93SUbinBNi4AOfwoHoDw&usg=AFQjCNGPPcalsf1La5yMENpZb7PxMV2i3Q&sig2=cSL3cBqrRtpr1ysxnhEqzQ Accessed: 7/3/13 MC) However, as the preceding chapter has shown, not only has the state media monopoly become porous, but so have the state's walls of containing web-based voice from spilling over into Cuban society. Some

15 years after Cuba joined the Internet, the webbased media not only represent a leak of voice to a globalized public, but they have led to a limited, yet important transformation of state-society relations. They empower a new reassertion of citi- zenship rights that challenge established rules and they foster the emergence of new social actors and forms of action.
However, the case also shows that there is no automatism from such trends to a process of gradual reform or even regime change. The crucial fault-line remains the physical space on the island, where the state's grip remains firm and the costs for collective action high. For

more large-scale political transformation to occur, a wider combination of conditions must be met, probably including the emergence of competing visions within the political elite or changes in the external constellation of allies and foes. But the expansion of voice, the reas- sertion of citizenship rights, and the web-based support for civic action in the physical world has already changed the contours of state-society relations. Once conditions arise-be it for a reform movement towards a more pluralist model of socialism or for a democratization proc- ess heading for a regime change-these transformations will undoubtedly play a crucial role in shaping any process of broader political change.

US should subsidize Cuban internet

Press 96 Larry Press, Policy Analyst at the RAND Institute (Cuban Telecommunications, Computer Networking, and U.S. Policy
Implications, National Defense Institute (RAND), July 1996, http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/drafts/2008/DRU1330-1.pdf, Accessed: 6/27/13, MC) At present the Cuban connection is via dial-up phone calls to Canada or the U.K. in which data is transferred then the connection dropped until the next call. This mode of Internet connection allows for electronic mail, but not for interactive applications like searching for and retrieving information on the www. Furthermore,

it does not allow the Cubans to place information on servers from which others can retrieve it. Full-time IP connectivity would allow Cubans interactive access to outside material and vice versa. IP connectivity requires a leased communication link, networking hardware, and competent networking centers. The capability of providing the leased link is already in place, and Sprint has stated they will have tariffed service available soon. Other vendors will probably follow the Sprint lead. Routers and other communication hardware and software would

also be needed. CENIAI or CIGBnet would be viable connection organizations within Cuba today, and InfoMed plans a significant upgrade; however, CENIAI seems to be the organization designated by the Cubans. Since Cuba has been connecting in Canada and the U.K. to date, those would be likely external connection points; however, the U.S. National Science Foundation has a strong record of providing connection points for developing nations, and a U.S. connection should be considered. The U.S. should subsidize the communication link, international connectivity through NSF, and Cuban networking hardware. The cost of doing so would be very small compared to Radio or TV Marti, and would surely have a greater impact than the latter.

Internet AT: Squo Solves -general

Challenges for societal autonomy within state control are co-opted Hoffmann 11- Bert Hoffmann, Senior Researcher GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies ( Civil Society 2.0?: How the
Internet Changes State-Society Relations in Authoritarian Regimes: The Case of Cuba, GIGA Research Programme: Legitimacy and Efficiency of Political Systems, January 2011 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gigahamburg.de%2Fdl%2Fdownload.php%3Fd%3D%2Fcontent%2Fpublikationen%2Fpdf%2Fwp156_hoffmann.pdf&ei=D93SUbinBNi4AOfwoHoDw&usg=AFQjCNGPPcalsf1La5yMENpZb7PxMV2i3Q&sig2=cSL3cBqrRtpr1ysxnhEqzQ Accessed: 7/3/13 MC)

The Cuban Revolution of 1959 redefined state-societyrelations. Most existing civil society organizations were either disbanded or transformed (and new ones created) according to a mold in which loyalty and subordination to the revolutionary leadership were a conditio sine qua non.1 With the so-called "process of institutionalization" in the 1970s, state-society rela- tions were formally modeled in MarxistLeninist fashion: the Constitution of 1976 defined the Communist Party as the "highest leading force of society and of the state, which organ- izes and guides the common effort" (Republica de Cuba 1992 5) and declared as mission of "the social and mass organizations [.] the edification, consolidation and defense of the so- cialist society" (ibid. 7). Freedom of speech and of press were limited, by constitutional pre- scription, "in keeping with the objectives of socialist society" (Republica de Cuba 1992). To this end, Article 52 of the Cuban Constitution effectively establishes a monopoly on mass media: "Material conditions for the exercise of that right are provided by the fact that the press, radio, television, cinema, and other mass media are state or social property and can never be private property" (ibid. 52,1).1 For Cuban civil society prior to 1959 see Armony/Crahan 2007; on trade unions and the women's federation see Marifeli Perez-Stable 1994. Organizational activities that remained (at least partially) outside of these parameters were few and narrowly restricted; arguably, the most important one being the Catholic church, which maintained a nationwide
and legally recognized institutional infrastructure that included media for internal circulation (Armony/Crahan 2007).2

In the charismatic brand of socialism that characterized post-1959 Cuba and which set it
apart from the standard Eastern European model (Hoffmann 2008), formal prescriptions like the constitutional provisions on the media were

The key statement on the margins for voice were his so-called "words to the intellectuals" from 1961, which pro- vided the following maxim: "Within the Revolution, everything. Against the Revolution, nothing."3 This sentence, repeated ad infinitum ever since, acquired law-like status and left ample discretion for the power-holders to define at every instance what was "within" and what was "against" the revolution. Aside from media, a central and related concern was on public space. In the dualism of Cuba's charismatic brand of socialism, formal restrictions on the freedom of assembly also found their informal equivalent in the slogan "The street is Fidel's!",4 a code the state invoked to justify the prohibition or repression of protesting voices in public. The severe limits imposed on public voices contrasted with an
complemented with declarations by the charismatic leader, Fidel Castro, which carried no less practical weight. often surprising level of tolerance towards criticism voiced in private-an ambivalence which led Cubans to paraphrase Fidel's 1961 words as "Under the roof, everything. In the street, nothing.

After the regime collapses in Eastern Europe and the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, a profound economic, social and ideological crisis in Cuba ensued, one that called into ques- tion the viability of state-society relations as they had developed in the three decades since 1959. Internationally, civil society had gone from a buzzword in academia to a resounding career path in international and development
politics. Particularly the role ascribed to civil society in bringing down state-socialism in Eastern Europe (Arato/Cohen 1992, Havel 1978) provided the background for the concept being taken up by U.S. policy towards Cuba, which in the early 1990s, publicly adopted "the fostering of Cuba's civil society" as a "second track" next to economic sanctions to bring about regime change in Havana.

These political overtones notwithstanding, it was within the official intellectual institu-

tions on the island that in the mid-1990s, the term "civil society" became the focus of a key debate about the country's course (Gray/Kapcia 2008). As the concept of civil society stresses some degree of autonomy from the "political society" (state, parties, parliaments, etc.) (e.g. Fernandez 1993: 99), in a state-socialist country this conception invariably raises the question about the role of state and party and the margins of associational autonomy within such a framework. This debate about civil society within state-socialism marked a new discussion not only for Cuba, but also internationally.
An article by Rafael Hernandez from Havana's Center for American Studies (CEA) initi-ated the Cuban civil society debate in 1994. In it, he underscored the Marxist ideological cre- dentials of the term claiming its tradition in the writings of Hegel, Marx and Gramsci and argued for

Hernandez argued that both civil society and the socialist state are "organic segments of the socialist system," which are interconnected and mutually reinforcing (Hernandez 1994: 31). Moreover, the distinction
"the necessity and usefulness [of applying] the concept to the analysis of current problems in Cuba" (Hernandez 1994: 30).6 between civil society and the state should be of great practical importance for Cuba because "the dynamics of civil society have been overshadowed by a strong politicization of social relations and institutions in Cuba" (ibid.: 30). This

indirect call for a depoliticization of social relations provides the signpost for the ensuing debate: reclaiming greater autonomy of the social sphere and its organizations and institutions from the state.
The background of this argument is the deep economic crisis that has plagued Cuba since the demise of its socialist allies overseas in 1989/90 and the consequences of that crisis for Cuban society-above all, the bitter divide between the depressed peso economy and the emergent enclaves of "dollarized" sectors in tourism and joint ventures, and the rapidly growing role of illegal and legal market mechanisms.7 On this, Hernandez (ibid.: 30) writes:

The problems the Cuban society is facing cannot be contained within the limits of an economic analysis. Both the causes and the consequences of the crisis transcend this dimension. However, even
within this narrow framework it is obvious that 'the realm of economic relations' in Cuba has changed [.]. It now comprises phenomena such as the informal economy, which is characterized by the growth of independent work and the black market, as well as the rise of new forms of labor in the mixed sector of the new, markedly differentiated, economy.

The concept of civil society suggested by Hernandez is thus framed as primarily a response to the increasing differentiation of Cuban society, resulting from the economic crisis. Other con- tributions pushed the Cuban civil society debate further. Most importantly, Hugo Azcuy, one of Hernandez's colleagues at the CEA, wrote of the "necessity for more plural expressions in Cuban society," (Azcuy 1995: 105, emphasis in original) for which the concept of civil society "should not only be used as an instrument of analysis, but also as a project" (ibid., emphasis in 6 Even at this early point, political resistance against the use of the term became evident. When published in the journal of the official Cuban writers' association, UNEAC, it was prefaced by a "Letter to the Editor " in which a member of the association reprimands Hernandez for his "imprecise" use of the term which he identified with the counter-revolutionary strategy of the U.S. government.
7 Parallel to the debate on civil society, a similar debate evolved about increased autonomy for economic actors and resulting reform steps (see Carranza/Gutierrez/Monreal 1995; for an overview see Hoffmann 1995; 1997). original). This idea of civil society as a project of socialist renewal hence became a leitmotif of Cuba's intellectual reform discourse in the mid-1990s. Azcuy (1995: 108) posits "the strength- ening of Cuban

civil society and its necessary autonomy within the framework of the revolu- tionary project of which it understands itself to be a part" as its frame of reference.8 If state authorities feared civil society as a potential loss of power, in the following text contribution Hernandez is explicit in reverting this logic. The activation of civil society is meant precisely to come to the rescue of a socialist state whose needs for "new forms of le- gitimacy" in order to secure regime stability are acknowledged:
As the sphere in which the tensions and conflicts facing the state are enacted, it is in the interest of and the responsibility of the state to search within civil society for new forms of legitimacy and arenas of consensus. [.] Without the consensus of civil soci- ety, not only will the legitimacy of the government suffer damage, but also the stability of the system itself. (Hernandez 1996: 88)

In terms of audience, the reach of this debate was limited. It mostly moved within academic or intellectual
institutions, with the Center for American Studies (CEA) as the epicenter,9 and journals, including Temas magazine, directed by Hernandez, became the key forums of the debate. The

civil society discourse hardly ever found reflections in the statecontrolled mass media. However, there was an empirical side to this debate which was played out in the tug- of-war about the redefinition of the nature of societal associations and their relation to the state. The economic crisis had not only led to a heterogenization of society, but had also left established institutions in cultural, social or academic fields cash-strapped, as the money from the state coffers dried up. As a consequence, a search for new funding possibilities be- gan. While also playing well to members' aspirations of more autonomy from the state, the label "non-governmental organization" (NGO) promised to be the key for access to donor money from international development actors, both private and public. Cuba becoming more repressive in the squo Daremblum 13- Jaime Daremblum, Ambassador Jaime Daremblum, a scholar of Latin America, international politics, and international
economics, joined Hudson Institute as a Senior Fellow and Director of Hudson's Center for Latin American Studies in 2005. He served as Ambassador of Costa Rica to the United States from 1998 to 2004. Prior to assuming his post as Ambassador, he was a professor at the University of Costa Rica, the Autonomous University, and the Center of Administrative and Political Research, affiliated with Tulane University. He has also practiced law in Costa Rica. Ambassador Daremblum also served, from 1985 to 1998, as a foreign policy advisor to the Presidential campaigns from the Social Christian Unity Party of Costa Rica. (Why Cuba Is Getting More Repressive, The Hudson Institute, April 4, 2013, http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=9566&pubType=LatinAmerica, MC)

Americans are always on the lookout for signs that Cuba is finally changing, and the changes listed above have prompted many journalists, analysts, and political figures to renew their calls for lifting or at least softening the U.S. embargo. After traveling to the island in mid-February as part of an official delegation of federal lawmakers, Democratic senator Pat Leahy of Vermont expressed his hope for a shift in U.S. policy: "There is a growing sense by many in the U.S. who do not have a Cold War attitude that they would like to see a change."
But the

biggest impediment to closer bilateral relations is not "a Cold War attitude" on Capitol Hill, nor is it the American embargo. It is the behavior of the Castro regime. Indeed, we should not let Havana's timid economic reforms or its new travel policy distract us from the more important story: In its treatment of human-rights activists, pro-democracy dissidents, and pretty much anyone it considers a threat to Communist rule, the Cuban government is becoming more repressive, not less.
For example:
* During the first nine months of 2011, the independent Cuban

Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCHRNR) documented some 2,784 "incidents of human-rights abuses," compared with 2,074 in all of 2010. * In March 2012, Amnesty International reported that, since 2010, there had been "a steady increase in the number of arbitrary detentions," with the Castro regime waging "a permanent campaign of harassment and short-term detentions of political opponents." One of Amnesty's Cuba researchers affirmed that "Cuba has seen worsening repression when it comes to human rights."
* Over the next ten months, between March 2012 and January 2013, the number of political prisoners on the island doubled (from 45 to 90), according to the CCHRNR.Those figures only include prisoners jailed on explicitly political charges; the total number of Cuban political prisoners is much larger, since the regime is holding many dissidents on bogus criminal charges.
* In its latest Freedom in the World report, Freedom House says: "The

Cuban government oversaw a systematic increase in short-term 'preventative' detentions of dissidents in 2012, in addition to harassment, beatings, acts of repudiation, and restrictions on foreign and domestic travel."
* Overall, notes Miami Herald correspondent Juan Tamayo, Cuba witnessed "a record 6,200 short-term detentions for political motives" last year. Then there is the story of Oswaldo Pay, a world-famous Cuban dissident and founder of the Varela Project who (along with fellow dissident Harold Cepero) died last July after a highly suspicious car accident. As Wall Street Journal columnist Mary O'Grady has written, Pay's daughter, Rosa Mara Pay, believes that his car "was

intentionally rammed from behind by another car," and that her father's death was "a probable murder." In a recent interview with the Washington Post, Spanish politician ngel Carromero, who was driving the car carrying Oswaldo Pay, said that they were rammed by a government vehicle whose occupants were "staring at [them] aggressively" before the collision. Carromero also said that, after the crash, he was drugged and threatened by Cuban authorities, who subsequently convicted him of manslaughter. (In December, Carromero was repatriated to Spain, and he has since been paroled.) Florida senator Bill Nelson, a Democrat, has urged the United Nations to launch "a thorough independent investigation of the events leading up to Pay's death." The death of Pay and the broader campaign of repression against Cuban activists are troubling enough. But for U.S. officials hoping to abolish or ease sanctions, the elephant in the room is the ongoing detention of USAID contractor Alan Gross, a Maryland resident who has been held in a Cuban prison for more than three years on ridiculous espionage charges. It is hard to argue that Havana either deserves or desires warmer relations with Washington when it continues to hold an American hostage. Gross, who turns 64 in May, has seen his health deteriorate, and has reportedly lost more than 100 pounds since his incarceration.
His only "crime" was to help boost Internet access for Cuba's tiny Jewish community. But the Castro regime fears greater Internet access because it fears losing its monopoly on information. It fears that Cubans will become more willing to challenge the status quo and demand real reforms. And, indeed, that is exactly what's been happening. As

dissident-blogger Yoani Snchez told the Post last month, "People are losing their fear, moving from silent to open, from wearing a mask to showing their real face in public." Havana's growing concern over political unrest explains the imprisonment of Gross, and the crackdown on the Ladies in White, and the harassment of activists across the island. Simply put: Cuba is becoming more repressive because the dictatorship is increasingly afraid of a homegrown democracy movement. That would seem to be a much bigger story than a few cosmetic economic reforms designed
to keep the regime in power. Appearing last month on Spanish television, Rosa Mara Pay said that Ral's reforms are mainly a PR stunt, and not a serious attempt to improve human rights. They "are designed to win over international public opinion," she said. "The conditions Cubans live in has not changed." If

the Castro regime is truly serious about reform and liberalization, Pay added, it will allow a nationwide referendum on democracy the type of referendum called for by her father's Varela Project. The government's
refusal to hold such a referendum shows just how little Cuba has actually changed.

Internet AT: The Black Market

Current underground internet access fails not widespread Kalathil & Boas 01- Shanthi Kalathil is an independent consultant on media and development. Shanthi is an expert on media, civil
society, and political transitions. Previously, she was a Senior Democracy Fellow based in the Office of Democracy and Governance at the U.S. Agency for International Development, where she served as an advisor on civil society and independent media development for Washingtonbased programs and planning, as well as for various USAID missions around the world. She holds a B.A. in Communications from U.C. Berkeley and a M.Sc. in Comparative Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Shanthi is particularly interested in issues of voice and accountability and their impact on political transitions. Taylor C. Boas, The Internet and State Control in Authoritarian Regimes: China, Cuba, and the Counterrevolution, http://carnegieendowment.org/2001/07/16/internet-and-state-control-in-authoritarian-regimes-chinacuba-and-counterrevolution/1ic4, Accessed: 6/28/13, MC)

The Cuban governments access controls are not perfect, and a growing number of users manage to connect to the Internet illegally from home, using passwords from their workplace or accounts acquired through the black market or personal connections. It is impossible to estimate precisely the extent of such underground Internet use, although it is undoubtedly limited by the considerable expense and difficulty of obtaining an Internet-capable computer. While comparatively well-off Cubans may be able to gain Internet access in this manner, known dissidents and members of the political opposition are watched closely and have virtually no hope of acquiring even underground Internet access. Still, there is the potential for underground Internet access to grow and become more of a challenge to state control. In particular, Cuba may eventually relax the restrictions on
individual Internet access to capture some of this blackmarket revenue, just as it legalized the use and possession of dollars in 1993 to capitalize on the already widespread trade in the currency.

The Internet poses several potential challenges to the regime that provoke a reactive state response. The first of these involves Internet use by the mass public. Like China, Cuba is undoubtedly concerned about ideational pluralism and the potential for its citizens to access a wide range of information on the Internet.69 This concern extends to other forms of media: Cuba pours enormous resources
Potential Challenges and Reactive State Response

into blocking U.S. radio and television broadcasts, and it quickly banned the homemade satellite dishes that began to proliferate in the early 1990s. In the case of the Internet, therefore, Cubas

strategy of access restriction seeks in part to minimize the potential threat of widespread use among the mass public. While other authoritarian regimes have allowed broader access and relied on censorship to maintain control of the Internet, Cubas strategy of access restriction obviates the need to maintain an elaborate, centralized system of blocking web sites and tracking e-mails. Those granted access to the Internet are generally sympathetic to the regimes point of view, and their use of the medium poses little threat to state security. Internet use by CSOs in
Cuba is another factor that may challenge state sociopolitical control. During the 1990s, the Cuban government has somewhat reluctantly allowed the sprouting of grassroots CSOs involved with religion, conservation, and sustainable development. In addition, a handful of human rights organizations and dissident groups have long existed (albeit illegally) as bottom-up organizations in Cuban society. During

recent years, U.S. policy toward Cuba has increasingly sought to engage the Cuban people while opposing the regime, and a major component of this strategy has involved reaching out to Cuban CSOs.70 In this
environment, the Cuban government has kept a watchful eye on organizations with extensive international contacts, and it is undoubtedly concerned about the potential use of e-mail for logistical organization among politically threatening CSOs. As

a result, it has carefully meted out access among CSOs according to their political orientation. Dissident and human rights organizations openly opposed to the regime have little hope of gaining Internet access: most have their telephone calls regularly monitored, and several have had computers confiscated by authorities. CSOs that have positive relationships with the regime have faced few obstacles to access, while those with a neutral political outlook generally have had more difficulty in obtaining an Internet connection.

Internet AT: Venezuela Cable

Venezuelan cable doesnt solve- government control stays

Reporters Without Borders 12- Reporters Without Borders, registered in France as a non-profit
organization and has consultant status at the United Nations and UNESCO. In 2013, Reporters Without Borders wins the Freedom of Speech Award from the International Association od Press Clubs (IAPC), (INTERNET ENEMIES REPORT 2012, Reporters Without Borders, 12 MARCH 2012, http://en.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/rapport-internet2012_ang.pdf, Accessed: 6/28/13, MC)
THE UNDERSEA CABLE FROM VENEZUELA, A NEW HOPE? Much

more is at stake now with the arrival of the undersea Alba fiber-optic cable which will link Cuba and Venezuela, multiplying by 3,000 the islands capacity to connect to the rest of the world. Initially scheduled for the summer of 2011, its implementation was postponed without further explanation. In early 2011, the regime announced that this Web access would be reserved for social use by institutions, universities and certain professions such as doctors and journalists. It would also make it possible to continue setting up collective access centres. Contrary to expectations, in late January 2012, the Cuban Communist Party Congress carefully set aside the issue of Internet development. Although no one is banking on the fact that certain cable fibres will be diverted towards the Internet access black market, others believe that the cable will not create new opportunities for Cubans who wish to connect to the World Wide Web. Since the latter is rationed, as is the rest of Cuba, the cable could only enhance connection quality and bandwidth speed for those who already have access. The regime remains ready to crush any attempt to bypass censorship. In November 2011, Cuba accused the United States of bolstering parallel Internet
connections on the island by unlawfully importing equipment and making satellite connections available. An American citizen accused of involvement in these clandestine activities was arrested in December 2009.

Venezuelan internet cable is functionally useless- obsolete hardware Mirof 10 Nick Miroff, Nick Miroff covers Cuba for GlobalPost., Miroff was part of the Washington Post reporting team that won a
Pulitzer prize for breaking news coverage of the massacre at Virginia Tech. His story in the Washington Post on coal miners and painkiller addiction in Appalachian southwest Virginia was the recipient of a 2008 Nancy Dickerson Award for Excellent in Reporting on Drug and Alcohol Problems. In 2006, he traveled to Northern Manitoba as part of a radio series on climate change, Early Signs: Report s from a Warming Planet that won a 2006 George Polk Award. Miroff grew up in Albany, N.Y., and earned a bachelor's degree in Spanish and Latin American literature at University of California Santa Cruz. He holds a master's degree from the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism . (Cuba internet: Wired, but not connected,globalpost.com, January 25, 2013, http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/cuba/130124/cubanundersea-internet-cable-web-connection, Accessed: 7/4/13, MC)

HAVANA, Cuba With

the long-anticipated activation of their ALBA-1 undersea internet cable this month, Cuban web users now have the technological equivalent of a horse-drawn Toyota Prius. Completed in 2011 and spanning the Caribbean from eastern Cuba to Venezuela roughly the distance from Miami to Washington, DC the cable finally gives the island a modern data transmission link. It has the capacity to vastly improve internet access in a country that consistently ranks as the least-connected in the Western Hemisphere. But the small minority of Cubans who currently enjoy internet access must go online via dial-up networks on their phone lines, relying on a technology that has been obsolete for more than a decade. Tourist hotels and a few government workplaces have Wi-Fi or DSL hookups, but everyone else is stuck with transmission rates that hover around 5 kilobytes per second.
Surfing the web in Cuba requires stoic reserves of patience. Online photos often dont open. Streaming web video is completely out of the question.

Firing up the undersea cable wont change that anytime soon.

ETECSA, the Castro governments state telecom monopoly, confirmed this week that it had finally flipped on the $70 million Venezuela-financed cable, rerouting data traffic away from the slow satellite systems it has relied upon until now. That should translate to faster Facebook access at the beach resorts of Varadero and in the lobbies of Havanas priciest hotels. But analysts say without massive investments in the rest of the islands communication infrastructure, Cuba will have little more than a strong link in a weak chain. Dial-up technology, they say, is simply not compatible with the modern internet.
The question now is whether Cuba will make good on its pledge to broaden web access prioritizing social uses, the government insists or keep the islands population in the pre-internet Dark Ages.

Fewer than 10 percent of Cubans currently have access to the world wide web, according to most
estimates, a rate lower than Haitis. Young Cubans often cite their inability to get online and communicate with friends abro ad as a deep frustration, and an added incentive to emigrate.

Cuban authorities say their priority will be to boost internet availability at schools, hospitals and other government institutions, in contrast to the at-home on-demand individual web access available in the capitalist world. As Castro critics point out, such social access can also conveniently facilitate censorship and web monitoring by the state.

Internet AT: Actor CP

US leadership is key to resolve international internet norms Fontaine and Rogers 11- Richard Fontaine is the President of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). He served as a
Senior Advisor and Senior Fellow at CNAS from 2009-2012. He previously served as foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain for more than five years. He has also worked at the State Department, the National Security Council and on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Will Rogers, is the Bacevich Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). At CNAS, Mr. Rogers researc h focus is on science, technology and national security policy. He has authored or co-authored a range of publications on energy, climate change, environmental cooperation in Asia and cybersecurity. ( Internet Freedom A Foreign Policy Imperative in the Digital Age, CNA S, JUNE 2011, http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_InternetFreedom_FontaineRogers_0.pdf, Accessed: 7/4/13, MC)

At the same time, the U.S. government has tried to codify norms that would reinforce free expression and block efforts to restrict it. The 2005 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), a U.N.-sponsored gathering of
174 countries, produced a consensus statement recognizing that freedom of expression and the free flow of information, id eas and knowledge, are essential for the

the member states of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) adopted a resolution pledging to refrain from taking any unilateral and/or discriminatory actions that could impede another Member State to access public Internet sites.
Information Society and beneficial to development.103 In 2008, According to Ambassador David Gross, then the top State Department official managing communications and information policy, the deliberations made clear that

Continued U.S. leadership is critical to fill what remains a normative vacuum. Part of the difficulty, however, lies not only with authoritarian regimes, but also with some of Americas closest democratic partners. While the U.S. government recognizes some limits on free expression child pornography, slander, perjury, fighting words and certain other forms of expression are illegal, online or off its commitment to free speech is nevertheless the strongest of any major country. Germany, for instance, prohibits Holocaust denial online; France does not allow
member states meant not only governments, but also the civilians of those countries.104 the sale of Nazi paraphernalia over the Internet; and Turkey banned YouTube for two years because it refused to remove videos the courts deemed insulting to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Governments in Britain, Italy and Germany have also established lists of blocked websites particularly those containing child pornography, online gambling or hate speech but these lists are often neither transparent nor accountable to the public.

Internet Public Sphere Ext.

Embargo blocks technology- State cuts the free-flow of information Dodge No Date Writing from University of Michigan (The United States Embargo on Cuba, University of Michigan InfoSurgents,
no date specified but last referred to 2010, http://sitemaker.umich.edu/infosurgentscuba/u.s._embargo_, accessed: 7/4/13, ckr)

The embargo is highly criticized by Cuban citizens for the negative impact it has on Cuban life. Because of the embargo and the additional restrictions imposed on Cuban citizens by Fidel Castro, Cuban citizens often do not have access to medical supplies that they need,[5]as well as access to the technologies that keep them connected to the rest of the world. While the United Nations votes every
year in favor of lifting the heavily criticized blockade, and the fact that travel restrictions to Cuba have be decreasing,[7] the United States continues to keep it in place, most recently evidenced by Barack Obama, who on September 2, 2010 renewed the embargo for another year, claiming that it was in the best interest of the United States.

The embargo completely hinders Cubans from accessing the technology that would allow a freeflow of information with the rest of the world. Citizens are cut off from the world around them, and even when they are able to access Internet cafs, the Internet is so slow and heavily monitored that it is virtually impossible to do more that send an email or two. Dissidents are heavily
persecuted, and it is common for journalists to be imprisoned for subverting the Cuban law. Because of the embargo imposed by the United States, the Cuban government is given more power over its citizens and their abilities to communicate with the rest of the world. In addition, the restrictions on traveling into and out of the country make it difficult for information to spread in the absence of Internet access.

Freedom in the public sphere is necessary for transformations of the state-society relationship Hoffmann 11- Bert Hoffmann, Senior Researcher GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies ( Civil Society 2.0?: How the
Internet Changes State-Society Relations in Authoritarian Regimes: The Case of Cuba, GIGA Research Programme: Legitimacy and Efficiency of Political Systems, January 2011 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gigahamburg.de%2Fdl%2Fdownload.php%3Fd%3D%2Fcontent%2Fpublikationen%2Fpdf%2Fwp156_hoffmann.pdf&ei=D93SUbinBNi4AOfwoHoDw&usg=AFQjCNGPPcalsf1La5yMENpZb7PxMV2i3Q&sig2=cSL3cBqrRtpr1ysxnhEqzQ Accessed: 7/3/13 MC)

A precondition for civil society activism to evolve is some degree of public sphere in which it can "breathe." The state monopoly on mass media, as exercised by the Cuban state, has been a particularly thorough form of authoritarian control over the national public sphere. The comparative empirical analysis of civil society dynamics in the 1990s and in the 2000s has shown the notable impact of the digital, web-based media on the contours of the public sphere and has also demonstrated that this, in turn, impacts the activities, conception and organizational forms of societal actors. In the pre-Internet period, within a very much restricted public sphere, the civil society debate largely focused on behind-the-scenes struggles for increased autonomy of associational life within the state-socialist framework (e.g. Azcuy 1995). In contrast, a decade later we witness the emergence of a self-assertive "citizenship from below," which demands, and to some degree enacts (empowered by digital and web-based technologies), a widening of the public sphere and a greater degree of citizen autonomy from the state, leading to a different type of civil society activity. While this "insurgent citizenship"-to borrow Holston's (2008) expression-defies the socialist regime's traditional design of state-society relations, its effect on democratization depends on the extent to which web-based voice is able to connect with off-line public debate and social action.

However, the initial question-that of whether civil society activism fosters processes of regime change-does not have a clear-cut answer. While regime opponents see the struggles over Internet access, blogs and e-mails

as a pars pro toto for the civic liberties of liberal democ- racy, reformists from within the system argue the need for more participation and wider margins of debate, precisely because they are indispensable to regain legitimacy for the so- cialist project.
As of this writing, the government, it seems, has come to accept the fact that its media monopoly has become porous. The government's crucial concern is containment:

to minimize the domestic impact, to put brakes on the contagion effect, and, most importantly, to keep the pluralism of the web-based voice from spilling over into Cuba's non-virtual public sphere. This
echoes the state's traditional "under the roof, everything-in the street, nothing" ap- proach towards dissenting voices; on the web, as "under the roof," much may be tolerated, aslong as it doesn't take to "the street," that is, combine with social action in the physical world. The state's attitude towards leading blogger Yoani Sanchez exemplifies this policy. While her blog is de facto tolerated by the outside world, domestic access to it is blocked. And when the blogger moved to social activism in the physical world in 2009, the regime reacted heavy-handedly, including using physical intimidation and orchestrated mobilizations of "enraged revolutionaries" against her and fellow bloggers. Similarly,

those still working within and those dependent on official structures are admonished and told to keep their dis- tance from those branded as "counter-revolutionaries."
However, as the preceding chapter has shown, not only has the state media monopoly become porous, but so have the state's walls of containing web-based voice from spilling over into Cuban society. Some 15 years after

Cuba joined the Internet, the web-based media not only represent a leak of voice to a globalized public, but they have led to a limited, yet important transformation of state-society relations. They empower a new reassertion of citi- zenship rights that challenge established rules and they foster the emergence of new social actors and forms of action. Internet can create free spaces outside state control Snchez 10 - Yoani Snchez, In 2008, Snchez was honored with awards that included Time magazines "One of the 100 Most Influential
People in the World, one of Foreign Policy magazines 10 Most Influential Latin American Intellectuals of the year, and th e El Pas 2008 Ortega y Gasset Prize for Digital Journalism. She was, as well, one of El Pas 2008 100 most notable Hispanoamericans, and one of Gatopardos 10 most influential people of 2008. (Freedom and Exchange in Communist Cuba, Cato Institute Development Policy Briefing Paper No. 5, June 16, 2010 http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/dbp5.pdf, Accessed: 7/3/13 MC)

The only threat that can be made against a sheep who wants to escape is that it will be returned to the pen. But it will no longer be part of the herd because, while the pen has fences, bolts, and physical boundaries, the herd is a mathematical abstraction, a number that falls apart once the participants who make up the sum decide to exercise their free will. As soon as a citizen stops paying with his

freedom for other rights that ought to be respected, the confiscator of his sovereignty must change his tactics; now, instead of stealing his freedom from him, he must buy it. He must promise him better food, a roof that wont go flying off in a hurricane, or more lucrative subsidies. But little can be done if your coffers are empty and you have not learned how to create the wealth you must offer in exchange for freedom. Every day there are more people in Cuba who are disenchanted with the socialist system, or the scam that goes by that name. Conversely, no conversions occur in the other direction and, now, to wear that mask is becoming a bad choice. Even the opportunists, with their sensitive noses, begin to flirt with real criticism and sing in the chorus of those demanding change. People are beginning to be conscious of having been cheated; this leads to signs of discontent and, lamentably, the country bleeds through growing migration. Just by boarding an airplane, many believe they can begin to recover all the freedoms ceded and stolen, while few darefrom inside our countryto push the limits of what is permitted. One of the tools that has helped people recover the opportunity to air their opinions is the Internet. Although a common citizen cannot contract for Internet at home, and the price of an hours connection in a public place exceeds two

weeks wages, a web of networks has emerged as the only means by which a person on the island can make his opinions known to the rest of the world. Today, this virtual space is like a training camp where Cubans go to relearn forgotten freedoms. The right of association can be found on
Facebook, Twitter, and the other social networks, in a sort of comp ensation for the crime of unlawful assembly established by the Cuban penal code. In a printed newspaper or magazine, on the radio or television, it is still impossible to publicize opinions that stray from the trite official script, but once connected to the Internet, many possibilities open up. Up until now, the most used are the independent blogs that have begun to appear. Most of the direct readers are abroad, and from there they email the articles and posts they like to their friends and family in Cuba, who copy and multiply them. The bloggers, for their part, put copies of their work on CDs and even distribute them on flash drives. Television stations received by illegal satellite report on the contents of the blogs and conduct interviews, showing the faces of the bloggers. In this way, in less than a year, a community of cyber-dissidents was createda blogostroika, as it is also called. Spaces such as Voces Cubanas or Desde Cuba, and the digital magazine Convivencia, are vivid examples of this. They dont need

authorized spaces to exist; rather, in lieu of recovering these parcels of freedom, they have created them.

Internet Impact Scenarios

Democracy: Civil Society is upholds democracy - internet awareness key Drake, Kalathil, & Boas 00- William J. Drake, University of Zurich, Switzerland, Media Change & Innovation Division,
IPMZ, International Fellow, Lecturer Shanthi Kalathil is an independent consultant on media and development. Shanthi is an expert on media, civil society, and political transitions. Previously, she was a Senior Democracy Fellow based in the Office of Democracy and Governance at the U.S. Agency for International Development, where she served as an advisor on civil society and independent media development for Washington-based programs and planning, as well as for various USAID missions around the world. She holds a B.A. in Communications from U.C. Berkeley and a M.Sc. in Comparative Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Shanthi is particularly interested in issues of voice and accountability and their impact on political transitions. Taylor C. Boas Assistant Professor of Political Science at Boston University, received a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2009 ( Dictatorships in the Digital Age : Some Considerations on the Internet in China and Cuba, http://carnegieendowment.org/, OCTOBER 23, 2000, http://carnegieendowment.org/2000/10/23/dictatorships-in-digital-age-some-considerations-on-internet-in-china-and-cuba/4e9e

Civil Society. As there is growing consensus among practitioners and scholars that a vibrant civil society is a key contributor to democracy, the use of the Internet by both civil societal organizations (CSOs) and the mass public merits significant attention. Especially important in the former category are human rights and other advocacy groups that actively work to promote social change. In addition, community, charitable, educational and other groups with less directly political agendas can also enhance a nation's social capital and the formation and spread of democratic impulses. Hence, one could examine CSOs' use of the Internet
to produce and distribute pro-democracy information, coordinate actions and form alliances with domestic and international counterparts and other organizations, contribute to democracy-building and civic education, etc. With

regard to the latter category, one could consider the implications of the mass public's Internet usage, e.g., the demonstration effects of increasing awareness of the outside world and exposure to democratic ideas and practices; greater access to information about domestic events such as government abuses of power; and the building of social capital and liberal values through virtual communities on the Internet. In
parallel, one should also assess the "dark side" of civil societal Internet usage by groups promoting ethnic hatreds or other causes that may work against democratization.

Human Rights: Internet freedom is key to intrinsic human rights Fontaine and Rogers 11- Richard Fontaine is the President of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). He served as a
Senior Advisor and Senior Fellow at CNAS from 2009-2012. He previously served as foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain for more than five years. He has also worked at the State Department, the National Security Council and on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Will Rogers, is the Bacevich Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). At CNAS, Mr. Rogers research focus is on science, technology and national security policy. He has authored or co-authored a range of publications on energy, climate change, environmental cooperation in Asia and cybersecurity. ( Internet Freedom A Foreign Policy Imperative in the Digital Age, CNAS, JUNE 2011, http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_InternetFreedom_FontaineRogers_0.pdf, Accessed: 7/4/13, MC)

The United States has a long history of providing diplomatic and financial support for the promotion of human rights abroad, including the right to free expression. While each presidential
administration emphasizes human rights to differing degrees, during recent decades they have all consistently held that human rights are a key U.S. interest. Promoting freedom of the Internet expands human

rights support into cyberspace, an environment in which an ever-greater proportion of human activity takes place. The United States advocates for freedom of the Internet because it accords not only with American values, but also with rights America believes are intrinsic to all humanity. For
years, the U.S. government has programmatically and rhetorically supported democracy promotion abroad. The State Department routinely disburses millions of dollars in funding for democracy-building programs around the world, many of which are aimed explicitly at expanding free expression. Presidential and other speeches regularly refer to the American belief in the universality of this right; to cite but one example, a March 2011 White House statement on Syria noted that, The United States stands for a set of universal rights, including the freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.8 The

Obama administrations 2010 National Security Strategy

specifically called for marshaling the Internet and other information technologies to support freedom of expression abroad,9 and the Bush administration adopted a policy of maximizing access to information and ideas over
the Internet.10Americas interest in promoting freedom via the Internet comes from the same fundamental belief in democratic values and human rights. Despite inevitable inconsistencies and difficult tradeoffs, the United States continues to support democracy. The Bush administrations 2006 National Security Strategy committed to support democratic institutions abroad through transformational diplomacy.11 President Obama, after entering office with an evident desire to move away from the sweeping tone of his predecessors freedom agenda, nevertheless told the U.N. General Assembly in 2009 that there

are basic principles that are universal; there are certain truths which are self-evident and the United States of America will never waver in our efforts to stand up for the right of people everywhere to determine their own destiny. Cuban Economy: Information and Communication Technology key to Cuban economic progress CSG et. Al.- 10- The Cuba Study Group (CSG) is a non-prot, non-partisan organization comprised of business and community leaders
of Cuban descent who share a common interest and vision of a free and prosperous Cuba. The CSG mission is to facilitate a peaceful reunication of the Cuban nation that would lead to a free and open society with respect for human rights, the rule of law and a market-based economy. Americas Society (AS) is the premier forum dedicated to education, debate and dialogue in the Americas. Council of the Americas (COA) is the premier international business organization whose members share a common commitment to economic and social development, open markets, the rule of law and democracy throughout the Western Hemisphere. The Latin America Initiative at Brookings focuses on the most critical economic, political and social issues facing the region. Research activities center on a wide range of topics, inclu ding Cubas political transition. The initiative is led by Senior Fellow Mauricio Crdenas and is a joint effort of the Global Economy and Development and Foreign Policy programs at Brookings. The Brookings Institution is a nonprot public policy organization based in Washington, DC., E mpowering the Cuban People through Technology: Recommendations for Private and Public Sector Leaders, JULY 2010, http://www.ascoa.org/sites/default/files/styles/Empowering_the_Cuban_People_through_Technology.pdf, Accessed: 7/7/13, MC)

ICT is inherently politically neutral in that it has the potential to repress, propagandize and liberate. Yet the force of ICT is powerful and indisputable. ICT has become a requirement, not a byproduct, for economic development. Several modern-day dictatorships that value economic development have allowed for the growth and development of the technologies but have made major investments in control tools. Examples include China, Iran, Syria and Burma. Other dictatorships that do not value economic growth simply hinder or block the technologies development. A perfect example is North Korea, while Cuba probably represents a dictatorship transitioning from one modality to the other.
Nonetheless, as we saw in Iran in the aftermath of its rigged electoral process in 2009, once the technology is widespread it tends to favor the people, not the regime. Thus, for those who advocate for the growth of democracy and freedom, promoting widespread access to ICT is an important liberating tool. For democracy advocates, exploiting the aforementioned challenges that ICT presents to dictatorial regimes acquires paramount importance. Cuba is not exempt from these challenges; rather, it is attempting to balance these key challenges. Cuba

needs to fundamentally reform its economy but deeply fears the political impact of widespread access to ICT. How it pursues that balance can be greatly facilitated, or made difcult, by U.S. policy toward Cuba. We know that there is a strong correlation between access to ICT and economic growth and development. Conversely, the large investments required for ICT infrastructure will only take place when there is a revenue model to support the investment and provide investors with market-based return rates. This became exceedingly clear with cellular phones. As little as ve years ago, there
were just a few thousand mobile phones in Cuba, almost all of them in the hands of government ofcials, foreigners and members of the elites. Since President Ra l Castros 2008 announcement lifting the ban on cell phones, the number of cell phones will rapidly approach one million by the end of 2010. The reason is simple: Cell phone revenues have become an important source of hard currency. The economic benets outweigh political concerns.

Internet Human Rights Ext. (moar cards)

UN ruled internet is a human right Ralph 12- Talia Ralph, She earned an honors degree in multimedia journalism from Emerson College, and has
written for Metro, Boston Magazine, WBUR.org, Flaunt Magazine, Roads and Kingdoms, and the Boston Globe,(UN deems Internet access a basic human right, Global Post, July 6, 2012, http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/politics/diplomacy/120706/un-deems-internet-access-basic-humanright-0, Accessed: June 28, 2013, KH) The United Nations has ruled that Internet access is a basic human right that should be guaranteed and protected by states. The motion, which was passed on Thursday in Geneva, "affirms that the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online, in particular freedom of expression, which is applicable regardless of frontiers and through any media of ones choice." The action was led by Sweden and supported by the General Assembly's 47 member countries, including America, Brazil and Tunisia, Digital Spy reported. The ruling comes in the wake of the Arab Spring, during which social media played a crucial role in organizing protesters and spreading the word. "This outcome is momentous for the Human Rights Council," said US ambassador Eileen Donahoe, Reuters reported. "It's the first ever UN resolution affirming that human rights in the digital realm must be protected and promoted to the same extent and with the same commitment as human rights in the physical world." The Internet's role has grown exponentially in recent years and will continue to grow: mobile data traffic alone is set to increase 15-fold in the next five years, according to the New York Times. With it's increased use, there is a greater focus on ensuring access to the world-wide web for everyone. "Beyond affirming that freedom of expression applies also to the Internet, the resolution also recognized the immense value the Internet has for global development and called on all states to facilitate and improve global access to it," wrote Carl Bildt, Sweden's foreign minister, in a New York Times opinion piece. UN member states China and Cuba have both been criticized for their censorship of the Internet in fact, China's selective blocking of webpages is no notorious it has come to be referred to as the Great Firewall of China, according to Reuters. In response to the resolution, Cuban diplomat Juan Antonio Quintanilla hinted that the US dominates control of the web, Reuters reported. "Only 30 percent of the world population currently has access to this form of technology," Quintanilla said. "Nor in the text is anything said about Internet governance. When we all know that this tool is controlled by a single country globally and this is something which hampers free access to this very important tool."

Internet Misc. - (not sure if these become aff or neg)

Internet would crumble the authoritarian government O'GRADY 12- MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY, is an editor of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and member of the Wall Street Journal
Editorial Board since 2005. She writes predominantly on Latin America and is a co-editor of the Index of Economic Freedom (Why Socialist Cuba Prohibits Social Media, Wall Street Journal, March 25, 2012 6:31 p.m ET, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304724404577299510054444278.html, Accessed: 7/3/13, MC)

'There's a reason the people in Cuba don't have access to the Internet. It is because the government [couldn't] survive it." That was Florida Sen. Marco Rubio last week at a Washington conference titled "Cuba Needs a (Technological) Revolution: How the Internet Can Thaw an Island Frozen in Time." The event was sponsored by Google Ideas, a venture of the giant Internet search enterprise, and the nonprofit Heritage Foundation. I was asked to kick off things with a Rubio interview. So I began
by asking him what he makes of the Cuban military's reference last year to technology that allows young people to exchange thoughts digitally as "the permanent battlefield." Columnist Mary O'Grady on her interview with Marco Rubio at the Heritage Foundation. Mr. Rubio responded that

it isn't communication with the outside world that the regime fears the most, but Cuban-to-Cuban chatter. "I think Ral Castro clearly understands that his regime cannot survive a Cuban reality where individual Cubans can communicate [with] each other in an unfettered manner." He called "unfiltered access to the Internet and social media" Cuba's "best hope" of avoiding "a stagnated dictatorship" for "the next 50 years that would survive even the death of Raul and Fidel." Mr. Rubio would like to see the U.S. go after the goal of turning Cuba into a Wi-Fi hot spot that is, finding a way to provide wireless Internet access to Cubans so they can both receive and send data in real time. "That's what U.S. policy should really begin to focus on, a 21st-century effort." It won't be easy with today's technology. While Internet experts tell me it is possible to expand two-way Wi-Fi communications to those that the regime has not approved to use its new fiber optic cable, access would likely be quite limited. Nevertheless, Mr. Rubio's proposal goes to the heart of the Cuban government's vulnerability.
The pope on his visit to Cuba today will see and hear what the military dictatorship wants him to see and hear, not the kind of public debate he would witness in a normal country. He will not see what Mr. Rubio is talking about emboldened Cuban dissidents who have no use for the "revolution" of a half-century ago and if given access to realtime communications would endeavor to overthrow their oppressors.
"If Cubans were able to communicate with each other, if Cubans in Santiago [de Cuba] were able to figure out what was happening in Havana and vice versa," Mr. Rubio said, there would be a real chance for change. " If

these groups were able to link up with one another and coordinate efforts and conversation and so forth, the Cuban government wouldn't last very long. It would collapse under the weight of that reality."
Some of Mr. Rubio's comments suggest that he is over-optimistic about whether technology can create island hotspots from afar. But if and when it can, there is little doubt that social media would play a role in bringing about change, as it did, for better or worse, in the overthrow of Egypt's Mubarak.
Closer to home, Mr. Rubio pointed out, it has already made a difference. Referring to the tea party movement, he said, "Fifteen years ago if you wanted to organize a group of people to do anything politically, you needed a big, burdensome organization to coordinate it. Today anyone with access to Facebook and Twitter can be an organizer, and it's happening all over this country, it's happening all over the world, and it will happen in Cuba."

Conventional anti-embargo wisdom holds that hordes of Americans traveling to the island would undermine the regime. The pro-embargo crowd, including Mr. Rubio, counters that foreigners, like everything else in Cuba, are tightly controlled. I mentioned that thousands of Americans are already going to Cuba
every year on "educational" travel. Mr. Rubio responded dryly: "Conga dancing [and] ethics briefings from the Castro government, that's the itinerary."

Internet could transform Cuban economic class divisons Kalathil & Boas 01- Shanthi Kalathil is an independent consultant on media and development. Shanthi is an expert on media, civil
society, and political transitions. Previously, she was a Senior Democracy Fellow based in the Office of Democracy and Governance at the U.S. Agency for International Development, where she served as an advisor on civil society and independent media development for Washingtonbased programs and planning, as well as for various USAID missions around the world. She holds a B.A. in Communications from U.C. Berkeley and a M.Sc. in Comparative Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Shanthi is particularly interested in issues of voice and accountability and their impact on political transitions. Taylor C. Boas, The Internet and State Control in Authoritarian Regimes: China, Cuba, and the Counterrevolution,

The implications of Internet use in the domestic economy pose a third potential challenge to the regime. While Cuba has been forced to implement some market reforms during the economic difficulties of the 1990s, it has generally contained them to the dollar-denominated, export-oriented sector of the economy. The regime has been quite reluctant to take steps that could generate class divisions between Cubans, and it looks disapprovingly upon the nouveaux riches who have emerged from gains in tourism or the informal economy. Although the obstacles may be significant, the Internet could present another lucrative opportunity for enterprising Cubans to make money, potentially exacerbating social tensions. Indeed, Cubans have been
allowed to pursue self-employment for several years, and a few have begun doing freelance web design for international clients. These clients benefit from cheap labor costs, yet still pay more

than Cubans typically earn through most other pursuits.72 But the government still controls Internet access for this handful of budding entrepreneurs, and as long as access does not become
a freely available commodity, it would be impossible for such activity to grow faster than the government desires. As such, it is highly unlikely than any sort of Internet class

will emerge in

Cuba in the short to medium term. Cuba is aware of US internet operations AFP 11- Agence France-Presse a French news agency(Cuba says prominent blogger part of US 'cyber-war,

Bangkok Post Tech, 22 Mar 2011 at 22.31, http://wwww.bangkokpost.com/tech/computer/228062/cuba-says-prominent-blogger-part-of-us-cyber-war, Accessed: 7/4/13, MC)

The accusations came in a documentary series aired on state TV in which an engineer from the information ministry and pro-government bloggers accuse Washington of targeting the country through "cyber-dissident" proxies.
"There exists on the island a new kind of counterrevolution composed of bloggers... These cyber-mercenaries constitute a new instrument to create internal conflicts," the documentary said. Sanchez, 35, an internationally-known blogger and dissident who writes on the site "Generation Y" has long traded barbs with a regime that accuses her of serving foreign agendas. In a blog video in response to the latest charges, Sanchez and five other opponents accuse the government of "demonizing" the internet after revolutions led by online activists brought down longstanding regimes in Egypt and Tunisia. "It is nervous because social networks like Twitter and Facebook can play the same role in Cuba they did in Egypt and Tunisia," it said. The video can be viewed at www.desdecuba.com/generationy.

Last month Cuba hailed the laying of a new undersea fiber-optic cable to Venezuela, which it said would allow the country to surmount a decades-old US embargo that had forced it to rely on more expensive satellite connections. But dissidents have said the government keeps a tight grip on information and communications to stifle dissent.

ETECSA funds and Embargo fees stop US internet deal

Miroff 10 Nick Miroff, Nick Miroff covers Cuba for GlobalPost., Miroff was part of the Washington Post reporting team that won a
Pulitzer prize for breaking news coverage of the massacre at Virginia Tech. His story in the Washington Post on coal miners and painkiller

addiction in Appalachian southwest Virginia was the recipient of a 2008 Nancy Dickerson Award for Excellent in Reporting on Drug and Alcohol Problems. In 2006, he traveled to Northern Manitoba as part of a radio series on climate change, Early Signs: Report s from a Warming Planet that won a 2006 George Polk Award. Miroff grew up in Albany, N.Y., and earned a bachelor's degree in Spanish and Latin American literature at University of California Santa Cruz. He holds a master's degree from the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. (Cuba: No deal with US telecoms,globalpost.com, October 18, 2009 17:11Updated May 30, 2010 13:11, http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/cuba/091018/cuba-says-no-deal-us-telecoms?page=0,1, Accessed: 6/27/13, MC)

exemptions from long-standing U.S. sanctions against Cubas communist government, so that companies like Verizon, Sprint and AT&T could bring better phone and
The White House announced in April that it would provide
internet service to the island to promote the freer flow of information. But the Castro government exerts strict control over the islands communication networks, and American

companies would have

to reach a deal with the governments telecom monopoly, ETECSA. Months passed without a response to Obamas proposal. But during an official government newscast Saturday, ETECSA international operations director Vivian Iglesias said there were two major obstacles to such a partnership: some $160 million in frozen funds that the U.S. government seized from ETECSA in 2000, and trade restrictions imposed by the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act, which forces Cuba to pay U.S. companies through third countries, incurring additional transaction fees. It may seem like the Obama administration has expanded communication possibilities, said Iglesias. But we know that unless restrictions like the (Cuban Democracy Act) and others that have been tightened since 1992 dont change, there cant be any normal communication. Iglesias statements were a reminder that a firewall of mistrust remains between two countries split by 50 years of hostile relations
and emotional politics. Previous agreements between U.S. telecom companies and ETECSA went sour in the late 1990s, when U.S. legislators ordered ETECSAs funds seized as payment to Cuban American families who won a wrongful death judgment against the Castro government after four pilots from a Cuban exile group were shot down in a 1996 dispute. Iglesias said that

If those restrictions dont change, that prevents direct communication between the United States and Cuba.
money was stolen from ETECSA, and hasnt been paid back. The causes that led to the theft of our funds are still in place, she said.

Embargo prevents internet access for Cubans Rodriguez 08 Andrea Rodriguez, Correspondent at AP (Cuba blames US for Internet restrictions,
USAToday, 5/16/08, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/topstories/2008-05-16-1303804967_x.htm?csp=34, 7/4/13, ckr) A top Cuban official said Friday that Ral Castro's government would consider loosening Internet restrictions on ordinary citizens newly allowed to purchase computers -- but Washington's decades-old

economic embargo makes it impossible.

''We aren't worried about the citizenry connecting from their homes,'' Telecommunications Vice Minister Boris Moreno told a small group of reporters.

''But problems with technology and resources have made it necessary to give priority to connections that guarantee the country's social and economic development,'' he said, referring to an
islandwide network that lets Cubans receive e-mail and view domestic Web sites.

The rest of the worldwide Web is blocked to most citizens in Cuba, which has access controls far stricter than in China or Saudi Arabia. Only foreigners and some government employees and academics are currently allowed unfiltered home Internet service, and many Cubans turn to the black
market for expensive, slow dial-up accounts. Computers for home use were also not available until two weeks ago, when state stores began selling them to the public as part of a series of small quality-of-life changes since Ral Castro replaced his elder brother Fidel in February. But Moreno said the government is unable to offer Cubans comprehensive Internet for their new

PCs, citing its long-standing complaint that the American embargo prevents it from getting service directly from the United States nearby through underwater cables. Instead, Cuba gets Internet
service through less reliable satellite connections, usually from faraway countries including Italy and Canada.

Summit of the Americas

Obama promised SOA we would lift embargo Swieg 1/25 Julia Swieg, director of Latin American Relations at the Council on Foreign Relation (Talking to
Cuba Council on Foreign Relations, 1/25/13, http://www.cfr.org/cuba/talking-cuba/p29879, Accessed 6/27/13)

Well, they are interested in using the case as leverage. President Obama, at the first Summit of the Americas he attended, pledged to open a new chapter in U.S.-Cuban relations and acknowledged that the embargo and U.S. policy had failed. Then he left in place the very policies he had inherited from George W. Bush. Some call them democracy promotions; some call them regime change--explicitly designed to destabilize Cuba. Which is very, very consistent with the bipartisan approach to Cuba over the last fifty years.

Cuban embargo is a major block in Latin American relations Summit proves LA Times 12 Los Angeles Times, (Time to Include Cuba, Article for the LA Times,
4/17/12, http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/17/opinion/la-ed-cuba-summit-20120417, Accessed 7/03/13, AW) Once again, Cuba was absent from the Summit of the Americas. Yet the communist nation might as well have attended the gathering last weekend in Cartagena, Colombia, because it took center stage, despite U.S. efforts to focus on other issues. Ecuador's president refused to attend the summit in protest of Cuba's exclusion. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and Brazil's Dilma Rouseff, both moderates rather than left-wingers, said there should be no more Summits of the Americas without Cuba. A leftist bloc of nations that includes Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and some Caribbean countries said it won't participate again unless Cuba does. And the meeting ended without a final joint declaration because the United States and Canada refused to agree to language specifying that Cuba would be invited to future summits. The controversy should serve as a wake-up call to the United States: The policy of banning Cuba from the gathering of the hemisphere's leaders for nearly 18 years is backfiring . It hasn't led to regime change any more than the 50-year-old U.S. trade embargo on Cuba has; it hasn't persuaded President Raul Castro or, before him, his brother Fidel to embrace democratic reforms, hold free elections or abandon human rights abuses. Instead, it has fueled frustration among Latin leaders. Today, the United States is the only country in the hemisphere that has not restored diplomatic relations with Havana. Even the Organization of American States, sometimes called an instrument of U.S. foreign policy, cleared the way for Cuba to return to the group in 2009. The Obama administration has denied that its goal in excluding Cuba is to keep Cuban American voters in Florida happy during a presidential election year. Whatever the reason, the position is not playing well with leaders in the region, who see embargoes and political isolation as anachronistic policies from the Cold War era. The United States should abandon its push to keep Cuba from attending the Americas summit. Engagement, not isolation, is the best way to encourage change without alienating allies.

Embargo is a prerequisite to Latin American Relations Summit of Americas proves Suggett 9 James Sugget, Staff Writer for Venezuela Analysis, (Obama Should End Cuba
Embargo and Learn About Latin America, Says Venezuelas Chvez, Article for Venezuela Analysis, 3/23/2009, http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/4315, Accessed 6/28/13, AW) On Sunday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chvez said that U.S. President Barack Obama should lift its economic embargo against Cuba and allow Cuba to attend the upcoming Summit of the Americas. Chvez also said that President Obamas negative remarks about Venezuela reflect ignorance about Latin America. If Obama wants to achieve better relations with the [Latin American] region, he should respect everyone equally, starting with Cuba , said Chvez during his weekly presidential talk show Al Presidente. He has the moral obligation to suspend the criminal embargo [against Cuba] and comply with the resolutions of the United Nations. President Chvez strongly advocated that Cuba be included in the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, which is scheduled for April 17th. Why does Cuba continue to be left out of the Summit of the Americas, if Cuba is a friend of Latin American and Caribbean countries? [] We cannot continue to accept the impositions of the [United States] empire, said the president. Chvez said he had prepared to renew diplomatic relations with the United States and chosen a new ambassador when Obama was elected to the presidency, but he put these plans back in the drawer in January when Obama said Chvez has impeded progress in the region and supported terrorists, alluding to accusations made by the Colombian government last year that Venezuela has financed Colombian guerrilla troops. The true obstacle is the empire over which you [Obama] now preside, Chvez stated Sunday. It has dropped atomic bombs on innocent cities, it has bombarded, invaded, and killed whomever it pleases, and now you are going to accuse me of exporting terrorism? [] You poor ignorant person, you should study so that you learn the reality of Latin America and the world! said Chvez. Chvez and his ally Bolivian President Evo Morales expelled their respective U.S. ambassadors last September, accusing them of conspiring with secessionist provincial leaders to destabilize the democratically elected governments of Chvez and Morales. On Sunday, Chvez reiterated his willingness to renew diplomatic relations with the United States, as long as the Obama administration shows

respect for Latin America . We continue hoping, but we are not desperate, said
Chvez.

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-thetime-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-continuecuban-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/thepointless-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-reasonsto-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 CubanAmerican 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 Branch implicitly

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 C ubas 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 cooperatives to strengthen social forces less dominated by Havanas powerful bureaucracies. Section 3 describes these European and Canadian coo peration programs as well as the creative initiatives of the non-governmental organization Oxfam, and draws lessons pointing 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-dailynews/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.)

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
WASHINGTON -- Cuban President Raul

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 Ameri can 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 DiazCanel 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 DiazCanel 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 aul 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 dialo gue. 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-latinamerica.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 CubanAmerican 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. Ke nnedys 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 t he 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 Ra l Castros announcement that he will retire in 2018, the imp lacable 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

reelection 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

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
based in Florida, does not want to normalize relations until the Communist regime is gone. "When they're polled, 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 Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), the top-ranking Republican

favor improving relations with Cuba. In 2009, 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 InterAmerican 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 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
the United States is still operating against them is obviousthe embargo. 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 i nspections 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-embargoagainst-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 o ther 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 Ho pe 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 th an 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 peo ple 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-ofcuba/, 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 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

hard). ather, it is Cubas own outdated economic model, inherited from the Soviet Union, of central planning.

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 cooperatives to 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-withchina-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

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
proof that the United States is still operating against them is obviousthe embargo. the demise of the current system. Lifting

the security apparatus would significantly delegitimize the Cuban government domestically and internationally and could only hasten

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-itssenseless-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 foreignenergy supplier to the United States of oil, natural gas, uranium and electricity. We both see eyeto-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 cooperation 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-itssenseless-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 fivedecade 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 C ontrol 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-usembargo-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 entrep reneurs. 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

United States actually want the embargo to continue.

few Cubans in the

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/whysummer-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 oi l 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 th e 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

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.
partnerships and not have the United States dictate policy. "

Cuba-Iran ties
Iran is a growing security threat- plan key Curtain 08 Joseph W. Curtain - Lieutenant Commander, United States Navy,(ECONOMIC AND SECURITY REASONS WHY THE
U.S. SHOULD NORMALIZE RELATIONS WITH CUBA,dtic.mil,6/2008,http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/ u2/a483591.pdf,6/28/13,JW)

Cubas economy has not only survived the end of Soviet-era subsidies but has thrived in the era of globalization. This thesis documents the adjustments the Cuban government has made to the economy and the increase in foreign direct investment (FDI) that has occurred as a result. The thesis also shows how China, Venezuela and Iran continue to invest more money in the island and subsequently threaten to wield more influence over Cuba . The U.S. has the opportunity to mitigate the threats posed by Venezuela and Iran vis--vis Cuba. However, the policy espoused by current policy makers is logically flawed. The Helms-Burton Act contains
unrealistic benchmarks for ending the embargo that provide little incentive for Cuban leaders to liberalize. Neither presidential candidate advocates a change in this legislation. In contrast, this thesis argues that the normalization of relations with Cuba can diminish the influence Iran and Venezuela have on Cuba and keep potential threats from coming ninety miles off the coast of the U.S. The next president should call for Congress to repeal the Helms-Burton Act so that executive discretion can be exercised with respect to Cuban foreign policy.

Iran influence threatens US security Curtain 08 Joseph W. Curtain - Lieutenant Commander, United States Navy,(ECONOMIC AND SECURITY REASONS WHY THE
U.S. SHOULD NORMALIZE RELATIONS WITH CUBA,dtic.mil,6/2008,http://www.dtic. mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a483591.pdf,6/28/13,JW) If Chavez has a kindred political kindred spirit, it would be Iranian

known on the world stage for his

conversely, it can be argued that those

Mahmoud president Ahmadinejad. Like Chavez, he is best inflammatory and incendiary rhetoric . And like Chavez, sometimes his

penchant for outrageous statements makes it hard to take him seriously (i.e., Does he really believe the Holocaust did not happen?). Although,

very same outrageous statements are all the more reason to take him seriously. Both presidents preside over petro-rich countries and both presidents have made no attempts to hide their disdain for U.S. imperialism. And like those of Venezuela, Irans policies by themselves pose a security threat to the U.S. What causes Ahmadinejads Iran to be perceived as t he number one threat to world stability in the Gallup poll and what would cause President Bush to say that he is even more evil than Fidel Castro or Gaddafi is the combination of his inflammatory anti-U.S./anti-Israel rhetoric and his claim that Iran is justified in its pursuit of nuclear power . But what gets less press is the fact that Iran, like Venezuela, has begun to invest heavily in Cuba. And like Venezuela, Iran may pose much more of a threat to the U.S. with an alliance with Cuba. Without Cuba, Iran can only pose a threat to the U.S. in the Middle East; however, with Cuba and Venezuela, Iran can bring its threat ninety miles off the shore of the U.S. The April 7, 2007, State Department Western
Hemisphere overview cites concerns about Hugo Chavezs deepened Venezuelan relationships with Iran and Cuba.95 Though the State Departments report is unclassified and certainly is not a comprehensive intelligence report on the extent of the relationship between Venezuela, Cuba and Iran, it is decidedly vague about exactly what the deepened relationship consists of and why the U.S. should be concerned. Yet despite the ambiguous State Department threat assessment linking Venezuela and Cuba to Iran, there

is plenty of circumstantial evidence that links the three nations in what can amount to be a potentially volatile triangular threat to U.S. interests. Though there have certainly been several recent links tying Iran to Venezuela and Cuba, a red flag was
definitely raised at the thirty-five nation International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) vote to refer Irans case for nuclear energy to the United Nations Security Council in February 2006.

Plan key to diminishing Iranian influence in the region Curtain 08 Joseph W. Curtain - Lieutenant Commander, United States Navy,(ECONOMIC AND SECURITY REASONS WHY THE
U.S. SHOULD NORMALIZE RELATIONS WITH CUBA,dtic.mil,6/2008,http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a483591.pdf,6/28/13,JW)

Cubas economy has not only survived the end of Soviet-era subsidies but has thrived in the era of globalization. This thesis documents the adjustments the

Cuban government has made to the economy and the increase in foreign direct investment (FDI) that has occurred as a result. The prospect of the U.S.s Cuban trade embargo actually accomplishing its goal seems to diminish more and more with the every dollar of FDI invested in Cuba. The thesis also shows how China, Venezuela and Iran continue to invest more money in the island and subsequently threaten to wield more influence over Cuba . The U.S. has the opportunity to mitigate the threats posed by Venezuela and Iran vis--vis Cuba. However, the policy espoused by current policy makers is logically flawed. The Helms-Burton Act contains unrealistic benchmarks that provide little incentive for Cuban leaders to liberalize. Senator McCain espouses a position little different from President Bushs hard-line implementation of HelmsBurton, an approach that has failed to produce change. Senator Obama advocates liberalization within the context of Helms-Burton, an approach already tried by President Clinton without producing significant change. In contrast, this thesis argues that the

normalization of relations with Cuba can diminish the influence Iran and Venezuela have on Cuba and keep potential threats from coming ninety miles off the coast of the U.S. The next president should call for Congress to repeal the Helms-Burton Act so that executive discretion can be exercised with respect to Cuban foreign policy. Embargo allows for strong Cuba-Iran ties Curtain 08 Joseph W. Curtain - Lieutenant Commander, United States Navy,(ECONOMIC AND SECURITY REASONS WHY THE
U.S. SHOULD NORMALIZE RELATIONS WITH CUBA,dtic.mil,6/2008,http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a483591.pdf,6/28/13,JW) Within a little more than 15 years, Cuba has unquestionably transitioned from a country that was economically dependent on the Soviet Union to one with a much healthier international trade balance. Cuba now trades more than $2 billion of merchandise and goods with the E.U., more than $730 million with China, and more than $690 million with Canada. Its levels of FDI have increased exponentiallyfrom $2 million in 1990 to over $480 million in 2005 and over $2.2 billion overall from 1993- 2004. Cubas tourism industry is booming as wellincreasing from 500,000 international tourists in 1993 to over 2.3 million tourists in 2005an astonishing 360% increase.132 Finally, the commitment Canadian, Chinese and Venezuelan companies have made to invest billions of dollars into nickel and oil exploitation are additional signs of Cubas increased trend toward global economic interconnectedness. This global economic expansion has helped Cuba lift itself from a post Soviet Union economic recession in the 1990s to an average of slightly over 5% economic growth from 2000 to 2004133 which increased to 9% in 2005, 10% in 2006 and 8% in 2007.134 Thus this economic expansion leads to the question Andrew Zimbalist posed back in 1993: If Castro has been able to maintain his grip on power during the crises of the last four years, then there is little prospect for his political demise as the economy begins to stabilize and slowly improve.135 Zimbalists point is more salient now than it was then. If Fidel Castros

regime was going to crumble because of the economic effects of the U.S. embargo, it should have deteriorated in the wake of the Soviet Unions dissolution and the absence of billions of dollars of annual aid. But the economy did just the opposite. Instead, it rebounded in the late 1990s and has shown consistent growth in the 2000sso much so that Cuba witnessed the recent peaceful transition of power from Fidel to his brother Raul. A
current spin on Zimbalists point would be: If Raul Castros regime can continue to sustain economic growth, then there is little prospect for the demise of the communist regime in the post-Fidel era. The recent

Cuban economic expansion is perhaps the clearest signal that the U.S.Cuban policy needs an overhaul. It is not working. It was a policy designed in
the Cold War that no longer makes sense in the globalized world of economic interconnectedness. Some critics might argue that maintaining the current policy cannot hurt the U.S., and at the very least, it is sending the right signal to Cubas communist leaders. The question they would ask is, What is the worst that could happen by staying the course? The

problem with the status quo logic is it overlooks the fact that the embargo has contributed to the growing influence of Venezuela, Iran and China in Cuba through their increasing investments in the Cuban economy.

Cuba Venezuela Ties

Venezuela trade with Cuba mainly based on oil Hanson et. al. 1/31/13 - Stephanie Hanson, associate director and coordinating editor at CFR.org, the website
of the Council on Foreign Relations. She manages the editorial production of the website and covers economic and political development in Africa and Latin America. Her work has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Bookforum, San Francisco Chronicle, Newsday, and on the websites of the New York Times, Newsweek, and the Washington Post. (U.S.-Cuba Relations, Council on Foreign Relations, 1/31/13, http://www.cfr.org/cuba/us-cubarelations/p11113#p3, accessed: 6/28/13, amf.) In October 2000, Chvez

and Fidel Castro signed the Integral Cooperation Accord, an agreement that specified an exchange of Venezuelan oil for Cuban goods and services. The accord was reaffirmed and extended for another ten-year period in 2010. Venezuela now sells Cuba some 90,000 barrels of crude oil daily at preferential prices, and Cuba sends tens of thousands of medical
professionals to work with Venezuelan communities. Florida International University's Martin calls the relationship "very intimate," and says it is getting "stronger and stronger every year."

Strong relationship between Cuba and Venezuela ideology and trade Global Times 6/8/13 Globaltimes.cn. (Venezuela-Cuba ties to stay strong: official, The Global Times,
6/8/13, http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/787836.shtml#.UdXIwT6sa9c, accessed: 7/4/13, amf)

Friendship between Venezuela and Cuba will continue to stay strong, Venezuelan National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello said Friday. The solidarity, friendship and camaraderie between the two nations, promoted by their respective former leaders, Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, will continue to thrive for many years, said Cabello, who
began an official three-day visit to Cuba on Friday. Cabello, after meeting his Cuban counterpart, Esteban Lazo,

thanked the Cuban people and their leaders for giving medical treatment to Chavez. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Chavez's successor, is committed to continuing the policies spearheaded by Chavez, said Cabello. Lazo reiterated Cuba's respect for Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution, the term Chavez gave to the
socialist reforms he launched to address the country's inequity.

The Cuban legislator also highlighted the extraordinary effort Chavez made to promote unity in Latin America and the Caribbean, saying Chavez served as an inspiration for other revolutionaries in the
region. With Chavez in power, the

two countries had maintained good relations. Venezuela supplies Cuba with 100,000 barrels of oil per day, and in exchange, Cuba provides Venezuela with more than 45,000 professionals, mainly in medical and healthcare fields. Cuba and Venezuela key to ALBA bloc leaders of the anti-US alliance Egan 7/4/13 Louise Egan, Senior Correspondent to Reuters, covering cover economics, fiscal policy, central
banking, and G20. (Latin America furious over Bolivia incident in Snowden saga , Reuters, 7/4/13, http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/07/03/usa-security-latinamerica-idINDEE9620GQ20130703, accessed: 7/4/13, amf) ANTI-U.S. RHETORIC

Bolivian officials were quick on Tuesday to accuse the United States of strong-arming the Europeans into denying access to their air space in an "act of intimidation" against Morales for suggesting while
attending an energy conference in Moscow that he would consider granting asylum to Snowden if requested. The restrictions were later lifted and Morales was on his way home after a stopover in the Canary Islands. Snowden is believed to be still in the transit area of a Moscow airport, where he has been trying since June 23 to find a country that will offer him refuge from prosecution in the United States on espionage charges. The Bolivian government said it had filed a formal complaint with the United Nations and was

studying other legal avenues to prove its rights had been violated under international law. Legal experts say Bolivia could take its case to the International Court of Justice in The Hague if
Austrian officials had boarded Morales' plane in Vienna without his consent, presumably to search for Snowden. Bolivian Defense Minister Ruben Saavedra said authorities did not board the plane, contradicting an Austrian official who said the aircraft had been boarded and checked. Some Bolivians took to the streets in protest, burning the French and European Union flags outside the French Embassy in the capital of La Paz.

Bolivia is part of the ALBA alliance of Latin American socialist countries that has for years delighted in confronting Washington. Morales has yet to restore full diplomatic relations with the United States after expelling the U.S.
ambassador in 2008. But the regional leftist

bloc's two leading members - Cuba and Venezuela - are in a cautious rapprochement with the United States that likely would be dashed if they gave sanctuary to Snowden. U.S. President Barack Obama has warned that giving Snowden asylum would carry serious costs.

Embargo is a block in Venezuelan relations plan solves Suggett 9 James Sugget, Staff Writer for Venezuela Analysis, (Obama Should End Cuba
Embargo and Learn About Latin America, Says Venezuelas Chvez, Article for Venezuela Analysis, 3/23/2009, http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/4315, Accessed 6/28/13, AW) President Obamas willingness to dialogue with Venezuela and Cuba and his pledge to find cooperation and mutual interest mark a departure from the harsh cold war rhetoric of the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush. However, the Venezuelan government views Obamas scolding of Venezuela for lacking good international behavior, his refusal so far to end the embargo against Cuba, and the U.S. State Departments recent report critiquing human rights worldwide as obstacles to improving U.S.-Latin American relations. Lifting restrictions on Cuba develops Venezuelan influence Pascual et. al. 09 Carlos Pascual, director of foreign policy at Brookings Institution ( Gustavo Arnavat
Attorney at law Ann Louise Bardach Author/Journalist University of California Santa Barbara dr. ramon Cols Co-Director Center for the Understanding of Cubans of African Descent dr. Jorge i. domnguez Vice-provost for international Affairs Antonio Madero professor of Mexican and latin American politics and Economics Harvard University daniel erikson Senior Associate for U.S. policy Director of Caribbean programs inter-American Dialogue dr. Mark falcoff resident Scholar Emeritus American Enterprise institute dr. damin J. fernndez provost and Executive Vice president purchase College dr. Andy s. Gomez Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings institution Assistant provost, University of Miami Senior Fellow, institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies Jess Gracia Former Spanish Ambassador to Cuba paul hare Former British Ambassador to Cuba francisco J. (pepe) hernndez president Cuban American National Foundation dr. William LeoGrande Dean, School of public Affairs American University dr. Marifeli prez-stable Vice president for Democratic Governance inter-American Dialogue Jorge r. pin Energy Fellow Center for Hemispheric policy University of Miami dr. Archibald ritter Distinguished research professor Emeritus Department of Economics and Norman paterson School of international Affairs Carleton University Andrs rozental Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings institution Former Deputy Foreign Minister of Mexico Carlos saladrigas CoChairman Cuba Study Group, Cuba: A New Policy of Critical and Constructive Engagement Brookings, April 2009,

Accessed 6/26/13, http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2009/4/cuba/0413_cuba.pdf)

The first two initiatives simply encourage a broadening of U.S. government public and private participation in activities that assist the growth of Cuban civil society and should be carried out regardless of Cubas conduct. The U.S. government should expand the assistance envisioned in the first basket by encouraging other

governments, multilateral institutions, organizations, and individuals to support educational exchanges as well as the improvement of human rights and the growth of civil society. in addition, in order to
enhance access to knowledge, the U.S. government should allow private individuals, groups, and the Cuban government access to normal commercial credit for the sale of communications equipment and connections to satellite and broadband networks. licensing U.S. companies to provide services for the development of Cuban offshore oil and gas would provide benefits to the United States and Cuba. (At this point it should be noted that the Secretary of Treasury has always had and continues to have the authorityas embodied in OFAC regulationsto license any transaction found to be in the U.S. national interest. This power has been used over the past fifteen years by various republican and Democratic administrations to license a variety of commercial transactions between the United States and Cuba). The following are some of the reasons we might wish to become engaged in developing Cubas offshore oil and gas. First, if U.S. and other reputable

companies are involved in Cubas offshore oil development it would reduce Cubas dependence on Venezuela for two-thirds of its oil imports. Second, it is preferable that U.S. oil companies with high standards of transparency develop these resources rather than, for example, russias notoriously corrupt oligarchy. Third, U.S. influence in Cuba is likely to increase if U.S. companies have an economic relationship on the ground. Fourth, U.S. companies have the technology and expertise to develop Cubas offshore oil and gas.

The plan is uniquely key to democracy reduces Cuban energy reliance on autocratic countries
Pinon 09 Jorge Pinon, research fellow at University of Miamis Center for Hemispheric Affairs, advisor at Brookings Institutions US Policy towards Cuba in Transition task force (Oil Work can be Part of US-Cuban Rapprochement, Oil and Gas Journal, 5/4/09, Lexis Nexis, AM) of Cuba's petroleum demand currently relies on imports, and Venezuela is the single source of these imports under heavily subsidized payment terms. This petroleum dependency, valued at over $3 billion in 2008, could be used by Venezuela as a tool to influence a future Cuban government in maintaining a politically antagonistic and belligerent position toward the US. Cuba has learned from experiences and is very much aware of the political and economic risks and consequences of depending on a single source for imported oil. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the 2003 Venezuelan oil strike taught Cuba very expensive lessons. President Raul Castro understands the risks; his recent visits to major oil exporters such as Brazil, Russia, Angola, and Algeria underscore his concerns. A relationship with Brazil would provide a balance to Cuba's current dependency, while others could bring with it corrupt and unsavory business practices. Only when Cuba diversifies suppliers and develops its offshore resources, estimated by the US Geological Survey to be at 5.5 billion bbl of oil and 9.8 tcf of natural gas undiscovered reserves, will it have the economic independence needed to consider a political and economic evolution. US restrictions
Two thirds

Although Cuban authorities have invited US oil companies to participate in developing their offshore oil and natural gas resources, US law does not allow it. American oil and oil equipment and service companies have the capital, technology, and operational know-how to explore, produce, and refine in a safe and responsible manner Cuba's potential oil and natural gas reserves. Yet they remain on the sidelines because of the almost 5-decade-old unilateral political and economic embargo. The president can end this impasse by licensing American companies to participate in developing Cuba's offshore oil and gas. Embargo regulations specifically give the secretary of the treasury the authority to license prohibited activities. The Helms-Burton law codified the embargo regulations as well as the secretary's power, embedded in the codified regulations, to rescind, modify, or amend them. The proof of this is that several years after the Helms-Burton law was enacted, former President Bill Clinton expanded travel and money transfers to the Cuban people and civil society. Cuba's future By seizing the initiative on Cuba policy, the president could claim an early and relatively easy policy success. Critically, he would position the US to play a role in Cuba's future, thereby giving Cubans a better chance for a stable and democratic future. A future Cuban government influenced by its energy benefactors would most likely result in a continuation of the current political and economic model. If Cuba's new leaders are unable to fill the power vacuum left by the departure of the old cadre, they could become pawns of illicit business activities and drug cartels , and the US could face a mass illegal immigration by hundreds of thousands of Cubans. If US companies were allowed to contribute in developing Cuba's hydrocarbon reserves, as well as renewable energy such as solar, wind, and sugarcane ethanol, the change would reduce the influence of autocratic and corrupt governments. Most importantly, it would provide the US and other democratic countries with a better chance of working with Cuba's future leaders to carry out reforms that would lead to a more open and representative society . Fifty-two years ago this October, following the nationalization of the property of U.S. citizens and corporations in Cuba, Washington enacted economic sanctions against the island nation, imposing El bloqueo, the longest embargo in modern history. This policy has not only been grossly ineffective, but has exacted a significant economic toll on both countries by restricting the movement of people, capital, and goods to and from Cuba. Over the years, these sanctions have evolved, as have the geo-political dynamics that formed the shaky reasoning behind the policy. Cuba's largest former benefactor, the USSR, has long since collapsed and its aging revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro, no longer holds formal power after handing leadership over to his brother in April 2011. Considering these seismic political changes, the embargo should be lifted to allow the unrestricted flow of trade that would bring an important level of economic growth to both the U.S. and Cuba.

US-Latin American relations

Plan sends a signal to Latin America that the US is willing to be reasonable- boosts US credibility in the region and salvages regional cooperation WHITE 3/7 -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 Chvez, a Chance to Rethink Relations With Cuba NYTimes March 7, 2013 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/opinion/after-chavez-hope-for-good-neighbors-in-latinamerica.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&partner=rss&emc=rss-Accessed-7-9-13-RX)
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
the rule of Mr. Castro and his brother al, Cubas current president. The

Mr. Chvez used our embargo as a wedge with which to antagonize the United States and alienate its supporters. His fuel helped prop up

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 Ke nnedys 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 al 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. Lifting the embargo solves Latin American relations Creamer 11Robert Creamer, Robert Creamer has been a political organizer and strategist
for four decades. He and his firm, Democracy Partners, work with many of the countrys most significant issue campaigns. He was one of the major architects and organizers of the successful campaign to defeat the privatization of Social Security. He has been a consultant to the campaigns to end the war in Iraq, pass universal health care, pass Wall Street reform, change Americas budget priorities and enact comprehensive immigration reform. He has also worked on hundreds of electoral campaigns at the local, state and national level. Creamer is married to Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky from Illinois. Arianna Huffington calls his book, Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, a masters class in electoral politics. (Changes in U.S. Cuba Policy Good First step But Its Time to Normalize Relations, 1/18/11, Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/changes-in-uscuba-policy_b_810161.html-Accessed-6-27-13-RX)
4). Our failure

to normalize relations with Cuba undermines American interests throughout the world -- and particular in Latin America.
U.S. policy towards Cuba has been a major sore point with other countries in Latin America, who view it as a vestige of Yankee paternalism toward the entire region. And

it is used by those who want to harm America as another

piece of anti-American propaganda.

Far from isolating Cuba, we have isolated ourselves. Virtually all of America's major allies have normal economic and political relationships with Cuba. Last year, the United Nations General Assembly voted for the seventeenth time -- in seventeen years -- to condemn our economic embargo of Cuba -- this time by a vote of 185 to 3.

Lifting the Embargo key to US LA relations Hirst 13 Monica Hirst - Full-time Professor at the Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Porfessor of MA Program of Universidad

Torcuato di Tella,(Cuba-Latin America & Caribbean relations; challenges beyond normalization,wordpress.com,2013,http://blogbrasilnomundo.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/cuba-latin-america-challenges-beyondnormalization.pdf,Accessed:7/4/13,JW)

For many decades, connections with Havana had inevitable implications for US-Latin American relations, as closeness to Washington was defined by whether governments were friends or foes to Cuba. While it is true that such rigidity no longer exists, narrow mind-sets have not been completely discarded. From a Cuban perspective, closer relations with Latin America is perceived as part of a more distant and critical view towards the US. For the US government, this
is essentially an intermestic matter with resilient ideological contents, to be addressed in the context of bilaterally unsettled negotiations. For L atin A merican countries, the US blockade represents a

plaintive anachronism, and any step on Washingtons part to eliminate it would be read as a
positive sign towards the region . Europeans, on their side, have observed the recent Cuban-Latin American rapprochement with a positive view and are about to take themselves a first step toward opening negotiations with this country. Relations between European countries and Cuba have followed a dual pattern; while the European Union has resisted going ahead in a negotiation of collective accords with the island, bilateral ties have been pursued by many EU members.16 Conditions imposed by the EU are focused on expected changes from the Cuban regime regarding the protection of human rights, the rule of law, and adherence to the International Court of Justice. The seventeen bilateral accords in place cover investment, trade and cooperation initiatives. Prospects have recently emerged to draft the framework to commence a negotiation process with Brussels. In fact, Europe stands as Cubas second trade partner (after Venezuela), benefitting therefore from bilateral understandings and commercial preferences. The EU does not

support the US blockade in any way. Businesswise, European expectations are pending on the day after of the suspension by the US blockade, particularly in areas as tourism, services and infrastructure since European investments are affected by the limitations imposed by US legislation. With the current economic crises faced at home, the importance of expanding markets as well as FDI in Latin American and Caribbean countries has been reinforced. Even more meaningful than potentially expanding the Cuban domestic market, are expectations that this country could become a regional hub to serve neighboring islands together along with the southeast of the United States (Feinberg, 2012:15).

Trade is the only link to Latin American Relations Ben-Ami 13 - Shlomo Ben-Ami a former Israeli foreign minister who now serves as the vice president of the Toledo
International Center for Peace, a former Israeli diplomat, politician and historian. (Is the US Losing Latin America?,The Guatemala Times, 05 JUNE 2013, http://www.guatemala-times.com/opinion/syndicated-2/3681--is-the-us-

losing-latin-america-.html Accessed: 6/27/13, MC)

It is true that US attention to Latin America has waned in recent years. President George W. Bush was more focused on his global war on terror. His successor, Barack Obama, seemed to give the region little thought as well, at least in his first term. Indeed, at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena in April 2012, Latin American leaders felt sufficiently confident and united to challenge US priorities in the region. They urged the US to lift its embargo on Cuba, claiming that it had damaged relations with the rest of the continent, and to do more to combat drug use on its own turf, through education and social work, rather than supplying arms to fight the drug lords in Latin America a battle that all acknowledged has

been an utter failure.It is also true that Latin American countries have pursued a massive expansion of economic ties beyond Americas sway. China is now Latin
Similarly, in 2008, ussias then-President Dmitri Medvedev identified the US war on terror as an opportunity to create strategic partnerships with rising powers such as Brazil, and with the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), a Venezuelan-inspired bloc opposed to US designs in the region. The energy giant Gazprom and the countrys military industries have spearheaded the Krem lins effort to demonstrate ussias ability to influence Americas neighborhood a direct response to perceived American meddling in ussias own near abroad, particularly Georgia and Ukraine. Yet it would be a mistake to regard Latin Americas broadening international relations as marking the end of US preeminence. Unlike in the bygone era of superpowers and captive nations, American

Americas second-largest trading partner and rapidly closing the gap with the US. India is showing keen interest in the regions energy indust ry, and has signed export agreements in the defense sector. Iran has strengthened its economic and military ties, especially in Venezuela.

influence can no longer be defined by the ability to install and depose leaders from the US embassy. To believe otherwise is to ignore how international politics has changed over the last quarter-century. A continent once afflicted by military takeovers has slowly but surely implanted stable democracies. Responsible economic management, poverty-reduction programs, structural reforms, and greater openness to foreign investment have all helped to generate years of low-inflation growth. As a result, the region was able to withstand the ravages of the global financial crisis. The US not only encouraged these changes, but has benefited hugely from them. More than 40%
of US exports now go to Mexico and Central and South America, the USs fastest -growing export destination. Mexico is Americas secondlargest foreign market (valued at $215 billion in 2012). US exports to Central America have risen by 94% over the past six years; imports from the region have risen by 87%. And the US continues to be the largest foreign investor on the continent. American interests are evidently well served by having democratic, stable, and increasingly prosperous neighbors.

The embargo isolates the U.S. from Latin America. Homick 2009 [Ed Homick. Ed Homick is a writer for CNN. CNN. Analysis: United States-Cuba relations begin the long
thaw. April 8 2009. http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/08/cuba.travel/ Accessed: June 28, 2013. AK]

(CNN) -- "It's time to talk to Cuba." That frank assessment from Rep. Barbara Lee, D-California, has

resonated loud and clear from the island of Cuba -- 90 miles from the southernmost point of Florida -- to

the halls of Congress. For the first time in nearly 50 years, relations between the two nations, which have a history steeped in tension, have seemed to ease a bit. That was apparent this week as a delegation from the Congressional Black Caucus traveled to the communist country on a fact-finding mission, with plans to deliver a report to the White House. Watch CNN's Ed Hornick discuss the story "Our purpose was to see if there were preconditions on the Cuban side. We heard that there were no preconditions," Lee said Wednesday. "And, in fact, we wanted to find out if they were interested. We have to remember that every country in Latin America, 15 countries, have normal relations with

Cuba. ... We're the country which is isolated."

Watch Lee discuss her visit to Cuba But even more significant were the meetings the group had with Cuban President Ral Castro and with his brother and predecessor, 82year-old Fidel Castro, a controversial political and social figure. President Obama has said he is in favor of changing the relationship with Cuba. The $410 billion budget Obama signed in March makes it easier for

Cuban-Americans to travel to Cuba and to send money to family members on the island. It could also allow the sale of agricultural and pharmaceutical products to Cuba. Three provisions

attached to the omnibus spending bill loosened restrictions enacted by former President Bush after he came to office in 2001. Bill to allow travel to Cuba has a better shot Analysts see the lawmakers' trip and Obama's campaign rhetoric as a way for the new administration to start thawing relations with Cuba before the Fifth Summit of the Americas. The summit will bring together the U.S. president and 33 other leaders from the Western Hemisphere in mid-April in Trinidad and Tobago. Watch more on the lawmakers' meeting It's a point that Fidel Castro seemed to hint at. In a letter published Tuesday in the online version of Granma, a state-run Cuban newspaper, Castro wrote that an unnamed caucus member told him "he was sure that Obama would change Cuba policy but that Cuba should also help him." "I value the

gesture of this legislative group," Fidel Castro wrote. "The aura of [the Rev. Martin] Luther King is

accompanying them. Our press has given broad coverage of their visit. They are exceptional witnesses to the respect that U.S. citizens visiting our homeland always receive." U.S. citizens are allowed to visit Cuba, an island shrouded in a virtual blackout to the U.S. and other parts of the world, but must apply for special licenses to do so. Though it is illegal, some citizens travel to a country like Mexico or Canada and then into Cuba. Not everyone is eager for change. CubanAmerican members of Congress, in particular, have voiced outrage over the easing of relations. Florida Republican Sen. Mel Martinez, who was born in Cuba, doesn't want to see changes to the embargo. "Having tourists on Cuban beaches is

not going to achieve democratic change in Cuba," Martinez has said. New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, a Democrat and Cuban-American, said in a recent speech that the Cuban government is "pure and simple a brutal dictatorship. ... The average Cuban lives on an income of less than a dollar a day." Fidel Castro led the 1959 revolution that overthrew Cuba's Batista dictatorship. The United States broke diplomatic ties with the nation in 1961. The next year, the U.S. government instituted a trade embargo. Both policies remain in effect. Interactive: A look at the Fidel Castro's life The State Department, per its Web site, officially recognizes the country as "a totalitarian police state which relies on repressive methods to maintain control. These methods, including intense physical and electronic surveillance of Cubans, are also extended to foreign travelers." Although Castro was credited with bringing social reforms to Cuba, he has been criticized around the world for oppressing human rights and free speech. Lee said she hopes the meeting in Cuba this week will help open diplomatic channels between the two nations. "It's time to change our direction in our foreign policy. The president is doing a phenomenal job in the world, reshaping America's image and role in the world," she said. "So we want to make sure that we have the proper information to make recommendations to the president, our secretary of state and our speaker with regard to U.S. policy toward Cuba." Interactive: Learn more about Cuba Though the current stance of the U.S. government toward Cuba fits well with an older generation of Cuban-Americans who despise Castro, not all are of that mind-set. Namely, members of a younger

generation see great benefits of opening trade and direct tourism between the United States and Cuba. Jessica Rodriguez, who owns Cuba de Ayer

restaurant in Burtonsville, Maryland, is part of that younger generation looking to change the views of her community. "I think it would be good to open up some of those doors. I have so many customers who say, 'Oh, I'd like to go to Cuba.' And I say, 'Me too.' " "I think it would be great for the world to see Cuba for itself," she added. Some Cuban-Americans like Tessie Aral, owner of a Miami, Florida, travel agency that specializes in trips to Cuba, see the financial benefits of lifting the travel ban. "I think a lot of Americans are going to want to travel to Cuba because it's been the forbidden fruit for so long," Aral said. "For our country to tell us which country we can travel to, I think that's just archaic." Others in Congress see opening greater relations with Cuba as vital to the United States. A group of senators and other supporters unveiled a bill March 31 to lift the 47-year-old travel ban to Cuba. "I think that we finally reached a new watermark here on this issue," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-North Dakota, one of the bill's sponsors. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Indiana, another sponsor of the bill, issued a draft report in February that said it was time to reconsider the economic sanctions. Lugar is the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Nonetheless, there is more political and diplomatic work to be done before restrictions on travel and trade could be lifted. Though it's a first step, Lee sees it as a crack in the proverbial ceiling. "We went to Cuba to listen to Cuban officials to make sure that we had the information and the facts that were necessary to bring back and at least let our administration know what we believe is possible."

Embargo undercuts foreign policy and influence in Latin America Frank 12 Marc Frank, Freelance journalist in Havana working for Reuters, the Financial
Times and ABC News. Specializes in information technology and services. (US-Cuba relations make little progress, Financial Times, September 25, 2012, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/2ca94f5e-070a-11e2-92ef00144feabdc0.html#axzz2Y71Yog00, accessed: 7/4/13, LR)
When Barack Obama won the US presidency in 2008, many believed he would make significant progress in Cuban relations, so resolving one of the last conflicts of the cold war. But four years later, US-Cuba relations remain stuck in much the same time warp, and whether Mr Obama or his Republican challenger Mitt Romney becomes the next US president, few expect a significant breakthrough although the regions changing ideological landscape could prompt the

beginnings of a shift.

Mr. Obama lifted all restrictions on Cuban American visits soon after taking office, and in December 2010 reversed a Bush Administration ban that led to a surge in so-called people-to-people visits, which are for educational purposes rather than tourism. But he has also stepped up financial sanctions under antiterrorism laws, and this year issued tough new travel guidelines. The US position on Cuba continues to undercut our strategic position in the region and a

breakthrough would greatly enhance Obamas foreign policy legacy through solving a problem far simpler than many other global issues, said Julia Sweig, a senior fellow on Latin America at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations.
There is no question that Obamas first term disappointed many when it comes to Cuba, but I think it premature to assume this status quo under a second term, she added.

Embargo specifically blocks Latin America relations White 3/7 - Robert E. White, 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 Chvez, a Chance to Rethink Relations With Cuba, The New York Times, March 7, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/opinion/after-chavez-hope-for-goodneighbors-in-latin-america.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0, accessed: 7/4/13, LR)
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.

Lifting embargo key to improving Latin American relations NY Daily News 09 - (Latin leaders urge U.S. to lift Cuba embargo, NY Daily News, 9/26/09,
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/latin-leaders-urge-u-s-lift-cuba-embargo-article-1.402175, Accessed 7/4/13, AM) Nevertheless, many other issues were also on the world leaders' agenda. Along with speeches opposing the posting of U.S. military personnel in seven Colombian army bases and multiple calls for restoring democratically elected Manuel Zelaya to the presidency of Honduras, several Latin American heads of state demanded the lifting of the economic embargo the people of Cuba have been subjected to for half a century. Their position was not new. All had called on President Obama to end the draconian measure last June at the Organization of American States' annual assembly in Honduras. Here in New York, it was Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva who issued the first plea for abolishing the blockade (as they call the embargo in Cuba), calling it an "obsolete measure." Uruguay's president, Tabar Vzquez, also expressed his country's desire for a new policy. "As Americans" [that is, all people born on the continent], he said, "we feel the ethical duty and the political responsibility of reiterating in this world forum that we will persevere in our effort for an American integration without exclusions, exceptions or blockades like the one Cuba is suffering." Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, pointed out that in order to change the world for the better,

first "we must change the UN and end the blockade to Cuba." Venezuelan President Hugo Chvez, a friend of Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution, also asked that the embargo be lifted, a demand he restated Thursday night during a one-hour CNN interview with Larry
King. "As we asked him in June, Obama should break the embargo already," Chvez told King, referring to the OAS meeting. The opposition to the failed embargo policy goes beyond Latin America. In what could be a record, the

General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly for 17 years in a row to urge the U.S. to lift the anachronistic embargo.

The time is long overdue for Congress and President Obama to heed the world's opinion and toss the failed embargo into the ash heap of history. That would really be in sync with his administration's policy of engagement with and mutual respect for Cuba, Latin America and the world.

US-Cuba Relations
US-Cuba relations low nowrefusal to release Gross and political conflict Franks 10Jeff Franks, five-year writer for Reuters on Cuban relations and politics (U.S.-Cuba relations under
Obama fall to lowest point, Reuters, 3/31/10, http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/03/31/us-cuba-usaidUSTRE62U34W20100331, Accessed 7/10/13, jtc) (Reuters) - U.S.-Cuban relations have fallen to their lowest point since Barack Obama became U.S.

president and are in danger of getting worse unless the two countries take serious steps toward ending five decades of hostility, according to Cuba experts. After a brief warming last year, both countries appear to be falling back into old, antagonistic ways, obscuring whatever progress that has been made and hindering further advances, the experts said this week. "The past year has proven that when it comes to U.S.-Cuba relations, old habits die hard," said Dan Erikson of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in
Washington. Obama, who took office in January 2009 and has said he wanted to recast U.S.-Cuban relations, lifted restrictions on travel by Cuban Americans to the communist-ruled island and initiated talks on migration issues and direct postal service. Since then, Cuban Americans have flooded the island and the two longtime ideological foes have held their first high-level discussions in years. But recent developments have been mostly negative. Cuba

jailed U.S. contractor Alan Gross in December on suspicion of spying and continues to hold him
without charges. Cuba's government has been condemned internationally for its treatment of opponents, including imprisoned dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who died in February from a hunger strike, and the "Ladies in White," wives and mothers of imprisoned dissidents, were shouted down by government supporters during protest marches this month. Obama rebuked the Cuban government in a strongly worded statement on March 24, saying Cuba continues "to respond to the aspirations of the Cuban people with a clenched fist." U.S. officials think they have done enough to elicit a more positive response from Cuba, while Cuba complains that Obama has done too little. 'GENUINE GOODWILL' Miami attorney Timothy Ashby, a former U.S. Commerce Department official in charge of trade with Cuba, said neither has done what is necessary to overcome 50 years of bitterness. "Neither government is willing to take a significant step that would serve as a demonstration of genuine goodwill," he said. Both nations have taken actions that have not helped the fragile improvement begun by Obama. Obama angered the Cuban government in November when he responded to questions via email from dissident Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, who Cuban leaders view as at least complicit with their enemies in Europe and the United States. In February, Assistant Secretary of State Craig Kelly provoked a bitter Cuban reaction when he met with dissidents following migration talks with Cuban officials in Havana. Cuba, in turn, has soured the political climate by harshly criticizing Obama for his lack of action while taking little of its own. Its detention of Gross, which U.S. officials say Cuba has refused to discuss, has called into question its desire for change even among those who want better relations. In a letter last week to Cuba's top diplomat in Washington, 41

members of the U.S. House of Representatives said the detention of Gross "has caused many to doubt your government's expressed desire to improve relations with the United States." "We
cannot assist in that regard while Mr. Gross is detained in a Cuban prison," said the legislators, who included sponsors of pending legislation to end a U.S. ban on travel to Cuba.

Now is uniquely key to boost US-Cuba relations 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, for Newsweek as its Mexico City bureau chief from 1990 to 1996, and for Time as its Latin America bureau chief, first in Mexico from 1996 to 1999 and then in Miami, where he also covered Florida and the U.S. Southeast, from 1999 to 2013. (Why This Summer Offers Hope For Better US-Cuba Relations, WLRN, 7/3/13 http://wlrn.org/post/why-summeroffers-hope-better-us-cuba-relations-Accessed-7-4-13-RX)

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 soci alist

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. Current political climate in Latin America gives Obama the chance to repair ties with Cuba and Latin America Tisdall 3/5- Simon Tisdall, Simon Tisdall is an assistant editor of the Guardian and a foreign
affairs columnist. He was previously a foreign leader writer for the paper and has also served as its foreign editor and its US editor, based in Washington DC. (Death of Hugo Chavez brings chance of fresh start for US and Latin America, Guardian Newspaper, 3/5/13, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/05/hugo-chavez-dead-us-latin-americaAccessed-6-27-13-RX)
Hugo Chvez's departure furnishes Barack Obama with an opportunity to repair US ties with Venezuela, but
also with other Latin American states whose relations with Washington were adversely affected by Chvez's politics of polarisation and the Bush administration's viscerally unintelligent reaction. In particular, the change of leadership in Caracas could unlock the deadlock over Cuba , if the White House can summon the requisite political will. Possibly anticipating a transition, Washington quietly engineered a diplomatic opening with Caracas last November after a lengthy standoff during which ambassadors were withdrawn. Roberta Jacobson, assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, telephoned Nicols Maduro, Venezuela's vice-president and Chvez's preferred successor, and discussed, among other things, the restoration of full diplomatic relations. "According to US officials, the Venezuelan vice-president offered to exchange ambassadors on the occasion of the beginning of President Barack Obama's second term. Jacobson, in turn, is said to have proposed a step-by-step approach to improve bilateral relations, starting with greater co-operation in counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism and energy issues," Andres Oppenheimer reported in the Miami Herald. There is much ground to make up. "Relations between the United States and Venezuela have ranged from difficult to hostile since Chvez took office in 1999 and began to implement what he calls 21st-century socialism," wrote a former US ambassador to Caracas, Charles Shapiro. "Chvez blamed a failed 2002 coup against him on the United States (not true), nationalised US companies, insulted the president of the United States and blamed 'the empire' his term for the United States for every ill In foreign affairs, the government actively supports the Assad regime in Syria, rejects sanctions on Iran and generally opposes the US at every turn." Despite such strains, economic self-interest always prevented a complete rupture. The US remained Venezuela's most important trading partner throughout Chvez's presidency, buying nearly half its oil exports. Caracas is the fourth largest supplier of oil to the US.

shared commerce now provides a formidable incentive and a launch platform for a fresh start.
In fact, the US imports more crude oil annually from Mexico and Venezuela than from the entire Persian Gulf. This Yet it depends even more on Obama,

Whether the opportunity is grasped depends partly on Maduro, a Chvez loyalist but a reputed pragmatist with close ties to Ral Castro in Cuba.

whose first term, after a promising start, ended up perpetuating Washington's historical neglect of Latin America. He now has a chance to do better. The political climate seems propitious. Economic and cultural ties are also strengthening dramatically. Trade between the US and Latin America grew by 82% between 1998 and 2009. In 2011 alone, exports and imports
rose by a massive 20% in both directions. "We do three times more business with Latin America than with China and twice as much business with Colombia [as] with Russia," an Obama official told Julia Sweig of the US Council on Foreign Relations. Latinos now comprise 15% of the US population; the US is the world's second largest Spanish-speaking country (after Mexico). Despite this convergence, high-level US strategic thinking about the region has continued to lag, Sweig argued. "For the last two decades, US domestic politics have too often driven Washington's Latin America agenda whether on issues of trade, immigration, drugs, guns or that perennial political albatross, Cuba, long driven by the supposedly crucial 'Cuban vote' in Florida," she said.

Obama could change this dynamic if he tried and one way to do it would be to unpick the

to colour the way Latin Americans view Washington.

Cuban problem, which continues

"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.

A move by Obama to end travel restrictions and the trade embargo on Cuba would be applauded across the region, explode old stereotypes about gringo oppressors, and help build confidence with Venezuela, the Castro
regime's key backer, she suggested.

US Should start dialogue to lift embargoleads way to solving tensions Duran 09-- Alfredo Duran, Cuban Committee for Democracy, lawyer and an advocate for dialogue as a way

to bring regime change in Cuba (in an interview with Duran, Possible Cuba Policy Changes Spark Debate, PBS Newshour, 4/8/9, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june09/cubadebate_04-08.html, Accessed 7/3/12, jtc) Oh, I believe so. I believe that it's about time that the United States and Cuba starts in the process of dialogue on this tension. We have been maintaining this policy of embargo for the past 50 years, and it has not worked. It's not working now, and it won't work for the next 50 years. It's about time that we bring about a change. The status quo is what we need to change in Cuba. We have a whole dynamic of generational changes in Cuba. We have the historicals who are all above 80 years of age. And the only way

that we're going to bring about a future of prosperity, of liberty, of democracy in Cuba is if we can send a strong message that the United States is not the enemy of the Cuban people,

that the United States is prepared to sit down and try to resolve the differences and hopefully, in that same table, we can have the Cuban opposition sit down and discuss the future of Cuba. We need to have national reconciliation. We need to have the people starting to talk to each other in order to bring about a transition, a peaceful transition, towards democracy in Cuba. I think it was helpful...

Lifting embargo improves relations, health and economy Burns and Mills 1/30 Larry Birns ,Council on Hemispheric Affairs Director and Frederick B. Mills,

COHA Senior esearch Fellow (Best Time for U.S. Cuba approchement Is Now, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 1/30/13, http://www.coha.org/best-time-for-u-s-cuba-rapprochement-is-now/, Accessed 7/3/12, jtc)

The Obama Administration should be prepared to take, in quick progression, three important initial steps to trigger a speedy rapprochement with Cuba: immediately phase out the embargo, free the Cuban five, and remove Havana from the spurious State Department roster of nations purportedly sponsoring terrorism. These measures should be seen as indispensable if Washington is to ever mount a credible regional policy of mutual respect among nations and adjust to the increased ideological diversity
and independence of the Latin American and Caribbean regions. Washingtons path towards an urgently ne eded rehabilitation of its hemispheric policy ought to also include consideration of Cubas own pressing national interests. A

thaw in USCuba relations would enhance existing security cooperation between the countries, amplify trade and commercial ties, and guarantee new opportunities for citizens of both nations to build bridges of friendship and cooperation. For this to happen, the Obama Administration would have to muster
political and economic reforms, Washington has had more than 50 years to see that the status quo is flawed. Over

the audacity to resist the anti-Castro lobby and their hardline allies in Congress, whose Cuba bashing has no limits. Nevertheless, it is time to replace belligerency with dtente. This essay argues that the embargo against Cuba is blatantly counterproductive, immoral, and anachronistic. If the initial purpose of this measure was to punish Havana for expropriating U.S. property and to bring about fundamental

the years, invasion, embargo, and covert psychological operations against Cuba have only served to reinforce a circle the wagons mentality in Havana. The island also has been subject to a relentless barrage of
propaganda and terrorist assaults organized by militant anti-Castro zealots to advance their cause. These attacks include the 1997 bombing of three hotels in Havana which resulted in the death of Italian tourist Fabio Di Celmo, and the deadly 1976 downing of a Cuban civilian jet. Rather than succumbing to pressure, all of these incidents have given the majority of Cuban nationals good reason to raise

defensive barricades in the face of repeated threats to the survival of their homeland. Besides being counter-productive, there are also strong moral arguments for ending the embargo. From a utilitarian point of view, the

policy is objectionable because it has brought about needless suffering without convincing evidence of praiseworthy results.
One illustration of this is what happened during what Havana calls the special period in time of peace. This refers to the economic crisis, hydrocarbon energy shortages, and food insecurity that followed the collapse of Soviet Bloc (1989 1991) which was Cubas main trading partner and the source of vital subsidies. The embargo took an especially harsh toll during the special period. According to a 1997 report Denial of Food and Medicine: The Impact of the Embargo on Health and Nutrition in Cuba by The American Association for World Health: the

U.S. embargo of Cuba has dramatically harmed the health and nutrition of large numbers of ordinary Cuban citizens. The report also observed that the U.S. embargo has caused a significant rise in suffering-and even deaths-in Cuba. The special period, including a serious food shortage in

1993, did not lead to the countrys surrender, but to the decisive restructuring of the agricultural sector, a number of economic reforms, and the diversification of trade.

Relations thawing now- embargo and terror list kill co-operation Haven, Armario, and Lee 6/21- PAUL HAVEN, Christine Armario, and Matthew Lee, Paul Have: the Associated
Press bureau chief in Havana, Cuba , Christine Armario: Education-Reporter, Associated Press, Mathew Lee: Education-Reporter, Associated Press, (US haltingly move to thaw? Associated Press, Published: Friday, June 21, 2013 at 9:30 a.m, http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20130621/WIRE/130629941/2055/NEWS?p=4&tc=pg, Accessed: 6/28/13 MC) 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."

Among the things that have changed, John Kerry has taken over as U.S. secretary of state after being an outspoken critic of Washington's policy on Cuba while in the Senate. President Barack Obama no longer has re-election concerns while dealing with the Cuban-American electorate in Florida, where there are also indications of a warming attitude to negotiating with Cuba. Castro, meanwhile, is striving to overhaul the island's Marxist economy with a dose of limited free-market capitalism and may feel a need for more open relations with the U.S. While direct American investment is still barred on the island, a rise in visits and money transfers by Cuban-Americans since Obama relaxed restrictions has been a boon for Cuba's cash-starved economy. Under the table, Cuban-Americans are also helping relatives on the island start private businesses and
refurbish homes bought under Castro's limited free-market reforms.

Several prominent

Cuban dissidents have been allowed to travel recently due to Castro's changes. The trips have been applauded by Washington, and also may have lessened Havana's worries about
the threat posed by dissidents. Likewise, a

U.S. federal judge's decision to allow Cuban spy Rene Gonzalez to return home was met with only muted criticism inside the United States, perhaps emboldening U.S. diplomats to seek further
openings with Cuba.

To be sure, there is still far more that separates the long-time antagonists than unites them. The State Department has kept Cuba on a list of state sponsors of terrorism and another that calls into question Havana's commitment to fighting human trafficking. The Obama administration
continues to demand democratic change on an island ruled for more than a half century by Castro and his brother Fidel.

For its part, Cuba continues to denounce Washington's 51-year-old economic embargo. Transfer of technology would strengthen US-Cuba relationships Lacey 9 Marc Lacey,Marc was The Timess Mexico bureau chief, responsible for covering Mexico, Central

America and the Caribbean. From 2006 to 2010, he led the newspapers coverage of Mexicos drug war, Cubas transition from Fidel Castro and Haitis struggle for stability, among other issues in more than 30 countries large and small.,The New York Times, 8/20/2009,http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/world/americas/21storm.html?_r=0,6/27/13,MH) The first tropical storms of the season have begun raging across the Atlantic, bringing with them all manner of panic and potential destruction and, behind the scenes, a little boost in United StatesCuba relations. . Weve had a close working relationship in regard to tropical cyclones that goes back to the 70s and 80s, said Max Mayfield, who retired in 2007 after seven years as director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Any storm that goes toward Florida goes over Cuba, so we need their observations. And they need our data from the aircraft. With coastal communities in both countries vulnerable, meteorology could bring the longtime adversaries closer together, especially with the policy of increased engagement pushed by President Obama, experts argue. Wayne Smith, a former American diplomat in Havana who is now a fellow at the Washington-based Center for International Policy, has brought an array of American officials to Cuba in recent years to look at how Cuban disaster preparedness programs manage to keep the number of hurricane deaths on the island so low.

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-obstacles19457659#.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
shifting on both sides of the Florida Straits. In

Cold War enemies have been here many times before, only to fall back into old recriminations. But there are signs that views might be

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
changes, including making it easier for Cubans to travel off the island. Under

examine him, though the visit has apparently not yet happened. President Raul Castro has also ushered in a series of economic and social

the radar, diplomats on both sides

describe a sea change in the tone of their dealings. Only last year, Cuban state television was broadcasting Today, U.S. diplomats in Havana and Cuban Foreign Ministry officials have easy contact,

grainy footage of American diplomats meeting with dissidents on Havana streets and publically accusing them of being CIA front-men.

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."

US Cuba relations key to Caribbean security Birns 13 Larry Birns, Council on Hemispheric Affairs Director [Best Time for U.S. Cuba Rapprochement Is Now, COHA, 1/30/13,
http://www.coha.org/best-time-for-u-s-cuba-rapprochement-is-now/, accessed: 7/4/13, JK] The Obama Administration should

be prepared to take, in quick progression, three important initial steps to trigger a speedy rapprochement with Cuba: immediately phase out the embargo, free the Cuban five, and remove Havana from the spurious State Department roster of nations purportedly sponsoring terrorism. These measures should be seen as indispensable if Washington is to ever mount a credible regional policy of mutual respect among nations and adjust to the increased ideological diversity and independence of the Latin American and Caribbean regions. Caribbean insecurity causes bioterrorism, LNG explosions, terrorism Bryan 1 - Anthony T. Bryan, Director of the Caribbean Program North/South Center, and Stephen E. Flynn, Senior Fellow Council
on Foreign elations [Terrorism, Porous Borders, and Homeland Security: The Case for U.S.-Caribbean Cooperation, CF , 11/21/01, http://www.cfr.org/publication/4844/terrorism_porous_borders_and _homeland_ security.html, accessed: 7/4/13, JK] Terrorist acts can take place anywhere. The Caribbean is no exception. Already

the linkages between drug trafficking and terrorism are clear in countries like Colombia and Peru, and such connections have similar potential in the Caribbean. The security of major industrial complexes in some Caribbean countries is vital. Petroleum refineries and major industrial estates in Trinidad, which host more than 100 companies that produce the majority of the worlds methanol, ammonium sulphate, and 40 percent of U.S. imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), are vulnerable targets. Unfortunately, as experience has shown in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, terrorists are likely to strike at U.S. and European interests in Caribbean countries. Security issues become even more critical when one considers the possible use of Caribbean countries by terrorists as bases from which to attack the United States. An airliner hijacked after departure from an airport in the northern Caribbean or the Bahamas can be flying over South Florida in less than an hour. Terrorists can sabotage or seize control of a cruise ship after the vessel leaves a Caribbean port. Moreover, terrorists with false passports and visas issued in the Caribbean may be able to move easily through passport controls in Canada or the United States.
(To help counter this possibility, some countries have suspended "economic citizenship" programs to ensure that known terrorists have not been inadvertently granted such citizenship.) Again, Caribbean

countries are as vulnerable as anywhere else to the clandestine manufacture and deployment of biological weapons within national borders. Caribbean insecurity leads to corruption, violence Brown 9 Evan Brown, member of University of Pittsburgh, Matthew B.

idgway Center for International Security Studies [D UG TRAFFICKING, VIOLENCE, AND INSTABILITY IN MEXICO, COLOMBIA, AND THE CARIBBEAN: IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S. NATIONAL

SECU ITY, Strategic Studies Institute, 10/30/09, http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB968.pdf, accessed: 7/4/13, JK]

the Caribbean has been the victim of extremely imbalanced relationships with the United States. One panelist pointed out that the islands were a minor consumer of drugs but a major transit point to the United States; with the attendant increase in corruption and violence, the Caribbean governments are ill-suited to combat it.
Panelists noted that

Cuban instability results in Latin American instability, terrorism, democratic backsliding, and distracts the US from critical hotspots including Africa, the Caucus, and North Korea Gorrell 5- Tim Gorrell, Lieutenant Colonel (CUBA: THE NEXT UNANTICIPATED ANTICIPATED ST ATEGIC
C ISIS? 3/18/05, http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA433074, Accessed: 7/4/13, zs)

Regardless of the succession, under the current U.S. policy, Cubas problems of a post Castro transformation only worsen. In addition to Cubans on the island, there will be those in exile who will return claiming authority. And there are remnants of the dissident community within Cuba who will attempt to exercise similar authority. A power vacuum or absence of order will create the conditions for instability and civil war . Whether Raul or another successor from within the current government can hold power is debatable. However, that individual will nonetheless extend the current policies for an indefinite period, which will only compound the Cuban situation. When Cuba finally collapses anarchy is a strong possibility if the U.S. maintains the wait and see approach. The U.S. then must deal with an unstable country 90 miles off its coast. In the midst of this chaos, thousands will flee the island. During the Mariel boatlift in 1980 125,000 fled the island.26 Many were criminals; this time the number could be several hundred thousand flee ing to the U.S., creating a refugee crisis. Equally important, by adhering to a negative containment policy, the U.S. may be creating its next series of transnational criminal problems.
Cuba is along the axis of the drug-trafficking flow into the U.S. from Columbia. The Castro government as a matter of policy does not support the drug trade.

Cubas actions have shown that its stance on drugs is more than hollow rhetoric as indicated by its increasing seizure of drugs 7.5 tons in 1995, 8.8 tons in 1999, and 13 tons in 2000.27 While there may be individuals within the government and outside who engage in drug trafficking and a percentage of drugs entering the U.S. may pass through Cuba, the Cuban government is not the path of least resistance for the flow of drugs. If there were no Cuban restraints, the flow of drugs to the U.S. could be greatly facilitated by a Cuba base of operation and accelerate considerably. In the midst of an unstable Cuba, the opportunity for radical fundamentalist groups to operate in the region increases. If these groups can export terrorist activity from Cuba to the U.S. or throughout the hemisphere then the war against this extremism gets more complicated . Such activity could increase direct attacks and disrupt the economies, threatening the stability of the fragile democracies that are budding throughout the region. In light of a failed state in the region, the U.S. may be forced to deploy military forces to Cuba, creating the conditions for another insurgency . The ramifications of this action could very well fuel greater anti-American sentiment throughout the Americas. A proactive policy now can mitigate these potential
In fact,

future problems. U.S. domestic political support is also turning against the current negative policy. The Cuban American population in the U.S. totals 1,241,685 or 3.5% of the population.28 Most of these exiles reside in Florida; their influence has been a factor in determining the margin of victory in the past two presidential elections. But this election strategy may be flawed, because recent polls of Cuban Americans reflect a decline for President Bush based on his policy crackdown. There is a clear softening in the Cuban-American community with regard to sanctions. Younger Cuban Americans do not necessarily subscribe to the hard-line approach. These changes signal an opportunity for a new approach to U.S.-Cuban relations. (Table 1) The time has come to look

The U.S. can little afford to be distracted by a failed state 90 miles off its coast. The administration, given the present state of world affairs, does not have the luxury or the resources to pursue the traditional American model of crisis management. The President and other government and military leaders have warned that the GWOT will be long and
realistically at the Cuban issue. Castro will rule until he dies. The only issue is what happens then?

protracted. These warnings were sounded when the administration did not anticipate operations in Iraq consuming so many military, diplomatic and economic resources. There is justifiable concern that Africa and the Caucasus region are potential hot spots for terrorist activity, so these areas should be secure. North Korea will continue to be an unpredictable crisis in waiting. We also cannot ignore China . What if China resorts to aggression to resolve the Taiwan situation? Will the U.S. go to war over Taiwan? Additionally, Iran could conceivably be the next target for U.S. pre-emptive action. These are known and potential situations that could easily require all or many of the elements of national power to resolve. In view of such global issues, can the U.S. afford to sustain the status quo and simply let the Cuban situation play out? The U.S. is at a
crossroads: should the policies of the past 40 years remain in effect with vigor? Or should the U.S. pursue a new approach to Cuba in an effort to facilitate a manageable transition to post-Castro Cuba?

The plan is key to relationseven if Castro steps down in 2018 it wont be sufficient to solve relations Allam 2/25- Hannah Allam, writer for the McClatchy newspaper, (Even if aul Castro steps down in 2018,

U.S.-Cuba relations may not thaw, 2/25/13, http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/25/3253690_p2/evenif-raul-castro-steps-down.html, Accessed: 2/25/13, zs) Cuban President aul 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. aul 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 aul 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. After meeting Castro, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., told reporters that it was time to move on from the U.S. Cold War mentality toward Cuba. The State Department was publicly resistant Monday to calls for a softening of the U.S. stance toward Cuba, with a spokesman bluntly dismissing aul Castros promise to step down as not a fundamental change for Cuba because it lacked concrete measures toward democratic rule. We remain hopeful for the day

that the Cuban people get democracy, when they can have the opportunity to freely pick their own leaders in an open democratic process and enjoy the freedoms of speech and association without fear of reprisal, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell told reporters Monday . Were clearly not there yet. In the 35-minute speech he gave when he was ratified for a second term as
president, Raul Castro made clear that he had no intention of moving away from his socialist roots. I was not chosen to be president to restore capitalism to Cuba. I was elected to defend, maintain and continue to perfect socialism, not destroy it, Castro told Parliament, according to a translation published in news reports. That message is why longtime Cuba observers find it hard to swallow that such an entrenched regime would willingly push reforms that could hasten the demise of Communist Party rule. Critics say Cubans are less likely to see a shift in U.S. policy than a rise in domestic unrest that forces change from within as Cubans grow impatient for promised reforms. Its political kabuki and Im not sure it can hold together for

another five years, said Jason Poblete, a Cuban-American attorney in Washington and an outspoken critic of the Castro regime. Lifting Embargo key to US-Cuba Relations that enhances security cooperation Burns and Mills 1/30 Larry Birns, Council on Hemispheric Affairs Director and Frederick B. Mills, COHA
Senior Research Fellow (Best Time for U.S. Cuba Rapprochement Is Now, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 1/30/13, http://www.coha.org/best-time-for-u-s-cuba-rapprochement-is-now/, Accessed: 7/10/13, ckr)

The Obama Administration should be prepared to take, in quick progression, three important initial steps to trigger a speedy rapprochement with Cuba : immediately phase out the embargo, free
the Cuban five, and remove Havana from the spurious State Department roster of nations purportedly sponsoring terrorism. These measures should be seen as indispensable if Washington is to ever mount a credible regional policy of mutual respect among nations and adjust to the increased ideological diversity and independence of the Latin American and Caribbean regions. Washingtons path towards an urgently needed rehabilitation of its hemispheric policy ought to also include consideration of Cubas own pressing national interests. A thaw in USCuba

relations would enhance existing security cooperation between the countries, amplify trade and commercial ties, and guarantee new opportunities for citizens of both nations to build bridges of friendship and cooperation. For this to happen, the Obama Administration would have to muster the audacity
to resist the anti-Castro lobby and their hardline allies in Congress, whose Cuba bashing has no limits. Nevertheless, it is time to replace belligerency with dtente. This essay argues that the embargo against Cuba is blatantly counterproductive, immoral, and anachronistic. If the initial purpose of this measure was to punish Havana for expropriating U.S. property and to bring about fundamental political and economic reforms, Washington has had more than 50 years to see that the status quo is flawed. Over the years, invasion, embargo, and covert psychological operations against Cuba have only served to reinforce a circle the wagons mentality in Havana. The island also has been subject to a relentless barrage of propaganda and terrorist assaults organized by militant anti-Castro zealots to advance their cause. These attacks include the 1997 bombing of three hotels in Havana which resulted in the death of Italian tourist Fabio Di Celmo, and the deadly 1976 downing of a Cuban civilian jet. Rather than succumbing to pressure, all of these incidents have given the majority of Cuban nationals good reason to raise defensive barricades in the face of repeated threats to the survival of their homeland.

Cuba wants relations with the US embargo blocks it Snow 10- Anita Snow, Editor on Latin America regional desk at Associated Press (Cuba embargo: UN vote urges
US to lift embargo, 10/26/10, http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2010/1026/Cuba-embargo-UNvote-urges-US-to-lift-embargo, 7/10/13, ckr)

Last year's U.N. vote was 187-3 to end the embargo, with only Israel and the tiny Pacific island nation of
Palau supporting the United States. "This is about a cruel and aggressive policy," Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told the body, "absolutely contrary to international law, that this government insists on

maintaining knowing that it causes harm, hardships and violates the human rights of an entire people." "This is not a bilateral issue, as is commonly repeated by the U.S. representatives," Rodriguez added, complaining about the sanctions' "remarkable extraterritorial character." Nevertheless, Cuba "will continue to be ready to establish peaceful and respectful relations with the United States," Rodriguez said.
American Ambassador Ronald D. Godard, U.S. Senior Area Adviser for Western Hemisphere Affairs, insisted that the embargo is a bilateral issue "and part of a broader set of relations meant to encourage a more open environment in Cuba and increased respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms." "We should not lose sight of that in a debate mired in rhetorical arguments of the past and focused on tactical differences, a debate that does nothing to help the Cuban people," he said.

Baby steps towards US and Cuba increased relations Haven 6/22/13- Paul Haven, former Associated Press bureau chief in Havana, deputy Latin America and
Caribbean editor (Cuba, U.S. try talking, but still face many obstacles, Daily Star, http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/International/2013/Jun-21/221161-cuba-us-try-talking-but-face-manyobstacles.ashx#axzz2XX13hW88, accessed: 6/28/13, ML) Theyve 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 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

would let an American doctor examine him, though the visit has apparently not yet happened. President Raul

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, Cubas top diplomat for North American affairs, recently traveled to Washington and met twice with State Department officials. Washington has also granted visas to prominent Cuban officials, including the daughter of Cubas 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 obert 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 backward are equally high.

Appointment of Diaz Canel does not mean normalization of relations.

Alam 2013 [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 selfserving for the regime, allowing the two elderly brothers to handpick an acceptable successor before theyre too infirm to administer the country. aul Castros anointing of Communist Party stalwart Miguel DiazCanel, 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 aul, 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 eventua l succession, Dominguez said. He has also been traveling abroad with Raul to add foreign experience to what had been principally a domesticpolicy 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 open to relations with US recent actions show News24 6/27/13 News24: Breaking News. First. (Cuba not safe for Snowden analysts, News24,
6/27/13, http://www.news24.com/World/News/Cuba-not-safe-for-Snowden-analysts-20130627, accessed: 7/4/13, amf)

US-Cuban relations have also been strained by the case of Alan Gross, a US government subcontractor who was convicted of spying and sentenced in 2011 to 15 years in prison. But now, with Raul Castro introducing timid economic reforms, a greater political pragmatism is seen as gaining ground.

Economic reform

A recent reform made it easier for Cubans to travel abroad. And Cuba is discussing migration-related questions with the United States, where hundreds of
thousands of Cubans have sought exile over the decades. extradition treaty.

Cuba is on the US black list of states protecting terrorists, and the two countries have no But that did not hamper swift co-operation in early April, when it took Havana just 48 hours to repatriate a US couple, which had abducted its own children after losing custody over them
and fled to Cuba.

The case reflects an interest in Havana in not straining relations with Washington, even if Cuba still does not want to make "unilateral and definitive concessions" without receiving anything in return, Lopez Levy told dpa. US-Cuba ties key to economic competitiveness and preventing conflict, particularly in Latin America Honda 10 Representative Mike Honda, U.S. Representative for California's 17th

congressional district, encompassing western San Jose and Silicon Valley, has served in Congress since 2001. (Honda: Embargo on Cuba No Longer Makes Sense, Roll Call, May 4, 2010, http://www.rollcall.com/issues/55_126/-45782-1.html, accessed: 7/3/13, LR)

Politically, now that Latin America stands beside Cuba as evidenced by diplomatic reinstatements with holdouts El Salvador and Costa Rica, and the reintegration of Cuba into the Organization for American States and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States the U.S. risks ruinous relations with countries that see the blockade as backward. The U.S. is already marginalized: CLACS explicitly bars U.S. participation. The impact of this Latin tack toward insularity is not insignificant. Consider grandstanding by Brazilian President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva, who rebuffed Secretary of State Hillary odham Clintons efforts to bring Brazil on Iran sanctions while courting Cubas leadership. Lula, capitalizing on Cubas appetite for growth, proposed investments in industrial, agriculture and infrastructure projects, including ports and hotels, and an agreement with Brazils oil company. We will see more of this. The Cubans are seeking suitors. Like the Bank of the South, Latin Americas attempt to wean countries off U.S. institutions like the World Bank, the longer we keep Cuba at arms length, the more likely Brazil and others will take our place. Embargo causes US-Cuba war Amash 12- Brandon Amash, writer at the Prospect Journal, (EVALUATING THE CUBAN EMBARGO, 7/23/12, http://prospectjournal.org/2012/07/23/evaluatingthe-cuban-embargo/, 6/28/13, CAS) 3.3: The current policy may drag the United States into a military conflict with Cuba. Military conflict may be inevitable in the future if the embargos explicit goal creating an insurrection in Cuba to overthrow the government is achieved, and the United States may not be ready to step
in. As atliff and Fontaine detail, Americans are not prepared to commit the military resources [] (Fontaine 57), especially after unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Much like Americas current situation with isolated rogue states such as Iran and North Korea, Cubas isolation may also lead to war for other reasons, like the American occupation of Guantanamo Bay. These consequences are

inherently counterproductive for the democratization of Cuba and the improvement of human rights. Cuba wants relations with the US Snow 10- Anita Snow, Editor on Latin America regional desk at Associated Press, (Cuba embargo: UN vote urges US to lift embargo, 10/26/10,

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2010/1026/Cubaembargo-UN-vote-urges-US-to-lift-embargo, 7/3/13, CAS)

Last year's U.N. vote was 187-3 to end the embargo, with only Israel and the tiny Pacific island
nation of Palau supporting the United States. "This is about a cruel and aggressive policy," Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told the body, "absolutely contrary to international law, that this government insists on maintaining

knowing that it causes harm, hardships and violates the human rights of an entire people." "This is not a bilateral issue, as is commonly repeated by the U.S. representatives," Rodriguez added,
complaining about the sanctions' "remarkable extraterritorial character." Nevertheless, Cuba "will continue to be ready to establish peaceful and respectful relations with the United States," Rodriguez said. American Ambassador Ronald D. Godard, U.S. Senior Area Adviser for Western Hemisphere Affairs, insisted that the embargo is a bilateral issue "and part of a broader set of relations meant to encourage a more open environment in Cuba and increased respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms." "We should not lose sight of that in a debate mired in rhetorical arguments of the past and focused on tactical differences, a debate that does nothing to help the Cuban people," he said.

Removing embargo solves narcotics cooperation key Johnson, Spector and Lilac 10 - Andy Johnson, Director, National Security Program, Kyle Spector, Policy Advisor, National Security Program , Kristina Lilac, National Security Program, Senior Fellows of The Third Way Institute, (End the Embargo of Cuba, Article for The Third Way Institute, 9/16/10, http://content.thirdway.org/publications/326/Third_Way_Memo__End_the_Embargo_of_Cuba.pdf, Accessed 7/02/13, AW) Others have argued that US - Cuba cooperation on issues such as counter - narcotics efforts cou ld benefit both countries and initiate trust - building among the two countries. Policymakers on both sides of the aisle can agree that the embargo has failed to meet its stated purpose of bringing change to Cubas communist government, making a change in c ourse a necessary next step. Lifting the antiquated embargo would help to move Cuba into the 21 st century, removing the barriers currently preventing the US from engaging Cuba and presenting the US with an opportunity to bring about change in Cuba through economic and diplomatic channels. By opening Cuba, the US could finally achieve the change it has been seeking for nearly fifty years.

US-EU relations
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-timefor-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-inmy-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 pa rtner, 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. The EU has made it illegal to comply with the embargo. Stern 12 - Scott Stern, undergraduate at Yale University who majors in International Relations [Lift the Cuba embargo, Yale Daily News,
2/10/12, http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2012/02/10/stern-lift-the-cuba-embargo/, accessed: 6/27/13, JK]

It has also hurt the United States relationships with other countries the European Parliament actually passed a law making it illegal for Europeans to comply with certain parts of the embargo. The purpose of the
The embargo has stunted the Cuban economy and limited Cubans access to good food, modern technology and useful medicine. embargo was undeniably to make life so difficult for Cubans that they would see the error of their ways and expel Castro and communism. The United States government has maintained for 50 years that it will not do business with Cuba until it learns to respect human rights and liberty.

Challenges for societal autonomy have been co-opted and limited by state control Hoffmann 11- Bert Hoffmann, Senior Researcher GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies ( Civil Society 2.0?: How the
Internet Changes State-Society Relations in Authoritarian Regimes: The Case of Cuba, GIGA Research Programme: Legitimacy and Efficiency of Political Systems, January 2011 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gigahamburg.de%2Fdl%2Fdownload.php%3Fd%3D%2Fcontent%2Fpublikationen%2Fpdf%2Fwp156_hoffmann.pdf&ei=D93SUbinBNi4AOfwoHoDw&usg=AFQjCNGPPcalsf1La5yMENpZb7PxMV2i3Q&sig2=cSL3cBqrRtpr1ysxnhEqzQ

The Cuban Revolution of 1959 redefined state-societyrelations. Most existing civil society organizations were either disbanded or transformed (and new ones created) according to a mold in which loyalty and subordination to the revolutionary leadership were a conditio sine qua non.1 With the socalled "process of institutionalization" in the 1970s, state-society rela- tions were formally modeled in Marxist-Leninist fashion: the Constitution of 1976 defined the Communist Party as the "highest leading force of society and of the state, which organ- izes and guides the common effort" (Republica de Cuba 1992 5) and declared as mission of "the social and mass organizations [.] the edification, consolidation and defense of the so- cialist society" (ibid. 7). Freedom of speech and of press were limited, by constitutional pre- scription, "in keeping with the objectives of socialist society" (Republica de Cuba 1992). To this end, Article 52 of the Cuban Constitution effectively establishes a monopoly on mass media: "Material conditions for the exercise of that right are provided by the fact that the press, radio, television, cinema, and other mass media are state or social property and can never be private property" (ibid. 52,1).1 For Cuban civil society prior to 1959
see Armony/Crahan 2007; on trade unions and the women's federation see Marifeli Perez-Stable 1994.

Organizational activities that remained (at least partially) outside of these parameters were few and narrowly restricted; arguably, the most important one being the Catholic church, which
maintained a nationwide and legally recognized institutional infrastructure that included media for internal circulation (Armony/Crahan 2007).2 In the charismatic brand of socialism that characterized post-1959 Cuba and which set it apart from the standard Eastern European model (Hoffmann 2008), formal prescriptions like the constitutional provisions on the media were complemented with declarations by the charismatic leader, Fidel Castro, which carried no less practical weight. The key statement on the margins for voice were his so-called

"words to the intellectuals" from 1961, which pro- vided the following maxim: "Within the Revolution, everything. Against the Revolution, nothing."3 This sentence, repeated ad infinitum ever since, acquired law-like status and left ample discretion for the power-holders to define at every instance what was "within" and what was "against" the revolution. Aside from media, a central and related concern was on public space. In the dualism of Cuba's charismatic brand of socialism, formal restrictions on the freedom of assembly also found their informal equivalent in the slogan

"The street is Fidel's!",4 a code the state invoked to justify the prohibition or repression of protesting voices in public. The severe limits imposed on public voices contrasted with an often
surprising level of tolerance towards criticism voiced in private-an ambivalence which led Cubans to paraphrase Fidel's 1961 words as "Under the roof, everything. In the street, nothing. After the regime collapses in

Eastern Europe and the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, a profound economic, social and ideological crisis in Cuba ensued, one that called into ques- tion the viability of state-society relations as they had developed in the three decades since 1959. Internationally, civil society had gone from
a buzzword in academia to a resounding career path in international and development politics. Particularly the role ascribed to civil society in bringing down state-socialism in Eastern Europe (Arato/Cohen 1992, Havel 1978) provided the background for the concept being taken up by U.S. policy towards Cuba, which in the early 1990s, publicly adopted "the fostering of Cuba's civil society" as a "second track" next to economic sanctions to bring about regime change in Havana. These political overtones notwithstanding, it was within the official

intellectual institutions on the island that in the mid-1990s, the term "civil society" became the focus of a key debate about the country's course (Gray/Kapcia 2008). As the concept of civil society stresses some degree of autonomy from the "political society" (state, parties, parliaments, etc.) (e.g. Fernandez 1993: 99), in a state-socialist country this conception invariably raises the question about the role of state and party and the margins of associational autonomy within such a framework. This
debate about civil society within state-socialism marked a new discussion not only for Cuba, but also internationally. An article by Rafael Hernandez from Havana's Center for American Studies (CEA) initi-ated the Cuban civil society debate in 1994. In it, he underscored the Marxist ideological cre- dentials of the term claiming its tradition in the writings of Hegel, Marx and Gramsci and argued for "the necessity and usefulness [of applying] the concept to the analysis of current problems in Cuba" (Hernandez 1994: 30).6 Hernandez argued that both civil society and

the socialist state are "organic segments of the socialist system," which are interconnected and mutually reinforcing (Hernandez 1994: 31). Moreover, the distinction between civil society and the state should
be of great practical importance for Cuba because "the dynamics of civil society have been overshadowed by a strong politicization of social relations and institutions in Cuba" (ibid.: 30). This indirect call for a de-

politicization of social relations provides the signpost for the ensuing debate: reclaiming greater autonomy of the social sphere and its organizations and institutions from the state. The background
of this argument is the deep economic crisis that has plagued Cuba since the demise of its socialist allies overseas in 1989/90 and the consequences of that crisis for Cuban society-above all, the bitter divide between the depressed peso economy and the emergent enclaves of "dollarized" sectors in tourism and joint ventures, and the rapidly growing role of illegal and legal market mechanisms.7 On this, Hernandez (ibid.: 30) writes: The problems the

Cuban society is facing cannot be contained within the limits of an economic analysis. Both the causes and the consequences of the crisis transcend this dimension. However, even within this narrow
framework it is obvious that 'the realm of economic relations' in Cuba has changed [.]. It now comprises phenomena such as the informal economy, which is characterized by the growth of independent work and the black market, as well as the rise of new forms of labor in the mixed sector of the new, markedly differentiated, economy. The

concept of civil society suggested by Hernandez is thus framed as primarily a response to the increasing differentiation of Cuban society, resulting from the economic crisis. Other con- tributions pushed
the Cuban civil society debate further. Most importantly, Hugo Azcuy, one of Hernandez's colleagues at the CEA, wrote of the "necessity for more plural expressions in Cuban society," (Azcuy 1995: 105, emphasis in original) for which the concept of civil society "should not only be used as an instrument of analysis, but also as a project" (ibid., emphasis in 6 Even at this early point, political resistance against the use of the term became evident. When published in the journal of the official Cuban writers' association, UNEAC, it was prefaced by a "Letter to the Editor " in which a member of the

association reprimands Hernandez for his "imprecise" use of the term which he identified with the counter-revolutionary strategy of the U.S. government. 7 Parallel to the debate on civil society, a
similar debate evolved about increased autonomy for economic actors and resulting reform steps (see Carranza/Gutierrez/Monreal 1995; for an overview see Hoffmann 1995; 1997). original). This idea of civil society as a project of socialist renewal hence became a leitmotif of Cuba's intellectual reform discourse in the mid-1990s.

Azcuy (1995: 108) posits "the strength- ening of Cuban

civil society and its necessary autonomy within the framework of the revolu- tionary project of which it understands itself to be a part" as its frame of reference.8 If state authorities feared civil society as a potential loss of power, in the following text contribution Hernandez is explicit in reverting this logic. The activation of civil society is meant precisely to come to the rescue of a socialist state whose needs for "new forms of legitimacy" in order to secure regime stability are acknowledged: As the sphere in which the tensions and
conflicts facing the state are enacted, it is in the interest of and the responsibility of the state to search within civil society for new forms of legitimacy and arenas of consensus. [.] Without the consensus of civil soci- ety, not only will the legitimacy of the government suffer damage, but also the stability of the system itself. (Hernandez 1996: 88) In terms of audience, the reach of this debate was limited. It mostly moved within academic or intellectual institutions, with the Center for American Studies (CEA) as the epicenter,9 and journals, including Temas magazine, directed by Hernandez, became the key forums of the debate. The civil society discourse hardly ever found reflections in the state-controlled mass media. However, there was an empirical side to this debate which was played out in the tug- of-war about the redefinition of the nature of societal associations and their relation to the state. The economic crisis had not only led to a heterogenization of society, but had also left established institutions in cultural, social or academic fields cash-strapped, as the money from the state coffers dried up. As a consequence, a search for new funding possibilities be- gan. While

also playing well to members' aspirations of more autonomy from the state, the label "nongovernmental organization" (NGO) promised to be the key for access to donor money from international development actors, both private and public.

US-UN Relations Advantage 1AC

International backlash against embargo undermines global multilateral policies GA 12 - General Assembly of the United Nations, (Archaic, Punitive Embargo Must be Consigned to History
Books, Say Speakers, as General Assembly, for Twenty-First Year, Demands End to Cuba Blockade Cuban Foreign Minister Sites Embargos Devastating Impact on Development; United States Delegate Says Economic Woes Due to Havanas Own Failed Policies, Transcript of the United Nations Sixty-Seventh General Assembly 35th and 36th Meetings, 11/13/12, http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2012/ga11311.doc.htm, Accessed 7/03/13, AW) Voting nearly-unanimously to adopt the General Assemblys twenty-first consecutive resolution calling for an end to the United States blockade against Cuba, United Nations delegates urged President Barack Obama, fresh-off a re-election victory, to act on the right side of history and lift Washingtons crushing economic, commercial and financial embargo on the island nation. By the text of the resolution, adopted by a recorded vote of 188 in favour to 3 against (United States, Israel, Palau) with 2 abstentions (Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia), the Assembly reaffirmed the principles of sovereign equality of States, nonintervention in internal affairs and freedom of international trade and navigation, among others. For details of the vote, see Annex. The Assembly expressed concern about the continued application of the 1996 Helm-Burton Act which extended the decades-old blockades reach to countries trading with Cuba and whose extraterritorial effects affected the sovereignty of other States and the legitimate interests of entities or persons under their jurisdiction. The resolution reiterated t on States to refrain from applying such measures, in conformity with their obligations under the United Nations Charter, and urged States that had applied such laws to repeal or invalidate them as soon as possible. Introducing that text was Bruno Eduardo Rodriquez Parilla, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Cuba, who recalled that, in 2008, then presidential candidate Barack Obama had electrified the American people, and after being elected, had announced a new beginning with Cuba. However, the reality of the past four years had been characterized by a persistent tightening of the blockade, particularly its extra-territorial dimensions. Keeping this policy in force is not in the national interest of the United States, he said. Quite the contrary, it harmed the interest of American citizens and companies, especially in times of economic crisis and high unemployment. Moreover, there was no legitimate or moral reason to maintain the blockade, which was anchored in the Cold War. Indeed, it is just a weapon in the hands of an ever more exiguous, isolated, violent and arrogant minority, he said. As was stated in recent Secretary-Generals report on the matter, the economic damage accumulated over more than 50 years, until 2011, amounted to one trillion six billion dollars. Any sensible person could figure out the living standards and development levels that we could have achieved if we had had those resources available, he added, calling the blockade one of the main causes of Cubas economic problems and the major obstacle to its economic and social development. Indeed, the embargo was an act of aggression - a permanent threat to the stability of a country and constituted a gross violation of the rules that governed international trade, freedom of navigation and the sovereign rights of States. President Obama has the opportunity to start a new policy towards Cuba, he said. It would be a difficult task and he might face serious obstacles, but there was no doubt that it would constitute a historical legacy. The representative of the United States, however, said that the resolution presented sought to identify an external scapegoat for Cubas economic problems, where in fact, they were caused by the Cuban Governments policies over the last half a century. In reality, the United States was a deep and abiding friend to the Cuban people; by its own account it was one of Cubas principal trading partners and it had authorized an estimated $1.2 billion in humanitarian assistance in 2011, as well as billions in remittances and other forms of assistance. The hundreds of thousands of Cuban Americans who had sent remittances and travelled to the island since the start of the Obama Administration were a central part of the strategy to help Cubans have the opportunities that they deserved, he continued, noting that, in contrast, Cuba still had one of the most restrictive economic systems in the world. Irrespective of United States policy, it was unrealistic to expect Cuba to thrive unless it opened its monopolies, respected international property rights and allowed unfettered access to the Internet, among other things. In addition, the Assembly could not ignore the ease and frequency with which Cuba inflicted politically motivated detentions, impeded access to journalism and restricted similar freedoms. The resolution before the Assembly today only served to distract from the real problems facing the Cuban people, he stressed. The

representative of India, while noting some of the detrimental effects of the longstanding embargo, agreed that there had been some relaxation of the strained relationship between the United States and Cuba in recent years. Taking advantage of limited openings under its Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000, the United States had become the largest exporter of agricultural products to Cuba, he noted. In addition, the steps taken by the United States in January 2011 to reduce restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba were positive developments. However, they remained far from making a fundamental change in the complex framework of laws and regulations, which were part of the embargo, he said. The path of history today is for those who choose openness, said the representative of Cape Verde, who spoke on behalf of the African Group . It was inconceivable for African countries to remain silent in the face of the adverse consequences of the longstanding embargo against Cuba, he added, recalling a resolution adopted at the African Union Summit in July through which the continents leaders had reissued a call inviting the United States to lift the longstanding embargo. In that res pect, he quoted Nelson Mandela, saying that to be free is not merely to cast off ones chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. Some delegates stressed the negative impact of the blockade on the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, sustainable development and other essential pursuits. In that vein, the representative of Kazakhstan, speaking on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), said that the embargo impeded poverty eradication and violated the

basic human rights to food, health and education, humanitarian assistance and overall national progress. Cubas already harsh situation was further aggravated by the effects of climate change to which its geographical location made it particularly vulnerable, she stressed, adding that the embargo also contradicted the regulations and directions of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which prohibited the adoption of
measures likely to hinder international free trade and shipping, and the widest possible partnership between two partners. Despite such stark challenges, many speakers offered words of support to the Cuban people, noting the strides made by the country even in the face of the blockade. In that regard, the representative of Venezuela said that while the embargo was an expression of a barbarous policy, the Cuban people had nevertheless overcome that unjust practice in a stoic and heroic way, moving forward with the principle of solidarity even beyond their own borders. Some advocates of imperialism maintained that Cuba was a threat to the region, which was a massive lie, he stressed. Cuba had, on the contrary, been an element of support and hope in the area of solidarity with States, contributing to the social well being of many other countries. He noted that President Obama had managed to connect with the majority feeling of the Latin American population living in the United States, and urged him to continue along those lines by finally ending the embargo. If the new United States Government moved forward in that regard, President Obama would indeed be acting on the right side of history, he stressed in that respect. The representative of Egypt said the embargo against Cuba was the longest and toughest system of sanctions ever applied against any country in modern history, and agreed that it must be lifted. At a time when peoples in his region were bravely fighting for freedom and justice, and some of them like in Egypt - were establishing the foundations of a genuine democracy, it was troubling that the United States continued to adopt coercive measures to prevent a neighbouring nation from freely deciding its own political and economic system. He also agreed with other speakers that the re-election of President Obama last week offered the American administration a fresh opportunity to rectify the historic injustice inflicted on Cuba. In that regard, he expressed his delegations hope that such an important opportunity not be missed. Also speaking today was a Member of Parliament of Indonesia. Taking part in the discussion were the representatives of Algeria (speaking on behalf of the Group of 77 developing countries and China, Barbados (speaking on behalf of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM)), Chile (speaking on behalf of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC)), Brazil (speaking on behalf of the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR)), Iran (speaking on behalf of the NonAligned Movement) and Cyprus (speaking on behalf of the European Union). Also speaking were the representatives of Mexico, Sudan, the Russian Federation, China, Ecuador, Bolivia and Viet Nam. Also making a statement in explanation of position before the vote was the representative of Nicaragua. Speaking in explanation after the vote were the representatives of Nigeria, Zambia, Saint Lucia, Uruguay, Namibia, the Lao Peoples Democratic Republic, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, Belarus and Syria. Also speaking in explanation after the vote were the representatives of Zimbabwe, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Myanmar, Ghana, Argentina, Iran (in his national capacity), South Africa and the Solomon Islands. Exercising his right of reply was the representative of Cuba. The Assembly will reconvene tomorrow, 14 November at 10:00 a.m. to consider the report of the Human Rights Council. Background The General Assembly met today to consider the Secretary-Generals report on the necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by

the United States of America against Cuba (document A/67/118), which summarizes the responses of 145 Governments and 26 United Nations bodies, received as at 9 July 2012, following a request by the SecretaryGeneral on that matter. Replies received after that date will be reproduced in addenda to the present report. In its 27page submission to the report, the Cuban Government reviews the history of the 53-year embargo and calls it an act of genocide, as understood by the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Cri me of Genocide of 1948. In addition, it stresses that the embargo is an act of economic war, per the Declaration concerning the laws of naval war, adopted by the Naval Conference of London in 1909. It goes on to state that the economic damage caused to the Cuban people by the embargo as of December 2011 - taking into account the depreciation of the dollar against the price of gold in the international market - amounted to $1.066 trillion. At current prices, the damage amounts to more than $108 billion, based on very conservative estimates. The report covers such areas as the main elements of the embargo, its impact on socially sensitive sectors and on different sectors of the Cuban economy, as well as opposition to the policy. It concludes, among other t hings, that the embargo is an absurd, obsolete, illegal and morally unsustainable policy leading to shortages and suffering for the Cuban people, hampering and delaying Cubas development and seriously harming the countrys economy, and calls for its unc onditional lifting, without delay. Also before the Assembly was a relevant draft resolution (document A/67/L.2) by which it would call upon all States in conformity with their obligations under the Charter of the United Nations - to refrain from promulgating and applying laws and measures whose extraterritorial effects affected the sovereignty of States, the legitimate interests of entities or persons under their jurisdiction and the freedom of trade and navigation. It would also urge States that had and continued to apply such laws and measures to take the necessary steps to repeal or invalidate them as soon as possible. Also by the text of the resolution, the Assembly would request the SecretaryGeneral to prepare a report on the implementation of the present resolution in light of the purposes and principles of the Charter and international law, and to submit it to the General Assembly at its sixty-eighth session. Statements MOURAD BENMEHIDI (Algeria), speaking on behalf of the Group of 77 developing countries and China, said that the embargo against Cuba contravened the fundamental norms of international law, international humanitarian law, the United Nations Charter and the norms and principles governing peaceful relations among States. Furthermore, its continued imposition violated the principles of the sovereign equality of States and of non-intervention and noninterference in each others domestic affairs. The measures announced by the United States Government two years ago, which related to a certain relaxation of restrictions on travel and transfer of remittances, had had a very limited effect and did not change the framework of laws, regulations and provisions of the embargo, which was still in place, he added. The deepening impact of the ongoing global economic and financial crisis and the continued embargo would continue to further aggravate hardships for the Cuban people, he went on to say. In addition, the embargo frustrated efforts towards the achievement of all the internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals, and negatively affected regional cooperation in the area. Today, the Group once again reiterated its longstanding and principled position on the matter of the embargo, and recalled the Ministerial Declaration of the thirty-sixth annual meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, held in New York in September, to the effect that the Ministers firmly rejected the imposition of laws and regulations with extraterritorial impact and all other forms of coercive measures. They had also called on the international community neither to recognize those measures nor apply them, he said. JOSEPH GODDARD (Barbados), speaking for the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), noted that this was the twenty-first consecutive occasion that the Assembly was meeting to raise the sustained chorus of opposition to the United States imposition of the economic, commercial and financial embargo against Cuba. While in some parts of the world, twenty-first birthdays were especially commemorated, the twenty-first year of adoption of the annual resolution on the Cuban embargo should instead give that Assembly pause for reflection. The embargo had persisted for too long in spite of the unambiguous reprove of an overwhelming majority of Member States, as demonstrated by the annual adoption of the resolution before delegates. He went to stress that CARICOM member States had camaraderie with Cuba, which had remained cordial and resilient even through a continually evolving hemispheric and international geo-political landscape. Cuba maintained embassies in all independent countries of the Community and continued to show itself as an integral part of the region. The Community and Cuba had developed and enjoyed mutually beneficial programmes of cooperation and trade in several key areas including physical education and sports, accounting, natural sciences, humanities, economy, special education, health and medicine. CARICOM States also continued to value and enjoy long-established, warm and friendly relations with the United States. It was in that spirit that the Community urged the United States to heed ts of the international community to bring an end to the embargo. ANTONIO PEDRO MONTEIRO LIMA (Cape Verde), speaking on behalf of the African Group and aligning with the Group of 77 developing countries and China, said it was inconceivable for African countries to remain silent in the face of the adverse consequences of the longstanding embargo against Cuba. By a resolution adopted at the African Union Summit in July, leaders had reissued a call inviting the United States to lift that embargo, he said; the Groups vote

today in favour of the Assemblys annual resolution would be another step in advancing that call. Indeed, he said, quoting the famous statesman Winston Churchill, criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. Criticism played the same role as pain in the human body, bringing attention to the fact that things are not right, he added. Furthermore, the Assembly status quo on the resolution ran contrary to the pursuit of a more equitable and just world, as well as the progress of Cuba towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and regional integration. The path of history today is for those who choose openness, he said. He quoted Nelson Mandela to the effect that to be free is not merely to cast off ones chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. OCTAVIO ERRZURIZ ( Chile) said on behalf of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) that the commercial, economic and financial embargo imposed on Cuba was contrary to the letter, spirit, principles and purposes of the United Nations Charter and international law. The Community was concerned about the extraterritorial effects of the embargo that affected the sovereignty of other States, the legitimate interests of entities or persons under their jurisdiction and the freedom of trade and navigation. The embargo, commenced in 1959 had continued to this day and had transformed into a strict system of unilateral measures, which had continued over time creating huge injustices for the Cuban people. In itself, the unilateral measure was a contradiction with the multilateralism, the openness and the dialogue promoted by the Charter. The Community was in favour of adoption of the resolution before the Assembly. He emphasized the inconsistency that existed between the application of unilateral measures, which had no backing in international law, and the letter, spirit, principles and purpose of the Charter, urging the United States to make necessary adjustments to its international behaviour in that regard and align its legislation with the Charter of the United Nations. BYRGANYM AITIMOVA (Kazakhstan), speaking on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), noted that the item had been on the Assemblys agenda for 20 years with little progress to record. Guided by the principles of international law, the OIC upheld the right of every nation to follow its own unique path of development and therefore condemned any unilateral action, which affected the sovereignty and interests of another State and its people. Further, it did not agree with any external regulations that infringed, impeded or delayed the development of any country, including in the economic, commercial and financial spheres. Even measures meant to relax restrictions had limited effect while the embargo remained in place to the detriment of the Cuban people. The embargo frustrated efforts toward achieving the Millennium Goals, she continued, impeding poverty eradication, and violating the basic human rights to food, health and education, humanitarian assistance and overall national progress. That already harsh situation was further aggravated by the e ffects of climate change to which Cubas geographical location made it particularly vulnerable. She went on to stress that the embargo contradicted the regulations and directions of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which prohibited the adoption of measures likely to hinder international free trade and shipping, and the widest possible partnership between two partners. She joined the overwhelming majority of the international community in calls to lift the embargo against Cuba. MARIA LUIZA RIBEIRO VIOTTI ( Brazil), speaking on behalf of Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), said that the Group had been founded on the principles of interdependence and good neighbourly relations. Alongside its Latin American neighbours, MERCOSUR showed respect for the sovereignty of States and for international law, and it viewed that the embargo ran contrary to the principles of the Unite Nations Charter and international law. In particular, she said, it violated the principle of non-interference in the affairs of other States. The embargo also ran contrary to the principles of justice and human rights, limited and delayed social and economic progress and inhibited the achievement of the Millennium Goals and other development targets. MERCOSUR therefore regretted the fact that the unilaterally imposed embargo continued unabated, she said. MERCOSUR rejected, in principle, all unilateral and extra-territorial measures, which caused harm to peoples and obstructed regional integration. By once again reaffirming its support to the present resolution, her delegation would reiterate its commitment to multilateralism as a legitimate instrument for the settling of disputes and a way to promote cooperation and understanding between peoples. Indeed, she concluded, the embargo was no more than an example of obsolete policies which have no place in todays world. MOHAMMAD KHAZAEE (Iran), speaking for the Non -Aligned Movement, recalled that the delegation, at its most recent Summit, held in Tehran, had reiterated its call to the United States to put an end to the economic, commercial and financial embargo against Cuba, a measure which was causing huge material and economic damage to the people of that island nation. Iran was concerned about the widening of the extraterritorial nature of the embargo and rejected the reinforcement of the measures adopted by the United States. The embargo had caused and would continue to cause a high degree of adverse impact on the wellbeing of the people of Cuba. The direct and indirect damage was enormous. The embargo affected all crucial sectors of the economy, including those most vital for the well being of the people there, such as public health, nutrition and agriculture, as well as banking, trade, investment and tourism. He said that the Movement saluted the Cuban people for what they had achieved so far, including significant progress in such areas as education and health care, despite the huge difficulties. Yet, the embargo continued to impede socio-economic advances and created unnecessary

economic hardship. The embargo denied Cuba access to markets, development aid from international financial institutions and technology transfers, which were all important for the development of Cuba. The United States had in the past claimed that it would reach out to the Cuban people but those words had regrettably not been translated into action. LUIS-ALFONSO DE ALBA (Mexico), joining with the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, said that todays meeting once again demonstrated the international communitys overwhelming opposition to the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States against Cuba. Mexico once again expressed its opposition to the measure, and reiterated its rejection of the use of coercive actions, which ran contrary to the principles of the United Nations Charter, produced severe humanitarian impacts and which were a rejection of diplomacy and dialogue as a way to resolve disputes between States. There were many harmful effects of the embargo in sensitive sectors, which had a direct impact on the citizens of Cuba as well as a negative effect on third countries. Indeed, the international community must not forget that political, economic or military sanctions imposed on States could only emanate from the United Nations Security Council or the General Assembly. Therefore, Mexico had supported all measures against the embargo in a number of forums, and would continue to provide its support for the inclusion of Cuba in global economic dialogue. Dialogue and negotiation continued to be the ideal way to resolve disputes and ensure peaceful cooperation between States, he stressed. Mexicos proximity to Cuba and its relationship with that country suggested the urgent need for the embargo to come to an end; Mexico would therefore vote in favour of the resolution currently before the Assembly, he said. MANJEEV SINGH PURI ( India) said the Secretary-Generals report was illustrative of the detrimental impact the embargo had had on international efforts to undertake socio-economic advancement in Cuba. The United Nations Resident Coordinator in Havana had noted the high cost of the embargo and its negative impact on development and humanitarian cooperation implemented by the United Nations system. There was, however, huge potential for strengthening economic and commercial ties between Cuba and the United States, especially in tourism. Taking advantage of limited openings under its Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000, the United States had become the largest exporter of agricultural products to Cuba, he noted. Americas Congressional efforts to relax or lift the embargo had lent further credence to the annual United Nations resolution calling for the full lifting of the measure. People-to-people contacts between the two nations held immense possibilities for fostering better understanding. The steps taken by the United States in January 2011 to reduce restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba were positive developments but far from making a fundamental change in the complex framework of laws and regulations, which were part of the embargo against Cuba, he added. IDRIS HASSAN ( Sudan) joined, at the outset, with the positions put forward by the Group of 77 developing countries and China, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Organization for Islamic Cooperation and the African Group of States. He extended his countrys solidarity with the people of Cuba, and condemned the unilateral coercive embargo imposed by the United States against that country, which was a flagrant violation of the human rights of Cubans as well as international law. The continuation of that embargo required all Member States to exert efforts on the United States administration, as the embargo threatened the dignity and economic progress of a United Nations Member State. Sudan had lost precious resources as a result of similar measures imposed by the United States; he went on, calling on Member States to apply ameliorative actions, and to accelerate reform of the Security Council. Indeed, it should not be possible for one country to have the right of the veto and to threaten international peace and security for all. ed on the United States to immediately lift the embargos on Cuba, Sudan and all other countries. That aggression was a crime and it had to be put to an end, he stressed, as it alienated developing countries and hindered them from achieving the Millennium Development Goal targets and sustainable development. VITALY CHURKIN ( Russian Federation) expressed disagreement with and rejection of the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed on Cuba by the United States. The position of the Russian Government on that matter was well known and had not changed. It condemned such a measure by the United States, which was an outdated relic of the Cold War era. It not only had hindered Cubas development model but had resulted in the worsening of the living conditions of the Cuban people. The United States had eased restrictions, for instance, allowing American citizens to visit family members and relatives in Cuba, he noted. The easing of those restrictions must be replicated in other areas as well. Guided by non-discrimination and other principles, the Russian Federation called for an early repeal of the embargo and urged the United States to reduce its confrontational approach. MEUTYA VIADA HAFID ( Indonesia) said that the Assembly was convening once again to consider the 51 year-old unilateral policy banning economic, commercial and financial activity with Cuba. Imposed during the Cold War, that embargo had cost the people of Cuba dearly and impacted the economic and commercial relations of third countries. Further, the sanctions exceeded the jurisdiction of national legislation and encroached on the sovereignty of other States that dealt with Cuba. Times had changed since 1961, she said; globalization had created conditions for true global solidarity and partnership among the community of nations. The continued imposition of the embargo against Cuba violated the principles of the sovereign equality of States, and of non-intervention and non-interference in each others domestic affairs, she

said, and clearly did not conform to the United Nations Charter. It created an unwanted standoff instead of dialogue to normalize relations, with both political complications, and economic, commercial and financial hardships that were unjustifiable on humanitarian grounds. She urged renunciation of extraterritorial laws and measures that affected the sovereignty of other States, the lawful interests of their subjects, or of other persons under their jurisdiction, and freedom of trade and navigation. Sed for the immediate cessation of the embargo. JULIO ESCALONA OJEDA ( Venezuela) recalled that, in October 2011, the Assembly had approved for the twentieth time - a resolution against the unilateral embargo imposed by the United States against Cuba. In that historic vote, 186 countries had expressed their support for the Cuban people, while only two countries had opposed it. Venezuela had always supported such resolutions and had repeatedly denounced the brutal embargo. It also stressed its rejection of all unilateral measures which had extraterritorial effects, which contravened the principles of the United Nations Charter and violated principles of free navigation, among other laws. Indeed, the Helms -Burton Act and similar laws were an affront to people all over the world. The Act undermined the human rights of the Cuban people - a despicable policy that punished the Cuban population with the aim of bringing about a change in leadership in Cuba. [They] will not achieve this, he stressed of those measures. While the embargo was an expression of a barbarous policy the Cuban people had nevertheless overcome that unjust practice in a stoic and heroic way, moving forward with the principle of solidarity even beyond their own borders. The advocates of imperialism maintained that Cuba was a threat to the region, which was a massive lie. Cuba had, on the contrary, been an element of support and hope in the area of solidarity with States, contributing to the social well being of many other countries. United States President Barack Obama had managed to connect with the majority feeling of the Latin American population living in the United States, and he should continue by finally ending the longstanding embargo. If the new United States Government moved forward in that regard, President Obama would be acting on the right side of history, he stressed in that respect. WANG MIN ( China), said that the commercial and financial embargo against Cuba imposed by the United States had inflicted enormous economic and financial loses on the island nation. Cubas economic losses directly resulting from the embargo had exceeded $108 billion by December 2011. Taking into account the depreciation of the United States dollar against the price of gold in the international market, the figure would increase to $1.066 trillion. The measure had caused shortage of commodities and huge suffering to the Cuban people. It also violated their fundamental human rights including the rights to food, health and education as well as their right to development. That also affected interactions between other countries and Cuba and impaired the interests and sovereignty of third countries. The embargo seriously violated the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter and the relevant General Assembly resolutions, and had met the firm opposition of the vast majority of Member States. T of the international community is getting louder and louder, he said, demanding that the United States Government change its policy towards Cuba. China and Cuba had maintained normal economic, trade and personnel exchanges. The friendly and mutually-beneficial cooperation in various fields between two countries had been growing. China hoped that the relationship between the United States and Cuba would improve so as to promote the stability and development in Latin America and the Caribbean region. MOOTAZ AHMADEIN KHALIL (Egypt), aligning with the statements delivered on behalf of the Group of 77 developing countries and China, the Non-Aligned Movement, the African Group and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, recalled that a little more than 50 years ago, an unjust and unjustifiable unilateral embargo had been imposed by the United States against Cuba. Although the world had profoundly changed since, the bloqueo had persisted, in total violation of multilateralism, the norms of international law, and the principles of the Charter and was an anachronism from a bygone era. He said the embargo against Cuba was the longest and toughest system of sanctions ever applied against any country in modern history and must be lifted. Last year, 186 countries had voted in favour of General Assembly resolution 66/6 the twentieth resolution adopted on the issue. Lifting the embargo was not only the Cuban peoples plea, but was also the request of the overwhelming majority of Member States. He praised the Cuban people for their achievements under difficult circumstances, noting that despite the economic and social hardship caused by the embargo, they had made significant progress in many areas, including education, health care and gender equality. At a time when peoples in his region were bravely fighting for freedom and justice, and some of them, like in his country, were establishing the foundations of a genuine democracy, it was troubling that the United States continued to adopt coercive measures to prevent a neighbouring nation from freely deciding its own political and economic system. Stressing that cooperation and engagement were more effective than isolation and estrangement, he said it was high time for the embargo to end. The re-election of President Obama last week offered the American administration a fresh opportunity to rectify the historic injustice inflicted on Cuba, he said, expressing hope that the opportunity to do so would not be missed. DIEGO MOREJN ( Ecuador) said that in an expression of solidarity, his Government had provided humanitarian aid to the victims and countries in need following the recent hurricane. Expressing concern about the United States Helms -Burton Act and its extraterritorial effects, Ecuador wished that the 21 resolutions on the Cuban blockade would finally be implemented

in their entirety. A clause in Ecuadors Constitution condemned interventions in internal affairs. The current text before the Assembly clearly condemned violations of free trade and navigation, which were enshrined in the United Nations Charter and international law. It was unacceptable to see the rising figures for the cost of the embargo in development. The blockade limited the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals and other internationally agreed targets. Aligning with the regional groups that had spoken thus far, Ecuador called for the repudiation and full lifting of the infamous and shameful blockade. SACHA SERGIO LLORENTTY SOLZ ( Bolivia) said that the report of the Secretary-General highlighted, once again, the global rejection of the economic and financial embargo which had been imposed in an arbitrary and unilateral way against Cuba by the United States Government. Bolivia firmly rejected the use of unilateral measures by any State seeking to impose embargoes that had humanitarian impacts. This blockade is unjust. Its illegal. Its extra -territorial, he stressed, adding that it violated the principles of the United Nations Charter. Further, the embargo contravened the rights of the Cuban people to self-determination and development, among others. The United States is not listening to the global appeal to put an end to this injustice, he continued. Such an attitude was one which represented genocide. Bolivia condemned the coercive nature of the embargo, which also affected other countries around the world. It also commended the courage of the revolutionary people of Cuba, which despite the effects of the embargo was moving forward, and recognized the efforts of the Cuban people to cooperate with Bolivia and other countries. Indeed, while some countries sent armies and soldiers with great weapons, Cuba sent armies of doctors and teachers to the most needed areas of Latin America. Cuba proclaimed solidarity, life, dignity and human value, he said, adding that, if the United States in fact defended equality and freedom, its President should immediately lift the inhuman embargo against that country. LE HOAI TRUNG ( Viet Nam) noted that while 20 annual Assembly resolutions had called for an end to the blockade imposed by the United States against Cuba, the measure remained in place and continued to enforce severe economic and financial restrictions on Cuba. The impact on Cuban lives and development caused by the embargo exceeded 1 trillion dollars, he said, adding that the majority of the international community opposed it on the grounds that it contravened the fundamental norms of international law, international humanitarian law and the fundamental principles and purposes of the Charter, especially those of sovereign equality, non-interference and self-determination. He supported the outcome of the Sixteenth Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement, which had reiterated the need to end the embargo. He also stressed his support for the statement by the G -77 Ministers of Foreign Affairs at their 36th Annual Meeting this year, which had rejected all forms of coercive economic measures, including unilateral sanctions, against developing countries and called for their urgent elimination to ensure that the principles of the United Nations Charter were not undermined and that freedom of trade and investment was protected. He added that he would vote in favour of the resolution. BRUNO RODRIGUEZ PARRILLA, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Cuba, referred to a 1960 quote by then-Under-Secretary of State of the United States, Lester D. Mallory, who had written that the commercial, economic and financial embargo against Cuba was intended to cause disenchantment and disaffection [] to weaken the economic life of Cuba [] to decrease monetary and r eal wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of Government. That had been the vision that embodied the inhumane, failed and anachronistic policy of eleven successive United States Governments, he added. In 2008, then presidential candidate Barack Obama had electrified the American people, and after being elected, had announced a new beginning with Cuba. However, the reality of the past four years had been characterized by a persistent tightening of the blockade, particularly its extra-territorial dimensions, despite the fact that the General Assembly had approved, by a consistent and overwhelming majority, 20 consecutive resolutions calling for an end to the policy. Keeping this policy in force is not in the national interest of the United States, he said. Quite the contrary, it harmed the interest of that countrys citizens and companies, especially in times of economic crisis and high unemployment. The blockade also harmed the legitimate interests of and discriminated against the Cuban emigration that had settled in the United States, which overwhelmingly favoured the normalization of relations with its home country. Moreover, there was no legitimate or moral reason to maintain the blockade, which was anchored in the Cold War. Indeed, it is just a weapon in the hands of an ever more exiguous, isolated, violent and arrogant minority, he said. He went on to describe some of the fines and repercussions imposed against various parties who had allegedly violated the blockade, as well as the human damage caused by it, which was huge and impossible to calculate. It caused hardships, shortages and difficulties that affected every family, every boy and girl, every man and women, as well as those with disabilities, senior citizens and the ill. In that regard, he told the story of several hospitals that were unable to treat patients due to a lack of the appropriate medicines, and of children who suffered such ills as the loss of an eye due to retinal cancer because of the lack of appropriate therapies. Given its express purpose and direct effects, the blockade against Cuba qualified as an act of genocide according to Article 2(b) of the Geneva Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948, he stressed, adding that it was a mass, flagrant and systematic violation of the human rights of an

entire people. As was stated in the Secretary-Generals report, the economic damage accumulated over more than 50 years, until 2011, amounted to one trillion six billion dollars. Any sensible person could figure out the living standards and development levels that we could have achieved if we had had those resources available, he added, calling the blockade one of the main causes of Cubas economic problems and
the major obstacle to its economic and social development. It was an act of aggression - a permanent threat to the stability of a country and constituted a gross violation of the rules that governed international trade, freedom of navigation and the sovereign rights of States. President Obama has the opportunity to start a new policy towards Cuba, he said. It would be a difficult task and he might face serious obstacles, but there was no doubt that it would constitute a historical legacy. Today Cuba was submitting to t he United States Government a draft agenda for bilateral dialogue aimed at moving towards the normalization of relations, including such fundamental topics as the lifting of the blockade, Cubas exclusion from the arbitrary and illegal list of terrorism -sponsoring countries, and return of the territory occupied by the Guantanamo Naval base, and others. An essential part of that agenda was the release of the five Cuban anti-terrorists who remained imprisoned or retained in the United States, he added. Action on Draft Taking the floor ahead of action on the draft resolution, the representative of the United States said that his country, like others, determined the conduct of its economic relationships with other States based on its best interest. Regarding Cuba, the priority of President Obamas Administration was to empower Cubans to determine their own future. Connections must be built between the American and Cuban people, and those links should help to provide Cubans with the tools necessary to move forward. In that regard, the hundreds of thousands of Cuban Americans who had sent remittances and travelled to the island since the start of the Obama Administration were a central part of the strategy to help Cubans have the opportunities that they deserved. Such actions provided alternative sources of information and strengthened civil society, he stressed. In contrast, the resolution presented by Cuba today sought to identify an external scapegoat for the countrys economic problems, where in fact, they we re caused by the Cuban Governments policies over the last half a century. Indeed, he went on, Cuba still had one of the most restrictive economic systems in the world. Irrespective of United States policy, it was unrealistic to expect Cuba to thrive unless it opened its monopolies, respected international property rights and allowed unfettered access to the Internet, among other things. He stressed that the United States was in fact a deep and abiding friend to the Cuban people; by its own account it was one of Cubas principal trading partners, and it had authorized an estimated $1.2 billion in humanitarian assistance in 2011, among other forms of assistance. The country remained committed to the welfare of the Cuban people despite such Cuban policies as those that allowed for the detention of Alan Gross, who had been sentenced to 15 years in prison in Cuba for facilitating Internet access for Cubas Jewish population. In addition, the Assembly could not ignore the ease and frequency with which Cuba i nflicted politically motivated detentions, impeded access to journalism and restricted similar freedoms. The resolution before the Assembly today only served to distract from the real problems facing the Cuban people, he stressed, adding that the United States would therefore vote against it. Next, the delegate of Nicaragua condemned the United States embargo for its negative consequences it had inflicted on the Cuban children, women and men. For the twenty-first time, the

General Assembly, which represented the Governments of the world, was speaking out for the Cuban people in a unanimous way, calling for the ending of blockage. In that vein, her delegation
would vote in favour of the resolution and for the generous nation of Cuba, which supported its people, the sick or elderly, through its social programmes. Nicaragua and Cuba had commenced cooperation, including technological assistance, to lift people out of poverty. Cuba was making significant contributions to humanity. The Assembly had just heard the representative of the United States try to justify Washingtons embargo, but such a measure was unjustifiable. In any case, the Cuban people were determined and would never bend; they were known for their nobility in the Latin American and Caribbean region. The United States had defied the General Assembly by continuing the criminal blockade. It was now high time to rectify the violations by the United States of international law and the United Nations Charter. The United States should not continue to be deaf to the international communitys call. The embargo remained an obstacle to Cubas social and economic development. She also urged the United States to release the five Cuban heroes who had been detained.

Any coercive measures ran counter to multilateralism. The United States imperialistic policy was unacceptable under Latin American norms, which valued good neighbourliness.

UN relations key to solve every impact coop more effective than unilateral attempts to solve Bellamy, Morrison, and Shays 06 in an interview with the Yale Journal of International Affairs Carol
Bellamy served as Executive Director of the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF) from 1995 to 2005, and is currently the President and CEO of the School for International Training in Bra leboro, Vermont. David Morrison is currently the Director of Communications for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). U.S. Representative Christopher Shays has served as a Republican congressman representing the fourth district of Connecticut since 1974. He is the Vice-Chair of the House Commi ee on Government Reform. (The U.S. Relationship with the United Nations, Yale Journal of International Affairs, 2006, http://yalejournal.org/wpcontent/uploads/2011/01/061207bellamy-morrison-shays.pdf, Accessed: 6/28/13, sh) Ultimately, if the United States and the UN both look at themselves in the mirror, areas such as security, health, and the environment provide a great deal of room for them to work together to achieve common goals. Building a safer and more secure world is one common goal, and I hope both the U.S. and the UN will work

together to institutionalize the international fight on terrorism, build a multilateral nuclear nonproliferation effort, and uphold the Geneva Conventions. The Millennium Development Goals provide another area where there ought to be a common agenda. Reducing poverty; fighting the challenges of AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria; and improving the environment are other issues where there is room for cooperation. I dont come to this discussion with rose-colored glasses, but I believe there are
commonalities that supersede the differences. David Morrison: The current relationship between the United States and the UN is stronger than most people think The UN-U.S. relationship is critical. It is critical for the United States as a global power with global interests because a productive relationship with the United Nations can allow the United States to pursue those interests more effectively than it could do acting on its own. And the relationship is certainly critical from the UNs point of view because the United States is the organizations largest shareholder. It is the only superpower in the world and this means it matters within the UN. So getting the relationship right is vital.

Nuclear proliferation causes extinction Viegas 9 - Jennifer Viegas, one of Discovery News first reporters, has covered a great variety of topics, an author of many books [Hum an
Extinction: How Could It Happen? Discovery News, 11/11/09, http://news.discovery.com/human/psychology/human-extinction-doomsday.htm, accessed: 7/2/13, JK] While any number and combination of doom-and-gloom happenings could destroy the human race, the researchers outlined four, more general

In this case, that defined scenario is human extinction. "The types were non-war human-caused -- whether accidental or intended or purposeful, natural-viral, natural-environmental, and finally nuclear or near nuclear war/engagement between any two nations," Lopes said. Should a launch of nuclear weapons, an outbreak of disease, an unforeseen side effect of technical and medical advancements, or unusual environmental changes occur, the researchers believe "serious consideration throughout the globe" is warranted. Side effects of technology and environmental changes "are slow to present themselves, and that's what makes those signposts the most dangerous, in my opinion," Lopes said.
types of events that may also serve as "signposts," or events that may signal the unfolding of a defined scenario. "Unfortunately, as we've seen with the impassioned discussion regarding global warming, not everyone can agree on what it is they are seeing or what the data reveal, and that's where a great deal of danger lies."

US-UN relations advantage - Impacts

Without UN support, nuclear proliferation would follow Zedillo 5 - Ernesto Zedillo, director, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, former president of Mexico [A World Without the UN?
Forbes, 3/28/05, http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2005/0328/041.html, accessed: 6/27/13, JK] Not so fast! The first question that must be posed is whether a system of collective responsibility to pursue peace and security still makes equal sense for the strong and the weak countries of the world. I believe it does. The weak want to know that if they're threatened by another country the international community will not be indifferent. The powerful know that even if they had the resources to wage war successfully against any potential aggressor state, it would be better to spare those resources if their security and national interest could be indubitably protected by other means. They also know that today's security threats are very different from traditional intercountry conflicts. Terrorists

and other transnational criminals, along with the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, constitute perils that no country, irrespective of its economic or military might, can defeat alone.
Cooperative and collective action is required.

UN relations are key to keeping world peace IHEU 8 - International Humanist and Ethical Union, world union in which human rights are respected and everyone can live life of dignity
[Does the UN have the power to do its job? http://iheu.org/content/does-un-have-power-do-its-job, accessed: 6/27/13, JK] In a 2007 poll, two

out of three Americans were disappointed at UN failures. Yet the same proportion wants the UN to play a strong role in settling global problems. The UN was designed with a Secretariat which was
given the power to implement policies and actions designed by the member states. The UN was never intended as a world government and was never given the power and the funding to achieve goals not fully agreed upon. The strongest political body, the Security Council, has 15 members with five major countries holding veto power. Even the threat of a veto determines what comes up before the Council. The Secretary General is far more secretary than general. If the major powers cannot agree on an action, it will not happen. Much of the UN's work is not controversial. Over 80% is humanitarian and highly effective given the small budget allocated for it. The

UN is the first recourse for aiding both natural and manmade disasters. Essentials for survival come quickly--bags of food, crates of medicine, blankets and tents. Rescue workers under the blue flag appear in hours. Through its many agencies, the UN promotes clean water, safe schools, vaccination and education campaigns. The UN is a leader in promoting security, education, and empowerment of women. The greatly feared worldwide pandemic, triggered by avian flu, has so far been avoided, thanks to
international cooperation carried out through the UN. Disappointment with the UN springs primarily from the UN's limited ability to control human rights abuses, and particularly the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur. The Rwanda genocide happened because the US, under President Clinton, actively lobbied against sending more peacekeepers. The ongoing genocide in Darfur continues in part because China protects Sudan from excessive attention in the Security Council. The Sudanese government uses the currency it earns from selling oil to China, to buy weapons from China. Yet even in the mine-strewn and politically explosive area of peacekeeping the

UN has negotiated 172 peaceful settlements of regional conflicts. The UN peacekeepers can keep a peace process going, but only when there is a process to keep. The major
powers must agree to effectively intervene for the UN to carry out its function. When governments agree the UN can intervene with speed and effectiveness. In some cases, as in Haiti, the UN has a strong mandate to use force to protect civilians. In the war in Lebanon between Hezbollah and Israel, when tensions threatened to ignite the entire Middle East, the participants and the governments wanted a ceasefire. The UN was there, ready and able to call a halt using peacekeepers. They stopped what could have been a spreading conflagration. There are currently 16 peacekeeping operations. The need for peacekeepers has grown sharply from 10,000 personnel in 1999, to 85,000 in 2007. Amazingly, the UN spends less on peacekeeping worldwide, than New York City spends on the annual budget of the Police Department. The UN is developing a Peace-building Commission to prevent countries at risk from falling into or returning to internal conflict. The

UN is desperately needed. Problems are now global, crossing borders without passports. Climate change, resistance to international terrorism, weapons proliferation, epidemics spread by world travel, all demand cooperation. The participation of the world's largest economy, the US, is essential . It is tragic that the US has pursued a mostly unilateral approach,
rejecting the Kyoto Climate Change Treaty, the International Criminal Court, and payment of its arrears in dues to the UN.

US-UN relations adv - Internal Links

The embargo tanks UN relations recent resolution proves Villarreal 12 Ryan Villarreal, reporter on foreign affairs with a focus on Latin America. He also covers human
rights and environmental issues worldwide. (UN Calls For End To US Embargo of Cuba, International Business Times, November 14, 2012, http://www.ibtimes.com/un-calls-end-us-embargo-cuba-880522, accessed: 7/2/13, LR)

The United Nations has called for an end to the U.S. embargo of Cuba that has been in place for over half a
century.

For the 21st consecutive year, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution opposing the embargo after 188 member states voted in favor of it.
There were three votes against it from the U.S., Israel and Palau, while two others, the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia, abstained. The United States embargo continues to severely affect the day-to-day welfare of Cuban citizens, read a June 2012 statement from the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean or CEPAL. CEPAL said that the embargo has driven up medical, agricultural and manufacturing costs, as well as for infrastructure projects.

Embargo destroys UN relations recent vote proves 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 a near unanimous vote at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, the vast majority of the world voted to put an end the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba. Aside from the moral argument, the driving principles behind the vote to end the embargo were those regarding the sovereign equality of states, non-intervention in internal affairs, and the freedom of international trade and navigation. In total, 188 countries voted in favor of the resolution, with the U.S., Israel, and Palau voting against it, and the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia abstaining. It was the twenty first consecutive year that the resolution passed by an overwhelming majority in the U.N. The last time the United States
had normal relations with Cuba, the Andy Griffith Show was the most popular show on TV, African Americans couldnt vote, McDonalds only had 228 locations, and Barack Obama would not be born for another year. It was indeed a different world. It was thought that President Obama knew this as well when he made headlines in 2009 by stating that he sought a new beginning with Cuba, as the outdated and damaging policy was more ideological than practical, Tuesdays vote showed that when it came to the embargo, nothing has changed.

Lifting Embargo Key to Improving US-UN involvement RIA Novosti 12 RIA Novosti (in Russian: ) or sometimes shortly RIA (Russian: ) is one of
the largest news agencies in Russia.[1] RIA Novosti is headquartered in Moscow and operates about 80 bureaus internationally. The agency publishes news and analysis of social-political, economic, scientific and financial subjects (Condemnedagain: 'Genocidal' US embargo on Cuba slammed by UN for 21st year, RIA Novosti, November 14, 2012, http://rt.com/news/cuba-embargo-un-vote-635/, Date Accessed: June 28, 2013, SD) The UN has urged the US to lift the 52-year trade embargo with Cuba in an almost-unanimous vote. Cuba likened the blockade to genocide and said it was disappointed that Obama had not taken measures to lift the disputed embargo.

Of the 193 members of the UN assembly, 188 voted to abolish what is widely perceived as an illegal blockade. The only two nations that got behind the US were Israel and the Pacific nation of Palau, while two countries abstained from the vote. T his is the 21st year running that the UN has decried the American economic sanctions against the island nation. Cubas Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez addressed the asse mbly, voicing Cuban disappointment that despite Obamas pledge to open a new chapter in Cuban -American relations on assuming office four years ago, no steps had been taken the lift the crippling embargo. "The reality is that the last four years have been characterized by the persistent tightening of the embargo," he said. The Cuban government has calculated that since the blockade was enforced in 1960 the total financial damage to Cubas economy is around US$3 trillion. Rodriguez qualified the maintenance of the embargo as tantamount to genocide and a massive, flagrant and systematic violation of the human rights of the people of Cuba. He criticized America for what ed a costly double standard for wasting hundreds of millions of dollars from the taxes that are paid by US citizens in the useless and illegal subversion against Cuba. US president Barack Obama has taken measures to facilitate US travel to the island nation, but has thus far refrained from taking any further steps to lift the embargo. The US justifies its stance by saying it is waiting for signs of changes in Cubas political regime and improvements in the island states human rights record. The embargo was originally introduced with a view to crippling Cubas communist regime, which took power in the country following the 1959 revolution headed by Fidel Castro. A loyal friend? In fact, US envoy at the UN assembly, Ronald D. Godard argued the embargo is one of the tools in our overall efforts to encourage respect for the human rights and basic freedoms to which the United Nations itself is committed. Cubas resolution seeks to identify an external scapegoat for the islands economic problems when they are principally caused by the economic policies that Cuban government has pursued for the past half century, Godard said. He stressed that the US was a loyal friend to Cuba and it is working to empower Cubans who wish to determine their own future. Citing the case of Alan Gross, a US citizen who was arrested in Cuba and currently serving a 15-year sentence for setting up internet networks on the island, Godard said his imprisonment had halted diplomatic proceedings with Cuba. Minister Rodriguezs speech was greeted by thunderous applause, while Godards was met with comparative silence at the assembly vote.

Embargo kills UN relations international law violation: recent vote proves Reuters 12Thomas Reuters, Chicago Tribune writer (For 21st time, UN urges end to embargo on Cuba,
Chicago Tribune, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-11-13/business/chi-for-21st-time-un-urges-us-to-endembargo-on-cuba-20121113_1_trade-embargo-cuban-people-change-cuba-policy, 11/13/12, Accessed 7/2/13, jtc) Repeating an annual ritual, the U.N. General Assembly called on Tuesday for the United States to lift its trade embargo against Cuba, whose foreign minister said the blockade against the communist-run island was tantamount to "genocide." For the 21st year, the assembly's vote was overwhelming, with 188 nations - including most of Washington's closest allies - supporting the embargo resolution, a result virtually unchanged from last year. Israel, heavily dependent on U.S. backing in the Middle East, and the tiny Pacific state of Palau were the only two countries that supported the United States in opposing the non-binding resolution in the 193-nation assembly. The Pacific states of the Marshall Islands and Micronesia abstained. President Barack Obama further loosened curbs last year on U.S. travel and remittances to Cuba. He had said he was ready to change Cuba policy but was still waiting for signals from Havana, such as the release of political prisoners and guarantees of basic human rights. But Obama has not lifted the five-decade-old trade embargo, and the imprisonment of a U.S. contractor in Cuba has halted the thaw in Cuban-U.S. relations. Havana's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told the assembly that Cuba had high hopes for Obama when he was first elected in 2008 and welcomed his calls for change. But he said the result had been disappointing. "The reality is that the last four years have been characterized by the persistent tightening of -- the embargo," he said. 'EXTERNAL SCAPEGOAT' Rodriguez said the "extraterritoriality" of the blockade measures - the fact that Washington pressures other countries to adhere to the U.S. embargo - violates international law. He added that the blockade is not in U.S. interests and harms its credibility. "It leads the U.S. to adopt costly double standards," he said, adding that the embargo has failed to achieve its objectives of pressuring the government to introduce economic and political freedoms and comply with international human rights standards. " There is no legitimate or moral reason to maintain this embargo that is anchored in the Cold War," he said. He said it qualified as a "act of

genocide" against Cuba and was a "massive, flagrant and systematic violation of the human rights of an
entire people."

Lifting embargo key to UN relations international hatred of the embargo Betancourt 13 [Roger R. Betancourt, Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Maryland,

received a B.A. in Economics from Georgetown University (Washington DC) and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin (Madison), Sh ould the US Lift the Embargo? Development Research Center, 4/13, http://devresearchcenter.org/2013/04/08/should-the-us-lift-the-embargo-by-rogerbetancourt/, accessed: 6/27/13, JK] This is even more applicable in the case of the US, which has more alternatives due to its higher level of wealth. With respect to restrictions motivated by national security, selective restrictions that apply to all countries, including China, would be more than sufficient to satisfy these

lifting of these restrictions, the US would benefit more in terms of improving its international relations with almost every other country in the world. They vote against the US embargo every year at the UN.
objectives. While Cuba would benefit more economically than the

US from the

US isolated in international community sole supporter of the embargo Piccone 09 Ted Piccone, senior director of foreign policy at Brookings Institution, served on the State
Department, National Security Council and Pentagon (The United Nations Denou nces the US Embargo on CubaAgain, Brookings, 10/27/09, http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-front/posts/2009/10/27-cuba-un-votepiccone, Accessed 6/28/13, AM) For the 18th year in a row, the United Nations General Assembly unequivocally calls for the end of "the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba." And once again, the United States finds itself completely isolated from even its closest friends in the international

community.
It wasnt supposed to be this way. President Obama is committed to a new course of multilateral engagement in which the United States reassumes its mantle of responsible global citizen. And in many ways, from the formal creation of the G-20 to re-joining the UN Human Rights Council, the administration has not just talked the talk, but walked the walk, earning him a rather premature though welcomed Nobel Peace Prize. But when it comes to Cuba, its back to the same old story: all politics is local, in this case, Miami, Florida. Earlier this year, there was some justified hope that, after eight years of an increasingly onerous set of laws and regulations restricting trade, travel and remittances between the United States and Cuba, President Obama would fulfill his promise to try a new path of pragmatic but principled engagement. And winning Florida last November despite losing the majority of Cuban American votes in Miami should have given the White House some elbow room to take some bold actions. But even supporters are disappointed by the excessively cautious steps this administration has taken so far to extend that "unclenched fist" to our closest island neighbor. If anything, the president seems to have limited his options by locking himself in to a policy of mutual reciprocity that lets Havana determine the pace of progress in unfreezing 50 years of icy relations. On more than one occasion, the president has reiterated his view that, in return for letting Cuban-American families travel and send remittances to their loved ones on the island, the Castro regime must take the next step toward better relations. He reportedly asked his Spanish counterpart, Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero, to tell President Raul Castro to get moving on democratic reforms. According to an unnamed U.S. official quoted in El Pais, Obama said, "We're taking steps, but if they don't take steps too, it's going to be very hard for us to continue." Of course, the fact that financial donations from pro-embargo Cuban Americans to the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, which happens to be led by pro-embargo Cuban-American Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), have jumped six-fold since 2006 also may have something to do with this approach. It at least seems to reaffirm another old clich: money talks. While a tit-for-tat approach may assuage the shrinking number of hard-liners in Miami, it is unlikely to have any effect on the intended audience the Cuban regime, now ruled by Fidel Castros "younger" brother (78 years old) and a cohort of aged revolutionaries. Cuba has made it very clear that it is prepared to sit down and talk with the United States in a spirit of mutual respect, i.e., accepting the regime as it is, rather than as we would like it to be. Until then, it will happily promote the image of David vs. Goliath on the world stage. It is just too potent and too successful a narrative in winning friends for Havana to abandon, even more so now that its economy is in a shambles and it needs all the friends it can get.

Similarly, the modest steps the administration has taken so far is unlikely to get much mileage with the other group one would want to influence the European and other allies who are rooting for a more multilateral, cooperative and pragmatic U.S. policy on this and a host of other issues. Washington will have to do much more to begin turning the tide of international public opinion against the embargo. This does not mean that the United States should abandon its defense of human rights for all Cubans. But it might want to change its tactics. Spain is touting its policy of quiet diplomacy as a better model for the European Union, which it chairs in 2010, and has a few, albeit meager concessions by Havana to back up its argument. We, after 50 years of attempting to punish Cuba for its bad behavior, have none. So a policy designed to isolate a small, poor Caribbean island has come around full circle to isolate the superpower instead. The lopsided UN vote reminds us yet again that its time for a change. If President Obama wants to show the world he is prepared to lead in a new direction, there are a multitude of steps he can take to ease the embargo and improve bilateral relations without waiting for Congress to act. These include expanding licenses for people-to-people travel for educational, cultural and humanitarian purposes; allowing more Cubans to travel to the United States; easing the licensing of tradable medicines developed in Cuba; reviewing whether Cuba should remain on the list of state sponsors of terrorism; and pursuing agreements on disaster relief and marine conservation. But something tells me that at next years UN vote, very little will have changed, in Havana or in Washington.

US-UN relations adv relations low now

UN relations low now contentious political issues Bellamy, Morrison, and Shays 06 in an interview with the Yale Journal of International Affairs Carol
Bellamy served as Executive Director of the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF) from 1995 to 2005, and is currently the President and CEO of the School for International Training in Bra leboro, Vermont. David Morrison is currently the Director of Communications for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). U.S. Representative Christopher Shays has served as a Republican congressman representing the fourth district of Connecticut since 1974. He is the Vice-Chair of the House Commi ee on Government Reform. (The U.S. Relationship with the United Nations, Yale Journal of International Affairs, 2006, http://yalejournal.org/wpcontent/uploads/2011/01/061207bellamy-morrison-shays.pdf, Accessed: 6/28/13, sh)

The relationship between the United States and the UN has deteriorated in the last decade. The relationship is especially strained because in the United States the public focus is almost entirely on the political half of the UN organization, where many of the more contentious issues arise. It is important to
take into consideration the broader dimensions of the United Nations, which range from confronting the various health emergencies of the moment to addressing problems in the environment and global poverty.

Soft Power Adv Embargo hurts soft power

Note: a lot of the UN advantage stuff will be relevant here, so you could probably get cards from that file.

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-continuecuban-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 sanc tions 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.

Lifting the embargo solves soft power and Latin American relations Rowen 13 Dolores Rowen, Graduate student at the Whitehead School of Diplomacy at Seton Hall
University, focusing in International Economics/Development and Latin America and the Caribbean. (What about Cuba?, Maplewood, April 19 2013, http://thealternativepress.com/articles/what-about-cuba, Accessed: 7/4/13, EH)
In 2012, only 29 percent of Americans felt that the 52-year-old trade embargo on Cuba should remain a US policy. The majority of Americans believe that the economic embargo should be lifted. It is even more interesting to know that many Cubans look favorably on the US and want to see an end to this ineffective and archaic policy. The question therefore is if so many Americans and native Cubans support an end to the embargo, why does it still exist? The answer is not far-fetched. It exists mainly because the large Cuban lobbying constituency that desires an end to the Castro regime actively lobbies to keep such policies in place. Yet those that advocate for a continuation of this policy may not realize that this embargo is ultimately a lost economic opportunity for the United States. Cuba has resources such as sugar, cocoa, nickel, and fertile soil all of which should appeal to US businesses.

For the US, this ineffective embargo has only resulted in increased tensions and anti-American sentiment in Latin America and the Caribbean. It has failed at its primary purpose of disposing Fidel and Raul Castro and their Communist regime and of
restoring democracy to Cuba. It has, however, had a profoundly negative effect on the Cuban economy. Given the current economic and political

climate, the time for economic reform and the restoration of bilateral economic ties with Cuba is now, as it would be strategically beneficial for both countries to end the embargo. In the past, efforts to increase the effect of the embargo, such as the creation of the Cuban-Democracy Act (1992) and the Helms-Burton Act (1996) have neither resulted in regime change nor economic collapse. Somehow, Cuba has endured throughout the years. But, the reality for Cuba is that there is little to no economic growth or prosperity in the country. Cuban officials have been well aware of the fact that since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the introduction of the special period that there has been a need to reform Cubas economi c policies. However, this process has been slow, subtle, and ineffective. In the 1990s, Cuba began to privatize small businesses. Its main focus was tourism, with the hope that this industry would revitalize its economy. In 2007, tourism accounted for about 16.7% of overall investment in Cuba. Due to the embargo, Americans are limited in their travel to Cuba. This is purely a lost economic opportunity for both Cuba and the US. Without tourists from the US, tourism untimely provides temporary economic stability, but does not provide long lasting economic growth. Cuba is a potential market for US exports and such opportunities should not be overlooked during in this present economic climate. Cuba is the largest country in the Caribbean with a large population of about11 million. Moreover, its unused agricultural land and limited technology should also be viewed as an opportunity for American businesses and entrepreneurs. Cuban society is highly educated and many of these individuals are currently working in positions that cater to the tourist industry rather than in their desired professional fields. The international community does not look favorably upon the perpetuation of this embargo. Our Latin American neighbors are adamantly opposed to it. Normalizing relations with Cuba would probably improve our overall relations with Latin American and Caribbean states, resulting in better relations within the Western Hemisphere, and prove to bolster the US soft power

in the region.

Lifting embargo key to preserving US image- Embargo seen as hypocritical 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-thetime-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. Lifting the embargo makes the US more credible- International support 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 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
the United States is still operating against them is obviousthe embargo. 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 solves soft power- Shows leadership Gerz-Escandon 08 Jennifer Gerz-Escandon, independent scholar and former professor of political
science based in Atlanta (End the US-Cuba embargo: Its a win-win, Christian Science Monitor, October 9 2008, http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2008/1009/p09s02-coop.html, Accessed: 7/4/13, EH)
For its part, by ending the embargo, the US simultaneously gains security through stability in Cuba. More important, by investing in the future prototype for emerging markets a 42,803-square-mile green energy and technology lab called Cuba America gains a dedicated partner in the search for energy independence. Finally, a key component of renewing relations is ending illicit emigration . At issue is the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, amended in 1995. It encourages disaffected Cubans to risk their lives for the reward of an expedited path to US citizenship upon reaching American soil. They also receive immediate access to a work permit and the ability to acquire residency in one year. A 2002 article from The Miami Herald reported that 1 in 20 Cubans being smuggled to the shores of the United States dies in the attempt. Meanwhile, smugglers collect up to $10,000 a person. Retiring the "wet-foot, dry-foot" policy and normalizing immigration laws could stop the Cuban brain drain, end charges of a US immigration double standard, and save hundreds of millions of dollars for the US taxpayers who must fund four different agencies to implement this policy. Supporters of the embargo say it serves as an important symbolic protest of Cuba's deplorable human rights record and its lack of political, civil, and economic freedoms. Yet constructive engagement with the reform-ready regime of Mr. Castro utilizing a framework based on mutual economic interests similar to US-China relations could give observers more cause for optimism. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's willingness to speak openly with Newsweek/CNN journalist Fareed Zakaria last month about democratization is evidence of progress. While phasing out the Cuban embargo won't render a quick solution to fractured US-Cuba relations or end the evaporation of esteem the US is suffering throughout Latin America, it would mark a significant achievement of hemispheric leadership on a divisive issue. By ending the embargo, the US may learn that under the right circumstances, the soft power of diplomacy proves more effective in reshaping America's perception in Latin America than the hard power of economic isolation ever did.

Lifting the embargo increases our influence in the region 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-embargoagainst-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?

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.

Plan popular in congress- Lobbies, Cuban-American and Republican support 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 Forei gn 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 antiCastro. 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).

Soft power Adv low now

US soft power low political squabbling and fiscal policymaking hurts influence in international organizations Neu 2/8 - Richard Neu, senior economist at RAND Corporation (U.S. 'Soft Power' Abroad Is Losing Its Punch,
RAND corporation, 2/8/13, http://www.rand.org/blog/2013/02/us-soft-power-abroad-is-losing-its-punch.html, Accessed 7/10/13) The way America flexes it economic muscle around the world is changing dramatically and not necessarily for the better. In 1997, facing a wave of sovereign debt defaults, the International Monetary Fund asked its member states to pledge lines of credit to support Fund rescue efforts. The United States and other nations did as asked. In 2009, the United States responded again to a call for expanded credit lines. When the Fund sought yet another expansion of these credit lines last April, 39 countries, including China, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, India, and Saudi Arabia, stepped up. Even cash-strapped Italy and Spain pledged support. But the United States was conspicuously absent. A pledge from the United States requires congressional authorization. In the midst of last spring's contentious debate over U.S. government deficits and debts, support for an international body was a political nonstarter. Where the United States had previously demonstrated international leadership, other countriessome of them America's rivals for international influencenow make the running. This is a small example of what may be a troubling trend: America's fiscal predicament and the seeming inability of its political system to resolve these matters may be taking a toll on the instruments of U.S. soft power and on the country's ability to shape international developments in ways that serve American interests. The most potent instrument of U.S. soft power is probably the simple size of the U.S. economy. As the biggest economy in the world, America has a lot to say about how the world works. But the economics profession is beginning to understand that high levels of public debt can slow economic growth, especially when gross general government debt rises above 85 or 90 percent of GDP. The United States crossed that threshold in 2009, and the negative effects are probably mostly out in the future. These will come at a bad time. The U.S. share of global economic output has been falling since 1999by nearly 5 percentage points as of 2011. As America's GDP share declined, so did its share of world trade, which may reduce U.S. influence in setting the rules for international trade. And it's not just the debt itself that may be slowing GDP growth. Economists at Stanford and the University of Chicago have demonstrated that uncertainty about economic policyon the rise as a result of political squabbling over U.S. fiscal policytypically foreshadows slower economic growth. Investors may be growing skittish about U.S. government debt levels and the disordered state of U.S.

fiscal policymaking. From the beginning of 2002, when U.S. government debt was at its most recent minimum as a share of GDP, to the end of 2012, the dollar lost 25 percent of its value, in price-adjusted terms, against a basket of the currencies of major trading partners. This may have been because investors fear that the only way out of the
current debt problems will be future inflation. The dollar has also given up a bit of its dominance as the preferred currency for international reserves among advanced economies. And the renminbi appears to have replaced the dollar as the reference currency for most of East Asia. (The good news is that in recent years U.S. banks have increased their share of deposits from foreigners, mostly at the expense of banks in London.) More troubling for the future is that private domestic investmentthe fuel for future economic growth shows a strong negative correlation with government debt levels over several business cycles dating back to the late 1950s. Continuing high debt does not bode well in this regard. But perhaps the worst consequences of U.S. debt are actions not taken.

U.S. international leadership has been based, in part, on contributionspolitical and financialto major institutions and initiativesInternational Monetary Fund, World Bank, General Agreements on Tariffs
and Trade (and later World Trade Organization), NATO, North America Free Trade Agreement, the Marshall Plan, and so on. These served U.S. interests and made the world better. But what have we done lately? The Doha round of trade negotiations has stalled. Ditto efforts at coordinated international action on climate change. Countries of the Arab Spring need rebuilding. Little progress is apparent on the Transpacific Partnership, a proposed new free-trade area. And

warnings from the U.S. treasury secretary to his European counterparts about the dangers of failing to resolve the fiscal crisis in the eurozone met with public rebukes: Get your own house in order before you lecture us. Have U.S. fiscal problems undermined America's self confidence and external credibility to the extent that it can no longer lead? And what about unmet needs at homehealthcare costs, a foundering public education system, deteriorating infrastructure, and increasing inequality? A strained fiscal situation that limits resources for action and absorbs so much political energy cannot be helping with any of these matters. But without progress on such things, what becomes of the social cohesion necessary for unified action abroad or the moral authority to lead other nations by example?
America's fiscal predicament is serious. The problem has become obvious in the last few years, but it has been building for decades, largely the result of promises of extensive social benefits without a corresponding willingness to pay for them. Putting U.S. government financing on a sustainable path will require painful adjustments over a number of years increased government revenue and painful reductions in government outlays, almost certainly including outlays for defense and international affairs. During the necessary period of fiscal adjustment and constrained government resources, U.S. international influence may decline yet further.

Tourism Good
The US should expand its influence in Cuba through lifting the travel ban Griswold 02 Daniel T. Griswold, the associate director of the Cato Institutes Center for Trade Policy Studies. (No: The Embargo
Harms Cubans and Gives Castro an Excuse for the Policy Failures of His Regime, CATO, May 27, 2002, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/no-embargo-harms-cubans-gives-castro-excuse-policy-failures-regime Accessed: 06/26/2013) Instead of relaxing the failed Cuban embargo, the Bush administration wants to continue the status quo. In a speech on May 20, the president reaffirmed his support for keeping the trade and travel embargoes in place until the Cuban government holds free elections. The administration already has quadrupled the number of Americans cited for violating the travel ban in 2001 compared with the number cited the last year of the Clinton administration. For example, one 75-year-old retired schoolteacher was fined $1,000 for a recent bicycle tour through rural Cuba. According to U.S. law, citizens can travel more or less freely to such axis of evil countries as Iran and North Korea. But i f Americans want to visit Cuba legally, they need to be a former president or some other well-connected VIP or a Cuban-American. The strongest supporters of the Cuban trade embargo are Cuban-Americans concentrated in Southern Florida an important constituency in a key electoral state. Yet those very same Cuban-Americans routinely and massively violate the spirit if not the letter of the embargo. Each year, they send $800 million in hard-dollar remittances to their friends and families back in Cuba; another 100,000 Cuban-Americans actually visit their homeland each year through a special program for emergency visits (most of which occur around the Christmas holiday). In the name of politics, Cuban-American leaders want to restrict the freedom of other Americans to visit Cuba while retaining that freedom for themselves. Lifting or modifying the embargo would not be a victory for Castro or his oppressive regime. It would be an overdue acknowledgment that the

four-decade-old 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, while allowing expanding trade and tourism to undermine Castros authority from below. Instead of the embargo, Congress and the administration should take concrete if incremental steps to expand American influence in Cuba. First, the travel ban should be lifted. Yes, more American dollars would end up in the coffers of the Cuban government, but
dollars also would go to private Cuban citizens. Philip Peters, a former State Department official in the Reagan administration and an 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 then would find their way to the 300 freely priced farmers markets, to carpenters, repairmen, tutors, food venders and other entrepreneurs. Lifting embargo increases travel and improves the economy. Griswold 09 Daniel Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. (6/27/13,
The US Embargo of Cuba is a Failure, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/us-embargo-cuba-is-failure) Admitting Cuba to the OAS may be premature, given the organisations charter that requires its members to be democracies that respect human rights, but changes to the US economic embargo are long overdue. The embargo has been a failure by every measure. It has not changed the course or nature of the Cuban government. It has not liberated a single Cuban citizen. In fact, the embargo has made the Cuban people a bit more impoverished, without making them one bit more free. At the same time, it

has deprived

Americans of their freedom to travel and has cost US farmers and other producers billions of dollars of potential exports. Congress and President Barack Obama should act now to lift the embargo to allow more travel and
farm exports to Cuba. As a tool of US foreign policy, the embargo actually enhances the Castro governments standing by giving it a handy excuse for the failures of the islands Caribbean-style socialism. Brothers Fidel and Raul can rail for hours about the suffering the embargo inflicts on Cubans, even though the damage done by their communist policies has been far worse. The embargo has failed to give us an ounce of extra leverage over what happens in Havana. In 2000, Congress approved a modest opening of the embargo. The Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act allows cash-only sales to Cuba of US farm products and medical supplies. The results of this modest opening have been quite amazing. Since 2000, total sales of farm products to Cuba have increased from virtually zero to $691m in 2008. The top US exports by value are corn, meat and poultry, wheat and soybeans. From dead last, Cuba is now the number six customer in Latin America for US agricultural products. Last year, American farmers sold more to the 11.5 million people who live in Cuba than to the 200 million people in Brazil. According to the US international trade commission, US farm exports would increase another $250m if restrictions were lifted on export financing. This should not be interpreted as a call for export-import bank subsidies. Trade with Cuba must be entirely commercial and market driven. Lifting the embargo should not mean that US taxpayers must now subsidise exports to Cuba. But neither should the government stand in the way. USITC estimates do not capture the long-term export potential to Cuba from normalised relations. The Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Guatemala spend an average of 2.8% of their GDP to buy farm exports from the US. If Cuba spent the same share of its GDP on US farm exports, exports could more than double the current level, to $1.5bn a year. Advocates of the embargo argue that trading with Cuba will only put dollars into the coffers of the Castro regime. And its true that the government in Havana, because it controls the economy, can skim off a large share of the remittances and tourist dollars spent in Cuba. But of course, selling more US products to Cuba would quickly relieve the Castro regime of those same dollars. if

more US tourists were permitted to visit Cuba, and at the same time US exports to Cuba were further liberalised, the US economy could reclaim dollars from the Castro regime as fast as the regime could acquire them. In effect, the exchange would be of agricultural products for tourism services, a kind of bread for beaches, food for fun trade relationship. Meanwhile, the increase in Americans visiting Cuba would dramatically

increase contact between Cubans and Americans. The unique US-Cuban relationship that flourished before Castro could
be renewed, which would increase US influence and potentially hasten the decline of the communist regime. Congress and President Barack Obama should act now to lift the embargo to allow more travel and farm exports to Cuba. Expanding our freedom to travel to, trade with and invest in Cuba would make Americans better off and would help the Cuban people and speed the day when they can enjoy the freedom they deserve.

Lifting embargo key to tourism. Danielson 13 Richard Danielson, covers city government and politics in Tampa. He grew up in
Clearwater, graduated from Vanderbilt University and joined the Times in 1987. (U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor: Lift Cuba embargo, travel limits, Tampa Bay Times, April 8, 2013, http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/us-rep-kathy-castor-lift-cuba-embargo-travelrestrictions/2113828, Date Accessed: June 28, 2013, SD)
TAMPA Saying "It's time to try something new," U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor on Monday called for the Obama administration and Congress to lift travel restrictions and the 51-year-old trade embargo on Cuba. "Cuba is changing," said Castor, DTampa, who left on a fact-finding trip there Wednesday evening and returned Saturday. "They have embarked on economic reforms that the United States of America should promote. The

United States of America now should normalize relations and begin a constructive dialogue with the island nation." Castor has worked for years to help arrange direct
flights from Tampa International Airport to Havana, but her support for ending the embargo and travel restrictions goes further than before. Castor said Fidel Castro is no longer in power, described his brother, President Raul Castro, as "a much more practical ruler," and said there is a generational change in Cuba's government. "They

are still a hard-core communist nation, but they are embarking on market reforms in their economy that deserve encouragement," said Castor,
who traveled with members of her staff and representatives of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Democracy in the Americas. Castor said she plans to ask President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry "to open talks to lead to greater trade and travel opportunities." "This should not be done with blinders on, however," she said. "There are still very significant human rights challenges in Cuba. It is still, to many extents, a repressive regime that does not allow citizens to enjoy all of the human rights that we all enjoy. "But after 50 years of an embargo and isolation that's proved that it hasn't worked, it's time to try something new and refresh our relationship," she said. Easing the restrictions would offer the United States a

variety of benefits, Castor said: a new market for manufacturers who cannot sell to Cuba now, more influence over a Cuban offshore oil drilling industry whose
antiquated technology could threaten Florida beaches, and an opportunity for Tampa to become a tourism gateway t o
the island. Castor was in Cuba the same time as celebrities Beyonc and Jay-Z, and she said at one point she watched a "massive crowd" outside their hotel chant "Beyonc! Beyonc!" "American popular culture is ubiquitous," Castor said. "On the serious side, it highlights the fact that Americans are prevented from traveling there, and that's the only country in the world that the American government restricts (that) ability." U.S. citizens need the federal government's permission to travel to Cuba. Cuban-Americans can get a special license to visit family. Tourism is not permitted, but non-Cubans can get a license to travel there for cultural, humanitarian or religious reasons. South Florida Republican Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart, whose districts include large numbers of Cuban-American residents, have sent a letter to the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control. It asked for "the type of license that Beyonc and Jay-Z received, for what purpose, and who approved such travel." "Despite the clear prohibition against tourism in Cuba, numerous press reports described the couple's trip as tourism, and the Castro regime touted it as such in its propaganda," they wrote. Citing news reports saying that the trip was fully licensed by the Treasury Department, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said that, "if true, the Obama administration should explain exactly how trips like these comply with U.S. law and regulations governing travel to Cuba and it should disclose how many more of these trips they have licensed." Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona saw no problem, tweeting, "Fine by me. Every American should have the right to travel there." Tampa lawyer and longtime anti-Castro activist Ralph Fernandez likewise said allowing Beyonc and Jay-Z to travel to Cuba was wrong, and he plans to put together a complaint to be turned over to the Justice Department for their prosecution. Fernandez also criticized Castor's suggestion to end the embargo, saying many

Lifting the embargo key to tourism and a better economy.

Lloyd 11 Delia Lloyd, PhD in political science.
(Ten Reasons to Lift the Cuba Embargo, Huffpost Politics, 2011, http://www.politics daily.com/2010/08/24/ten-reasons-to-lift-the-cubaembargo, Date Accessed: June 28, 2013, SD)

It's good economics. It's long been recognized that opening up Cuba to American investment would be a huge boon to the tourism industry in both countries. According to the Cuban government, 250,000 Cuban-Americans visited from the United
States in 2009, up from roughly 170,000 the year before, suggesting a pent-up demand. Lifting the embargo would also be an enormous

boon the U.S. agricultural sector. One 2009 study estimated that doing away with

all financing and travel restrictions on U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba would have boosted 2008 dairy sales to that country from $13 million to between $39 million and $87 million, increasing U.S. market share from 6 percent to between
18 and 42 percent.

Lifting Embargo Key to Tourism Griswold 05 Daniel Griswold is director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. (Four Decades of Failure:
The U.S. Embargo Against Cuba, CATO Institute, October 12, 2005, http://www.cato.org/publications/speeches/four-decades-failureus-embargo-against-cuba, Accessed: July 3, 2013, SD)

Presented at the the James A. Baker III Institute Program, Cuba and the United States in the 21st Century at Rice University, Houston, Texas. The real dividing line in U.S. policy toward Cuba is how best to undermine the Castro regime and hasten the islands day of liberation. For almost half a century, the U.S. government has tried to isolate Cuba economically in an effort to undermine the regime and deprive it of resources. Since 1960, Americans have been barred from trading with, investing in, or traveling to Cuba. The embargo had a national security rationale before 1991, when Castro served as the Soviet Unions proxy in the Western Hemisphere. But all that changed with the fall of Soviet communism. Today, more than a decade after losing billions in annual economic aid from its former sponsor, Cuba is only a poor and dysfunctional nation of 11 million that poses no threat to American or regional security. Cuban families are not the only victims of the embargo. Many of the dollars Cubans could earn from U.S. tourists would come back to the United States to buy American products, especially farm goods. The ban on tourism cost US tourism agencies almost a billion dollars Grogg 06- Patricia Grogg; Cuban correspondent to IPS, studied Journalism in the University of Havana (Cuba
Embargos Boomerang Effect IPS, October 2006, http://havanajournal.com/politics/entry/cuba-embargosboomerang-effect/, accessed: 6/27/13, ML)

Washingtons embargo against Cuba also has an impact on the United States economy and prevents
millions of U.S. citizens from benefiting from Cuban medical progress, according to a report released by the Cuban foreign ministry. The text of the report will be presented at the United Nations General Assembly, which on Nov. 8 will be examining for the fifteenth consecutive year the need to end the embargo imposed by Washington on Havana more than four decades ago. The document states that becaus e of the blockade regulations it has been impossible to begin clinical trials in the U.S. with TheraCIM, a Cuban pharmaceutic al product for treating brain tumours in children. TheraCIM is produced by the Molecular Immunology Centre, which in 2004 made a deal with U.S. company CancerVax to develop and produce therapeutic vaccines against cancer. This medication is registered in Cuba and other countries for treating cancer of the head and neck, and has been proved to reduce tumour mass. It could benefit children in the United States and other countries with this type of cancer, the report points out. It also adds that were it not for the embargo, millions of people in the United States suffering from diabetes could benefit from Citoprot P, a unique product and treatment method that accelerates healing of diabetic foot ulcers, reducing the risk of lower extremity amputations. Citoprot P was developed by the Cuban Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. According to the foreign ministry report, about 20.8 million people in the United States suffer from diabetes, a chronic incurable disease. The restrictions that Cuba calls a blockade and the U.S. an embargo have cost this Caribbean country 86.1 billion dollars in total damages throughout the period, including four billion in 2005 alone, the document says. Last year the U.N. approved by 182 votes the Cuban motion in favour of lifting the embargo. The motion was first set before the U.N. General Assembly in 1992, when only 59 countries voted in favour of the resolution. The report states that the

ban on U.S. tourism to Cuba causes tourist agents in the U.S. losses of 565 million dollars per million U.S. tourists who are prevented from visiting the country. An estimated 1.8 million U.S. tourists could have vacationed in this Caribbean island in 2005, but because of the ban, U.S. tourist agencies lost potential income of 996 million dollars, the report says. China proves that opening up the tourism ushers in new freedoms and solves poverty. Brinkley 12- Joel Brinkley, former NYT foreign correspondent, professor of journalism at Stanford (Cuba
embargo isn't working but isn't going a way, Politico, http://www.politico.com/story/2012/12/cuba-embargo-isntworking-but-isnt-going-away-85281.html, accessed: 6/28/13, ML)

Some Cuba experts

argue that allowing American tourists to visit Cuba for the first time since 1960 might bring the beginnings of substantial change by fostering greater prosperity. They point to China, a passive agrarian society until the government opened the economy, pulling millions of Chinese out of poverty. Suddenly, these newly prosperous people began standing up to their government, demanding greater freedom and opportunities. The same could be true for Cuba,
Henken said.

Lifting travel embargo has helped Cubas economy Sweig and Bustamante 13- Julia E. Sweig, Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America
Studies and Director for Latin America Studies; Michael Bustamante, PhD candidate specializing in Latin American and Caribbean History at Yale, dissertation about the cultural politics of Cuban collective and historical memory, on and off the island, in the wake of the 1959 Revolution, served as Research Associate for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. (Cuba After Communism, Council on Foreign Relations, http://www.cfr.org/cuba/cuba-after-communism/p30991, July/August 2013, accessed: 7/3/13, ML)

Cuba's recent reform of its migration law neatly encapsulates a number of the possibilities, limits, and implications of Castro's larger agenda. Despite being both a sign of the state's willingness to make strategic decisions and arguably the most important reform to date, the new law also underscores the uphill battles that remain and illustrates the difficulty of managing optics and expectations. As
with most issues in Cuban society, the line between politics and economics is entirely blurred. Faced with an exodus of educated professionals and capital from the country after the revolution, the Cuban government began heavily regulating the movement of its citizens abroad in the early 1960s. In light of migrs' direct involvement in attempts to unseat the Castro regime, often financed by the U.S. government, Havana treated migration as a matter of national security. For many years, those who succeeded in leaving, legally or

illegally, had their property stripped by the state and could not, barring extraordinary exceptions, return home. Such restrictions left deep wounds.
Yet it has been a long time since Cubans on the island and off could be neatly divided between anticommunists and pro-Castro revolutionaries. Any visit to the Miami airport today attests to the strength of transnational

ties; in peak season, over a hundred weekly charter flights carry Cubans and Cuban Americans between the two countries. Such travel, allowed under some circumstances since the late 1970s, has expanded considerably since 2009, when U.S. President Barack Obama lifted restrictions on family visits. In 2012, upward of 400,000 Cubans in the United States visited the island. And this is to say nothing of the
hundreds of thousands of Cuban emigrants living across Latin America, Canada, Europe, and beyond who also visit and support family at home. Indeed, by making it easier for Cubans to travel, work abroad, and then return home, Cuba's new migration law is also meant to stimulate the economy. At an estimated $1 billion a year, remittances have been big business since the late 1990s, helping Cubans compensate for low salaries and take

advantage of what few opportunities have existed for private enterprise. Now that the government has undertaken a wider expansion of the small-business sector, ties between the diaspora and the island are bringing an even greater payoff. Cubans abroad are already helping invest money in the window-front cafeterias, repair shops, and other small businesses popping up across the country. Some islanders are also sending their own money out of the country so that relatives can buy
them consumer goods abroad. Beyond redressing a deeply unpopular status quo, however, the new migration law has put the government in an awkward position. Assuming enough Cubans can afford the now reduced, but still comparatively high, fees associated with acquiring necessary travel documents, other countries -- principally the United States -- will need to continue receiving Cuban visitors and migrants in large numbers. Ironically, Havana has long criticized the special preferences granted to Cubans under U.S. immigration law for seeming to encourage and reward dangerous attempts to reach U.S. shores. Now, Cuba appears to benefit from such measures' remaining on the books -- especially the

one-year fast track to permanent residency established by the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act. Under Cuba's expanded two-year allowance for legal residency abroad, the more than 20,000 Cubans emigrating legally to the United States each year will be able to acquire green cards without necessarily giving up their citizenship claims, homes, or businesses on the island.

Small-time diaspora capital may prove easier to regulate and rely on than funds from multinational corporations driven strictly by profits. Under the repatriation provisions of the island's new
migration law, some Cubans may even retire to the island with their pensions and savings after decades of working abroad. Yet opening the doors for more young citizens to leave could prove risky for a quickly aging, low-birthrate society that has been suffering from a brain drain for some time. Besides, along with remittance dollars, Cuba urgently needs both medium and large investors. Ultimately, only larger

outlays can help fix Cuba's most fundamental economic problem: its depleted productive base. Castro appears to recognize that attracting foreign investment, decentralizing the government, and further expanding the private sector are the only ways to tackle this long-term predicament.
The government is unlikely to proceed with anything but caution, however. Officials are wary of rocking the domestic political boat, and citizens and party leaders alike recoil from the prospect of more radical shock therapy. Rising public protests in China and Vietnam against inequality and rampant corruption have only reinforced the Cuban government's preference for gradualism. Striking an adequate balance will be no easy task. In late 2012, Havana legalized the creation of transportation cooperatives -- private, profit-sharing entities owned and manage by their members -- to fix bottlenecks in agricultural distribution. Meanwhile, 100 state enterprises are now running their finances completely autonomously as part of a yearlong pilot program. The government is also reportedly considering ways to offer a wider array of potential foreign partners more advantageous terms for joint ventures. But the Communist Party

is working through numerous contradictions -- recognizing a place for market economics, challenging old biases against entrepreneurs, and hinting at decentralizing the budget while incongruously insisting, in the words of its official 2011 guidelines, that "central planning, and not the market, will take precedence." American travel stops censorship spread of capitalism Tampa Tribune 6/9/13 Editorials section. (Ease travel restrictions to Cuba to boost freedom, The Tampa
Tribune, 6/9/13, http://tbo.com/list/news-opinion-editorials/ease-travel-restrictions-to-cuba-to-boost-freedom20130609/, accessed:7/3/13, amf)

There is a quick way for our nation to help overwhelm Cubas censorship and propaganda. Simply allow Americans the most effective ambassadors for democracy and free enterprise to travel more easily to Cuba. Having more Americans visit Cuba would almost surely boost capitalism in a country that is
cautiously experimenting with property rights and private enterprise.

This can be done without the political firefight of eliminating the 50-year-old Cuban embargo,
which greatly restricts trade and travel to Cuba.

We think the embargo no longer serves a useful purpose. Indeed, it gives the Cuban government a scapegoat for its failed economic policies. As John Caulfield, chief of Mission of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, says, Cubas financial woes are a result of Cubas choice of an economic model.
But eliminating the embargo or allowing unrestricted travel to Cuba will require congressional approval, a political challenge. In contrast, President Barack Obama by executive order can require general licenses be issued for all

approved travel to Cuba.

Americans now can receive a visa to travel for such specific purposes as education and cultural studies. These trips must be guided by licensed travel services that are required to follow a strict agenda.

Everything is tightly regulated by the Office of Foreign Assets Control to ensure there are no violations of the sanctions against Cuba. (Cuban-Americans appropriately have no restrictions on traveling to visit family.)

The approval process for the specific visas can be cumbersome and time-consuming. Obtaining general license is far less complicated, so expanding its use would eliminate red tape and diminish barriers to travel. It could, depending on how the executive order was written, give travelers more flexibility in what they do in Cuba. It might allow Americans to travel outside of tours. This would likely benefit those Cubans trying to establish private businesses, such as small hotels or restaurants. In any event, making travel to Cuba less daunting would result in more American visitors, which we believe would generate more support for an open society in Cuba. In April, 59 members of Congress, including Hillsborough's Rep. Kathy Castor, wrote the president urging him to "allow all current categories of permissible travel, including people-to-people, to be carried out under a general license." It is, as the representatives stress, a logical next step for the president, who already has eased some travel restrictions, including allowing flights from Tampa to Cuba, which have proved popular.
The United States' tough trade and travel prohibitions unquestionably were necessary after Fidel Castro's communist takeover, when he confiscated property, ruthlessly suppressed opposition, sought to export revolution to Latin America and provided a base for the Soviet Union. But the Cold War is over and the Soviet Union is gone. Cuba remains an authoritarian state, but its grip

seems to be slipping. That control would be further eroded should Americans be allowed to spread the seeds of capitalism and freedom in a country whose people badly need them.

Energy (oil, natural gas, etc.)

Cuba talking about renewable energy
Plain 13- Prensa Latina Agencia Informativa Latinoamericana, Prensa Latina is also an important publishing
house. Prensa Latina is also periodic publications, some of them made to order. an important publishing house. An experienced team of journalists, designers and copy editors are in charge of preparing the contents, (Cuba to Host Intl. Workshop on Renewable Energy Sources, Plengish, 7/2/13, http://www.plenglish.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1568641&Itemid=1, Accessed: 7/3/13, MH) Promoting sustainable energy and socioeconomic development based on renewable energy sources and environmental respect will be the objectives of an International Workshop to be held in Varadero, Cuba, in April, 2014. Juan Veliz, vice president of the organizing committee, told Prensa Latina that the meeting, named Cubasolar, will be attended by a large number of foreign experts from some 10 nations. "Priority topics of the forum will include food, water supply and renewable energy sources; energy, environment, local development and sustainable solar energy, and energy education, culture and information for sustainability," he said. Veliz said the delegates will also discuss South-South and South-North-South cooperation for renewable sources and associate technologies, with emphasis on the Latin American area. Discussions about biomass, alternative energy in rural areas, biofuels, bioclimate architecture and wind energy are also included on the agenda of the meeting. The workshop is sponsored by the government of Matanzas province, in western Cuba, the Camilo Cienguegos University, the construction and community service sectors and the center for dialogue and reflection, among other institutions, said Veliz.

High global demand for ethanol but Cuba is key ASCE 09 - Association for The Study of The Cuban Economy(THE CUBAN SUGAR DILEMMA:
THE PROSPECT FOR A GREEN FUTURE,2009,ascecuba.org,http://www.ascecuba.org/publications/proceedings/volum e19/pdfs/patino.pdf,accessed:7/2/13,JW) Given that Cubas daily energy consumption is fairly low, Cuba could

export its potential 616 million gallons of ethanol to generate needed reserves. As global energy demand rises,11 as the security of fossil fuels becomes uncertain, and as global climate issues reach the forefront of policymaking, it will become increasingly more important to combine fuels and technology to satisfy our energy needs. It will take some
time before ethanol can be gradually adopted as an important source of renewable energy, yet on the medium term, given that Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether (MTBE) has been banned in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Japan, the

prospective Cuban ethanol sector couldprofit significantly from the world demand for octane enhancers (Goettemoeller and Goettemoeller 18).
This section sets out to appraise the present and future world demand of ethanol. In the early 1990s ethanol was reintroduced as an oxygenate to be added to gasoline to reduce carbon monoxide emissions. However, it was not until MTBE began to be banned worldwide in the late 1990s that ethanol began to truly participate in the oxygenates market. Ethanol producers have benefited greatly from ethanols adoption as an oxygenate, yet the future of ethanol lies not on as an oxygenate, but on the end of cheap and easily accessible oil. Although oil continues to be available, it is

becoming increasingly more difficult to extract and concentrated in unstable regions of the world. With this in mind, governments throughout the world have encouraged the adoption of gasohol, a blend of gasoline and ethanol (Nersesia 52):13 The E uropean U nion, for example, expects to double its ethanol consumption by the year 2020; Cuba could take advantage of this increase by using the EUs Generalized System of Preferences in its trade exchanges with the EU. The Chinese government has also decided that it will import and produce more renewable sources of energy and to achieve this objective a recent law was approved that requires all fuel-traders to add at least 10 percent ethanol in the fuel mix.
Given that Chinas corn-based-ethanol is highly expensiveat U.S. $1.7/gallonit is possible that the Chinese government will favor the importation of the fuel. In that case, Cuba could capitalize on Chinas growing energy demand which is expected to grow from 69 quadrillion BTUs to 145 quadrillion BTUs by 2030 (Klare 73). In 2005, the

United States announced that in the next ten years it will substitute 20 percent of its petroleum fuel consumption with ethanol. In order to attain this

objective, ethanol imports are expected to grow by 2017 from their original level of 713 million gallons to 3.9 billion gallons. If relations between the United States and Cuba normalize, considering Cubas proximity to the United States, Cuba will have a significant advantage in delivering ethanol to the United States. Because of the size of its ethanol market and its proximity to Cuba, the United States will play a considerable role in the development of Cubas prospective ethanol industry. Possible tax exemptions could particularly give Cuba a
huge advantage against the better established Brazilian ethanol industries, shipping their product from more than 6,000 kilometers away. The governments of Japan, Canada, India, the Philippines, and Thailand have also expressed similar intentions as those proposed by the aforementioned nations and as Figure 4 demonstrates, when these measures take place, demand for ethanol is expected to increase exponentially. As world energy demand increases, ethanol will not be the solution to our energy needs; nor will the solution be coal, natural gas, oil, hydropower, solar, wind, or nuclear energy: ethanol will become one of the many indispensable sources that will constitute the energy basket of the future. With this in mind, nations

across the world are no longer blending ethanol in gasoline as a simple oxygenate, but also using it to diversify their energy needs and reduce their dependence on oil. Wanting to tend to this trend, auto manufacturers are increasing the number of flex-fuel vehicles capable of running on E8585
percent ethanoland in the United States alone, between 2005 and 2007 the number of E85 flex-fuel vehicles on the road increased by 1 million (Goettemoeller and Goettemoeller 56; National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition). The niche for Cubas prospective ethanol se ctor will emerge out of this growing demand for energy.

Cuba ethanol production is cost effective and efficient ASCE 09 - Association for The Study of The Cuban Economy(THE CUBAN SUGAR DILEMMA:
THE PROSPECT FOR A GREEN FUTURE,2009,ascecuba.org,http://www.ascecuba.org/publications/proceedings/volume19/pdfs/patino.pdf,accessed:7/2/13,JW)

Cuba will also have an advantage given its specialization in sugarcane-based ethanol. Among ethanol production methods, the production of sugarcane-based ethanol is the most cost efficient . Ethanol blends made from starches such as potatoes, corn, wheat, or barley are more expensive to produce because before their starch content can be distilled it must first pass through three extra steps . The three steps that must be carried out before starches can be distilled bring about significant costs for starch-based ethanol producers. Additional costs are incurred by starch-based ethanol producers due to the high water requirements in the refining process of starches into simple sugars. Although water has yet to be valued as highly as energy, excessive
water usage is yet another unnecessary cost evaded by sugarcane based ethanol producers. In Minnesota, for example, it is estimated that during 2005, corn bio-refineries consumed an average of 4.2 gallons of water for every gallon of ethanol produced (Goettemoeller and Goettemoeller 118). Furthermore, sugarcane-based

ethanol benefits greatly from its ability to use leftover bagasse to produce heat and energy. When sugarcane bagasse is burnt, the heat can be used to power the ethanol factories, reducing energy costs . Since only 20 percent of the bagasse is estimated to be needed to power each factory, the rest can be sold onto the electric grid (Goettemoeller and Goettemoeller 149). In todays competitive world, small cuts in the cost of production will determine which ethanol blends compete in the international market. The recent
bankruptcy of VeraSun Energy, a starch based ethanol producer and the second largest ethanol producer in the United States, reflects the difficulty that starch based ethanol producers have to manufacture ethanol at a competitive price. Todays low sugarcane yields should not discourage the development of Cubas prospective ethanol sector; instead, it

is important that investors embrace long time horizons. Cuba possess the ideal conditions for sugarcane cultivationwith time and good harvesting practices, production yields should increase to a competitive level. This expected rise in production is what will make Cuban ethanol an enticing business; and Cubas modern transportation networks and highly experienced labor force will complement this process. Cuba lacks capital to fund biofuel sector ASCE 09 - Association for The Study of The Cuban Economy(THE CUBAN SUGAR DILEMMA:
THE PROSPECT FOR A GREEN FUTURE,2009,ascecuba.org,http://www.ascecuba.org/publications/proceedings/volume19/pdfs/patino.pdf,accessed:7/2/13,JW)

With the price of ethanol hovering at U.S.$2.00 per gallon at the beginning of the year, and taking into consideration that nations such as Canada, China, India, Sweden, and Japan are gradually increasing ethanol consumption, ethanol production presents an enticing opportunity for the cash strapped, sugarcane nation of Cuba (Johnson, 2008). However, whereas Cuba devoted 1.4 million hectares of land to the production of 75 million metric tons (MT) of sugarcane in 1989, in 2007, the land under sugar cane cultivation was no more than 400,000 hectares and sugarcane production was less than 12 million MT (CEPALSTAT, 2009). If Cuba were to restore sugarcane production to its pre-1990 levels, Cuba could manufacture an annual supply of 1.5 billion gallons of ethanol, earn over U.S. $3 billion , and become the third largest exporter of ethanol in the world (see Table 1). But for Cuba to produce ethanol at an international scale it must acquire the needed technologyat the moment the few Cuban distilleries that could potentially be converted into ethanol factories are small and their capacity is limited to a trivial volume of 84 million gallons a year.4 Given that the Cuban regime does not have the capital to finance the development of the ethanol sector, capital will have to be injected from the outside and as investor asses their risks they will evaluate the backward and
forward linkages of the Cuban sugarcane sector as well as trends in the world demand for ethanol. The intention of this work is to assess whether Cuba can become an important ethanol producer. With this in mind, the first section will examine the conditions for why Cuba might potentially become an important ethanol producer. The second section will provide an in depth description on the evolution of the Cuban sugarcane sector. And the third section will appraise the present and future world demand for ethanol.

Domestic biofuel fails droughts Specht 13 Jonathan Specht - Legal Advisor, Pearlmaker Holsteins, Inc. B.A., Louisiana State University, 2009; J.D., Washington
University in St. Louis 2012,(Raising Cane: Cuban Sugarcane Ethanols Economic and Environmental Effects on the United States,ucdavis.edu,4/24/3013,http://environs.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/36/2/specht.pdf,Acessed:6/28/2013,JW) Events in the

summer of 2012 highlighted both the potential risks of continuing to center U.S. biofuels policy on domestic corn production and the potential benefits of promoting the growth of a Cuban sugarcane-based ethanol industry. In the summer of 2012, the U.S. Midwest experienced its worst drought since 1956.184 In the middle of August 2012, more than twenty-two percent of the contiguous United States was considered to be in one of the two most severe categories of drought.185 High temperatures and lack of rain combined to devastate productivity of U.S. crops, especially corn, 40 million acres of which were in drought areas.186
According to a USDA report, the U.S. corn crop of 2012 was projected to be the smallest since 2006,187 despite the fact that significantly more acres of land were planted with corn in 2012 as compared to 2006.188 As

a result of anticipated lower supplies, corn prices shot up to record levels in the summer of 2012.189 In response to these high prices, livestock producers affected by high grain prices and others, including members of Congress and four state governors, called on the Obama Administration to temporarily suspend the RFS, and thereby reduce pressure on commodity prices by the ethanol industry.190 Criticism of current U.S. ethanol policy was not limited to livestock producers Joz Graziano da Silva,
head of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, also called for a temporary suspension of the RFS.191 As critics of U.S. ethanol policy pointed out, the

drought of 2012 and the destruction it inflicted on corn production in the United States show the danger of relying on a single crop as a source for fuel production. Peak oil inevitable absent US transition sugar-cane based ethanol solves Specht 13 Jonathan Specht - Legal Advisor, Pearlmaker Holsteins, Inc. B.A., Louisiana State University, 2009; J.D., Washington
University in St. Louis 2012,(Raising Cane: Cuban Sugarcane Ethanols Economic and Environmental Effects on the United States,ucdavis.edu,4/24/3013,http://environs.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/36/2/specht.pdf,Acessed:6/28/2013,JW)

The United States of America cannot afford to bet our long-term prosperity and security on a resource that will eventually run out.1 This dramatic quote from President Obama opens the White Houses forty-four page Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future. The resource referred to, oil, is indeed finite . [T]he output of conventional oil will peak in 2020, according to estimates from the chief economist for the International Energy

Agency.3 The transportation sector has increased its oil consumption over the past thirty years in the United States while residential, commercial, and electric utilities have decreased consumption. Simply put, Americas oil problem is an automobile problem. There are a number of ways the U.S. transportation sector could reduce the amount of oil it consumes: raising vehicle fuel efficiency standards further; increasing and improving light rail and other public transportation
options; building more walkable communities so daily errands could be made without using an automobile; encouraging people to live closer

Yet , even using all of these strategies comprehensively will not change a fundamental fact of our oil-based transportation system in certain areas (like rural communities and outer suburbs) the automobile is essential for transportation, and liquid fuel is extremely convenient for automobiles. With a liquid fuel engine, a driver can re-charge his or her car in a few minutes with a substance that is widely available from Boston to Boise and everywhere in between. With the conveniences of oil, however, come costs. Oil is a finite resource, and its consumption pollutes the air and contributes to climate change. Furthermore, it is expensive and will only get more expensive in the future. However, any realistic plan for dealing with a future of reduced oil use must include liquid fuels that are similar in convenience and availability to gasoline, given the geography of the United States, the
to where they work; and increasing the availability of electric cars.5 state of the current domestic transportation system,8 and the ease of using liquid fuel for the personal automobile. This does not mean, however, that corn-based ethanol, thus far the major liquid-fuel petroleum alternative pursued by the United States, is the best answer. While it has benefitted the Midwest economically, the

domestic ethanol industry has also contributed to a number of negative environmental effects. There is, however, another liquid fuel option other than fossil-fuel based gasoline and corn-based
ethanol. The Obama Administrations energy plan includes a wide range of strategies to reduce U.S. fossil fuel consumption, yet one strategy is notably absent from the Blueprint: replacing

a percentage of U.S. gasoline with ethanol imported from outside the United States. A number of influential commentators, such as Thomas Friedman10 and The Economist,11 have called for the United States to encourage the importation of sugarcane-based ethanol from countries like Brazil. But the possibility of importing ethanol from Cuba has been largely ignored by influential opinionmakers as well as the United States government.12 While by no means a silver bullet for solving the United States energy problems,

importing ethanol made from sugarcane grown in Cuba would bring a number of environmental and economic benefits partially offset by regionalized economic harms to the United States. This possibility, at the very least, deserves much greater consideration and evaluation than it has thus far received. Growth in the Cuban sugarcane-based ethanol industry key Specht 13 Jonathan Specht - Legal Advisor, Pearlmaker Holsteins, Inc. B.A., Louisiana State University, 2009; J.D., Washington
University in St. Louis 2012,(Raising Cane: Cuban Sugarcane Ethanols Economic and Environmental Effects on the United States,ucdavis.edu,4/24/3013,http://environs.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/36/2/specht.pdf,Acessed:6/28/2013,JW) In the coming decades the

need to change its energy policy to face two immense challenges: adjusting to peak oil, and halting the advance of climate change. Liquid biofuels made from renewable, biologically-based sources of energy, rather than finite and climate change-inducing fossil fuels will be an important component of any strategy to deal with the twin challenges of peak oil and climate change. While the United States has encouraged the production of biofuels in recent decades, the domestic ethanol industry, which is almost entirely corn-based, has a number of major flaws, among them its environmental effects. Other legal scholarship has focused on the environmental problems of the domestic ethanol industry and on the possibility of importing ethanol from countries with more environmentally-friendly ethanol production. One possibility that has thus far largely been ignored, however, is the possibility of the United States importing sugarcane-based ethanol from Cuba. This Article attempts to close that gap in the legal literature. This Article begins with an
overview of the U.S. corn-based ethanol industry and demonstrates that its growth has been driven to a large degree by domestic politics. The Article then shifts its focus to Cuba, describing the potential for that country to develop a sugarcane-based ethanol industry as well as the challenges such an industry will face. The remainder of this Article discusses the environmental and economic effects that the growth of such

U nited S tates will

an industry would have on the United States. In concluding, this Article asserts that while Cuban not be a complete solution to either peak oil or climate change, it can and should

sugarcane-based ethanol will be included in future U.S. energy

policy. It further concludes, when the post-Castro era begins, the United States should move quickly to encourage the growth of a Cuban sugarcane-based ethanol industry.

Embargo should get lifted for environmental security and oil drilling Yapp 11 Robin Yapp, The Daily Telegraph's Brazil correspondent based in Sao Paulo (US could lift Cuba
embargo after oil discovery, The Telegraph, 5/29/11, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/cuba/8544870/US-could-lift-Cubaembargo-after-oil-discovery.html, accessed: 7/3/13, ckr) The world's longest-running embargo has endured in part because there was little the US wanted to buy from its impoverished neighbour.

But the discovery of between five and 20 billion barrels of oil in the deep waters off Cuba's north coast, only 60 miles away from Florida, has made American businessmen and politicians consider lifting the embargo. Repsol, the Spanish oil firm, will start exploratory drilling within months. If it strikes a large deposit, the trade embargo could be significantly revised or removed, according to Professor Mark Jones, an expert
on Latin America at the Rice University of Texas. "The greater the drilling and production, the

greater the pressure will be to engage in a complete overhaul of the trade embargo, either getting rid of it altogether or watering it down substantially," he said.
"I think it is fairly realistic, since the embargo is an anachronism of the Cold War sustained only by a misguided fear of a backlash from anti-Castro Cuban Americans." Opponents of the US embargo argue that it has failed to drive Fidel and Raul Castro from power and that if Cuba becomes rich from its oil, regime change is even less likely. They also argue that warmer relations between the two countries could help stave off an environmental crisis if there is a spill from the field. Jorge Pinon, visiting research fellow with Florida International University's Cuban Research Insitute, warned: "The US embargo means Repsol can't pick up the phone to Washington. Any equipment to help in a problem would have to come from the UK or Norway or somewhere else." Repsol will drill at least one and possibly as many as five wells in waters of similar depth to those where an explosion on BP's Deepwater Horizon rig caused eleven deaths and led to an environmental catastrophe. In the event of a further disaster, as much as 90 per cent of any spill could end up in US waters. "If there is any leverage that could push the Obama administration or the US Congress to push for change it would be from an environmental standpoint." said John Kavulich, senior policy adviser at the US-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. He argued the US could treat Cuban oil in the same way it treats oil from Venezuela: "We don't like them but we like their product and we are going to buy it". The current embargo expires this September. However, Prof Jones suggested that it is unlikely that Barack Obama will move to lift it before the conclusion of his next run for President.

Lifting embargo key to US energy firms Cuba is a good location for energy projects Offshore based on article written by Amy Myers Jaffe, with the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice
University, Houston, and Ronald Soligo, a Rice economics professor (Report says lifting US embargo against Cuba would help energy firms, Offshore, No Date Specified BUT last refers to 2001 document, http://www.offshoremag.com/articles/2001/12/report-says-lifting-us-embargo-against-cuba-would-help-energy-firms.html, accessed: 7/3/13, ckr)

WASHINGTON, DC, Dec. 17 -- A

study issued Monday concluded that lifting the US trade embargo against Cuba could provide US energy firms $2-3 billion/year in new revenue.
The report was from the Cuba Policy Foundation, Washington, DC, which has been lobbying to get the embargo removed. Authors were Amy Myers Jaffe, with the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, Houston, and Ronald Soligo, a Rice economics professor. They wrote the report as consultants, not Baker Institute representatives.

Jaffe and Soligo predicted that Cuban energy demand per capita in 2015 would be similar to comparable countries in the region such as Jamaica and Costa Rica. Oil demand could increase 148,000-184,000 b/d, and would have to be met by additional imports or increases in domestic hydrocarbon production. The study said Cuba's offshore waters could provide yield natural gas that could be exported to Florida by pipeline or converted to products in a gas-to-liquids plant.
Gasoline refining capacity would have to increase by 30,000-38,000 b/d to bring Cuban usage in 2015 to current Jamaican or Costa Rican levels, but higher population growth rates or GDP growth rates would increase those requirements move. The paper said, "Though Cuba may not have the energy potential of some of its Caribbean or Latin

American neighbors, there is continued interest from foreign oil firms in exploring for crude and natural gas on the island. Between 1991 and 1999, foreign investment in oil exploration and production in Cuba increased by about $600 million. While the growth potential is not considered large, the country's geographic position near to growing markets in the US and Mexico make it an interesting possible entrept for energy project development."
The study said that combined with a base oil import market of 100,000 b/d or more, high-end growth possibilities of the Cuban oil import market potential could represent gross sales business value of $1.4 billion to $1.62 billion/year beyond the next decade. "Electricity sector expansion could also represent a substantial business opportunity for American firms." The report said Cuba may need additional electric generating capacity of 48-107 Mw by 2015, but if demand grows at 4%/year, Cuba will need another 478 Mw of capacity by 2015.

Embargo prevents companies from drilling oil in Cuban waters Kramer 12 Andrew Kramer, writer at New York Times (Russian Oil Drilling Off Cuba Is Delayed by Old
Embargo, The New York Times, 7/11/12, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/12/business/global/russian-companydelays-cuban-oil-exploration-plans.html, accessed: 7/4/12, ckr) MOSCOW A Russian oil company will delay drilling its first exploratory well off the northern coast of Cuba, about 180 miles from Florida, after apparently struggling to find a drilling rig that

would not violate a United States embargo.

Finding rigs can be a challenge for oil companies operating in Cuba. To

avoid violating the trade embargo the United States imposed on Cuba 50 years ago, rigs can have only a small portion of their parts manufactured in the United States.
Zarubezhneft, a small state-owned company, obtained the exploration rights to potential oil fields in the waters off Cuba three years ago. Last month, it obtained a rig from the Cyprus-based drilling operator, Songa Offshore. Cuba produces little oil now, but petroleum experts say the countrys northern coastal waters could hold reserves, which may help revive the islands economy and ease its dependence on oil imported from Venezuela.

Half a dozen companies have signed deals to work in Cuban waters on projects that concern United States authorities. Many of the projects would be close to the United States but beyond the reach of its safety regulators. Cubas maritime border is in some places 50 miles from the coast of the
United States.

Embargo prevents oil spill safety technology and efforts Burnside 12 Jeff Burnside, NBC Miami Reporter (Embargo Could Prevent Spill Containment if Cuban Oil
Drilling Goes Wrong, Channel 6, 4/12/12, http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/Embargo-Makes-Cuban-Oil-Drilling-aDangerous-Proposition-for-Florida-130174948.html, accessed: 7/4/13, ckr)

By mid-December, Cuba plans to be drililng for oil just 80 miles from the Florida coast. In fact, an
Italian-built driling rig is now in the water, ready to start five exploratory wells.

But because of the Cuban embargo, drilling in the communist nation's waters is being done by foreign oil companies. Cuban officials say they'll adhere to the highest safety standards, but the embargo may prevent the U.S. from cooperating with Cuba in sharing safety equipment and technology that would contain or prevent a spill.
However tough things went with BP during the recent spill in the Gulf of Mexico, imagine dealing with Raul and Fidel Castro. Strong currents would take a spill directly to the Keys, toward Miami, and up the

Florida east coast.

Cuba expert Jorge Pinion, a former oil exec, said the U.S. must protect its shorelines. "The US and Cuba need to sit down together and put together a coordination or a protocol on the management of a future oil spill. The US already has that with Mexico and Canada. So why not with Cuba?" he asked.

One reason is that South Florida's Cuban-American congressional delegation opposes an exemption to the 50-year-old Cuban embargo, even if it protects the coast in case of spill.
"Nobody's asking for a lifting of the embargo," Pinion argues. "All that we're asking is that in the case of a national emergency, intl oil compannies operating in Cuba can quickly access this technology and equipment that will safeguard our share environment, and most importantly, it will save our economy and our tourism."

Americans, meanwhile, continue to oppose oil drilling close to Florida. If the Cuban exploratory wells find oil, Pinion says it will ratchet up pressure on U.S. lawmakers to finally permit drilling near Sunshine State shores. The embargo stops the US access to natural gas and oil. Grogg 06- Patricia Grogg; Cuban correspondent to IPS, studied Journalism in the University of Havana (Cuba
Embargos Boomerang Effect IPS, October 2006, http://havanajournal.com/politics/entry/cuba-embargosboomerang-effect/, accessed: 6/27/13, ML)

Washingtons embargo against Cuba also has an impact on the United States economy and prevents
millions of U.S. citizens from benefiting from Cuban medical progress, according to a report released by the Cuban foreign ministry. The text of the report will be presented at the United Nations General Assembly, which on Nov. 8 will be examining for the fifteenth consecutive year the need to end the embargo imposed by Washington on Havana more than four decades ago. The document states that because o f the blockade regulations it has been impossible to begin clinical trials in the U.S. with TheraCIM, a Cuban pharmaceutical produ ct for treating brain tumours in children. TheraCIM is produced by the Molecular Immunology Centre, which in 2004 made a deal with U.S. company CancerVax to develop and produce therapeutic vaccines against cancer. This medication is registered in Cuba and other countries for treating cancer of the head and neck, and has been proved to reduce tumour mass. It could benefit children in the United States and other countries with this type of cancer, the report points out. It also adds that were it not for the embargo, millions of people in the United States suffering from diabetes could benefit from Citoprot P, a unique product and treatment method that accelerates healing of diabetic foot ulcers, reducing the risk of lower extremity amputations. Citoprot P was developed by the Cuban Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. According to the foreign ministry report, about 20.8 million people in the United States suffer from diabetes, a chronic incurable disease. The restrictions that Cuba calls a blockade and the U.S. an embargo have cost this Caribbean country 86.1 billion dollars in total damages throughout the period, including four billion in 2005 alone, the document says. Last year the U.N. approved by 182 votes the Cuban motion in favour of lifting the embargo. The motion was first set before the U.N. General Assembly in 1992, when only 59 countries voted in favour of the resolution. The report states that the ban on U.S. tourism to Cuba causes tourist agents in the U.S. losses of 565 million dollars per million U.S. tourists who are prevented from visiting the country. An estimated 1.8 million U.S. tourists could have vacationed in this Caribbean island in 2005, but because of the ban, U.S. tourist agencies lost potential income of 996 million dollars, the report says. In addition, the U.S. imports about 148,000 tons of primary nickel and some 10,000 tons of cobalt annually from distant markets. But If the blockade did not exist, it could purchase these raw materials from Cuba, only 200 kilometres away, the report notes.

At present Cuba produces about 77,000 tons of nickel a year, and output is set to increase through an investment programme agreed with Canada in March 2005 for the expansion and modernisation of a joint venture company to exploit the mineral. Cuba has proven nickel reserves of 800 million tons, and potential reserves are estimated at two billion tons. The countrys cobalt reserves amount to approximately 26 percent of total world reserves, according to official sources. In presenting the report, Cuban deputy foreign minister Bruno Rodrquez said on Monday that the George W. Bush administration has created an inter-agency task force on Cuban nickel, to monitor and prevent sales of this strategic mineral.

Energy is another good business that Havana says U.S. companies are missing out on, because they are forbidden to participate in prospecting for oil on Cubas undersea platform in the Gulf of Mexico, only 137 kilometres from Florida. The platform to the north of Cuba has an estimated potential of between one billion and 9.3 billion barrels of crude and between 1.9 trillion and 22 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. These estimates in the Cuban foreign ministrys report are attributed to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which said the possibilities of success are of the order of 95 percent.
In 1999 Cuba opened up to tender 112,000 square kilometres of its waters in the Gulf of Mexico, divided into 51 blocks, for foreign exploration aimed at eventual exploitation. The Spanish-Argentine company Repsol YPF currently has a contract to drill in six of these blocks, with a total surface area of 10,700 square kilometres. This year, however it decided to spread the risk and has sold a 30 percent share in the venture to each of two other companies, from India and Norway, retaining 40 percent itself. The Canadian firm Sherritt International has also signed a contract for four blocks in this deep water drilling area.

The embargo is hampering US imports of raw materials such as nickel and cobalt. Grogg 06- Patricia Grogg; Cuban correspondent to IPS, studied Journalism in the University of Havana (Cuba
Embargos Boomerang Effect IPS, October 2006, http://havanajournal.com/politics/entry/cuba-embargosboomerang-effect/, accessed: 6/27/13, ML)

Washingtons embargo against Cuba also has an impact on the United States economy and prevents
millions of U.S. citizens from benefiting from Cuban medical progress, according to a report released by the Cuban foreign ministry. The text of the report will be presented at the United Nations General Assembly, which on Nov. 8 will be examining for the fifteenth consecutive year the need to end the embargo imposed by Washington on Havana more than four decades ago. The document states that because of the blockade regulations it has been impossible to begin clinical trials in the U.S. with TheraCIM, a Cuban pharmaceutical produ ct for treating brain tumours in children. TheraCIM is produced by the Molecular Immunology Centre, which in 2004 made a deal with U.S. company CancerVax to develop and produce therapeutic vaccines against cancer. This medication is registered in Cuba and other countries for treating cancer of the head and neck, and has been proved to reduce tumour mass. It could benefit children in the United States and other countries with this type of cancer, the report points out. It also adds that were it not for the embargo, millions of people in the United States suffering from diabetes could benefit from Citoprot P, a unique product and treatment method that accelerates healing of diabetic foot ulcers, reducing the risk of lower extremity amputations. Citoprot P was developed by the Cuban Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. According to the foreign ministry report, about 20.8 million people in the United States suffer from diabetes, a chronic incurable disease. The restrictions that Cuba calls a blockade and the U.S. an embargo have cost this Caribbean country 86.1 billion dollars in total damages throughout the period, including four billion in 2005 alone, the document says. Last year the U.N. approved by 182 votes the Cuban motion in favour of lifting the embargo. The motion was first set before the U.N. General Assembly in 1992, when only 59 countries voted in favour of the resolution. The report states that the ban on U.S. tourism to Cuba causes tourist agents in the U.S. losses of 565 million dollars per million U.S. tourists who are prevented from visiting the country. An estimated 1.8 million U.S. tourists could have vacationed in this Caribbean island in 2005, but because of the ban, U.S. tourist agencies lost potential income of 996 million dollars, the report says. In addition, the

U.S. imports about 148,000 tons of primary nickel and some 10,000 tons of cobalt annually from distant markets. But If the blockade did not exist, it could purchase these raw materials from Cuba, only 200 kilometres
away, the report notes.

At present Cuba produces about 77,000 tons of nickel a year, and output is set to increase through an
investment programme agreed with Canada in March 2005 for the expansion and modernisation of a joint venture company to exploit the mineral.

Cuba has proven nickel reserves of 800 million tons, and potential reserves are estimated at two billion tons. The countrys cobalt reserves amount to approximately 26 percent of total world reserves, according to official sources.

In presenting the report, Cuban deputy foreign minister Bruno Rodrquez said on Monday that the

George W. Bush administration has created an inter-agency task force on Cuban nickel, to monitor and prevent sales of this strategic mineral.

No Cuban oil reserves

Crdenas 12 - Jos R. Crdenas, Acting Assistant Administrator for Latin America and the
Caribbean under the Bush Administration, Senior Advisor to the Bush Administration in the U.S. Department of State, the National Security Council, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, Senior Advisor at the Organization of American States and as a senior professional staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, (The phony Cuba embargo debate, Article for Foreign Policy: Shadow Government, 3/21/12, http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/03/21/the_phony_cuba_embargo_debate, Accessed 6/28/13, AW) The likelihood that Cuba possesses any commercially viable oil reserves off its shores is dubious. And, in the unlikely event that it does discover any, it's probable that they will be exploitable only after the Castro regime passes into the dustbin of history. In the meantime, however, allowing Cuba anywhere near a deepwater platform is akin to handing a hand-grenade to a monkey.

Solves Venezuelan dependency Cuba shifts to US oil Zimmerman 10 CHELSEA A. ZIMMERMAN, Fellow of the Center for The Study of the
Presidency and Congress, Member of The Juvenile Rights Project and the Legal Aid Society, Barnard College, (Rethinking The Cuban Trade Embargo: An Opportune Time To Mend a Broken Policy, The Presidency 2010 Fellows, NO DATE (Paper was written in 2010), http://www.thepresidency.org/storage/documents/Fellows2010/Zimmerman.pdf, Accessed 6/27/13, AW) Although he has not signaled any major shift in Cubas econo mic system, in a speech given in July of 2007, Raul Castro acknowledged that structu ral changes were necessary to increase efficiency and the production of goods in Cuba Castro recognizes the inherent limitations on a country that imports more than 80 percent of its food, leaves half of its arable land fallow, and depends on Venezuela for 90 million barrels of oil per day ( The Center for Democracy in the Americas)

Embargo prevents drilling US tech restrictions key repeal sets a negative precedent Claver-Carone 8 - Mauricio Clever-Carone, Executive Director of Cuba Democracy
Advocates, Served as Attorney-advisor for the U.S. Department of the Treasury, (How the Cuban embargo protects the environment, Article for the New York Times, 7/25/08, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/25/opinion/25iht-edcarone.1.14793496.html?_r=0, Accessed 7/03/13, AW) Clearly, foreign oil companies anticipate political changes in Cuba and are trying to position themselves accordingly. It is equally clear they are encountering legal and

logistical obstacles preventing oil and gas exploration and development. Among the
impediments are well-founded reservations as to how any new discovery can be turned into product. Cuba has very limited refining capacity, and the U.S. embargo prevents sending

Cuban crude oil to American refineries. Neither is it financially or logistically viable for partners of the current Cuban regime to undertake deep-water exploration without access to U.S. technology, which the embargo prohibits transferring to Cuba. The prohibitions exist

for good reason . Fidel Castro expropriated U.S. oil company assets after taking control of
Cuba and has never provided compensation. Equally important, foreign companies trying to do business with Cuba still face a lot of expenses and political risks. If, or when, the Cuban regime decides again to expropriate the assets of these companies, there is no legal recourse in Cuba. Frankly, it is bewildering why some seem to believe that U.S. companies partnering with one more anti-American dictatorship to explore and develop oil fields will somehow reduce fuel costs for American consumers and contribute to U.S. energy independence. One needs only to look at the reaction of the international oil markets when Hugo Chvez of Venezuela nationalized assets of U.S.-based ConocoPhillips and Chevron. What message would the United States be sending to oil-rich, tyrannical regimes around the world about the consequences of expropriation if we were now to lift the embargo that was imposed after Fidel Castro expropriated the assets of Esso, Shell and Texaco? For many years the U.S. embargo has served to protect America's national security interests; today it is also serving to prevent Cuba's regime from drilling near U.S. shores. And that's good for the environment.

Lifting embargo solves US oil now is key foreign competition Zimmerman 10 CHELSEA A. ZIMMERMAN, Fellow of the Center for The Study of the
Presidency and Congress, Member of The Juvenile Rights Project and the Legal Aid Society, Barnard College, (Rethinking The Cuban Trade Embargo: An Opportune Time To Mend a Broken Policy, The Presidency 2010 Fellows, NO DATE (Paper was written in 2010), http://www.thepresidency.org/storage/documents/Fellows2010/Zimmerman.pdf, Accessed 6/27/13, AW) Meanwhile, other countries are filling the vacuum c reated by the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba. China more than doubled its trade with Cuba in 2006 to $1.8 billion. Venezuela exports to Cuba increased from $2 billion in 2005 to $2.6 billion in 2006. China and Venezuela currently represent 3 5% of Cubas total trade ( Reuters , February 26, 2007) . Cuba recently entered into an agreement with Chi na for the sale of 4500 pickup trucks, and has develop ed a cooperative relationship with China in developing its energy resources. Furt hermore, Brazil, Turkey, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, Spain and Vietnam hav e in recent years solidified their trade relationships with Cuba. In late 2008, the European Union signed an agreement to renew its ties with Cuba after having formally lifted its diplomatic sanctions against Cuba. Lifting the trading ban with Cuba could directly benefit the U.S. by providing an additional supplier of oil, gas and et hanol only ninety miles from its coast. Cubapetroleo, the state oil company, claims that Cu ba has 20 billion barrels of recoverable oil in its offshore waters (Reuters, October 16, 2008). If efforts to develop more offshore wells proceed as planned, Cub a could produce as much as 525,000 barrels per day of oil, most of which could be exported to the United States if the trade embargo was lifted (Reuters, June 12, 2008).

Treasury Enforcement (OFAC)

Removing embargo shifts resources to solve terrorism Johnson, Spector and Lilac 10 - Andy Johnson, Director, National Security Program, Kyle Spector, Policy Advisor, National Security Program , Kristina Lilac, National Security Program, Senior Fellows of The Third Way Institute, (End the Embargo of Cuba, Article for The Third Way Institute, 9/16/10, http://content.thirdway.org/publications/326/Third_Way_Memo__End_the_Embargo_of_Cuba.pdf, Accessed 7/02/13, AW) Keeping the embargo in place requires that the US government devote time and resources to fighting a Cold War -8 era threat. Senator Chris Dodd argued in a 2005 op - ed that the US spends extraordinary resources eac h year to enforce the sanctions instead of devoting such resources to the fight against terrorism. 4 While the financial resources dedicated to enforcing the embargo may be limited compared to resources dedicated to other causes, lifting the Cuban embargo c ould put the US in a better position to fight terrorist organizations by freeing up resources currently enforcing the embargo. For example, the Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which governs travel and trade between the US an d Cuba, is also responsible for maintaining sanctions against truly problematic countries, including Iran and North Korea. OFAC also is responsible for responding to economic threats posed by terrorist organizations and narcotics traffickers. By ending OFA Cs need to regulate the Cuban embargo, OFAC could instead devote those resources to respond to the current threats posed by rogue states and terrorist networks. Cuba also remains on the State Departments state sponsor of terrorism list along with Iran, S yria, and Sudan, 5 despite claims by experts such as former National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism Richard Clarke that Cuba is only on the list for domestic political reasons. 6 A 1998 report by the US Intelligence Community determined that C uba does not pose a threat to US national security, 7 yet the State Department continues to keep Cuba on the list. By normalizing relations with Cuba and removing Cuba from the list, the State Department could better focus on actual state sponsors of terror and instead use resources in the Western Hemisphere bureau to initiate a new path for engaging Cuba. Allows for effective crack-down on Iran and North Korea Johnson, Spector and Lilac 10 - Andy Johnson, Director, National Security Program, Kyle Spector, Policy Advisor, National Security Program , Kristina Lilac, National Security Program, Senior Fellows of The Third Way Institute, (End the Embargo of Cuba, Article for The Third Way Institute, 9/16/10, http://content.thirdway.org/publications/326/Third_Way_Memo__End_the_Embargo_of_Cuba.pdf, Accessed 7/02/13, AW) For example, the Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which governs travel and trade between the US an d Cuba, is also responsible for maintaining sanctions against truly problematic countries, including Iran and North Korea.

OFAC Solves drug trafficking

Johnson, Spector and Lilac 10 - Andy Johnson, Director, National Security Program,
Kyle Spector, Policy Advisor, National Security Program , Kristina Lilac, National Security

Program, Senior Fellows of The Third Way Institute, (End the Embargo of Cuba, Article for The Third Way Institute, 9/16/10, OFAC also is responsible for responding to economic threats posed by terrorist organizations and narcotics traffickers. By ending OFA Cs need to regulate the Cuban embargo, OFAC could instead devote those resources to respond to the current threats posed by rogue states and terrorist networks.

International Law
The UN prohibits sanctions obstructing citizens access to basic rights or needs Garfield 99 Richard Garfield, Richard Garfield, nurse and epidemiologist, is professor of clinical international
nursing at Columbia University. He is the co-chair of the Human Rights Committee of the American Public Health Association and director of a PAHO/WHO collaborating centre at Columbia University. He worked in the ministry of health in Nicaragua. (The Impact of Economic Sanctions on Health and Well-being, Relief and Rehabilitation Network Paper, November 1999, http://www.essex.ac.uk/armedcon/story_id/The%20Impact%20of%20Econmoic%20Sanctins%20on%20Health%20 abd%20Well-Being.pdf, accessed: 7/2/13, amf) The impact of trade sanctions on the citizens of some countries raises the question of the relationship between civil and political, and social and economic rights. Indeed, its Charter charges the UN with promoting higher standards of living and human development. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on

the Rights of the Child, among others, condemn actions which obstruct the realisation of basic rights such as the right to shelter, healthcare and food, the lack of which might even affect survival. In a number of situations, then, such as in Haiti and Iraq, the UN finds itself in the dual role of hostile
agent and humanitarian defender. Not surprisingly, UN organisations providing humanitarian assistance have sometimes found themselves rejected by affected people and their governments alike, as the UN was perceived to be creating the misery in the first place. Sanctions may precede, accompany, or follow war. Yet they may be instituted without a declaration of war and do not fall under the rules of war. These rules were designed to provide protection to civilians and non-combatants. The Geneva Conventions (1949) and its Additional Protocols (1977)

prohibit measures depriving a civilian population of goods indispensable to survival. Article 70 of Protocol I and Article 18 of Protocol II, for example, call for relief operations for civilians experiencing undue hardship due to a lack of essential supplies. Article 14 of Protocol II guarantees the protection of goods indispensable to survival: Starvation of civilians as a method of combat is prohibited. It is therefore prohibited to attack ... crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works.
Two essential principles of the laws of warfare are proportionality and distinction. Proportionality directs combatants away from targets that are likely to cause unnecessary civilian harm relative to military benefit. Distinction directs those waging a war to focus on military rather than civilian targets. But sanctions, when not occurring during a state of war, do not fall under the laws of war. There is then no legal obligation on the sanction imposing authorities to carefully select their targets, to take precautions to reduce civilian suffering and avoid civilian deaths, and to examine the relative merits and drawbacks of a proposed approach in terms of the harm it can cause to civilian populations. Thus it can be argued that comprehensive sanctions, when scrutinised under the principles of differentiation and proportionality, may violate more rights than war itself.

Economic embargoes violate human rights its only a question of how many Garfield 99 Richard Garfield, Richard Garfield, nurse and epidemiologist, is professor of clinical international
nursing at Columbia University. He is the co-chair of the Human Rights Committee of the American Public Health Association and director of a PAHO/WHO collaborating centre at Columbia University. He worked in the ministry of health in Nicaragua. (The Impact of Economic Sanctions on Health and Well-being, Relief and Rehabilitation Network Paper, November 1999, http://www.essex.ac.uk/armedcon/story_id/The%20Impact%20of%20Econmoic%20Sanctins%20on%20Health%20 abd%20Well-Being.pdf, accessed: 7/2/13, amf) Table 3: Human Rights which may be Violated by Economic Embargoes Human Rights Relevant United Nations Instruments Right to life UDHR(3), ICCPR(6) Right to liberty and security of person UDHR(3); ICCPR(9) Right to freedom of opinion and expression UDHR(19); ICCPR(19); CRC(13) Right

to adequate food, and to be free from hunger UDHR(25); ICESCR(11) Right to the highest possible standard of physical and mental health CRC(24); ICESCR(12) Right to the provision of medical assistance and healthcare UDHR(25); ICESCR(12); CRC(24) Right to adequate clothing and housing UDHR(25); ICESCR(11) Right to adequate environmental conditions ICESCR(12) Right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being UDHR(25); ICESCR(11), CRC(27) Right to education UDHR(26);ICESCR(13); CRC(28) Right to work, and to just and favourable conditions of work UDHR(23); ICESCR(6,7) Right to social security UDHR(22); ICESCR(9); CRC(26) Right to participate in government UDHR(21); ICCPR(25) Embargo violates international law extraterritorial and human rights violation Snow 10 Anita Snow, Veteran international journalist, editor and news manager with two decades of
experience in Latin America. (Cuba Embargo: UN Vote Urges US to Lift Embargo, The Christian Science Monitor, October 26, 2010, http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2010/1026/Cuba-embargo-UNvote-urges-US-to-lift-embargo, Accessed: 6/28/13, sh) "This is about a cruel and aggressive policy," Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told the body, absolutely contrary to international law, that this government insists on maintaining knowing that it

causes harm, hardships and violates the human rights of an entire people."
"This is not a bilateral issue, as is commonly repeated by the U.S. representatives," Rodriguez added, complaining about the sanctions' "remarkable extraterritorial character." Nevertheless, Cuba "will continue to be ready to establish peaceful and respectful relations with the United States," Rodriguez said. American Ambassador Ronald D. Godard, U.S. Senior Area Adviser for Western Hemisphere Affairs, insisted that the embargo is a bilateral issue "and part of a broader set of relations meant to encourage a more open environment in Cuba and increased respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms."

Embargo violates international law blocks food and medicine Kirkpatrick 96- Anthony K, PhD, the national director for research and chairman of clinical practice guidelines
for the Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome Association of America (Role of the USA in shortage of food and medicine in Cuba, The Lancet, http://www.cubasolidarity.net/Kirkpatrick-lancet.pdf, 11/30/96, accessed: 7/4/13, ML) The US embargo imposes significant restrictions on Cuba acquiring non-US products. For example, foreign vessels are banned from loading or unloading freight anywhere in the US for at least 6 months after having stopped in Cuba. Similarly, aircraft carrying emergency medical supplies to Cuba are banned from landing in the USA (which creates delays). The Helms-Burton Act, which was passed in March, 1996, is having an inhibiting effect on non-US medical companies. For example, the Act instructs US officials to bar US entry to any aliennon-US medical company directors as well as their families and childrenwho traffics in American property that was confiscated by the Cuban government after the 1959 takeover by Fidel Castro.8 Another provision would allow US citizens to sue such firmsie, those trafficking in nationalized properties, in US courts. President Clinton has postponed the implementation of the latter provision until Jan 15, 1997. But even if he renews the suspension of the lawsuit part of the Act, the law will remain on the books and serve as a disincentive to companies that may wish to sell medicines to Cuba. What makes the current law so difficult to change is the way it came into effect in March. In a major concession to the Republican-controlled Congress, Clinton relinquished some of his authority as President over foreign affairs and agreed that the only way the Act could be amended or overturned is by another act of Congress. It is unsurprising that Mexico, Canada, and the European Union are threatening to retaliate if the USA tries to punish them. For Cuba, the costs of medical products have increased because the country has few potential suppliers, and therefore little negotiating strength. Cubans complain that non-US medical companies raise prices because of increased transportation costs and increased risk due to possible reprisals from the US Government. The effect on Cubas health system is increased costs, shipping delays, and restricted access to some of the most important medical products because they are subject to US jurisdiction. In February, 1995, a group of concerned US citizens, including me, approached the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States

(OAS) to point out that the

inclusion of foods and medicines in the US trade embargo against Cuba was a violation of common international law. The matter was discussed at hearings at the OAS that month and the Commissionin a little-noticed letterurged the US Government to end restrictions on shipment of food and medicines to Cuba, calling them a violation of international law.9 This
development was significant because the OAS has excluded Cuba from membership of the organisation. In addition, the OAS was one of the first international organisations to deplore violations of human rights by the Fidel Castros Government. In response to the opinion of the OAS, the USA maintains that medicines and medical supplies are exempt from the US embargo and can be sold to Cuba. The USA insists, however, that it must be able to verify their proper distribution.10 This provision, and the other bureaucratic requirements implemented by the US Government, effectively subverts the medical-supply exception to the embargo. In essence, the USA remains in violation

of international law. Embargo violates international law legally regarded as genocide, extraterritoriality, and interference in cooperation CBS News 11 Portia Siegelbaum, writer for CBS News (Cuba: US embargo causes $1 trillion in losses, CBS
News, 9/14/11, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20106159-503543.html, Accessed 7/2/13, AM) Speaking to journalists in Havana, Moreno

insisted the embargo violates international law and the U.N. Charter, and constitutes genocide according to the 1948 Geneva Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Yesterday President Obama authorized the continuation of the embargo for another year under the Trading with the Enemy Act, stating that it is in "the national interest of the United States" to do so.

Moreno particularly attacked the extra-territoriality of the embargo listing various fines imposed by the U.S. on third country entities such as a $500 million fine against the Dutch Bank ABN Amro last year for "having carried out unauthorized financial transactions in which Cuba or Cuban Nationals had interests."
The vice foreign minister noted that in all from March 2010 to April 2011 there were several multimillion dollar fines levied against U.S. and foreign banking institutions for having conducted operations with Cuba. 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.

Embargo violates international law extraterritorial and human rights violation Charbonneau 12- Louis Charbonneau, Reuters' United Nations bureau chief, (U.N. urges end to U.S. Cuba
embargo for 21st year, 11/13/12, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/13/us-cuba-embargo-

un-idUSBRE8AC11820121113, 7/3/13, CAS)

Rodriguez said the extraterritoriality of the blockade measures - the fact that Washington pressures other countries to adhere to the US embargo - violates international law. He added that the
blockade is not in US interests and harms its credibility. It leads the US to adopt costly double standards , he said, adding that the embargo has failed to achieve its objectives of pressuring the government to introduce economic and political freedoms and comply with international human rights standards. There is no legitimate or moral reason to maintain this embargo that is anchored in the Cold War, he said. He said it qualified as a "act of genocide" against Cuba and was a "massive, flagrant and

systematic violation of the human rights of an entire people."

Embargo violates international law impedes access to medical goods Garfield and Santana 97 - Richard Garfield and Sarah Santana, Richard Garfield, nurse and epidemiologist, is
professor of clinical international nursing at Columbia University. He is the co-chair of the Human Rights Committee of the American Public Health Association and director of a PAHO/WHO collaborating centre at Columbia University. He worked in the ministry of health in Nicaragua. (The Impact of the Economic Crisis and the US Embargo on Health in Cuba, The American Journal of Public Health, January 1997, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1380757/, accessed: 6/28/13, amf) OBJECTIVES: This paper examines the combined effects of a severe economic decline since 1989 and a tightening of the US embargo in 1992 on health and health care in Cuba. METHODS: Data from surveillance systems for nutrition, reportable diseases, and hospital diagnoses were reviewed. These sources were supplemented with utilization data from the national health system and interviews with health leaders. RESULTS: Changes in

Cuba include declining nutritional levels, rising rates of infectious diseases and violent death, and a deteriorating public health infrastructure. But despite these threats, mortality levels for children and women remain low. Instead, much of the health impact of the economic decline of Cuba has fallen on adult men and the elderly. CONCLUSIONS: To be consistent with international humanitarian law, embargoes must not impede access to essential humanitarian goods. Yet this embargo has raised the cost of medical supplies and food Rationing, universal access to primary health services, a highly educated population, and preferential access to scarce goods for women and children help protect most Cubans from what otherwise might have been a health disaster. Embargo a form of Genocide Amnesty International 10 Amnesty International is a global movement of people fighting injustice and promoting human rights.
We work to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth and d ignity are denied. Currently the worlds largest grassroots human rights organization, we investigate and expose abuses, educate and mobilize the public, and help transform societies to create a safer, more just world. We received the Nobel Peace Prize for our life-saving work. (Is the U.S. Embargo on Cuba a Form of Genocide?, Amnesty International, September 8, 2010, http://www3.sympatico.ca/danchristienses/CubaFAQ137.html , Accessed: July 2, 2013, SD) What is genocide? To answer this question, we must define what is meant by genocide. According to Oxford English Dictionary, genocide is "the mass extermination of human beings, esp. of a particular race or nation." The Law Under

international law the legal

definition is given in Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention and covers a much wider range of crimes. Article
2 states: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a)

Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Item (c) would seem to be the most relevant in the case of the US embargo on Cuba. It tells us that, to prove the
perpetrators of these sanctions are guilty of genocide, we do not need to prove that any deaths were directly attributable to these sanctions. We are

required only to prove that the perpetrators deliberately inflicted on the Cuban people conditions of life calculated to bring about the group's physical destruction in whole or in part. This is relatively easy to prove. A Brief History The US embargo first came into effect during the Kennedy administration in 1962. Thirty years later in
1992, shortly after the collapse of Cuba's main trading partner, the former USSR, the US regime moved in for the kill with intensified trade sanctions under its so-called Cuban Democracy Act, also known as the Torricelli Act. Four years later in 1996, with the Cuban people having weathered the worst of the economic collapse and as defiant as ever, the US embargo was tightened further still with the introduction of the socalled Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, also known as the Helms-Burton Act. Today, while there have since been limited openings in one-way trade in food and medicine, these two laws form the legislative underpinning of the US embargo, a master plan to wreck the Cuban economy and thereby deprive the population of many of the essentials of life. The all too predictable outcomes have been documented by various international humanitarian and human rights groups. From "The US attack on Cuba's health," Canadian Medical Association Journal, August 1, 1997: In 1992 Cuba was in a severe economic depression, largely resulting from a loss of preferential trade with the Soviet bloc. Cuba turned to US foreign subsidiaries, from whom it received $500-600 million per year in imports -- 90% of which was food and medicine. The American Public Health Association warned the US government that tightening the embargo would lead to the abrupt cessation of this supply of essential goods and result in widespread famine. Indeed, 5 months after passage of the CDA [Cuba Democracy Act] , food shortages in Cuba set the scene for the worst epidemic of neurologic disease this century. More than 50,000 people suffered from optic neuropathy, deafness, loss of sensation and pain in the extremities, and a spinal cord disorder that impaired walking and bladder control. That the US embargo has harmed the Cuban

people has also been documented by the American Association for World Health. It performed a year-long review of the implications of embargo restrictions which included on-site visits to 46 treatment centers and related facilities, 160 interviews with medical professionals and other specialists, government officials, representatives of non-governmental organizations, churches and international aid agencies. Their 300 page report, "Denial of Food and Medicine: THE IMPACT OF THE U.S. EMBARGO ON HEALTH AND NUTRITION IN CUBA," dated March 1997, concluded: After a year-long investigation, the American Association for World Health has determined that the U.S. embargo of Cuba has dramatically harmed the health and nutrition of large numbers of ordinary Cuban citizens. As documented by the attached report, it is our expert medical opinion that the U.S. embargo has caused a significant rise in suffering -- and even deaths -- in Cuba. For several decades the U.S. embargo has imposed significant financial burdens on the Cuban health care system. Clearly

then these sanctions were

meant to kill. It was only thanks to the renowned fighting spirit of the Cuban people, and countless acts of international solidarity, that the
death count was kept to a minimum. Despite these cruel sanctions, Cuba's health care system actually continued to improve and is widely regarded as the best in Latin America. This in no way, however, diminishes the criminal responsibility of the US regime. In 2003, even

Amnesty International, after years of dithering, was finally forced to concede in a report actually critical of Cuba that, yes, the US embargo is: (a) "highly detrimental to Cubans' enjoyment of a range of economic, social and cultural rights... (b) "has had a very significant negative impact on the overall performance of the national economy, diverting the optimal allocation of resources from the prioritized areas and affecting the health programmes and services... (c) "compromises the quality of life of the population, specifically the children, the elderly and the infirm... (d) "is used to harm the most vulnerable members of society." And how did the Bush regime respond to these shocking
revelations at the time? Had it immediately lifted the embargo, it might be argued that these outcomes were unintentional. But the regime did just the opposite -- in 2004 they actually moved to intensify these cruel sanctions! Remittances and family visits were severely curtailed in hopes of cutting off an important source of hard currency and material support for Cuban families, along with unprecedented financial restrictions on payments for shipments of food and medicine bound for Cuba. The amount of food exported to Cuba from the US declined each year for several years immediately afterward. In another report critical of Cuba in 2004 (and reiterated in March 2005), the UN Human Rights Commission, as well, was forced to concede that, "It is also impossible to ignore the disastrous and lasting economic and social effects of the embargo imposed on the Cuban population over 40 years ago." In January of 2005 (and 2006), Human Rights Watch reiterated that, "The U.S. economic embargo on Cuba, in effect for more than four decades, continues to impose indiscriminate hardship on the Cuban people." In September, 2006, Christine

Chanet, the Personal Representative of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, in another of her
reports critical of Cuba, explicitly criticized the "severe restrictions caused by a disastrous embargo, exacerbated in 2004 by unbearable restrictions on the movement of persons and goods." She also said that the

US embargo, which she "deplores," was "not a path to democracy (sic), and should not continue." (UN HRC discussion) In November, 2006, the
Miami Herald gleefully reported: The Bush administration's vow to enforce U.S. regulations is stifling Cuba's ability to operate in international markets... U.S. companies are allowed to export agricultural products to Cuba, provided they receive cash payments before the goods are delivered. But even cash payments must move through banks, so the restrictions are giving U.S. corporations headaches... ''It's the hassle factor,'' said John Kavulich, senior policy advisor with the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, which tracks bilateral economic relations. "They've coupled rhetoric with enforcement, and it's worked!'' In January 2007, Amnesty International confirmed again that: Amnesty International has called for the US embargo against Cuba to be lifted, as it is highly detrimental to Cubans' enjoyment of a range of economic, social and cultural rights, such as the right to food, health and sanitation -- particularly affecting the weakest and most vulnerable members of the population. Conclusion The

genocidal intent of the Bush regime had never been more clear. Therefore, under the terms of the of the

UN Genocide Convention, the US embargo does indeed appear to be a form of genocide. Follow-up, March 2009 Amnesty International reiterates its condemnation of the US embargo two months into the mandate of the new Barack Obama administration: Amnesty International urges the US government to lift the nearly five-decade long economic and trade embargo against Cuba as it is detrimental to the fulfillment of the economic and social rights of the Cuban people. It obstructs and constrains efforts by the Cuban government to purchase essential medicines, medical equipment and supplies, food and agricultural products, construction materials and access to new technologies. Source: "Cuba and the Fifth Summit of the Americas," Amnesty International, March 2009 Follow-up, September 2009 By September 2009, very little seemed to have actually changed as far as the US embargo was concerned. Eight months into President Obama's mandate, it seemed to this writer that Amnesty International had all but called for the arrests of the perpetrators of these crimes against the Cuban people! Citing the continued blocking and constraining of vital imports of medicines, supplies and technology, Amnesty called called these cruel and inhumane sanctions "immoral" and demanded that it be "lifted without further delay": The US embargo against Cuba is immoral and should be lifted. Its preventing millions of Cubans from benefiting from vital medicines and medical equipment essential for their health. Source: "President Obama should take lead in lifting embargo against Cuba," Amnesty International, September 2009 Amnesty International calls on the US Congress to take, without further delay, the necessary steps towards lifting the economic, financial and trade embargo against Cuba.... The UN General Assembly has repeatedly condemned the US embargo as contrary to the Charter of the United Nations and international law.... The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has also reiterated its position regarding the impact of such sanctions on the human rig hts of the Cuban people and, therefore, insists that the embargo be lifted...." [E]xports of food and agricultural products to Cuba remain regulated by the Department of Commerce and require a licence for export or re-export. The export of medicines and medical supplies continues to be severely limited....

Right To Travel
Embargo restricts right to travel Dodd (no date) Christopher Dodd, Democratic Politician of Connecticut (Should the U.S. End Its Cuba
Embargo?, Scholastic, No Date, http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/should-us-end-its-cuba-embargo, accessed: 6/28/13, ckr) The United States is the only nation that still has a trade embargo against Cuba. After four decades, it's clear that our policy has failed to achieve its goals: the end of Fidel Castro's regime and a peaceful transition to democracy. Today, Cuba remains under totalitarian rule, with Castro still firmly in power. The real victims of our policies

are the 11 million innocent Cuban men, women, and children. Our embargo has exacerbated already-miserable living conditions for Cuban citizens. Cuba's economy has suffered because it is prohibited from exporting goods to the U.S. In addition, most Cubans have very limited access to American products. Moreover, our policies restrict Americans' right to travel freely to Cuba, making exchange between our two cultures essentially impossible.
There are many other countries whose governments are not freely elected. Yet none of our policies toward these nations resemble our treatment of Cuba.

With the Cold War over and Cuba posing no threat to the U.S.. there is no justification for our outdated approach to Cuba. To make matters worse, we are spending extraordinary resources to enforce the embargo resources that could be used to secure our nation against terrorism.
It's time for a fundamental change in our Cuba policy. We can start by ending the trade embargo and by lifting the ban on travel to Cuba by American citizens. Only by engaging the Cuban people, and by building

bridges between our citizens and theirs, will we succeed in bringing freedom and democracy to our neighbor. Lifting travel ban essentialCuban culture similar to U.S.-- Constitutional American rights Duran 09-- Alfredo Duran, Cuban Committee for Democracy, lawyer and an advocate for dialogue as a way to
bring regime change in Cuba (in an interview with Duran, Possible Cuba Policy Changes Spark Debate, PBS Newshour, 4/8/9, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june09/cubadebate_04-08.html, Accessed 7/3/12, jtc) I think that it's very important the moment that the Cubans' family, the Cubans in Cuba start receiving substantial aid from their families, it makes the government irrelevant. They don't need the government to be able to subsist and to resolve their problems. That is one of the most important things that can happen out of the Cuban-Americans traveling. And I think that we must go further than that. We must absolutely lift all restrictions for Americans to travel to Cuba. It's a constitutional right of all Americans to be -- it must be protected under the laws of this country. And I think that if Cuban-Americans are allowed to go, Americans should be allowed to go. And I think that's going to have a tremendous impact, because the travel of Americans is not like the travel of Europeans or Canadians. Cubans play baseball; they don't play hockey. And our cultural nearness is very similar. You go to Cuba right now, and it's like the Russians had never gone by there. You go to Cuba right now, and you still can feel the influence of our American tradition in the past and our cultural nearness. So I think it's important that travel be permitted. I think I would wish that Obama would go further than that; I don't think it will. I think that the United States, Cuba is not a top priority right now, and I think first he's going to deal with the economy and with the Middle East and Iraq, Iran, and all of that, unfortunately.

Embargo restricts Americans freedom of movement

Lloyd 11-Delia Lloyd, (a writer based in London. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The International
Herald Tribune, and The Financial Times. Previously,she worked as a producer at Chicago Public Radio and taught political science at the University of Chicago, Ten Reasons to Lift the Cuba Embargo, Politics Daily, http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/08/24/ten-reasons-to-lift-the-cuba-embargo/, June 27, 2013, KH)

10. It restricts Americans' freedom of movement. Cuba is the only country in the world where Americans are restricted by their own government from visiting freely. Yes, that's right. It's easier to go to North Korea (from the American end of things) than it is to travel to our Caribbean neighbor. In a country whose "great American novelist" -- that would be Jonathan Franzen -- just published a national epic titled "Freedom," one need not underscore this irony. Embargo theory hypocritical 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.h tml, accessed: 7/3/13, LR)

WASHINGTON -- Most Americans seem to reject the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba. According to a Washington Post/ABC poll, 57 percent of Americans now oppose the policy. A survey by Bendixen & Associates shows that only 42 percent of Cuban-Americans continue to back it. I have been conflicted on this issue for years. Until not long ago, I favored the embargo. As an advocate for free trade, I would normally have called such a measure an unacceptable restriction on the freedom of people to trade with whomever they pleased. But I thought that trading with a regime that had killed, jailed, exiled or muzzled countless of its citizens for decades was not a worthy objective, as it would also preserve that dictatorship. Any transaction with Cuba would also benefit the government. After all, the authorities were already skimming 20 percent of the remittances from Cuban-Americans and 90 percent of the salary paid to Cubans by non-American foreign investors. Eventually, I admitted to myself that there was an intolerable inconsistency in my thinking. No democracy based on liberty should tell its citizens what country to visit or whom to trade with, regardless of the government under which they live. Even though the Castro brothers, Fidel and Raul, would obtain a political victory in the very short run, the embargo could no longer be justified.

Economy

Private Companies I/L

Privatization creates competitive labor markets that solves government exploitation Seiglie 01 Carlos Seiglie - Associate Professor of Economics at Rutgers University,(Cubas Road to
Serfdom,cato.org,winter/2001,http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/2001/1/cj20n3-6.pdf,Accessed:7/3/13,JW)

Creating a free labor market in Cuba would benefit Cuban workers by increasing their real wages and increasing the number of jobs . The net gain to society from this change in policy would be quite large. As the
government permited workers to deal directly with foreign firms, the equilibrium wage and the level of employment would rise, which would increase production. The net gain to society is measured by the difference between this increase in output and the opportunity cost of the incremental workers hired (see Harberger 1971). Stated differently, the

Cuban governments current policy of not permitting Cuban workers to deal directly with foreign firms imposes a deadweight loss on society. The size of the deadweight loss can be estimated as follows. Suppose that the average monthly wage received by the Cuban
government per worker employed in joint ventures is $500.00 as reported. At the current exchange rate, the average Cuban worker receives approximately $14.00 a month of this from the state. The most conservative estimate is that 75,000 workers are employed in joint enterprises. Furthermore, suppose the uncompensated wage elasticity of hours worked (elasticity of labor supply) is 0.5. Then, assuming the supply and demand for labor are linear, the

loss in production is $16 million dollars a month or $192 million dollars a year below where it would be if the government permitted a competitive labor market to exist that resulted in Cuban wages rising to $50 a month or to a $600 annual salary. The deadweight loss to society is
$170 million dollars a year. If competitive labor market conditions raised average Cuban wages to $100 a month or to a $1,200 annual salary, the estimates

for the loss in production from failing to enact this policy rises to $27.5 million a month or $331 million dollars annually. This amount is twice the annual amount invested in Cuba by foreigners over the last decade. The social welfare losses from continuing the current policy would be $268 million dollars annually. These estimates rise dramatically if we assume that the wage elasticity of hours
worked is higher than 0.5. It is clear that Cuba is paying a high price for regressing to serfdom. Yet, as large as this cost may be, it is only a fraction of the total cost that the governments policy imposes on society. The reason is that for

the state to remain a monopsonist in the labor market and, therefore, to continue to extract the rents granted by having this privileged position, it has been essential for the state to deny Cubans the right to freedom of contract in the labor market and the right to own private property. If the government enacted the economically sound policy of massive privatization, labor markets would become competitive. The governments monopsony
power would break down since each worker would have the option of either working at the governments lower wageseeking individually or collectively to buy out some state-owned firm and become the recipient of the residual incomeor instead work for some other domestic private firm that offers them higher compensation, possibly in the form of an equity stake in the enterprise. The

power of the Cuban government to exploit the workers would therefore be eliminated. Finally, it should be pointed out that since the
current policy reduces the level of employment, the marginal productivity of capital and return to capital (net of risk) is currently lower in Cuba than it would be if the Castro government initiated the appropriate reforms. Cuba

cannot develop economically if it continues to permit only foreigners, and not its citizens, to own private property. Granting workers the right to own property will result in an increase in saving and development of the capital markets. Equally, reforming the capital markets so that all Cubans may borrow and lend will lead to the development of small businesses which are so essential in achieving a high level of development. Privatization is key to the Cuban economy Seiglie 01 Carlos Seiglie - Associate Professor of Economics at Rutgers University,(Cubas Road to
Serfdom,cato.org,winter/2001,http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/2001/1/cj20n3-6.pdf,Accessed:7/3/13,JW)

Creating a free labor market in Cuba would benefit Cuban workers by increasing their real wages and increasing the number of jobs . The net gain to society from this change in policy would be quite large. As the
government permited workers to deal directly with foreign firms, the equilibrium wage and the level of employment would rise, which would increase production. The net gain to society is measured by the difference between this increase in output and the opportunity cost of the incremental workers hired (see Harberger 1971). Stated differently, the

Cuban governments current policy of not

permitting Cuban workers to deal directly with foreign firms imposes a deadweight loss on society. The size of the deadweight loss can be estimated as follows. Suppose that the average monthly wage received by the Cuban
government per worker employed in joint ventures is $500.00 as reported. At the current exchange rate, the average Cuban worker receives approximately $14.00 a month of this from the state. The most conservative estimate is that 75,000 workers are employed in joint enterprises. Furthermore, suppose the uncompensated wage elasticity of hours worked (elasticity of labor supply) is 0.5. Then, assuming the supply and demand for labor are linear, the

loss in production is $16 million dollars a month or $192 million dollars a year below where it would be if the government permitted a competitive labor market to exist that resulted in Cuban wages rising to $50 a month or to a $600 annual salary. The deadweight loss to society is
$170 million dollars a year. If competitive labor market conditions raised average Cuban wages to $100 a month or to a $1,200 annual salary, the estimates

for the loss in production from failing to enact this policy rises to $27.5 million a month or $331 million dollars annually. This amount is twice the annual amount invested in Cuba by foreigners over the last decade. The social welfare losses from continuing the current policy would be $268 million dollars annually. These estimates rise dramatically if we assume that the wage elasticity of hours
worked is higher than 0.5. It is clear that Cuba is paying a high price for regressing to serfdom. Yet, as large as this cost may be, it is only a fraction of the total cost that the governments policy imposes on society. The reason i s that for

the state to remain a monopsonist in the labor market and, therefore, to continue to extract the rents granted by having this privileged position, it has been essential for the state to deny Cubans the right to freedom of contract in the labor market and the right to own private property. If the government enacted the economically sound policy of massive privatization, labor markets would become competitive. The governments monopsony
power would break down since each worker would have the option of either working at the governments lower wageseeking individually or collectively to buy out some state-owned firm and become the recipient of the residual incomeor instead work for some other domestic private firm that offers them higher compensation, possibly in the form of an equity stake in the enterprise. The

power of the Cuban government to exploit the workers would therefore be eliminated. Finally, it should be pointed out that since the
current policy reduces the level of employment, the marginal productivity of capital and return to capital (net of risk) is currently lower in Cuba than it would be if the Castro government initiated the appropriate reforms. Cuba

cannot develop economically if it continues to permit only foreigners, and not its citizens, to own private property. Granting workers the right to own property will result in an increase in saving and development of the capital markets. Equally, reforming the capital markets so that all Cubans may borrow and lend will lead to the development of small businesses which are so essential in achieving a high level of development. Private sector undermines government social divide Burnett 7/6/13 Victoria Burnett, writer for the New York Times. (Slowly, Cuba Is Developing an Appetite for
Spending, The New York Times, 7/6/13, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/world/americas/slowly-cuba-isdeveloping-an-appetite-for-spending.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0, accessed: 7/6/13, amf) On the positive side, the private sector is raising the quality of services, said Lenier Gonzlez, coeditor of Espacio Laical, a magazine financed by the Roman Catholic Church. But it is not linked to the production of tangible goods, he added. Its just money in a closed circuit. Unless the government stimulates production and raises state salaries, the social fissure will widen, Mr. Gonzlez said. The country is fractured, he said. There are people who have money and people who dont. Nowadays, its more obvious. Whether this newfound prosperity some Cubans are feeling will last,

Cubas new spenders are a good source of business.

Lifting Embargo Key: Economy General

Lifting the Embargo key for both economies Seiglie 01 Carlos Seiglie - Associate Professor of Economics at Rutgers University,(Cubas Road to
Serfdom,cato.org,winter/2001,http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/2001/1/cj20n3-6.pdf,Accessed:7/3/13,JW)

Fines against U.S. and foreign companies and individuals who have violated the embargo have climbed from $89 million in 2011 to $622 million in 2012. If US Americans were allowed to travel to Cuba as tourists, Cubans can earn thousands of dollars, which they could spend on US products, especially farm goods. The American Farm Bureau estimates that US farmers and ranchers are looking at an agricultural market worth $1 billion in Cuba . In addition to this, the embargo is suppressing another $250 million that could be made through the exports of fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides and other farming machinery to Cuba. In a study conducted by the US International Trade Commission (USITC), it was calculated that the embargo costs American firms $700 million to $1.2 billion per year. Cuba is also the 5th largest export market in Latin America for US farm exports. In fact, in 2004, American farmers sold more to Cuba than Brazil. It is estimated that if restrictions on financing of US agricultural exports and travel of US citizens to Cuba were lifted, the US would make large gains among the 16 commodity groups (wheat, rice, corn, animal feed, soybeans, fats
and oils, dry beans, poultry, beef, pork, milk powder, other dairy, processed foods, fish products, forest products and other food products). In 2000, after the implementation of the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act, the US became the largest agricultural exporter to Cuba. The US exported $392million worth of agricultural goods in 2000 alone, which was 42% of Cubas total imports. According to the USITC U.S. restrictions on travel to Cuba limited the number of Americans traveling to Cuba to fewer than 200,000 in 2005 and reduced the amount of U.S. dollar remittances to Cuba from Cuban-Americans. A large proportion of these remittance dollars received by Cuban citizens are spent on U.S. agricultural products. The Commission estimated that without

the travel sanctions, Americans travel by to Cuba would increase from 171,000 to between about 554,000 and 1.1 million in the short term. Since these American visitors could, to some extent, displace current foreign tourists in Cuba, the net effect in the short term
is a potential annual increase in additional tourist visits to Cuba of between 226,000 and 538,000.

Lifting embargo boosts economies of both countries Rangel 11-Charles Rangel, the U.S. Representative for New York's 13th congressional district. A member of the
Democratic Party, he is the third-longest currently serving member of the House of Representatives, serving consistently since 1971. As its most senior member, he is also the Dean of New York's congressional delegation. Rangel was the first African-American Chair of the influential House Ways and Means Committee. He is also a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus.(Time To Lift Travel Ban, Embargo And Increase Trading With Cuba, Rangel House, May 12, 2011, http://rangel.house.gov/press-release/rangel-time-lift-travel-ban-embargoand-increase-trading-cuba, June 28, 2013, KH) According to a 2009 U.S. International Trade Commission Report, the effect of lifting trade restrictions on Cuba would increase U.S. exports to that nation from approximately $924 billion to $1.2 trillion, an increase of anywhere from $216 to $478 million dollars. The boost to tourism and travel as a result of lifting travel limits would significantly increase Cuban demand for agricultural and commercial products and allow for the purchase of more U.S. products,
according to the report.

US Should lift the embargo- key to trade, medicine, economy, and technology Stern 12- Scott Stern, Writer and editor for the Yale Daily, Branford college (STERN: Lift the Cuban Embargo,
2/10/12, http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2012/02/10/stern-lift-the-cuba-embargo/, Accessed: 7/3/13, zs) When you own a cow in Cuba, you can drink its milk, but you may not slaughter it, said Patricia Alejandro 12, who was born in Cuba and is a member of Yales Cuban American Undergraduate Student Association. When they wanted to buy beef, Alejandros family had to pay 40 or 50 convertible units two or three months salary. A pair of jeans or sandals cost more than one months salary. Countless other goods were also prohibitively expensive including sugar, the national crop of Cuba, yet one so overpriced that few Cubans can actually enjoy it. Fifty years ago Tuesday, President John F. Kennedys Proclamation 3447 entered into full force, and all trade

between the United States and Cuba was prohibited. The measure dramatically tightened what had been a partial economic embargo against Cuba and the harsher measure continues to this day. The embargo was initially enacted after Fidel Castro took power and the Cuban government nationalized American holdings in Cuba. The embargo prohibits American citizens from doing business with Cuba, visiting (except under exceptional circumstances) and, until 2000, even providing humanitarian aid. The embargos extraterritorial provisions also make it extremely difficult for Cuba to do business with other countries. The embargo has stunted the Cuban economy and limited Cubans access to good
food, modern technology and useful medicine. It has also hurt the United States relationships with other countries the European Parliament actually passed a law making it illegal for Europeans to comply with certain parts of the embargo. The purpose of the embargo was undeniably to make life so difficult for Cubans that they would see the error of their ways and expel Castro and communism. The United States government has

maintained for 50 years that it will not do business with Cuba until it learns to respect human rights and liberty. There is a pretty serious problem with this plan: It hasnt worked. Beyond the fact
that Castro is still in power and Cuba is still not a democracy, the embargo has not truly succeeded in sewing resentment into the hearts and minds of the Cuban people. The embargo allows Castro to make the United States and the embargo the scapegoats for all of Cubas ills. It also forces Cuba to rely on countries like the former USSR, China and Venezuela for trade. The appalling hypocrisy of the embargo is that the United States nearly always maintained diplomatic and economic relationships with countries like Russia, China and Vietnam even during the heart of the Cold War. Numerous influential people have come out against the Cuban embargo, including Pope John Paul II, Jesse Jackson and George Schultz. They all claim that the embargo hurts the Cuban people, not the Cuban government. Democratic politicians Gary Hart, George McGovern and Jimmy Carter have also expressed this view. It is interesting to note, however, that Hart and McGovern only became vocal enemies of the embargo long after their presidential runs. Politicians are scared openly to oppose the embargo. The CubanAmerican population is an exceptionally powerful and vocal voting bloc, and many Cuban-Americans support the embargo out of sheer hatred of Castro. These Cuban exiles whose votes are so important, particularly in Florida have pushed nearly every major politician away from normalizing relations with Cuba. As Hart wrote on his blog last year - years after leaving politics, of course the embargo is a straight-jacket whereby first-

generation Cuban-Americans wielded inordinate political power over both parties and constructed a veto over rational, mature diplomacy.
It would be highly inaccurate, however, to foist the blame for the embargos persistence upon the Cuban -American population. American politicians across the political spectrum are to blame for their intransigence and their unwillingness to challenge the status quo. The embargo is not a major political issue, so politicians are just too apathetic to engage with it. I will be the first to admit that this is an irritatingly complex issue and one that only an expert could fully understand. My limited understanding of the embargo against Cuba is based on research and interviews, not personal experience. And yet it is easy for anyone to note that covering our eyes and pretending we cant see Castro wont make him go away. There is, however, hope. Recent public opinion polls show an

overwhelming majority of Americans support at least re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba. President Obama has relaxed some of the harsh travel restrictions against Cuba and shown signs of favoring
the normalization of relations there as well. Cuba, too, has shown a willingness to change, highlighted by its recent legalization of the private sale of real estate. It is time for the embargo to end.

50 years late is better than never. Lifting trade embargo key to economy Franks 12 Jeff Franks, writer at Reuters (Cuba says ending U.S. embargo would help both countries, Reuters,
9/20/12, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/20/us-cuba-usa-embargo-idUSBRE88J15G20120920, accessed: 6/27/13, ckr)

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

(Reuters) - Both the

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. Obama, who said early in his presidency that he wanted to recast long-hostile U.S.-Cuba relations,
has been a disappointment to the Cuban government, which expected him to do more to dismantle the embargo.

Enormous economic benefits for Cuba and the U.S. after lifting the embargo Bandow 12 Doug Bandow, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, specializing in foreign policy and civil liberties [Time to End the Cuba
Embargo, The Cato Institute, 12/11/12, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/time-end-cuba-embargo, accessed: 7/3/13, JK] Ending the embargo would have obvious economic benefits for both Cubans and Americans. The

U.S. International Trade Commission estimates American losses alone from the embargo as much as $1.2 billion annually. Expanding economic opportunities also might increase pressure within Cuba for further economic reform. So far the regime has taken small steps, but rejected significant change. Moreover, thrusting more Americans into Cuban society could help undermine the ruling system. Despite Fidel Castros decline, Cuban
politics remains largely static. A few human rights activists have been released, while Raul Castro has used party purges to entrench loyal elites. Lifting the embargo would be no panacea. Other

countries invest in and trade with Cuba to no obvious political impact. And the lack of widespread economic reform makes it easier for the regime rather than the people to collect the benefits of trade, in contrast to China. Still, more U.S. contact would have an impact. Argued trade specialist Dan Griswold, 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. The Castro dictatorship ultimately will end up in historys dustbin. But it will continue to cause much human
hardship along the way. The Heritage Foundations John Sweeney complained nearly two decades ago that the United States must not abandon the Cuban people by relaxing or lifting the trade embargo against the communist regime. But the dead hand of half a century of failed policy is the worst breach of faith with the Cuban people. Lifting

sanctions would be a victory not for Fidel Castro, but for the power of free people to spread liberty. As Griswold argued, commercial engagement is the best way to encourage more open societies abroad. Of course, there are no guarantees. But lifting the embargo would have a greater likelihood of success than continuing a policy which has failed. Some day the Cuban people will be free. Allowing more contact with Americans likely would make that day come sooner. Cuba says ending US embargo would help both the US and Cuba. Franks 12 - Jeff Franks, staff writer for Reuters [Cuba says ending U.S. embargo would help both
countries, Reuters, 9/20/12, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/20/us-cuba-usa-embargo-idUSBRE88J15G20120920, accessed: 7/2/13, JK] (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 muchneeded 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. Many benefits to deeper US Cuba relations econ especially Raul 10 Jose Raul, Director, Americas Department at U.S. Chamber of Commerce,
Executive Director at Association of American Chambers of Commerce in Latin America, Adjunct Professor at The George Washington University [The United States and Cuba: Implications of an Economic Relationship , Wilson Center, 8/6/10, http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/LAP_Cuba_Implications.pdf, accessed: 7/4/13, JK]

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 Jos Ral 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 Consensus that lifting the embargo mutually beneficial Brinkley 12 Joel Brinkley, Hearst Professional in Residence for the journalism program at Stanford
University, a position he assumed in 2006 after a 23-year career with The New York Times. There he served as a reporter, editor and Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent. He writes a weekly op-ed column on foreign policy. He is a native of Washington, D.C., and a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (Cuba Embargo Isn't Working But Isn't Going Away, Politico, December 18, 2012, http://www.politico.com/story/2012/12/cuba-embargo-isnt-working-but-isnt-going-away85281.html, accessed: 6/28/13, LR)

Americas embargo on Cuba began its 53rd year this fall, and its hard to find anyone who thinks its working. Even Cuban-Americans who hate the Castro brothers and fervently insist that the embargo remain in place generally agree that it has accomplished little, if anything.
Still, said Jaime Suchlicki, a Cuban migr who is the director of the Cuba Transition Project at the University of Miami, do you give away a policy that has been in place for 50 years, whether you think its right or wrong, good or bad, effective or not for nothing? Without a quid pro quo from Cuba?

Suchlicki came to the United States in the first wave of Cuban refugees in 1960 after the communist revolution. His hardline views mirror those of many in his generation. And for decades, it dominated the Cuba discussion in Florida, a state presidential candidates have long believed they need to win to be elected. But today the Cuban-American population is more diverse, as the U.S. presidential election last month showed. Previously, Cuban-Americans regularly voted in favor of Republicans, who are generally staunch embargo supporters, by 4 to 1. This time, President Barack Obama won half their vote. Now an argument can be made that if the half-century of political paralysis on this issue can be overcome , both Cuba and the United States would benefit. American tourists would most likely pour into Cuba,

buying cigars, staying in beachfront hotels spending money in the Cuban economy. And American businesses would find an eager new market for a range of products beyond the food and medicine they are already authorized to sell. We cannot afford an obsolete ideological war against Cuba, Richard Slatta, a history professor at North Carolina State University who specializes in Latin America, wrote in an op-ed last month. The embargo
against Cuba denies North Carolina businesses and farmers access to a major, proximate market.

Plan spurs economic growth in both countries 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-reasonsto-lift-the-cuba-embargo/, accessed: 7/3/13, LR)
1. It's

good economics. It's long been recognized that opening up Cuba to American investment would be a huge boon to the tourism industry in both countries. According to the Cuban government, 250,000 CubanAmericans visited from the United States in 2009, up from roughly 170,000 the year before, suggesting a pent-up demand. Lifting the embargo would also be an enormous boon the U.S. agricultural sector. One 2009 study estimated that doing away with all financing and travel restrictions on U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba would have boosted 2008 dairy sales to that country from $13 million to between $39 million and $87 million, increasing U.S. market share from 6 percent to between 18 and 42 percent.

Lifting embargo key to trade and econ 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-thetime-to-lift-the-us-embargo-on-cuba/article6790494/, accessed: 6/27/13, LR)

Now that the election is over, the United States has a rare opportunity to do away with one of its most pointless and ineffective foreign policies the embargo of Cuba that is as obsolete as the cool 1950s and 1960s sedans still
running on the streets of Havana. Just a few weeks ago, U.S. President Barack Obama sat down with leaders in Myanmar, an international pariah for many years with a military responsible for thousands of civilian deaths. The United States now trades actively with Vietnam, which remains under the control of the same Communist Party against whom it once fought and lost a terrible war. The U.S. has a normal, albeit complex, diplomatic and commercial relationship with China, another Communist country. Yet, Cuba is still treated as a pariah, a bizarre relic of the Cold

Americans would have full access to Cubas rich culture and natural beauty, and some new trade and investment opportunities. Cuba would have expanded economic options, which it needs to improve the material well-being of its citizens. The U.S.
War. I just returned from a visit there and realized that lifting the embargo would be to both countries advantage. has had normal diplomatic and commercial relationships with regimes and despots of all stripes from Mobutu in Zaire to Mubarak in Egypt. The list is long. So what makes Cuba so special? Is it because it is so close to the continental United States? No the U.S. has had a good, if testy, formal relationship with Mexico for many years, including when it was a one-party state. Is

it because Cuba poses a military threat? Maybe, once upon a time. But if Americans got over the Vietnam War, they surely can put the Cuban (or was that Soviet?) missile crisis behind them, especially since the U.S. now has quite a normal relationship with Russia. What about a security threat? Arguably, almost every country could be wittingly or unwittingly harboring extremist plotters. Somehow, though, I dont

think al-Qaeda operatives are drinking mojitos on Cuban beaches. Cuba loosened its ban on organized religion
some time ago, but imagining either the government or its people sympathetic to Islamic fundamentalism is quite a stretch. Is it because Cuba lacks economic opportunities for U.S. business? Granted, its not a potential powerhouse such as Russia, China or even Vietnam for commercial purposes. But the U.S. has maintained good relationships (and made money) with many small, poor countries. Whats one more? Is it because Americans are standing on principle over Cubas human -rights record or strident rhetoric? Its hard to argue this when the White House has entertained leaders of countries with even worse records and positions. Moreover, many of those countries do not have education, health-care or food systems that reach the poor. Cuba does, although increasingly it is a challenge. Of course, America should care about human rights and, along with that, everyone should have access to adequate food, education and health care. But sadly, none of these reasons explain why the U.S.

the real reason is because of a small vocal minority (Cuban-American exiles and their families) who happen to be clustered in an electoral swing state (Florida) that gives them political
keeps a strict embargo on Cuba and has no diplomatic relationship with it. No, clout. Some say the attitudes of the younger generation are softening toward Cuba. Does Washington really need to wait another generation or two?

Lifting embargo improves US and Cuban economies Harding and Rojas-Ruiz 12 Andrew Harding and Jorge Rojas-Ruiz, research associates on the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (An Economic Analysis of the Cuban Embargo, Council on the Hemispheric Affairs, 8/24/12, Proquest, Accessed 7/3/13, AM) As of 2010, the 11 million inhabitants of the island of Cuba have an average GDP per capita of $9,900 USD. Agriculture, industry, and services constituted 4, 20.8, and 75.2 percent of Cuba's economy, respectively. Aside from a strong health care services industry, the country has an unsophisticated commodity sector and lacks many of the value-added and technical products of other countries. Observers debate the actual cost of the embargo on U.S. and Cuban economies. In 2009, several United States business organizations as well as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce signed a letter urging President Obama to remove the Cuban embargo. The letter stated that the embargo costs the U.S. $1.2 billion USD every year. According to the Cuba Policy Foundation (CPF), the total cost is actually much higher at $4.84 billion USD per year "in lost sales and exports." On the other hand, the Cuban government estimates the country loses about $685 million USD every year due to the embargo. According to an analysis from Johns Hopkins University, the misguided use of this antiquated economic weapon costs U.S. businesses over $30 billion USD in trade between 1959 and 1992. Cuba's Institute of Economic Research stated that Cuba lost an estimated amount of $28.6 billion USD during that same period. In either case, the embargo has led to millions of dollars in missed opportunities both sides and has forestalled economic development in Cuba. Oil Although it lacks access to some vital imports, Cuba still possesses other ways to bolster its economy. With current levels of production at 53,690 bbl/day (2010 est.) Cuba's oil industry has plenty of room to grow, especially since Havana imports two-thirds of its oil from Venezuela, costing Cuba over $3 billion USD a year. Cuba's oil industry has had many hard lessons over the past 20 years since the collapse of the USSR and the 2003 Venezuelan oil strike severely impacting the economy. Despite the fuel provided by sympathetic Venezuela, the diversification of oil imports is sorely needed. Internal Reform The problems in the Cuban oil industry and the wider economy stem from policies initiated under the communist leadership of the Castro regime and the terms of the United States' half-century embargo. Exclusion from the world's largest economy in the world imposed high costs and caused large distortions to the already weakened economy after the Castros took power. The embargo notwithstanding, Havana must initiate the advancement of Cuba's economy into its own hands by continuing the reforms begun in 1993 to remove tariffs, quotas, restrictions on civil liberties, as well as to institute solid property rights, encourage private investment, and allow citizens to pursue entrepreneurial activities. Yet such reforms will not have a chance to succeed unless United States gives the Cubans an opportunity for growth and development. By lifting the embargo, the United States would take a step forward in promoting a brighter future for the Cuban people. The Double Standard: A Case Study

Lifting the embargo increases economic activity and revenue Landau 1/29 Saul Landua, professor at California State University Pomona, fellow at Insitute for Policy
Studies and Nelson Vandela, professor at University of Mexico (Economics of Cuban embargo, Counter Punch, 1/29/13, http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/01/29/the-economics-of-the-cuban-embargo/, Accessed 1/27/13)

The time has come and almost gone for Washington to repair its broken relations with Cuba. For 53 years the White House has maintained a punishing embargo on trade with Cuba. Its proponents, with the goal of removing Cubas revolutionary government, still plead: give it time. In 2001 President George W. Bush allowed for an exception permitting US companies to sell agricultural products to Cuba for immediate payment, although imports from Cuba remained off limits. Other economic sectors received no benefits. Cuban Americans particularly from south Florida now export goods and remittances to relatives and friends while importing profits from sales made to fellow Cubans in Cuba, giving them an advantage denied to the rest of the country. Washington pundits attribute superhuman strength to the anti-Castro lobby; thus no President would attempt to lift the trade and travel embargoes on the island. Yet, Cuban Americans trade with and travel to Cuba freely on a daily basis. The embargo applies to everyone except Cuban Americans. This growing international trade, disguised as sending goods to needy family members in Cuba, now includes filling the hulls on 10 or more daily charter flights from US cities to Cuba. Cuban Americans send goods, often with mules, to provide family members in Cuba, needing supplies for their businesses. The mules return with cash, derived from sales of these goods. Some of the new Cuban stores and restaurants supplied by Miami-based Cubans make substantial profits, some of which get spent in Cuba, and ends up in Cubas central bank. Miami, the United States poorest large city, derives income because it provides jobs involved in buying and selling the goods sent to Cuba. Jobs also arise from routine tasks created around the daily charter flights to and from Cuba, and the fees collected from take offs and landings. Add to this, the work for accountants, book-keepers and others. Some unemployed Cuban Americans get jobs as mules transporting the goods and money from one country to the other. Miami banks also benefit. In Cuba, this trade also creates jobs and wealth. Mercedes runs a paladar [private restaurant]in Havanas Vedado neighborhood, because we draw tourists who like good food, which I serve at my paladar. Some paladar customers flew to Havana from Miami. These Cuban Americans come to visit relatives and maybe check on their new investments in Havana family-run businesses. Relatives in Florida supply me with food I cant get easily in Cuba, Mercedes said, like some spices, and packaged goods. I send them money for these products. They make a profit, and so do I. The government makes money from taxes I pay, and jobs grow in Cubas tourist industry. US-based charter flights have full hulls, even those with few passengers. One charter flight company manager told us: Passengers dont matter that much. The hull is totally full. Much of the Cuba trade flows through the Miami International Airport, meaning capital moves from the US to Cuba; most of the luggage contents, however, remain in Cuba. The boon to Miami airport services means jobs, fees and taxes, which remain as capital in south Florida. The goods purchased in south Florida by Cubans (relatives, mules, etc) benefit local businesses. This trade multiplies jobs throughout the area as well as it does for Cuba: In Miami sales emanate from stores and lead to jobs in transportation, parking, hotel facilities, restaurants, and luggage-handling. Count the businesses providing services to the people traveling to Cuba and sending goods there. Dont omit the expanded police force, and extra officials required in immigration, and customs; nor fail to consider jobs servicing air planes, and their jetways, and additional personnel needed for landings and take offs, and extra

jobs in airport administration and maintenance created by expanded travel. Think of Miamis increased tax revenues. South Florida represents a Cuban settler state within the United States. It counters its interests against those of the dominant society, with the societys ignorant acquiescence. The Miami-based Cuban Americans and their Cuba-based families have used USCuba policy, the embargo representing the power of the nation for their own self-interest, and in order to attain a comparative advantage vis a vis the rest of the American population. Since 1960, commitment to overthrow of the Cuban government has functioned as US foreign policy on Cuba, a policy now controlled informally by south Florida Cuban-Americans. The Cuban American ethnic enclave assumed the political power needed to turn south Florida into an autonomous Cuban settler state inside US boundaries, so that the embargo does not get applied to the Cuban American enclave. The enclave barons use the embargo to secure, for themselves, a protection of the Cuba trade monopoly. This challenges stated US national interests. Camouflaged by ubiquitous anti-Castro rhetoric, the Cuban American entrepreneurs have manufactured a lucrative business with the island, regulated by the very government they pretend to hate. The rightwing congressional representatives pretend to fight for every law to punish the Castro regime while in practice turn a dead eye to the growing trade that helps Floridas and Cubas economy. Preserve the embargo, but make an exception for Cuban Americans. By recognizing the facts about this trade, the White House might become inspired to lift the embargo a move to benefit all Americans. US government revenue would grow from opening trade and travel with Cuba. In the process we might also regain a missing piece of US sovereignty! Time to End the Cuba Embargo

Lifting Embargo Key: US Economy

Embargo hurts the US economy and American interests 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/itstime-for-the-u-s-to-end-its-senseless-embargo-of-cuba/, 7/2/13, CAS) 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 USowned networks close to its shores.

Lifting the Embargo improves US economy and global image Franks 12- Jeff Franks, writer at Reuters, (Cuba says ending U.S. embargo would help both countries, 9/20/12, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/20/us-cuba-usaembargo-idUSBRE88J15G20120920, 7/4/13, CAS) 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. Obama, who said early in his presidency that he wanted to recast long-hostile U.S.-Cuba relations, has been a disappointment to the Cuban government, which expected him to do more to dismantle the embargo. He has lifted some restrictions on travel and all on the sending of remittances to the island, but Rodriguez said he has broadened the embargo and its enforcement in other areas. Fines against U.S. and foreign companies and individuals who have violated the embargo have climbed from $89 million in 2011 to $622 million so far this year, he said.

Lifting Embargo will put 2-3 billion into economy and help enhance US energy security Alexander 01, Brian Alexander, Strategy Consultant at Legislative Analytics Workshop
Adjunct Instructor at George Mason University Trustee at Cuba Policy Foundation, (LIFTING U.S. EMBARGO AGAINST CUBA COULD RESULT IN $2 BILLION TO $3 BILLION ANNUALLY FOR U.S. ENERGY INDUSTRY, ACCORDING TO NEW REPORT BY TWO OF NATIONS TOP ENERGY ECONOMISTS, Cuba policy foundation, December 17, 2001, http://www.cubafoundation.org/CPF-Release-EnergyStudy.htm, Accessed July 2, 2013, KH) December 17, 2001, Washington - Lifting the U.S. embargo against Cuba could provide U.S. energy firms $2 billion to $3 billion annually in new revenue. Thats the conclusion of a new report, The Potential for the U.S. Energy Sector in Cuba, by two of the
nations leading energy industry economists: Amy Myers Jaffe, senior energy adviser at the James A. Baker III Institute for P ublic Policy at Rice University, and Ronald Soligo, a Rice University professor of economics who specializes in economic growth as well as in Latin America. In their report released today, which they wrote as independent consultants, Jaffe and Soligo state the embargo is blocking promising ventures that could help enhance U.S. energy security, create a diversified energy supply for Florida, and help ease an expected shortage in U.S. local refining capacity. The report was commissioned by the Cuba Policy Foundation, a Washington, D.C.- based organization led by senior diplomats from Republican Administrations who believe lifting the embargo against Cuba would be in

Americas best economic and national interests, as well as hasten democratic reform on the island.

Studies conducted by the Cuba Study Group and the Council of the Americas show that lifting the embargo would boost the US economy. Goodman 13 - Joshua Goodman, economic and political reporter for Bloomberg based in Latin America [Obama Can Bend Cuba
Embargo to Help Open Economy, Groups Say, Bloomberg, 2/20/13, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-20/obama-should-bend-cubaembargo-to-buoy-free-markets-reports-say.html, accessed: 7/3/13, JK] President Barack Obama should

break free of the embargo on Cuba and assert his authority to promote a

free-market overhaul taking place on the communist island. The recommendation is contained in concurrent reports to be published today
by the Cuba Study Group and the Council of the Americas, two groups seeking to end a decades-old deadlock on U.S. policy toward Cuba.

Among steps Obama can take without violating sanctions passed by Congress are opening U.S. markets, as well as authorizing the sale of American goods and services, to the estimated 400,000 private entrepreneurs that have arisen since Cuban President Raul Castro started cutting state payrolls in 2011. The reports also recommend allowing U.S. credit card and insurance companies to provide basic financial services to licensed U.S. travelers to Cuba. Weve been sitting on the sidelines with our hands tied by an antiquated law thats being too strictly
interpreted, said Chris Sabatini, an author of the report and senior policy director for the Council of the Americas, a busi ness-backed group based in New York. Theres more Obama can do to be a catalyst for meaningful economic change. Obama in 2009 allowed companies for the first time to provide communications services to the Caribbean island of 11 million and lifted a travel ban for Cuban-Americans. The loosening of restrictions, while heralded by the White House as a way to undermine the Castro governments control of information, was seen as insufficient by potential investors including Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc.

Lifting embargo allows economic gainsU.S. losing money in SQ Griswold 05 --Daniel Griswold, Director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute (Four
Decades of Failure: The U.S. Embargo against Cuba, 10/12/05, Cato Institute Speeches, http://www.cato.org/publications/speeches/four-decades-failure-us-embargo-against-cuba, Accessed 6/27/13 jtc)

Cuban families are not the only victims of the embargo. Many of the dollars Cubans could earn from U.S. tourists would come back to the United States to buy American products, especially farm goods. In 2000, Congress approved a modest opening of the embargo. The Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000 allows cash-only sales to Cuba of U.S. farm products and medical supplies. The results of this opening have been quite amazing. Since 2000, total sales of farm products to Cuba have increased from virtually zero to $380 million last year. From dead last in U.S. farm export markets, Cuba ranked 25th last year out of 228 countries in total purchases of U.S. farm products. Cuba is now the fifth largest export market in Latin America for U.S. farm exports. American farmers sold more to Cuba last year than to Brazil. Our leading exports to Cuba are meat and poultry,
rice, wheat, corn, and soybeans. The American Farm Bureau estimates that Cuba could eventually become a $1 billion agricultural export market for products of U.S. farmers and ranchers. The

embargo stifles another $250 million in potential annual exports of fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides and tractors. According to a study by the U.S. International Trade Commission, the embargo costs American firms a total of $700 million to $1.2 billion per year.
Farmers in Texas and neighboring states are among the biggest potential winners. One study by Texas A&M University estimated that Texas ranks fifth among states in potential farm exports to Cuba, with rice, poultry, beef and fertilizer the top exports.

Lifting the embargo also saves the US economy several billions of dollars Hanson, Batten, & Ealey 1/16 --- Daniel Hanson, Dayne Batten, and 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 (Daniel Hanson, Dayne Batten & Harrison Ealey,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-itssenseless-embargo-of-cuba/, accessed June 28, 2013, MY)

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 larg est 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 embargo greatly beneficial to US economy and 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.

Lifting Embargo Key: Cuban Economy

Solves Cuban econ main barrier to development GA 12 - General Assembly of the United Nations, (Archaic, Punitive Embargo Must be Consigned to History Books, Say Speakers, as General Assembly, for Twenty-First Year, Demands End to Cuba Blockade Cuban Foreign Minister Sites Embargos Devastating Impact on Development; United States Delegate Says Economic Woes Due to Havanas Own Failed Policies, Transcript of the United Nations Sixty-Seventh General Assembly 35th and 36th Meetings, 11/13/12, http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2012/ga11311.doc.htm, Accessed 7/03/13, AW) As was stated in recent Secretary-Generals report on the matter, the economic damage accumulated over more than 50 years, until 2011, amounted to one trillion six billion dollars. Any sensible person could figure out the living standards and development levels that we could have achieved if we had had those resources available, he added, calling the blockade one of the main causes of Cubas economic problems and the major obstacle to its economic and social development.

Lifting Embargo Key: Agriculture Industry

Lifting Embargo will boost countries economies-especially in agriculture and tourism sector
Lloyd 11-Delia Lloyd, (a writer based in London. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The International
Herald Tribune, and The Financial Times. Previously,she worked as a producer at Chicago Public Radio and taught political science at the University of Chicago, Ten Reasons to Lift the Cuba Embargo, Politics Daily, http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/08/24/ten-reasons-to-lift-the-cuba-embargo/, June 27, 2013, KH)
In that spirit, here are 10 reasons that lifting

the embargo makes sense: 1. It's good economics. It's long been recognized that opening up Cuba to American investment would be a huge boon to the tourism industry in both countries. According to
the Cuban government, 250,000 Cuban-Americans visited from the United States in 2009, up from roughly 170,000 the year before, suggesting a pent-up demand. Lifting the embargo would also be an enormous boon the U.S. agricultural sector. One 2009 study

estimated that doing away with all financing and travel restrictions on U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba would have boosted 2008 dairy sales to that country from $13 million to between $39 million and $87 million, increasing U.S. market share from 6 percent to between 18 and 42 percent.

Solves US economy and sustains growth ag sector Zimmerman 10 CHELSEA A. ZIMMERMAN, Fellow of the Center for The Study of the Presidency and Congress, Member of The Juvenile Rights Project and the Legal Aid Society, Barnard College, (Rethinking The Cuban Trade Embargo: An Opportune Time To Mend a Broken Policy, The Presidency 2010 Fellows, NO DATE (Paper was written in 2010), http://www.thepresidency.org/storage/documents/Fellows2010/Zimmerman.pdf, Accessed 6/27/13, AW) Trade levels between Cuba and the U.S. could reach $5 billion annually by removing the trade embargo, resulting in a boost to American agribusinesses while also helping to alleviate hunger among Cubans.

Lifting Embargo Key: Tourism

Lifting embargo would help US economy by increasing tourism. Griswold 09 - Daniel Griswold, Director of Cato Institutes Center for Trade Policy Studies [The US Embargo of Cuba is a Failure, The
Cato Institute, 6/15/09, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/us-embargo-cuba-is-failure, accessed: 7/3/13, JK] Advocates of the embargo argue that trading with Cuba will only put dollars i nto the coffers of the Castro regime. And its true that the government in Havana, because it controls the economy, can skim off a large share of the remittances and tourist dollars spent in Cuba. But of course, selling

more US products to Cuba would quickly relieve the Castro regime of those same dollars. If more US tourists were permitted to visit Cuba, and at the same time US exports to Cuba were further liberalised, the US economy could reclaim dollars from the Castro regime as fast as the regime could acquire them. In effect, the exchange would be of agricultural products for tourism services, a kind of bread for beaches, food for fun trade relationship. Meanwhile, the increase in Americans visiting Cuba would dramatically increase contact between Cubans and Americans. The unique US-Cuban relationship that flourished before Castro could be renewed, which would increase US influence and potentially hasten the decline of the communist regime. Congress and President Barack Obama should act now to lift the embargo to allow more travel and farm exports to Cuba. Expanding
our freedom to travel to, trade with and invest in Cuba would make Americans better off and would help the Cuban people and speed the day when they can enjoy the freedom they deserve.

Lifting tourism ban creates profits Schlesinger 09-- Robert Schlesinger, managing editor for opinion at U.S. News and World Report, author of
"White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters." (It's Time to End the Cuba Travel Ban (the Embargo Too), U.S. News, 4/1/2009, http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/robert-schlesinger/2009/04/01/its-time-to-endthe-cuba-travel-ban-the-embargo-too, Accessed 7/3/13, jtc)
To be clear: The trade embargo would still be in place, but tourism would be good to go. So a company couldn't do business in Cuba, but any of us could fly down there and flood the place with dollars. It's a start, and I'll take it. Speaking of floods of dollars, the

L.A. Times cites a 2002 study that estimates lifting the travel ban would produced between $1.2 billion and $1.6 billion annually and create as many as 23,000 new jobs. I'll take that too. Of course, much like their nemesis, the
anti-Castro hard-liners in Congress hold on: Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) strongly opposes the measure. He warned that flooding Cuba with tourists and dollars would only sustain the Castro regime. ... Martinez accused the Chamber of Commerce and business interests of seeking profits at the expense of freedom and democracy. "They are not acting from a moral standpoint," he said. "They are simply acting from an economic advantage standpoint." Three points here: The

embargo does more to help the Castro regime than hurt it, by giving the Cuban government a standing excuse for whatever troubles the country has and an enemy against which to rally their citizens. Second, since Senator Martinez is so concerned about morality of international trade, I assume that he plans to introduce legislation imposing a similar trade and travel embargo on China, right? Third, speaking of oppressive governments, Kevin Drum makes a great point about the travel ban: The trade embargo against Cuba has long outlived whatever usefulness it might have had. It accomplishes nothing and has turned us into an international joke. Still, it's well within the bounds of normal
international relations. I don't like it, but it's not fundamentally antidemocratic or an assault on basic freedoms. The travel ban has always been in a separate class. Autocracies and dictatorships control the movements of their subjects, but free citizens of a liberal democracy should be able to travel wherever they want. So whatever happens with the trade embargo, removing the travel ban should be a no-brainer. This is America, not North Korea.

Lifting Embargo Key: Jobs/Business

Lifting the embargo will provide the US with at least 11 million more jobs Atlanta Black Star 12 - Atlanta Black Star News [Cuban Officials Claim $108 Billion Lost to Embargo, Atlanta Black Star,
9/23/12, http://atlantablackstar.com/2012/09/23/cuban-officials-claim-108-billion-lost-to-embargo/, accessed: 7/3/13, JK] Rodriguezs comments were part of a press conference staged by Cuba every year as part of an appeal to the United Nations. Th e UN will vote on a resolution condemning the embargo next month, in what has become an annual event. Last years vote saw 186 countries opposing the embargo, with the United States and Israel standing as the only dissenters. Rodriguez went on to refer to the embargo as a m assive, flagrant and systematic violation of human rights. The

embargo also includes restrictions on travel, forcing Americans to apply for government clearance to visit the country, and preventing American companies from setting up shop in Cuba. In a moment of economic crisis, lifting the blockade would contribute to the United States a totally new market of 11 million people, Rodriguez said. It would generate employment and end the situation in which American companies cannot compete in Cuba. Lifting the embargo solves the Economy--Jobs Ball 12 (chipsball, contributer to Hubpages, Lift Trade Embargo Against Cuba Create U.S. Jobs,
August 2012, http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/100613, Accessed: 7/4/13, EH)
The U.S. Economy needs a "jolt". Lifting the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba would be just the "spark" that could unleash a wave of business from this country less than 90 miles from U.S shores. Cuba needs every U.S. product and service the U.S. could offer to them. There is no reason other than pure politics that is keeping this from occuring. It makes no business sense to allow a ever diminishing group of people in South Florida to prevent a economic boom to the U.S. in the form of trade

with Cuba. Lifting of the trade embargo against Cuba and simultaneous measures to create infrastructure building jobs within the U.S. will result in a substantial increase in manufacturing for struggling U.S.companies (particularly the auto industry)and a substantial decrease in the unemployment rate IMO.
The embargo should have been lifted years ago...the question now is whether or not the Obama Administration has the courage to pursue it.

Lifting the Embargo would help the economy Brinkley 12 (Joel Brinkley, professor of journalism at Stanford University, Puliter Prize-winning former
foreign correspondent for The New York Times, Cuba embargo isnt working but isnt going away, Politico, 12/18/12, http://www.politico.com/story/2012/12/cuba-embargo-isnt-working-but-isnt-going-away85281.html, Accessed: 6/27/13, EH)
Now an argument can be made that if the half-century of political paralysis on this issue can be overcome, both Cuba and

the United States would benefit. American tourists would most likely pour into Cuba, buying cigars, staying in beachfront hotels spending money in the Cuban economy. And American businesses would find a n eager new market for a range of products beyond the food and medicine they are already authorized to sell. We cannot afford an obsolete ideological war against Cuba, Richard Slatta, a history professor at North Carolina State University who specializes in Latin America, wrote in an op-ed last month. The embargo against Cuba denies North Carolina businesses and farmers access to a major, proximate market. Cuba experts say many business leaders, particularly, are making the same case, especially now that the American economy has remained in the doldrums for so long. They add that its an obvious second-term issue; Obama doesnt have to worry about winning Florida again . But for so many people in
Washington, Cuba doesnt matter any more now, said Ted Piccone, deputy director for foreign policy at the Broo kings Institution and a former National Security Council official. Theres no political incentive to change the policy even though the arguments for changing it are rife. Despite ample provocation, the U.S. doesnt impose similar embargoes on other authoritarian states.

Time to life embargo nowwould improve economy by increasing employment and businesses McElvaine 11--Robert S. McElvaine, professor of history at Millsaps College, his most recent book is a 25th
anniversary edition of The Great Depression (Lift the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba, 7/08/11, Los Angeles Times, http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/08/opinion/la-oe-mcelvaine-cuba-20110908/2, Accessed: 6/27/13 jtc) Lifting the embargo would not turn the U.S. economy around. But it would be of marginal assistance to the overall economy and could be of substantial help to businesses and employment in industries that would have significant exports to the island. Cuba is, of course, well known as a living museum of the golden age of the Detroit automotive industry. There is a vast fleet of U.S.-made automobiles on the road here, but none more recent than 1959. In addition to the common Russian-built Ladas, the newer models include Mercedes, BMWs, Nissans, Hyundais just about every car make except those made in the U.S. And even the old American cars here often have new Japanese-made engines in them. An end to the embargo would give U.S. manufacturers an opportunity to compete for business in Cuba. It has been 20 years since the Soviet Union disintegrated. The Cold War has receded into history, with the one glaring exception of the U.S. embargo of Cuba. The United States fought terrible wars with China (in Korea) and Vietnam, each of which cost tens of thousands of American lives. Yet relations with China were normalized in 1978 and with Vietnam in 1995. A huge amount of U.S. trade takes place with both. The Chinese regime today is much more repressive than that of Cuba, and Vietnam blocks its citizens' access to uncensored information at least as much as Cuba does. Yet the

embargo goes on. Ending the Cuban embargo spurs opportunities for US businesses Pae and Semuels 09- Peter Pae and Alana Semuels, Both head writers for the LA times (Loosening of Cuba embargo could mean huge possibilities for U.S. businesses, 4/14/09, http://articles.latimes.com/2009/apr/14/business/fi-cuba-impact14, Accessed: 7/2/12, zs)
"This is a big deal; it's a significant change in U.S. policy," said former Ambassador David A. Gross, the U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy and a partner at law firm Wiley Rein. Though the

announcement by the Obama administration signaled thawing of relations with the communist nation, questions remain about what kind of access to the island market Cuba will allow U.S. companies. Telecommunications businesses
will now potentially be able to enter into roaming agreements with Cuban carriers -- if the Cuban government agrees, Gross said. That means

Cuban Americans could send U.S. cellphones to their relatives, who will be able to make roaming calls on them and communicate with friends and family in the U.S. And the latest policy shift has raised prospects that travel restrictions could be lifted for everyone, fueling a surge in tourism. About 1.5 million Americans, including about 85,000 Cuban Americans who live in Los Angeles, have relatives on the island.
"This is definitely a step in the right direction for the airline industry and for the travel industry," said Michael Zuccato, general manager for Cuba Travel Services, a Long Beach agency that specializes in booking travel to the island. With the loosening of travel restrictions, the company said it was working to return direct charter flights from Los Angeles to Havana in June or July. The flights were eliminated after the Bush administration tightened restrictions in 2004. "But the

big thing will be when the restriction is lifted for everyone. You'll see a tremendous boost in tourism," he said. U.S. airlines are currently restricted from operating regularly scheduled flights, and planes chartered by federally licensed travel agencies will still be the only way for Cuban Americans to visit the island. Americans without families in Cuba can travel
to the island only if the visit is related to agriculture, a sporting event or for humanitarian missions. Journalists can also travel to Cuba. Several U.S. carriers said it was too early for them to know what kind of effect the new policies would have on air travel to Cuba. "It is a little bit too premature to say exactly what kind of opportunities this will present to Delta or to any other U.S. carrier," said Carlos Santos, a Delta Air Lines Inc. spokesman. "The industry is waiting for details and seeing how this will be implemented."

Lifting the embargo helps American industries McElvaine 11- Robert McElvaine, professor of history at Millsaps college, (Lift the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba, 9/8/11, http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/08/opinion/la-oe-mcelvainecuba-20110908, 7/4/13, CAS)

If the

embargo hasn't worked after 50 years, how can anyone plausibly argue that it will work now? Who wants the embargo? Practically no one beyond a small number of Cuban Americans in the Miami area. It exists today only because Florida is the largest swing state and Republicans believe, probably correctly, that they are unlikely to win its 29 electoral votes without strong support from this special-interest group. Lifting the embargo would not turn the U.S. economy around. But it would be of marginal assistance to the overall economy and could be of substantial help to businesses and employment in industries that would have significant exports to the island. Cuba is, of course, well known as a living museum of the golden age
of the Detroit automotive industry. There is a vast fleet of U.S.-made automobiles on the road here, but none more recent than 1959. In addition to the common Russian-built Ladas, the newer models include Mercedes, BMWs, Nissans, Hyundais just about every car make except those made in the U.S. And even the old American cars here often have new Japanese-made engines in them. An end to the embargo would give U.S. manufacturers

an opportunity to compete for business in Cuba. Loosening restrictions on Cuba benefits businesses Piccone 3/18 Ted Piccone, senior director of foreign policy at Brookings Institution, served on the State
Department, National Security Council and Pentagon (Time to Bet on Cuba, Brookings, 3/18/13, http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2013/03/18-cuba-piccone, Accessed 7/2/13, AM)

Cubas efforts to update its socialist system through a series of economic reforms just got more complicated. The death of Venezuelas Hugo Chvez, its principal benefactor, could seriously disrupt what is already a precarious process of maintaining top-down political control while liberalizing elements of the economy. Ral Castros announcement that he will step down in five years and the emergence of younger leaders born after the 1959 revolution add further uncertainty to the islands future. These new circumstances offer President Obama a rare opportunity to turn the page of history from an outdated Cold War approach to Cuba to a new era of constructive engagement. In his second term in office, he should place a big bet by investing political capital in defrosting relations, an approach that will advance U.S. interests in a stable, prosperous and democratic Cuba. Under Castro, the Cuban government has undertaken important reforms to modernize and liberalize the economy. Cubans are now permitted to buy and sell property, open their own businesses, hire employees and enter into co-ops, with stateowned enterprises on a more equal footing. The updating of the Soviet-style economic system is a gradual and highly controlled process. But the recent legal emergence of formal, small-scale private businesses (cuentapropistas) that can now compete on a more equal footing with stateowned enterprises opens a window into a profound shift in thinking already under way on the island. The reforms also offer new opportunities for U.S. engagement. Castros loosening of the apron strings extends beyond the economy. In January, the Cuban government lifted exit controls for most citizens, which is likely to accelerate the process of reconciliation within the Cuban diaspora. It could also result in a swift uptick of Cubans departing for the United States, demanding a reconsideration of U.S. migration policy to manage the increase. The gradual handoff of power to a next generation of more pragmatic party and military leaders who will determine the pace and scope of the reform process is yet further evidence that the Castro generation is looking forward to securing a viable legacy. The U.S. approach to Cuba has likewise undergone important changes since Obama took office. Since the expansion of travel and remittances in 2009, hundreds of thousands of the 1.8 million Cuban Americans living in the United States have sent more than $2 billion to relatives there, providing important fuel to the burgeoning private sector and empowering citizens to be less dependent on the Cuban state. Much more, however, could be done. In his second term, Obama has a wealth of policy options available to him through executive authority that would reframe U.S. support for the Cuban people and advance U.S. national interests. In his second term, the president can (and should):

Appoint a special envoy to open a discrete dialogue with Havana without preconditions to discuss such issues as migration, travel, counterterrorism and counternarcotics, energy and the environment, and trade and investment. Such talks could result in provisions that strengthen border security, protect Florida from oil spills, break down the walls of communication that prevent our diplomats from traveling outside Havana and help U.S. businesses export more goods, and thereby create jobs. Authorize financial and technical assistance to support burgeoning small businesses and permit trade in goods and services with certified independent entrepreneurs. Expand the list of exports licensed for sale to Cuba, including school and art supplies, water and food preparation systems and telecommunications equipment. Grant general licenses for journalists, researchers, humanitarian organizations and others to facilitate people-to-people exchanges. Remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, where it does not belong, allowing a greater share of U.S.-sourced components and services in products that enter Cuban commerce.

Lifting Embargo Key: Markets/Exports

Lifting embargo expands US markets and influence AFP 11Princeton American Foreign Policy magazine (Ending the Embargo Against Cuba: Why Obamas
Baby Steps Are Not Enough, American Foreign Policy, http://afpprinceton.com/2011/03/ending-the-embargoagainst-cuba-why-obama%E2%80%99s-baby-steps-are-not-enough/, Accessed 7/3/13, jtc)
In addition to aiding the Cuban people, ending

the embargo would strengthen Americas own economic interests and improve her reputation abroad. American businesses currently yearn for the untapped potential present in Cuba, and the opening of trade would help the United States assert dominance during a difficult economic time. Furthermore, the negative global consequences of the embargo would be curbed. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez called the present embargo a cruel and aggressive policy absolutely contrary to international law and much of the international community agrees;
in October 2010, the United Nations voted to end the U.S. embargo for the 19th consecutive year, with 187 members voting against the embargo and the only two votes supporting the embargo from the United States and Israel. President Obama

has taken a step in the right

direction with his modification of the embargo against Cuba, but it is simply not enough. In the current, relatively moderate Cuban political environment, ending the fifty-year-old embargo would give the Cuban people the American economic and cultural connection they sorely need. If Obama limits his actions to the superficial changes of Carter and
Clinton, both the president and his policies may be gone in 2012. Relations between the United States and Cuba cannot afford to wait another fifty years

Lifting embargo helps Cuban economy Stern 12Sam Stern, Dartmouth Business Journal writer (THE COST OF CRISIS IN CUBA, Dartmouth
Business Journal, http://dartmouthbusinessjournal.com/2012/05/the-cost-of-crisis-in-cuba/, Accessed 7/4/13, jtc)

The large economic impact the lifting of the Cuban embargo would have on Cuba is closely tied to its dependence on trade. Historically, the socialist system of trade has left Cubas prosperity in the hands of the Soviet Union and, recently, Venezuela. In
the period following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Cubas GDP dropped 35% as Soviet subsidies were lost and 85% of Cubas trading partners ceased trade with the island. Shortages

of basic goods and medicine, a plummeting standard of living, and rising debts all revealed Cubas dependence on international trade and subsidies from socialist allies. And while Cuba has recovered from this period, much of it was due to relaxed state control of the economy and increased
humanitarian trade from the US.

Since 2004, Cuba has replaced its Soviet sponsorship with Venezuelan subsidies and trade. Amidst Cuban economic growth, open trade with the United States could relieve Cuban dependence on foreign support. As

Cubas main trading partners are currently Venezuela, Canada, and the EU, Cuba could competitively export agricultural and fuel products to its close neighbor, the U.S. With the surplus earned from exports, the government could make balance debts and offer a greater variety of goods to its citizens. US economy benefits from lifting embargo Stern 12Sam Stern, Dartmouth Business Journal writer (THE COST OF CRISIS IN CUBA, Dartmouth
Business Journal, http://dartmouthbusinessjournal.com/2012/05/the-cost-of-crisis-in-cuba/, Accessed 7/4/13, jtc) The United States would also benefit greatly from lifting the embargo. In terms of U.S. exports, the U.S. International Trade Commission estimated that the annual U.S. export losses from the embargo are approximately $1 billion dollars. Additionally, the United States could also normalize relations with nations frustrated by their stubbornness over excluding Cuba. When choosing whether to continue or close the embargo, the U.S. must weigh its effectiveness against these forgone benefits. The embargo has now been in place for 50 years and has been
utterly unsuccessful. Broadly, the embargo was intended to push Cuba toward democracy and oust Fidel Castro as its leader, but instead Cuba has adapted to the loss of U.S. support and has distanced itself from its powerful neighbor. Independent of the embargo, Raul CastroFidels 80year- old younger brotherhas loosened government economic control. Cubans are now able to sell some private property and apply for 181 approved self-employment occupations. Although the work is predominantly menial labor, the 371,000 licenses granted for self-employment is

nonetheless a step toward capitalism. As Cuba takes these small steps on its own, U.S.

trade will expose the benefits of

capitalism to the Cuban government. The losses from trade that the United States incurs by imposing the Cuban embargo further exposes its absurdity. The U.S. government promises to lift the ineffective embargo on the condition that Cuba transitions to democracy, yet communist China remains Americas second largest trading partner. After 50 years, the embargo resembles more an outdated manifestation of the Cold War than an effort to
improve the lives of Cuban citizens.nearly impossible for entrepreneurs to create successful businesses.

Lifting embargo now opens new markets Danielson 13- Richard Danielson, Times staff writer, (U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor: Lift Cuba embargo, travel limits, 4/8/13, http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/us-rep-kathycastor-lift-cuba-embargo-travel-restrictions/2113828, 7/2/13, CAS) "Cuba is changing," said Castor, D-Tampa, who left on a fact-finding trip there Wednesday evening and returned Saturday. "They have embarked on economic reforms that the United States of America should promote. The United States of America now should normalize relations and begin a constructive dialogue
with the island nation." Castor has worked for years to help arrange direct flights from Tampa International Airport to Havana, but her support for ending the embargo and travel restrictions goes further than before. Related News/Archive Castor said Fidel Castro is no longer in power, described his brother, President Raul Castro, as "a much more practical ruler," and said there is a generational change in Cuba's government. "They are still a hard-core communist nation, but they are embarking on market reforms in their economy that deserve encouragement," said Castor, who traveled with members of her staff and representatives of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Democracy in the Americas. Castor said she plans to ask President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry "to open talks to lead to greater trade and travel opportunities." "This should not be done with blinders on, however," she said. "There are still very significant human rights challenges in Cuba. It is still, to many extents, a repressive regime that does not allow citizens to enjoy all of the human rights that we all enjoy. "But after 50 years of an embargo and isolation that's proved that it hasn't worked, it's time to try something new and refresh our relationship," she said. Easing the restrictions would offer the United States a variety of benefits, Castor said: a new market for manufacturers who cannot sell to Cuba now, more influence over a Cuban offshore oil drilling industry whose antiquated technology could threaten Florida beaches, and an opportunity for Tampa to

become a tourism gateway to the island.

Embargo Fails: Castro Regime

Economic embargo just gives Castro a scapegoat for economic problems-props up the regime
Lloyd 11-Delia Lloyd, (a writer based in London. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The International
Herald Tribune, and The Financial Times. Previously,she worked as a producer at Chicago Public Radio and taught political science at the University of Chicago, Ten Reasons to Lift the Cuba Embargo, Politics Daily, http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/08/24/ten-reasons-to-lift-the-cuba-embargo/, June 27, 2013, KH)

if the embargo were the last outpost of Cold War politics and it produced results, that might be an argument for continuing it. But scholars and analysts of economic sanctions have repeatedly questioned the efficacy of economic statecraft against rogue states unless and until there's been regime change. And that's because, as one scholar put it, "interfering with the market (whether using sanctions, aid, or other government policies) has real economic costs, and we rarely know enough about how the target economy works or how to manipulate the political incentives of the target government to achieve our goals." 6. It's counter-productive. Isolating Cuba has been more than ineffective. It's also provided the Castro brothers with a convenient political scapegoat for the country's ongoing economic problems, rather than drawing attention to their own mismanagement. Moreover, in banning the shipment of informationtechnology products, the United States has effectively assisted the Cuban government in shutting out information from the outside world, yet another potential catalyst for democratization.
5. It doesn't work. Of course,

Cuban Embargo failsonly helps the regime and hurts our economy
Chapman 4/15- Steve Chapman, Steve Chapman is a columnist and editorial writer for the Chicago Tribune
(Its time to end the Us embargo on Cuba, Accessed 6/27/13, Chicago Tribune, http://reason.com/archives/2013/04/15/its-time-to-end-the-us-embargo-of-cuba)
The communist regime in Cuba was just about to come tumbling down, ending decades of dictatorship and opening the way for freedom and democracy. But before that could happen, Jay-Z and Beyonce took a trip to the island. So Cuba's despotism can expect to survive another 50 years. Well, maybe I exaggerate. It's just possible that the musical couple's presence or absence was utterly irrelevant to Cuba's future. Americans have somewhat less control over the island than we like to imagine. The

U.S. embargo of Cuba has been in effect since

1962, with no end in sight. Fidel Castro's government has somehow managed to outlast the Soviet Union, Montgomery Ward, rotary-dial telephones and 10 American presidents. The boycott adheres to the stubborn logic of governmental action. It was created to solve a problem: the existence of a communist government 90 miles off our shores. It failed to solve that problem. But its failure is taken as proof of its everlasting necessity. If there is any lesson to be drawn from this dismal experience, though, it's that the economic quarantine has been either 1) grossly ineffectual or 2) positively helpful to the regime. The first would not be surprising, if only because economic sanctions almost never work. Iraq under Saddam Hussein? Nope. Iran? Still waiting. North Korea? Don't make me laugh. What makes this embargo even less promising is that we have so little help in trying to apply the squeeze. Nearly 200 countries allow trade with Cuba.
Tourists from Canada and Europe flock there in search of beaches, nightlife and Havana cigars, bringing hard currency with them. So even if starving the country into submission could work, Cuba hasn't starved and won't anytime soon. Nor is it implausible to suspect that the boycott has been the best thing that ever happened to the Castro brothers, providing them a scapegoat for the nation's many economic ills. The implacable hostility of the Yankee imperialists also serves to align Cuban nationalism with Cuban communism. Even Cubans who don't like Castro may not relish being told what to do by the superpower next door. Normally it is no business of the federal government where private citizens want to spend their vacation time. But among those who claim to speak for the Cuban exile community, it is anathema for anyone to visit the island as long as the communists hold power. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., was among those lambasting the couple for daring to venture where he doesn't want them to go. Rubio claimed that people who make visits to Cuba "either don't realize or don't care that they're essentially funding the regime's systematic trampling of people's human rights." Such activity, he said, "provides money to a cruel, repressive and murderous regime." That may be true. But U.S. law allows Americans to visit the island according to certain rules enforced by the Treasury Department, and some 500,000 people from the U.S. go each year. The rules for cultural trips were tightened last year after Rubio griped that they were too lax. "The trip was handled according to a standard licensing procedure for federally approved 'people to people' cultural tours to the island," reported Reuters, "and the power couple received no special treatment, said Academic Arrangements Abroad, the New York-based group that organized the trip." When it comes to sending money to a "cruel, repressive, murderous regime," Rubio's outrage is strangely selective. The same accusation could be laid against anyone who travels to China, Vietnam or Burma -- all of which are open to American visitors, as far as Washington is concerned. Our willingness to trade with them stems from the belief that economic improvement and contact with outsiders will foster liberalization rather than retard it. But the opposite approach is supposed to produce this kind of progress in Cuba. Do trade and tourism work to weaken repression? The evidence is mixed. But

our attempted economic strangulation of Cuba has been an emphatic bust. We keep trying it, and the communist government remains in full control,

making a mockery of our strategy. The U.S. government has been tireless in pursuing a policy that does not look better with time. It could benefit from the advice of W.C. Fields, who said, "If at first you don't succeed, try,
try again. Then give up. No use being a damned fool about it."

Cuban Embargo fails American workers unemployed, Cuban economy collapsing, and Cuban regime getting stronger Haass 09 Richard N. Haass, Richard N. Haass is president of the Council on Foreign Relations (Forget About
Fidel, The Daily Beast, 3/6/2009, http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/03/06/forget-about-fidel.html, accessed: 6/28/13, ckr)
There are signs that change may finally be coming to Cuba, 50 years after the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power. In a major shakeup, Ral Castro, Fidel's brother, fired several high-level officials last week. While Ral did more to raise expectations than living standards in his first year as president, he may now be positioning the government to go beyond the tentative reforms so far introduced. Then again, he might merely be installing loyalists who share his view that the regime should keep a tight grip on society. What's

more certain is the need for change in Cuba. Last year's hurricanes cost the already poor island nation $10 billion, 20 percent of its GDP. The global economic slowdown has dampened tourism. The population of 11 million is shrinking, in part because of a housing shortage that's leading many families to have fewer children. Cuba's people, the lion's share of whom were born after 1959, face a future that promises little in the way of either prosperity or freedom. Some American conservatives maintain that all this is reason enough for the United States to persist in its
policy of ignoring Cuba diplomatically and sanctioning it economically. At least in principle, one could argue that the revolution is running out of steam and that regime change from within may finally be at hand. The problem is that this argument ignores Cuban reality. The country is not near the precipice of collapse. To the contrary, the intertwined party, government and military have matters well in hand. The population, ensured basic necessities along with access to education and health care, is neither inclined to radical change nor in a position to bring it about. The

American policy of isolating Cuba has failed. Officials boast that Havana now hosts more diplomatic missions than any other country in the region save Brazil. Nor is the economic embargo working. Or worse: it is working, but for countries like Canada, South Korea and dozens of others that are only too happy to help supply Cuba with food, generators and building materials. Those in Congress who complain about the "offshoring" of American jobs ought to consider that the embargo deprives thousands of American workers of employment. The policy of trying to isolate Cuba also worksperversely enoughto bolster the Cuban regime. The U.S. embargo provides Cuba's leaders a convenient excusethe country's economic travails are due to U.S. sanctions, they can claim, not their own failed policies. The lack of American visitors
and investment also helps the government maintain political control. There is one more reason to doubt the wisdom of continuing to isolate Cuba. However slowly, the country is changing. The question is whether the United States will be in a position to influence the direction and pace of this change. We do not want to see a Cuba that fails, in which the existing regime gives way to a repressive regime of a different stripe or to disorder marked by drugs, criminality, terror or a humanitarian crisis that prompts hundreds of thousands of Cubans to flee their country for the United States. Rather, Washington should work to shape the behavior and policy of Cuba's leadership so that the country becomes more open politically and economically. Fifty years of animosity cannot be set aside in a stroke, but now is the time for Washington to act. Much of the initiative lies with the new president.

President Obama, could, for example, make good on campaign promises to allow Cuban-Americans to freely remit funds to relatives in Cuba and to visit them regularly, and could loosen travel restrictions for others as well. (Some of these measures can be found in legislation currently working its way through Congress.) Obama could also initiate technical contacts. Each country already maintains an "interests section," a small embassy by another name, in the other's capital. They also share information about weather. But they could resume exchanges on such common challenges as migration and drug interdiction, and initiate them on homeland security and counterterrorism. Embargo causes poverty and doesnt pressure Castro Taylor 2k Stuart Taylor, writer for the national Journal (How the embargo hurts Cubans and helps Castro,
National Journal, 5/13/00, Proquest, Accessed 7/4/13, AM) In the early 1960s, the CIA plotted to poison Fidel Castro's cigars, to send Mafia hit men after him, and to make his beard fall out by dusting his shoes with a depilatory. These were not good ideas. Now the centerpiece of U.S. policy is the rigid, unilateral economic embargo and travel ban codified by the 1996 Helms-Burton Act. This is not a good idea, either. Nor are the Helms-Burton penalties on foreign companies that invest in properties expropriated by Castro 40 years ago.

At least the CIA targeted the murderous dictator himself. The embargo

targets the island's entire population of 11 million, in an effort to strangle the Castro regime. This made sense when the United States first imposed the embargo in the early 1960s, as Castro was becoming a Soviet ally bent on exporting revolution during the most dangerous phase of the Cold War. But the embargo has proven so counterproductive since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 as to be almost irrational. By aggravating the dire poverty in which most Cubans live, the embargo enables the 73-year-old Castro to maintain a siege mentality and blame Yankee imperialists for the disastrous state into which his Communist regime has plunged the Cuban economy. No other nation now supports the embargo, which once had the backing of the Organization of American States and others. Virtually every other nation condemns Helms-Burton. These policies bar U.S. businesses from competing for toeholds in a Cuban market that will someday become lucrative. They have manifestly failed to drive Castro from
power, to ease his repressive rule, or to lay any groundwork for a peaceful transition to freedom and democracy. To the contrary, the embargo and Helms-Burton have strengthened Castro in both Cuban and world opinion. Although Castro clamors for an end to it, "I think he loves the embargo," says one high-level former National Security Council official. "It keeps him in power." Now, thanks to the spotlight on Elian Gonzalez, more Americans are starting to notice the stupidity of our Cuba policies. To be sure, the embargo seems unassailable in this election year, sustained as it is by the passionate support of the potent Cuban-American lobby, which no President, or would-be President, wants to cross. But that lobby's strength has ebbed. Most Americans disapprove of the tactics of many of the Cuban exiles who have fought to block Elian's father from taking him back to Cuba. This development may broaden opposition to the embargo. Opposition had already been growing among export-seeking farmers; business groups,

including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; religious leaders, including Pope John Paul II; human rights groups; foreign policy experts across the political spectrum; and some conservative Republicans, as well as liberal Democrats. Claims that the policy needs more time to "force [Castro] to face the consequences of his misrule [and] reflect on Cuba's desperate need for change," which is how the Cuban-American National Foundation puts it, are getting old. It has been four decades since the embargo's inception, nine years since the end of the billions of
dollars in Soviet subsidies that had previously blunted its impact, and five years since Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms, R-N.C., said that the thenpending Helms-Burton bill would give Castro "a final push." A growing minority of Cuban-Americans says it's time to try a different approach, although many won't say so publicly for fear (one told me) of ostracism, or worse. This is not to say that the next President will, or even should, try to end the embargo in one fell swoop. That would require getting Congress to repeal HelmsBurton. As a political matter, furious opposition from the Cuban-American lobby and its allies, notably Helms, would probably doom any such effort. As a policy matter, a case can be

made for relaxing the embargo by increments, and imposing conditions on private U.S. trade or investment, to maximize pressure on the Cuban regime to ease its stifling economic controls and sometimes brutal
repression of dissidents. And any President who wants to lead the nation toward constructive engagement with Cuba will run into a buzz saw if he ignores political realities, suggests Richard A. Nuccio, who was once special adviser to President Clinton on Cuba. One such reality is Castro's habit of spitting in the face of the United States at politically sensitive moments, as in early 1996, when he sent Helms-Burton sailing through Congress by cracking down on dissidents and having Cuban fighters shoot down two small civilian planes, killing four Cuban-Americans who had planned to fly over Havana. President Clinton signed the bill into law because it was politically expedient, says then-adviser Nuccio, even though Helms-Burton would abort the Administration's nascent moves to engage Castro's regime and Nuccio himself had lobbied against it. Politics aside, the case for relaxing the embargo does not depend upon whether one sees Castro as a flawed, but wellmeaning, champion of the common people, or (as I do) a ruthless Communist dictator who keeps Cubans poor to avoid giving them a taste of freedom. Let's stipulate that Castro's totalitarian regime is every bit as bad as Helms and the most anti-Castro Cuban exiles believe; that it is only sustained by fear and a network of security forces and informants reminiscent of George Orwell's novel 1984; that most Cubans would secretly love to be rid of Castro; that he seeks foreign trade,

investment, and tourists not to meet the needs of the Cuban people or to foster reforms but, as Helms has said, to get "hard currency to keep his faltering Marxist-Leninist economy afloat" and to "pay for the ruthless and cruel apparatus that keeps him in power"; that the regime keeps for itself 95 percent of the payments it demands from foreign companies in lieu of wages for Cuban workers; that, unlike China, communist Cuba is determined to minimize any movement toward a free-market economy; that Castro will always find ways to blame the United States for Cuba's problems; and that any retreat from the embargo would prompt the tyrant to crow that he had forced the United States to recognize the legitimacy and permanence of his regime. Let him crow. He would be losing his only excuse for Cuba's grinding poverty and political repression. If most

Cubans are already as disaffected as Helms suggests, then surely they won't be fooled by more Castro propaganda. Meanwhile, if Castro allows tourism, trade, and investment to bring in a lot of money, the inevitable infusion of people, products, and ideas will feed popular pressure for change and perhaps crack the thinning ice under his regime. Conversely, if Castro is determined to crush any private entrepreneurial activity, then he won't take in much foreign exchange.
There can be no guarantee that relaxing the embargo will succeed in changing Cuba for the better. But if done with care, such a move can hardly make things worse. (Nuccio does caution that sudden U.S. abolition of the embargo can make things worse in the short run by so gravely threatening the Communist regime's grip on power as to provoke a new wave of repression, and perhaps a new wave of refugees.) The harder question is how much to ease the embargo and under what conditions. Even Helms has indicated he would ease up if Cuba's government would institute such revolutionary changes as allowing free and fair elections. But that's not going to happen while Castro is in charge. And the constructive steps taken by the Clinton Administration since Helms-Burton, such as slightly easing restrictions on travel to Cuba and allowing CubanAmericans and others to send more dollars to relatives and friends there, have been tiny. The best opportunity for a larger step toward engaging Cuba may be presented by a combination of farm-lobby clout and the humanitarian appeal of sending impoverished Cubans food and medicine. Last August, the Senate voted by a surprising 70-28 majority to add to an appropriations bill language sponsored by Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo., to end unilateral U.S. embargoes on exports of farm products and pharmaceuticals to Cuba and some other nations. Although the three Cuban-American House members are likely to block any similar Senate-passed measure this year, the next President will have some potent allies if he chooses to exercise the kind of leadership that Clinton has eschewed.

Embargo Fails: US Economy

Sanctions hurt US competiveness undermine firm legitimacy Rodman 01 Kenneth A. Rodman, Professor of Government at Colby College, (Volume 9:
Article 10: Sanctions beyond Borders: Multinational Corporations and U.S. Economic Statecraft, Book published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, August 2001 (Publish Date), http://www.dundee.ac.uk/cepmlp/journal/html/vol9/article9-8.html, Accessed 7/02/13, AW) Although Gilpin applies this model to trade liberalization, it can be extrapolated to economic sanctions. Domestic constraints on sanctions were minimal in the early postwar period because U.S. firms were technologically dominant and the U.S. market was the most important for U.S.-based firms. This changed as foreign companies became more competitive and economic opportunities abroad increased relative to those in the United States.

U.S. firms came to see unilateral sanctions as ceding markets to foreign competitors without imposing meaningful costs on target states. The routine use of extraterritorial sanctions was also seen as costly because U.S. business could be branded by potential partners as unreliable and excluded from many international ventures because of the political risk of unpredictable U.S. sanctions. It may also legitimize discrimination against U.S. investors abroad since they will be seen in host countries as instruments of a U.S. political agenda at the expense of the host country's economic development goals.

Embargo deprives Cuba and America 5 billion lost West-Duran 12 Alan West-Duran, PhD, Director of the Latino/Latin American and
Caribbean Studies Program at Northwestern University, (Cuba, Book published by Gale: Cengage Learning, 2012 (Publish Date), http://www.gale.cengage.com/pdf/samples/CubaSampleChapter.pdf, Accessed 7/02/13, AW) President Barack Obama has said, Our guiding light . . . is libertad; whether theres greater freedom inside Cuba (quoted in Talev and Clark). It cannot be coincidental that he used the word libertad . It comes directly from the title of Senator Jesse Helmss 1996 legislation, thereby confirming that the cur- rent embargo is not based on U.S. national security concerns but instead continues to rest on a rationale of regime change and political reform in Cuba. This observation prompts the obvious reflection that the United States has based no other embargo on such a rationale. If it did, such key trading partners as China and Saudi Arabia would find themselves embargoed. The embargo has cost Cuba billions of dollars in lost trade opportunities with U.S. business. Likewise U.S. businesses have lost revenue from trade with Cuba. Estimates of the value of the lost trade range from $1.5 to $5 billion dollars (and tens of thousands of jobs) to the United States. For Cuba the estimate are $700 million annually, and for 19602010 between $40 and $50 billion. U.S. companies also find them- selves unable to invest in Cuba, thereby losing out to European and Canadian enterprises. For Cuba, the embargo has meant an everincreasing cost for its food imports, as well as hampering agriculture (especially inputs). There is a human cost in Cuba to the embargo insofar as U.S. trade and investment would ameliorate to a degree the deprivations Cubans have been sub- jected to since the end of the trade relationship with the Soviet Union. Another cost of the embargo since it was made extraterritorial in the 1990s is the amount of inward investment it may have thwarted from

third countries. This has certainly cost ordinary Cubans thousands of jobs. These human costs increased even more with the Bush administration restrictions (2004) on Cuban American visits and remittances, including people- to-people visits to Cuba. Cuban Americans were only allowed to visit the island once every three years, could only send a maximum of twelve hundred dollars per family in remittances, and the definition of the fam- ily members who could be visited was narrowed by the new law. Although the Cuban exile community favored being tough on the Cuban government, many saw these restrictions as a true hardship for Cuban families, especially their loved ones on the island. The embargo costs the U.S. economy billions of dollars per year PR Newswire 12 - PR Newswire, leading global provider of marketing and communications solutions [Should the United States
maintain its embargo against Cuba? ProCon.org brings the pros and cons to 50-year-old debate, PR Newswire, 12/20/12, http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/should-the-united-states-maintain-its-embargo-against-cuba-proconorg-brings-the-pros-and-cons-to50-year-old-debate-184350351.html, accessed: 7/3/13, JK] Proponents of the embargo argue that Cuba has not met the US conditions for lifting the embargo, including transitioning to democracy and improving human rights. They say that backing down without getting concessions from the Castro regime will make the United States appear weak, and that only the Cuban elite would benefit from open trade. Opponents of the Cuba embargo argue that it should be lifted because the failed policy is a Cold War relic and has clearly not achieved its goals. They

say the sanctions harm the US economy and Cuban citizens, and prevent opportunities to promote change and democracy in Cuba. They say the embargo hurts international opinion of the United States. In addition to in-depth research on the pros and cons of
maintaining the Cuba embargo, the new ProCon.org website contains a historical background section, videos, images, over 60 footnotes and sources, and Did You Know? facts including: 1. President John F. Kennedy sent his press secretary to buy 1,200 Cuban cigars the night before

Estimates place the cost of the Cuban embargo to the US economy between $1.2 and $4.84 billion annually. A 2010 study byTexas A&M University calculated that 6,000 American jobs could be created by lifting the embargo.
he signed the embargo in Feb. 1962. 2.

Embargo impedes US market Crowther 09-- Colonel Glenn A. Crowther, Adjunct Research Professor at the Strategic Studies Institute,
Expertise in Western Hemisphere, COIN, Joint / Interagency / Intergovernmental / Multinational Issues, Reserve Components (KISS THE EMBARGO GOODBYE, Strategic Studies Institute Op-Ed, http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub906.pdf, Accessed 7/4/13, jtc)

The last reason to lift the embargo is to open a new market to U.S. goods and services. Although Cubans do buy some food and medicine from the United States, it is nothing compared to purchases that an open Cuba could make. Once the markets are opened and the Cuban people start to make money, they will need refrigerators, air conditioners, satellite dishes, and all the other accoutrements of a modern society. We saw this happen in Iraq after 2003. The United States is the logical purchase place. We are close by and make excellent products. If the Venezuelans buy most of their imports from the United States, there is no reason to think that Cuba would not. To maintain the status quo is to continue failing to engender reforms in Cuba and to continue empowering the dictatorship. Ending the embargo would have positive results for everyone involved. The Cuban government would either have to allow reforms or be delegitimized. The Cuban people could buy American goods and services. The United States would have a new market. The international community could work together to convince Cuba to accept political reforms. Most important of all, it would be the first step in the long process of freeing the Cuban people and allowing them to join the family of Western Hemisphere nations. Embargo fails - hurts US and Cuban economy Weissert 07 Will Weissert, Associated Press writer (Cuba: US Embargo Has Cost Over $89B, Cubanet,
9/18/07, http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y07/sep07/20e11.htm, accessed: 6/27/13, ckr)
HAVANA (AP) -- Washington's

45-year-old embargo has cost Cuba more than $89 billion to date, wreaking havoc on everything from primary education to pest control and nearly all other facets

of island life, the foreign minister said Tuesday. Havana produced a 56-page booklet laying out its latest argument against the embargo
ahead of next month's meeting in New York of the U.N. General Assembly, which has voted 15 years in a row to urge the United States to lift trade sanctions against Cuba. Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said the

U.S. policy caused $3 billion in losses over the past year alone to the economy of Cuba -- which had a 2006 GDP estimated at $40 billion,
according to the CIA World Factbook. The embargo "has reached levels of schizophrenia and made the last year notable for the ferocious and cruel way the blockade has been applied," Perez Roque told a news conference. Washington,

he said, is bent on "persecuting Cuban interests and attempting to beat our people into submission with hunger and disease." The U.S. sanctions bar American tourists from visiting Cuba and prohibit U.S. companies from doing business with the communistrun nation, with some exceptions for exports of food and farm products, medical supplies and telecommunications equipment.

Embargo hurts economy billions of dollars in damage Suszczynski 4/24 Joe Suszczynski (End The Embargo, The Recorder, 4/24/13,
http://centralrecorder.com/2013/04/24/end-the-embargo/, accessed: 7/4/13, ckr) Since 1960 the United States has held some form of embargo towards the country of Cuba. The main reason why the embargo was put in place was due to the Cold War and Cuba aligning itself with the Soviet Union who were our (United States) sworn enemy. Today there are still restrictions on who can go there. This needs to change. The

Cold War has been over 20 years and Cuba has not been a threat to the United States since then. Plus Raul Castro, brother of Fidel Castro and current leader of Cuba, said that he would step down in 2018. It looks bad on our country when the United Nations has been condemning the embargo since 1991. In 2012, 188 countries in the General Assembly had voted on a resolution in favor of condemning the
embargo. Beside the United States only Israel and Palau had sided in support of the embargo. This result is overwhelming and when most of the world, including most of your allies, is condemning your actions there is a problem. And ironically enough our allies like France, Canada, Britain, Italy and Mexico can travel to Cuba; why is it that our nation cannot go? America could use the trade and it could potentially be successful. According to the

United States Chamber of Commerce it costs the United States $1.2 billion annually in lost sales of exports. However a nonprofit founded by former US diplomats, called Cuba Policy Foundation, estimated that the annual cost to the US economy could be as high as $4.84 billion in agricultural exports and related economic output. That could help greatly as we would be getting
revenue. And the Cuban economy could improve because it would be flooded with American tourists.

The Embargo hurts the economy because of tourism and the resources Trani 6/23/13- Eugene P. Trani; permanent member of the council of foreign relations, PhD, president of Virginia
Commonwealth University. (Trani: End the embargo on Cuba, Times Dispatch, http://www.timesdispatch.com/opinion/their-opinion/columnists-blogs/guest-columnists/end-the-embargo-oncuba/article_ba3e522f-8861-5f3c-bee9-000dffff8ce7.html, accessed: 6/28/13, ML)
A recent four-day trip to Havana illustrated the complicated and indeed puzzling nature of Cuban-American relations. The

official United States policy is that we do not have formal diplomatic relations with Cuba, and we have maintained an economic embargo by which it is illegal for American corporations to do business with Cuba. Current American policy, of course, dates from Fidel Castros coming to power in 1959, overthrowing the government of
Fulgencio Batista. Castros expropriation of the assets of American corporations and his embrace of the Soviet Union as an al ternative to American economic support for Cuba made relations with the United States difficult from the beginning. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, in which Cuba became ground zero for the closest brush with nuclear war that we have ever seen, cemented the bad relations for the last half of the 20th Century. The Soviet support of Cuba lasted right up to the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. That event shattered the economy of Cuba and many hoped would lead to normal diplomatic and economic relations between the United States and Cuba. But 22 years later, normal relations are still not in the cards. In fact, with

the passage of the Cuban Democracy Act (the Torricelli Law) in 1992 and the Cuban Liberty and Democracy Solidarity Act (the Helms-Burton Act) of 1996, relations have become even more difficult. The result is a patchwork of policies that appear to contradict one another and do not seem to be a sensible and rational policy for the United States to follow. On the one hand, more than 200,000 Americans are now visiting Cuba on American Treasury Department-approved licenses annually. The sight of American Airlines planes dropping off
and picking up American citizens at the Jos Mart International Airport in Havana seems at best surprising. My trip, conducted by Insight Cuba,

was one such officially approved trip. Further, there are now more than $2 billion of remittances sent by Americans to their Cuban relatives annually. So there are some points of progress in overall Cuban-American relations. At

the same time, there are many significant problems that tend to hurt the Cuban people most at risk in economic terms. The visit of a cruise ship to a Cuban port results in that ship being unable, no matter which flag registry the ship has, to dock in the United States for six months. This policy really hurts the Cuban tourist economy, which could greatly improve employment and job creation across Cuba. If Cuban materials are used in the construction of cars (more than 4% nickel for example), these cars cannot be sold in the United States, a policy which works against the rise of an automobile-based manufacturing segment of the Cuban economy. The American embargo has had, therefore, very significant impact on different parts of the economy in Cuba. In fact, such varied political leaders as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; George P. Shultz, former Republican secretary of state; and the late former Democratic presidential candidate, George McGovern, have called for the embargo to be lifted and relations to be renewed between Cuba and the United States. Even polls of Americans show a majority in favor of
an end to the embargo and re-establishing of normal relations between the countries. My own trip to Cuba reinforced the call for such actions. We spent four days visiting with many different kinds of groups in Havana, community projects, senior citizens, a health clinic, youth programs, artist and recording facilities, musical ensembles, historic sites such as Revolution Square and the Ernest Hemingway house and an environmental training facility, and not once did we hear anger toward the United States or the American people. What

we heard was puzzlement about the embargo and strong feelings that it was hurting the people of Cuba. In fact, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the absolute poverty rate has increased significantly in Cuba. It was also evident that there is visible decline in major infrastructure areas such as housing. Today, there seem to be both humanitarian and economic factors, particularly with the significant growth of the non-governmental section of the economy that could
factor in a change in American policy. There is also a major diplomatic factor in that no other major country, including our allies, follows our policy. What a positive statement for American foreign policy in Latin America and throughout the world it would be for the United States to end its embargo and establish normal diplomatic relations with Cuba. We would be taking both a humanitarian course of action and making a smart diplomatic gesture. The time is right and all our policy makers need is courage to bring about this change.

The embargo fails and undermines our economy. Morrow 2009 [Elizabeth Morrow. Elizabeth Morrow is a writer for the boston globe. The Boston Globe. End the
embargo on Cuba. April 12, 2009. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/04/12/end_the_embargo_on_cuba/ Accessed: June 28, 2013. AK] IN THE midst of economic turmoil at home, President Obama will travel this week to participate in the

Summit of the Americas. He will have the opportunity to both strengthen the US economy, and end 50 years of counterproductive foreign policy in Latin America. The unilateral US embargo of Cuba has not supported democracy there; it has created a useful piece of propaganda used against us. It has not isolated Cuba's government from the rest of the world; it has isolated the United States from Latin America. Though it has undeniably strained the Cuban economy, the strain is disproportionately harder on the Cuban people than the government. Persuasive arguments have been made painting the embargo as alternately a useful diplomatic tool, or a failed Cold War relic. What is clear is that the embargo policy has unquestionably failed
us domestically. Two of the pressing concerns facing the United States are the economy and national/human security. Human security includes environmental security, effective immigration policy, and security in communities: freedom from the presence of organized crime, and safety in homes and schools. The embargo of Cuba directly harms

the US economy, and our national and human security.

While the US government refuses to engage in trade with Cuba (though not China, a communist country that unquestionably poses a much greater threat than Cuba and its 11 million inhabitants), firms from Europe, Asia, and Latin America are signing lucrative contracts. Chinese oil companies have signed contracts to drill for oil in Cuban waters; not only are American firms prevented from bidding for these contracts, creating an economic loss, but offshore drilling is extremely risky environmentally. These waters are less than 100 miles from the Florida coast: if US companies were drilling, they would be accountable not

only to their shareholders, but also to residents of the Gulf of Florida, who will be affected by any
outfits operating in Cuba: the self-exclusion of US

environmental fallout. The same argument can be adapted to construction companies, mining firms, and pharmaceutical

companies from the Cuban market negatively

affects both our economy and our security. Though economic matters are foremost on many of our minds, we must examine how our policies toward Cuba threaten our national and human security. The embargo is counterproductive costs money 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 la rgest 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. Embargo hurts US and Cuban economylifting gradually helps The Associated Press 12supplier of comprehensive journalism (No cigar: Economic embargo on Cuba
turns 50, USA Today, 2/7/12, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-02-07/cuba-usembargo/53000402/1, Accessed 7/2/13, jtc) With just 90 miles (145 kilometers) of sea between Florida and Cuba, the United States would be a natural No. 1 trade partner and source of tourism. But the embargo chokes off most commerce, and the threat of stiff fines keeps most Americans from sunbathing in balmy resorts like Cayo Coco. Cuba is free to trade with other nations, but the U.S. threatens sanctions against foreign companies that don't abide by its restrictions. A stark example arrived off the coast of Havana last month: A massive oil exploration rig built with less than 10 percent U.S. parts to qualify under the embargo was brought all the way from Singapore at great expense, while comparable platforms sat idle in U.S. waters just across the Gulf of Mexico. The embargo is a constant talking point for island authorities, who blame it for shortages of everything from medical equipment to the concrete needed to complete an eight-lane highway spanning the length of the island. Cuba frequently fulminates against the "blockade" at the United Nations and demands the U.S. end its "genocidal" policy. Every fall, like clockwork, the vast majority of nations agree, and overwhelmingly back a resolution condemning the embargo. In November, 186 countries supported the measure, with only Israel joining the U.S. in opposition. Also each year, Cuba updates its estimate of how much the embargo has cost it, using a complicated and some say flawed calculus that takes into account years of interest, the end of the gold standard and other factors.

Last year's estimate summing 49 years of sanctions was $975 billion. Even some critics of the embargo call Havana's claims exaggerated, saying that while the sanctions had a tremendous impact when first put in place, Cuba was able to adapt and benefited from relationships with like-minded allies such as the former Soviet Union and Venezuela. "There's no doubt that the embargo is detrimental to the Cuban economy. It

complicates international financial transactions, but more importantly, it limits Cuban families' access to medicine," said Geoff Thale, a Cuba analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, which
supports ending the policy. "At the same time, Cuba's economic problems go beyond the embargo."

Embargo failshurts US and Cuba econ Storozynski 13--Nicholas Storozynski, Senior at Phillips Exeter Academy (Dear President Obama: End the
Cuba Embargo, Huff Post, 1/15/13, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicholas-storozynski/dear-president-obamaend-_b_2434954.html, Accessed 7/3/13, jtc) Additionally, the embargo hurts US businesses willing to sell their products to Cuba. It doesn't make sense during an economic slowdown to limit the customers that a business can sell to because of outdated politics. Duke Professor Phyllis Pomerantz recently wrote in the The Globe and Mail, "It's 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 Havana's old cars, Americans should be selling them new ones." Cuba is a country with thousands of miles of arable land, but because communism has taken away people's incentive to work, the nation has to import most of its food.

Removing the embargo would likely speed up the transition to a capitalist economy in Cuba.
Since Fidel's brother has taken the helm, Raul has been allowing people to open small businesses and introducing elements of a free market economy. But many Cubans don't have access to goods they need because the Cuban government cannot produce and distribute these goods effectively. A New York Times article in November stated that allowing American companies to trade with the Cuban people wouldn't only benefit American companies, but also Cuban citizens. In the piece, a Cuban mechanic said, "legalizing imports

and investment would create a flood of the supplies that businesses needed, overwhelming the government's controls while lowering prices and creating more work apart from the state." This would strengthen the developing private sector in Cuba. The Cuban government plans to remove more than
one million government jobs. The people currently holding these jobs would be able to find jobs in the private sector, spurred on by the American capital that would flow in. Removing the embargo would also lead the Cuban people to demand better treatment from their government. Cubans would see that American tourists have a higher quality of life, and they'll want the same for themselves. Currently, the Castro brothers blame the poor conditions in Cuba on the embargo. Without this excuse, Cubans will find that their government is simply unable to take care of them, and demand a change.

Embargo Fails: Cuban Economy

Embargo has dealt a trillion dollars in damage to Cuban economy Siegelbaum 11- Portia Siegelbaum, CBS news producer that was based in Cuba, (Cuba: U.S. embargo causes $1 trillion in losses, 9/14/11, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301503543_162-20106159-503543.html, 7/3/13, CAS) Cuba blames the U.S. embargo for nearly a trillion dollars in losses to the island's economy since it
was imposed by President Kennedy in 1962. Vice Foreign Minister Abelardo Moreno said that at current prices a conservative estimate of economic damages to the island up until December 2010 would be more than $104 billion. However, he added, if you take into consideration the extreme devaluation of the dollar against the price of gold on the international financial market during 2010, they would add up to nearly a trillion dollars.

Embargo hurts Cuban economy CBS News 11 Portia Siegelbaum, writer for CBS News (Cuba: US embargo causes $1 trillion in losses, CBS
News, 9/14/11, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20106159-503543.html, Accessed 7/2/13, AM) Cuba blames the U.S. embargo for nearly a trillion dollars in losses to the island's economy since

it was imposed by President Kennedy in 1962. Vice Foreign Minister Abelardo Moreno said that at current prices a conservative estimate of economic damages to the island up until December 2010 would be more than $104 billion. However, he added, if you take into consideration the extreme devaluation of the dollar against the price of gold on the international financial market during 2010, they would add up to nearly a trillion dollars. Cuba will be presenting a resolution at the current U.N. General Assembly on the "Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba." This will be the 20th time the same resolution is put to a vote there. It has repeatedly been approved by the international community. Last year's vote was: 185 countries in favor to 2 -- the United States and Israel -- against. Embargo KILLS the Cuban economytrillion dollar losses Siegelbaum 11- Portia Siegelbaum, correspondent for CBS news, specialized on US relations with Cuba (Cuba:
US Embargo causes $1 Trillion in losses, 9/14/11, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20106159503543.html, CBS News, Accessed: 7/2/12, zs)

Cuba blames the U.S. embargo for nearly a trillion dollars in losses to the island's economy since it was imposed by President Kennedy in 1962. Vice Foreign Minister Abelardo Moreno said that at current prices a conservative estimate of economic damages to the island up until December 2010 would be more than $104 billion. However, he added, if you take into consideration the extreme devaluation of the dollar against the price of gold on the international financial market during 2010, they would add up to nearly a trillion dollars. Cuba will be presenting a resolution at the current U.N. General Assembly on the "Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba." This will be the 20th time the same resolution is put to a vote there. It has repeatedly been approved by the international community. Last year's vote was: 185 countries in favor to 2 -- the United States and Israel -- against. Speaking to journalists in Havana, Moreno insisted the embargo violates international law and the U.N. Charter, and constitutes genocide according to the 1948 Geneva Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Yesterday President Obama authorized the continuation of the
embargo for another year under the Trading with the Enemy Act, stating that it is in "the national interest of the United States" to do so. Moreno

particularly attacked the extra-territoriality of the embargo listing various fines

imposed by the U.S. on third country entities such as a $500 million fine against the Dutch Bank ABN Amro last year for "having carried out unauthorized financial transactions in which Cuba or Cuban Nationals had interests."
The vice foreign minister noted that in all from March 2010 to April 2011 there were several multimillion dollar fines levied against U.S. and foreign banking institutions for having conducted operations with Cuba. 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.

Cuban embargo is detrimental to Cuban economy and medicine availability Galeano 12 Javier Galeano, write at AP (No cigar: Economic embargo on Cuba turns 50, USA Today, 2/7/12,
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-02-07/cuba-us-embargo/53000402/1, accessed: 6/27/13, ckr)
Supporters of the policy acknowledge that many U.S. strategic concerns from the 1960s have been consigned to the dustbin of history, such as halting the spread of Soviet influence and keeping Fidel Castro from exporting revolution throughout Latin America. But they say other justifications remain, such as the confiscation of U.S. property in Cuba and the need to press for greater political and personal freedoms on the island. "We

have a hemispheric commitment to freedom and democracy and respect for human rights," said Jose Cardenas, a former National Security Council staffer on Cuba under President George W. Bush. "I still think that those are worthy aspirations." With just 90 miles (145 kilometers) of sea between Florida and Cuba, the United States would be a natural No. 1 trade partner and source of tourism. But the embargo chokes off most commerce, and the threat of stiff fines keeps most Americans from sunbathing in balmy resorts like Cayo Coco. Cuba is free to
trade with other nations, but the U.S. threatens sanctions against foreign companies that don't abide by its restrictions. A stark example arrived off the coast of Havana last month: A massive oil exploration rig built with less than 10 percent U.S. parts to qualify under the embargo was brought all the way from Singapore at great expense, while comparable platforms sat idle in U.S. waters just across the Gulf of Mexico. The embargo is a constant talking point for island authorities, who blame it for shortages of everything from medical equipment to the concrete needed to complete an eight-lane highway spanning the length of the island. Cuba frequently fulminates against the "blockade" at the United Nations and demands the U.S. end its "genocidal" policy. Every fall, like clockwork, the

vast majority of nations agree, and overwhelmingly back a resolution condemning the embargo. In November, 186 countries supported the measure, with only Israel joining the U.S. in opposition. Also each year, Cuba updates its estimate of how much the embargo has cost it, using a complicated and some say flawed calculus that takes into account years of interest, the end of the gold standard and other factors. Last year's estimate summing 49 years of sanctions was $975 billion. Even some critics of the
embargo call Havana's claims exaggerated, saying that while the sanctions had a tremendous impact when first put in place, Cuba was able to

no doubt that the embargo is detrimental to the Cuban economy. It complicates international financial transactions, but more importantly, it limits Cuban families' access to medicine," said Geoff Thale, a Cuba
adapt and benefited from relationships with like-minded allies such as the former Soviet analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, which supports ending the policy. "At the same time, Cuba's economic problems go beyond the embargo." While 50 years of socialism have brought advancements in areas such as education and health care, even island authorities acknowledge their perennially struggling economic system must change. President Raul Castro is in the process of allowing more private-sector activity, decentralizing state-run businesses, implementing agricultural reform and slimming government payrolls.

Union and Venezuela. "There's

Embargo hurts economy and prevents change to democracy in Cuba Caribbean News 12 (Should the United States maintain its embargo against Cuba?, Caribbean News Now!,
12/22/12, http://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/headline-Should-the-United-States-maintain-its-embargo-againstCuba%3F-13864.html, accessed: 6/28/13, ckr)
Opponents of the Cuba embargo argue that it should be lifted because the failed policy is a Cold War relic and has clearly not achieved its goals. They say the

sanctions harm the US economy and Cuban citizens, and prevent opportunities to promote change and democracy in Cuba. They say the embargo hurts international opinion of the United States. In addition
to in-depth research on the pros and cons of maintaining the Cuba embargo, the new ProCon.org website contains a historical background section, videos, images, over 60 footnotes and sources, and Did You Know? facts including: 1. President John F. Kennedy sent his press secretary to buy 1,200 Cuban cigars the night before he signed the embargo in February 1962. 2. Estimates

place the cost of the Cuban embargo to the US economy between $1.2 and $4.84 billion annually. A 2010 study by Texas A&M University calculated that 6,000 American jobs could be created by lifting the embargo. 3. There are an estimated 65,000 to 70,000 political prisoners incarcerated in Cuba as of May 2012, which is among the world's
highest on a per capita basis. 4. The United Nations has denounced the US embargo against Cuba for 21 straight years. The vote against the embargo was 188-3 in 2012, with only Israel and Palau supporting the United States. 5. The United States began exporting food to Cuba following a devastating hurricane in 2001 and is now the island's second-largest food supplier. Annual food sales to Cuba peaked at $710 million in 2008.

Cuban embargo damages Cuban economy Dominica News 12 author name not provided (Cuba makes case for lifting of US embargo, Dominica
News, 10/10/12, http://dominicanewsonline.com/news/homepage/news/international-relations/cuba-makes-case-forlifting-of-us-embargo/, accessed: 7/3/13, ckr)

The Cuban government is once again calling on the international community to support its call for the lifting of the trade embargo imposed by the United States. At a press conference, to garner local support,
Cuban ambassador to Dominica Joanna Elena Ramos on Wednesday described the embargo as an act of genocide. The increased persecution of Cubas international financial transactions has been one of the distinctive features in the implementation of the blockade policy under the current US administration, she argued. For the 21st consecutive time Cuba on November 13th, 2012 will submit for the consideration of the UN General Assembly the draft resolution entitled Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed b y the United States of America against Cuba. Since its conception the resolution has been steadily gaining support from nations around the globe. Last year 186 member states voted in favor of the resolution, which according to Cuba is irrefutable proof that the battle for the lifting of the blockade has the recognition and support of the vast majority of the international community. But

calls for lifting the embargo have fallen on deaf ears. In 2012 the US imposed a $619-million fine on the Dutch bank ING for making transactions with Cuba, in dollars. Actions like these due to the embargo are described by the Cuban ambassador as criminal and inhumane. The blockade continues to be a criminal, inhumane and morally unsustainable policy that has not succeeded and will never succeed in fulfilling the purpose of breaking the political will of the Cuban people to preserve its sovereignty, independence and right to selfdetermination, she stated. She said the embargo is having a devastating impact on Cuba. The direct economic damage to the Cuban people by the implementation of the economic, commercial and financial blockade of the United States against Cuba until December 2011 based on the current prices and calculated in a very conservative way, amount to over 108 billion dollars (108,000,000,000), she said. Taking into consideration the depreciation of the US dollar against the price of gold in the international financial market , the damages cost to the Cuban economy would exceed one trillion 66 thousand million dollars ($1,066,000,000,000). She also thanked the Dominican
government for its continued support on the matter.

The economic embargo on Cuba caused a trillion dollars in losses to Cubas economy. Siegelbaum 2011 [Portia. September 14. CBS News. Cuba: U.S. embargo causes $1 trillion in losses.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20106159-503543.html]

Cuba blames the U.S. embargo for nearly a trillion dollars in losses to the island's economy since it was imposed by President Kennedy in 1962. Vice Foreign Minister Abelardo Moreno said that at current prices a conservative estimate of economic damages to the island up until December 2010 would be more than $104 billion. However, he added, if you take into consideration the extreme devaluation of the dollar against the price of gold on the international financial market during 2010, they would add up to nearly a trillion dollars.

Current Cuban economic reforms fail, statistics prove more must be done Tamayo 7/1/13 Juan O. Tamayo, Juan O. Tamayo, Award-winning journalist with more than 25 years of
experience as foreign correspondent and editor with The Miami Herald, focusing on Latin America - especially Cuba - as well as the Middle East and Europe. Proven writer, editor and analyst, with contacts around the world. Excels at investigations, developing sources, explaining complex stories and guiding staff to report and write creative stories. (Report says Cuban economic growth hasnt quickened despite reforms, The Miami Herald, 7/1/13, http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/01/3480625/report-says-cuban-economy-is.html, accessed: 7/4/13, amf)
Cuba said Monday its

economy will grow by no more than 3 percent this year, about the same as in 2012 but far short of the 3.6 percent goal and another indication that ruler Ra l Castros reforms are generating little new economic activity. Castro, nevertheless, seemed pleased with the reports on his reforms submitted
Friday to a meeting of the Council of Ministers and detailed in a story Monday in Granma, the official newspaper of the ruling Communist Party. We continue advancing and the results can be seen. We are moving at a faster pace than can be imagined by those who criticiz e our supposed slow pace and ignore the difficulties that we face, he was quoted as saying at the meeting. Since succeeding older brother Fidel in 2008, Castro has allowed more private enterprise and cut state payrolls and subsidies. But many

economists have dismissed his reforms as too slow and too weak to rescue Cubas Soviet-styled economy. Minister of the Economy and planning Adel Yzquierdo told the Cabinet meeting that he expects Gross Domestic Product will grow by between 2.5 and 3 percent, far short of the 3.6 percent goal. The countrys GDP grew by 3 percent last year. GDP growth for the first half of this year was estimated at 2.3 percent, compared to 2.1 percent for the same period last year, he added. Cuba uses a unique way of counting GDP that exaggerates the number when compared to other countries. Yzquierdo blamed the shortcomings on a broad range of factors that went from last years Hurricane
Sandy it caused an estimated $2 billion in damages to what Granma called the deficiencies that are part and parcel of the Cuban economy. Granma and Yzquierdo ticked off a list of reasons for the economic stagnation, from delays in projects to broken contracts and the low productivity and shortage of the labor force as well as the economic situation in Latin America and the rest of the worl d. Spending on social services remained stable for the first semester of this year, Yzquierdo declared, and many parts of the economy grew at a 2.9 percent clip or better. But the

sugar harvest fell 192,000 tons short of goal and bean production fell 6,000 tons short. Government spending on construction and other capital projects was 16.6 percent higher than in the first semester last year but 9 percent short of goal because of delays and others issues, the minister said. Exports grew by 5 percent, Granma reported, and lower prices on imported food meant savings of $168 million. But shortcomings in Cuban farming forced the government to import an unplanned $46 million worth of food. Cuba must import more than 70 percent of the food items it consumes, at a cost of more than $1.5 billion a year. Embargo hurts Cuban economy Trani 13- Eugene Trani, former president of the Virginia Commonwealth University and a PHD in American history, ( Trani: End the embargo on Cuba, 6/23/13,

http://www.timesdispatch.com/opinion/their-opinion/columnists-blogs/guestcolumnists/end-the-embargo-on-cuba/article_ba3e522f-8861-5f3c-bee9000dffff8ce7.html, 7/4/13, CAS)

On the one hand, more than

200,000 Americans are now visiting Cuba on American Treasury Department-approved licenses annually. The sight of American Airlines planes dropping off and picking up
American citizens at the Jos Mart International Airport in Havana seems at best surprising. My trip, conducted by Insight Cuba, was one such officially approved trip. Further, there are now more than $2 billion of remittances sent by Americans to their Cuban relatives annually. So there are some points of progress in overall Cuban-American relations. At the same time, there are many significant problems that tend to hurt the Cuban people most at risk in economic terms. The visit of a cruise ship to a Cuban port results in that ship being unable, no matter which flag registry the ship has, to dock in the United States for six months. This policy really hurts the

Cuban tourist economy, which could greatly improve employment and job creation across Cuba.

If Cuban materials are used in the construction of cars (more than 4% nickel for example), these cars cannot be sold in the United States, a policy which works against the rise of an automobile-based manufacturing segment of the Cuban economy. The American embargo has had, therefore, very significant impact on different parts of the economy in Cuba. In fact, such varied political leaders as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; George P. Shultz, former
Republican secretary of state; and the late former Democratic presidential candidate, George McGovern, have called for the embargo to be lifted and relations to be renewed between Cuba and the United States. Even polls of Americans show a majority in favor of an end to the embargo and re-establishing of normal relations between the countries.

Cuba Econ Growing

Cubas Economy is growingsending doctors to Asia, Africa, and Latin America France-Presse 6/19- Agence France-Presse, head writer for the Raw Story (Cuba nets billions each year by
hiring out its doctors to Asia, Africa and Latin America, 6/19/13, the Raw Story, http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/19/cuba-nets-billions-each-year-by-hiring-out-its-doctors-to-asia-africa-andlatin-america/, Accessed: 7/2/13, zs)

Cuba is out to boost its top export, an ever-more critical pillar of its economy. And its not sugar: hired-out Cuban doctors earn the Communist government over six billion dollars a year. Medical services exports are now the leading source of hard-currency income for the nation, and have great potential to keep growing, Foreign Trade Minister Rodrigo Malmierca said at a recent event. About 40,000 Cubans doctors are working on contracts in 66 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The next big-ticket client could be Brazil the
booming South American giant is considering hiring 6,000 Cuban doctors to help cover its health care staff shortage. It may be somewhat surprising that Cuba once known for its exports like sugar, cigars, citrus fruits and rum now has four main pillars of its state-controlled economy. Only one nickel is a traditional commodity, bringing in $1.1 billion a year as the countrys fourth most important import. Bu t in this nation of endless white beaches, nickel is still less than half as significant as tourism, which brings in $2.5 billion a year into government coffers. Impressively, in a Caribbean country of just 11 million people, remittances money sent by relatives abroad also end up giving $2.5 billion to the Cuban government. Why? Because their family members here spend it mostly at stores owned by the government. Each of those big-ticket, hard-currency spinners however pales in comparison to the whopping $6 billion Cuba earns each year in exporting professional services sports trainers, teachers and especially doctors on overseas contracts. At home, doctors earn between $25 and $41 dollars each month, and they are not allowed to leave Cuba at will. If they were to head to the nearby US state of Florida, where Cubans can work legally just after arrival, they could earn a physicians salary of $150,000 per year or more. Private mechanics, waiters at restaurants c atering to tourists, and even hairdressers can earn far more than do highly-trained doctors in Cuba, making overseas medical missions appealing to this countrys doctors. The Cuban government acts as a middleman in the transactions, hiring out their medical staff to foreign countries. The amounts Havana charges for the services of their workers are not made public, but payment, in hard currency, is for significantly more than what the doctors are paid personally. The

government keeps the difference between its contracting price and what it pays the Cuban worker monthly. Its a big business that is getting bigger: Havana has said it wants to increase the number of countries paying to import Cuban doctors. In a nation proud of its public health tradition,
it also is charity in some cases: Cuba gives doctors services to 40 countries that cannot afford to pay for them for free. President Raul

Castros government recently vowed that medical missions, which started under his brother Fidel Castro back in 1998, would be maintained and even expanded. We are going to continue assistance in solidarity to countries that cannot pay for these medical services, as in the case of Haiti, said Health Minister Roberto Morales. At the moment, 26 nations are paying the Cuban government to send them doctors, at a salary level determined by the Cuban government. Morales said money earned from the medical contracting arrangement with Venezuela, for example, helps pay for expenses we incur in other countries and is also used to improve workers health care and working conditions. The politically based economic arrangement
with Venezuela harkens back to the Cold War, when Cuba exported its sugar to the East bloc for cut-rate Soviet oil. Cuba hopes one day to be able to tap yet another source of revenue: the cash-strapped government believes there are vast crude oil assets off the islands north coast. But as long as it is unable to access them, Cuba remains economically isolated and dependent on Venezuela, which provides the communist island with cut-rate oil and is the single largest importer of Cubas medical export workers, taking in about 30,000 of them.

Cuban economy growing now exceeding estimates Xinhuanet News 7/1/13 Edited by Fu Peng, editor at Xinhuanet News. (Cuba making economic progress:
president, Xinhuanet News, 7/1/13, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/business/2013-07/02/c_132503979.htm, accessed: 7/3/13, amf)
HAVANA, July 1 (Xinhua) -- Cuban President Raul

Castro has praised his country's economic progress as "noticeable," the official daily Granma reported Monday. "We are progressing at a faster rate than estimated by
those who had criticized our supposed slow pace and who didn't know the difficulties we face," the president was quoted as saying at a recent meeting with the Council of Ministers reviewing the 2012 budget and other economic issues. Economy

and Planning Minister Abdel Yzquierdo said it was officially estimated that Cuba's gross domestic product (GDP) will grow 2.3 percent in the first half this year, with most economic sectors reporting an uptick, especially in trade, transportation, communication and manufacturing, the daily said. During the first half of this year, Cuban exports grew more than 5 percent year on year from 2012 and 168

million U.S. dollars less were spent on food imports thanks to lower prices of several products, Yzquierdo said. The state budget closed the first half of the year with a slight surplus, while revenue growth exceeded 4 percent mainly due to taxes, Cuban Finance and Prices Minister Lina Pedraza Rodriguez added Cubas economy improving Xinhuanet 7/2- xinhuanetnews, The Xinhua News Agency is the official press agency of the People's Republic
of China and the biggest center for collecting information and press conferences, (Cuba making economic progress: president, xinhuanet.com, 7/2/13, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/business/2013-07/02/c_132503979.htm, Accessed: 7/3/13, MH)
HAVANA, July 1 (Xinhua) -- Cuban President Raul Castro

has praised his country's economic progress as "noticeable," the official daily Granma reported Monday. "We are progressing at a faster rate than estimated by those who had criticized our supposed slow pace and who didn't know the difficulties we face," the
president was quoted as saying at a recent meeting with the Council of Ministers reviewing the 2012 budget and other economic issues. Economy and Planning Minister Abdel Yzquierdo said it was officially estimated that Cuba's

gross domestic product (GDP) will grow 2.3 percent in the first half this year, with most economic sectors reporting an uptick,
especially in trade, transportation, communication and manufacturing, the daily said. During the first half of this year, Cuban exports grew more than 5 percent year on year from 2012 and 168 million U.S. dollars less were spent on food imports thanks to lower prices of several products, Yzquierdo said. The

state budget closed the first half of the year with a slight surplus, while revenue growth exceeded 4 percent mainly due to taxes, Cuban Finance and Prices Minister Lina Pedraza Rodriguez added Castro said that
"we demand everyone pay his or her taxes; we cannot allow this issue to be born with problems. We have to educate and teach schoolchildren the importance of taxes in the redistribution of wealth."

Cuba Econ Down

The Cuban economy is in the dumps More than $108 billion in damage caused by the embargo. JPost 12 - The Jerusalem Post, Israels best-selling English daily and most-read English website [Cuba says ending U.S. embargo would
help both countries, The Jerusalem Post, 9/20/12, http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Cuba-says-ending-US-embargo-would-help-bothcountries, accessed: 7/2/13, JK]

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 US 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.

Cuban economy stagnant Tamayo 7/1- JUAN O. TAMAYO, The University of Miamis Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies
(ICCAS) has named Juan O. Tamayo, former Foreign Editor and Chief of Correspondents at The Miami Herald and for many years the newspapers lead person in its coverage of Cuban affairs, a Research Associate, Report says Cuban economic growth hasnt quickened despite reforms, Miami Herald, 7/1/13, http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/01/3480625/report-says-cuban-economy-is.html, 7/3/13, MH) Cuba said Monday its economy will grow by no more than 3 percent this year, about the same as in 2012 but far short of the 3.6 percent goal and another indication that ruler Ra l Castros reforms are generating little new economic activity. Castro, nevertheless, seemed pleased with the reports on his reforms submitted Friday to a meeting of the Council of Ministers and detailed in a story Monday in Granma, the official newspaper of the ruling Communist Party. We continue advancing and the results can be seen. We are moving at a faster pace than can be imagined by those who criticize our supposed slow pace and ignore the difficulties that we face, he was quoted as saying at the meeting. Since succeeding older brother Fidel in 2008, Castro has allowed more private enterprise and cut state payrolls and subsidies. But many economists have dismissed his reforms as too slow and too weak to rescue Cubas Soviet-styled economy. Minister of the Economy and planning Adel Yzquierdo told the Cabinet meeting that he expects Gross Domestic Product will grow by between 2.5 and 3 percent, far short of the 3.6 percent goal. The countrys GDP grew by 3 percent last year. GDP growth for the first half of this year was estimated at 2.3 percent, compared to 2.1 percent for the same period last year, he added. Cuba uses a unique way of counting GDP that exaggerates the number when compared to other countries. Yzquierdo blamed the shortcomings on a broad range of factors that went from last years Hurricane Sandy it caused an estimated $2 billion in damages to what Granma called the deficiencies that are part and parcel of the Cuban economy.

Cuba Key
Cuba key to US economy helps agriculture, businesses, and health care system Goll 03 David Goll, silicon valley business journal (citing Roy Allen, an international business authority who
wrote the book "Financial Crises and Recession in Global Economy") (Prof says Cuba embargo bad for business, San Francisco Business Times, 5/23/03, http://www.bizjournals.com/eastbay/stories/2003/05/26/story5.html?page=all, accessed: 7/4/13, ckr)
In Roy Allen's opinion, business as usual between the United States and Cuba isn't good business. That view was strengthened by Allen's participation in a trip to the Caribbean nation last month as part of a 33-member delegation of East Bay residents led by Rep. Barbara Lee, DOakland. During the week-long sojourn to the Western Hemisphere's only remaining socialist nation, the dean of the School of Economics and Business Administration at Saint Mary's College of California in Moraga met with 76-year-old President Fidel Castro. "California

business is missing out," Allen said. "And for Cuba, which is developing its tourism industry, the fact that American tourists can't travel there makes a huge difference in its economy." Castro, who has led the
country since 1959 and through 41 years of a U.S. economic embargo based on political differences between the two nations, met with members of the Lee contingent, as he does periodically with groups of Americans. U.S. citizens are only legally able to visit the nation as part of cultural or educational exchange programs. The East Bay group, which also delivered medical supplies for the needy, was an attractive one for Castro, Allen said, because of Lee's highly visible progressive politics and membership on the House of Representatives' Cuba Working Group.

Allen, an international business authority who wrote the book "Financial Crises and Recession in Global Economy" in 1999, is one of a growing number of U.S. academicians and business people who view Cuba as a potentially profitable market for American companies - especially food, medical and technology companies. Because they have no curbs on trade with Cuba, businesses in Canada, Mexico, South America and Europe have stepped into the breach, to some extent. Cuba has diplomatic relations with 165 nations, although not the United States. While relations between the two nations have softened
from time to time, the Bush administration has taken a hard line against the Communist nation, contending that increased trade and cultural exchanges give legitimacy to a dictatorship that has brutally suppressed dissent. Republicans also get a great deal of political and financial support from members of the large Cuban exile community in South Florida. However, one of Bush's own party members, Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Montana, plans to submit a bill in the House of Representatives to lift the embargo, arguing his state could greatly benefit by selling farm products to Cuba. Another Montana representative, Sen. Max Baucus, a Democrat, plans to sponsor a similar bill in the Senate. Some Bay Area businesses - especially the struggling tech sector - could get a boost if the embargo was lifted. According to Allen, Castro told the East Bay group he has a long-term goal of putting at least one computer, along with peripheral hardware such as printers, in every Cuban classroom. Allen said the American embargo unquestionably has stunted the

Cuban economy, cutting off a nearby source of goods and services and restricting a potentially lucrative tourist trade. The embargo also denies Cuba access to a huge market for its main products, including sugar, tobacco and citrus. In 2000, Cubans had a per capita
annual income of $1,700, according to the U.S. State Department. Housing and medical care is free, however, for Cuban citizens. During a brief one-on-one meeting at a government building, Allen says he and Castro discussed the role of the U.S. dollar in the Cuban economy. American currency is legal tender along with the Cuban peso on the island. "I asked him if he was confident the dollar base could be managed properly, given what happened to the economies of Argentina and Mexico when they circulated the U.S. dollar," Allen said, adding that Castro, responding in his characteristically long-winded fashion, essentially said Cuba would learn from mistakes made by its Latin American neighbors and manage the situation more effectively. "I was impressed with his knowledge of business and economics." Castro also queried Allen and other members of the delegation about the economy of California, the fifth largest in the world, and of the city of Oakland. "He was very interested in the size of the city budget and how much it spent on city services," Allen said. "He wanted to compare the level of spending on social services between the Bay Area and Cuba." Following the private conversations Castro had with members of the delegation, they joined him for a three-hour luncheon at which Allen said he sat directly across the table from Castro. The Cuban leader did most of the talking, Allen said. The delegation also met with other Cuban government officials, who engaged them in conversations on topics ranging from business to politics to comparisons between the two societies. "(Government officials) claim every child has access to day care and an education," Allen said. "They appear to have a pretty good social safety net. "There are a lot of substandard buildings around the city and countryside, but we saw no evidence of abject poverty," Allen said. He said he and other delegation members were free to roam about Havana and Playa Veradero, Cuba's largest resort. If the embargo of Cuba was lifted, Allen envisions dramatic benefits in a short time. "Right now, there is a single chartered flight a day from Los Angeles to Havana, so if trade and tourism were allowed, there would be dozens of flights daily from all over California," he said. "I

think there would be strong interest (in Cuba) from our agricultural industry and from real estate development interests here in California. And, since Cuba is renowned as having the best medical practices in Latin America, I believe our local health care community could benefit tremendously from exchanges between the two countries." Allen fears, however, that the situation is moving in
exactly the opposite direction, with the Bush administration threatening to cut off all remaining cultural exchanges between the two nations. "We have a group of Saint Mary's students scheduled to go there in January with one of our history professors, and that trip may now be threatened," he said. "As an educator interested in international cooperation, I think these exchanges are so important. Our U.S. policy, which seems to be based on Cold War realities, is just a little out of date."

Cubas new immigration laws are good for the regional economy Sweig and Bustamante 13- Julia E. Sweig, Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America
Studies and Director for Latin America Studies; Michael Bustamante, PhD candidate specializing in Latin American and Caribbean History at Yale, dissertation about the cultural politics of Cuban collective and historical memory, on and off the island, in the wake of the 1959 Revolution, served as Research Associate for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. (Cuba After Communism, Counci l on Foreign Relations, http://www.cfr.org/cuba/cuba-after-communism/p30991, July/August 2013, accessed: 7/3/13, ML)

Cuba's recent reform of its migration law neatly encapsulates a number of the possibilities, limits, and implications of Castro's larger agenda. Despite being both a sign of the state's willingness to make strategic decisions and arguably the most important reform to date, the new law also underscores the uphill battles that remain and illustrates the difficulty of managing optics and expectations. As with most issues in Cuban society, the line between politics and economics is entirely blurred. Faced with an exodus of educated professionals and capital from the country after the revolution, the Cuban government began heavily regulating the movement of its citizens abroad in the early 1960s. In light of migrs' direct involvement in attempts to unseat the Castro regime, often financed by the U.S. government, Havana treated migration as a matter of national security. For many years, those who succeeded in leaving, legally or illegally, had their property stripped by the state and could not, barring extraordinary exceptions, return home. Such restrictions left deep wounds. Yet it has been a long time since Cubans on the island and off could be
neatly divided between anticommunists and pro-Castro revolutionaries. Any visit to the Miami airport today attests to the strength of transnational ties; in peak season, over a hundred weekly charter flights carry Cubans and Cuban Americans between the two countries. Such travel, allowed under some circumstances since the late 1970s, has expanded considerably since 2009, when U.S. President Barack Obama lifted restrictions on family visits. In 2012, upward of 400,000 Cubans in the United States visited the island. And this is to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of Cuban emigrants living across Latin America, Canada, Europe, and beyond who also visit and support family at home.

Indeed, by making it easier for Cubans to travel, work abroad, and then return home, Cuba's new migration law is also meant to stimulate the economy. At an estimated $1 billion a year, remittances have been big
business since the late 1990s, helping Cubans compensate for low salaries and take advantage of what few opportunities have existed for private enterprise. Now

that the government has undertaken a wider expansion of the small-business sector, ties between the diaspora and the island are bringing an even greater payoff. Cubans abroad are already
helping invest money in the window-front cafeterias, repair shops, and other small businesses popping up across the country. Some islanders are also sending their own money out of the country so that relatives can buy them consumer goods abroad. Beyond

redressing a deeply unpopular status quo, however, the new migration law has put the government in an awkward position. Assuming enough Cubans can afford the now reduced, but still comparatively high, fees associated with acquiring
necessary travel documents, other countries -- principally the United States -- will need to continue receiving Cuban visitors and migrants in large numbers. Ironically, Havana

has long criticized the special preferences granted to Cubans under U.S. immigration law for seeming to encourage and reward dangerous attempts to reach U.S. shores. Now, Cuba appears to benefit from such measures' remaining on the books -- especially the one-year fast track
to permanent residency established by the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act. Under Cuba's expanded two-year allowance for legal residency abroad, the more than 20,000 Cubans emigrating legally to the United States each year will be able to acquire green cards without necessarily giving up their citizenship claims, homes, or businesses on the island. Small-time

diaspora capital may prove easier to regulate and rely on than funds from multinational corporations driven strictly by profits. Under the repatriation provisions of the island's new migration law, some Cubans may even retire to the island with their pensions and savings after decades of working abroad. Yet opening the doors for more young citizens to leave could prove risky for a quickly aging, low-birthrate society that has been suffering from a brain drain for some time. Besides, along with remittance dollars, Cuba urgently needs both medium and large investors. Ultimately, only larger outlays can help fix Cuba's most fundamental
economic problem: its depleted productive base. Castro appears to recognize that attracting foreign investment, decentralizing the government, and further expanding the private sector are the only ways to tackle this long-term predicament. The government is unlikely to proceed with anything but caution, however. Officials are wary of rocking the domestic political boat, and citizens and party leaders alike recoil from the prospect of more radical shock therapy. Rising public protests in China and Vietnam against inequality and rampant corruption have only reinforced the Cuban government's preference for gradualism. Striking an adequate balance will be no easy task. In late 2012, Havana

legalized the creation of transportation cooperatives -- private, profit-sharing entities owned and manage by their members -- to fix bottlenecks in agricultural distribution. Meanwhile, 100 state enterprises are now running their
finances completely autonomously as part of a yearlong pilot program. The government is also reportedly considering ways to offer a wider array of potential foreign partners more advantageous terms for joint ventures. But

the Communist Party is working through

numerous contradictions -- recognizing a place for market economics, challenging old biases against entrepreneurs, and hinting at decentralizing the budget while incongruously insisting, in the words of its official 2011 guidelines, that " central planning, and not the market, will take precedence." Lifting the embargo would improve Cuban and US economies Bandow 12/11/12 Doug Bandow, Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special
Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is the author of several books, including Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire. (Time to End the Cuban Embargo, The National Interest, 12/11/12, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-pointless-cuba-embargo-7834?page=1, accessed: 7/3/13, amf)

Ending the embargo would have obvious economic benefits for both Cubans and Americans. The U.S. International Trade Commission estimates American losses alone from the embargo as much as $1.2 billion annually. Expanding economic opportunities also might increase pressure within Cuba for further economic reform. So far the regime has taken small steps, but rejected significant change. Moreover, thrusting more Americans into Cuban society could help undermine the ruling system.
Despite Fidel Castros decline, Cuban politics remains largely static. A few human rights activists have been released, while Raul Castro has used party purges to entrench loyal elites. Lifting the embargo would be no panacea. Other countries invest in and trade with Cuba to no obvious political impact. And the lack of widespread economic reform makes it easier for the regime rather than the people to collect the benefits of trade, in contrast to China. Still, more

U.S. contact would have an impact. Argued trade specialist Dan Griswold, 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. Several steps can be taken to help Cuba improve their economic endeavors. vanden Heuvel 7/2/13- Katrina vanden Heuvel; member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Princeton
undergrad in politics and history, editor of The Nation magazine (The U.S. should end the Cuban embargo, Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/katrina-vanden-heuvel-us-should-end-cubanembargo/2013/07/02/8ab3a8de-e278-11e2-a11e-c2ea876a8f30_story.html, accessed: 7/2/13, ML)
Is there a greater example of utter folly than Americas superannuated policy toward Cuba? During

more than 50 years corrupted by covert actions, economic sabotage, travel bans and unending embargo, the United States managed to make Castro and Cuba an international symbol of proud independence. Intent on isolating Cuba, Washington has succeeded only in isolating itself in its own hemisphere. Intent on displacing Fidel Castro, the U.S. enmity only added to his nationalist credentials. A recent visit reveals a Cuba that is already beginning a new, post-Castro era. That only highlights the inanity of the continuing U.S. embargo, a cruel relic of a Cold War era that is long gone. Cuba is beginning a new experiment, driven by necessity, of trying to build its own version of market socialism in one country. Just as populist movements in the hemisphere looked to Castro and Cuba for inspiration, now Cuba is learning from its allies as it cautiously seeks to open up its economy. A former minister of the economy spoke of how Cuba is committed to fostering private coops and businesses, and is beginning a push to make more state enterprises make their own way. This month, 100 state-run produce markets and 26 other establishments are scheduled to
become private cooperatives. The government says many more establishments will follow, beginning in 2014, as an alternative to small and medium-size state businesses in retail and food services, transportation, light manufacturing and construction, among other sectors. Despite the embargo, Jos Mart International Airport displays the new vitality. Hundreds of Cuban Americans fly into see relatives, bringing everything from flat-screen TVs to consumer basics. Since President Obama lifted restrictions on family visits in 2009, remittances and material support from Cuban Americans play a growing role in the microeconomy of the island. Whereas in the 1990s, Havana was willing to permit only limited private enterprise as an emergency measure, government officials now speculate openly about aiming toward 50 percent of Cuba s GDP in private hands within five years. Of course, an expanding small business sector wont resolve some central issues facing the island: access to large-scale credit and investment and the need to boost exports and address anemic productivity, not to mention the demands of an aging population. In Havana, there is more talk about Brazils investment in renovating Mariel Harbor than about Edward Snowden. Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht had to resist threats by Floridas state government to cut off any state contracts if it invested in C uba. This enormous deep-water port is designed to handle trade with the United States and beyond in a post-embargo world, if the embargo is ever ended. Cubas official media remains sclerotic, though there are spirited debates in a few online outlets. But the government appears to understand that the explosion of social media will transform communications and politics, and however tentatively, realizes it has little choice but to change if it is to

engage a younger generation. It

is long past time for the United States to end the embargo and influence Cuba, rather than threaten it. Ironically, as a result of a new Cuban migration law lifting more than 50 years of restrictions on the
ability of its citizens to travel freely abroad, taking effect this year, Cubans are now freer to travel to the United States than Americans are to Cuba. The president cant end the travel ban without Congressional approval, but as Peter Kornbluhexplained in a recent piece in Th e Nation, he can take several steps that would transform our policy. Obama

should start by removing Cuba from the State Departments list of nations that support terrorism, terminating the economic and commercial sanctions that come with that designation. The Treasury could stop fining international banks for doing business with Cuba, a practice that impedes the countrys slow opening to private enterprise. At the same time, the president could expand licensing for travel to Cuba, making it easier for entrepreneurs, scientists, doctors and others to travel and explore commercial possibilities. The Cold War Cuban Democracy and Contingency Planning Program, designed for regime change, should be reconfigured to a people-to-people exchange program that would actually have some influence. Finally, as a prelude to broader bilateral negotiations on a range of issues, Obama could act directly to remove an open sore in U.S.-Cuban relations. The president could commute the sentences of the so-called Cuban Five, counterterrorism agents arrested in Florida in 1998 and convicted on espionage charges, four of whom are still imprisoned. At the same time, the Cubans
could free Alan Gross, who was arrested when he was sent to Cuba by USAID on a quasi-covert mission to supply Jewish groups with satellite connections to the Internet. Former President Jimmy Carter has offered to facilitate these sensible steps. The Cold War is over; the Soviet Union is no more. The United States sustains the largest trade deficit in the history of the world with Chinas communists. And yet the embargo and enmity towards Cuba continue. The intelligence agencies and the embittered and aging Cuban refugees may never acknowledge the world as it is. But it

is long past time for the United States to turn to a policy that will engage Cuba rather than isolate ourselves. Opening Cuban markets spark hope with lifting the embargo. Cave 12- Damien Cave, NYT foreign correspondent for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean (Easing of
Restraints in Cuba Renews Debate on U.S. Embargo, NYT, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/world/americas/changes-in-cuba-create-support-for-easingembargo.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0, 11/19.12, accessed: 7/2/13, ML) If I could just get a lift, said Francisco Lpez, imagining the addition of a hydraulic elevator as he stood by a rusted Russian sedan in his mechanics workshop here. All he needed was an investment from his brother in Miami or from a Cuban friend there who already sneaks in brake pads and other parts for him. The problem: Washingtons 50-year-old trade embargo, which prohibits even the most basic business dealings across the 90 miles separating Cuba from the United States. Indeed, every time Mr. Lpezs friend in Florida accepts payment for a car pa rt destined for Cuba, he puts himself at risk of a fine of up to $65,000. With Cuba cautiously introducing free-market changes that have legalized hundreds of thousands of small private businesses over the past two years, new economic bonds between Cuba and the United States have formed, creating new challenges, new possibilities and a more complicated

debate over the embargo. The longstanding logic has been that broad sanctions are necessary to suffocate the totalitarian government of Fidel and Ral Castro. Now, especially for many Cubans who had previously stayed on the sidelines in the battle over Cuba policy, a new argument against the embargo is gaining currency that the tentative move toward capitalism by the Cuban government could be sped up with more assistance from Americans.
Even as defenders of the embargo warn against providing the Cuban government with economic lifelines, some Cubans and exiles are advocating a fresh approach. The Obama administration already showed an openness to engagement with Cuba in 2009 by removing restrictions on travel and remittances for Cuban Americans. But with Fidel Castro, 86, retired and President Ral Castro, 81, leading a bureaucracy that is divided on the pace and scope of change, many have begun urging President Obama to go further and update

American policy by putting a priority on assistance for Cubans seeking more economic independence from the government.

Cuban market key to US economy Thompson & Reuters 13in an interview with Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, Thompson and
Reuters, Newsmax reporters (Cuba: Ending US Embargo Would Help Both Countries, Newsmax, http://www.newsmax.com/GlobalTalk/cuba-us-embargo-end/2012/09/21/id/457042, Accessed 7/4/13, jtc)

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, 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 spoke at a news 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 t he 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 muchneeded 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.
Obama, who said early in his presidency that he wanted to recast long-hostile U.S.-Cuba relations, has been a disappointment to the Cuban government, which expected him to do more to dismantle the embargo. He has lifted some restrictions on travel and all on the sending of remittances to the island, but Rodriguez said he has broadened the embargo and its enforcement in other areas.

Economic reforms in Cuba make engagement now key Patterson 4/8 - Jeff Patterson, general assignment reporter whos covered a wide variety of stories in
the Tampa Bay area. (Cuban embargo to be lifted, WFLA, April 8, 2013, http://www.wfla.com/story/21911379/florida-democratic-congresswoman-calls-for-cuban-embargo-to-belifted, accessed: 7/4/13, LR)

" They have embarked on economic reforms that the United States of America should promote.", says Castor. The Florida Democrat says she believes she is only the second member of congress from the state to
visit Cuba since 1959. Castor met with a number of Cuban government officials during her trip and she is calling for a significant change to U.S. and Cuban relations. Castor says, "Fidel Castro is no longer in power. There is a generational change occurring in the government of Cuba. They are still a hard corps communist nation, but they are embarking on market reforms in their economy that deserve encouragement." Castor also says it's time to allow Americans to freely travel to Cuba. "I believe policy makers in Washington should consider lifting the embargo on Cuba. They should consider, they should lift the travel restrictions that prevent Americans from traveling to Cuba.", says Castor.

Laundry list of economic incentives for engaging with Cuba Ediger 12 - Don Ediger, journalist and author, contributor to Consortium News. (Cubas Post-Castro
Future, Consortium News, September 19, 2012, http://consortiumnews.com/2012/09/19/cubas-postcastro-future/, accessed: 7/4/13, LR)
The stakes are high for post-embargo trade. Cuba has a gross domestic product (in purchasing power parity) of about $114 billion, putting it in a league with Ecuador and New Zealand. Companies from dozens

of countries including Spain, France, Venezuela and Canada are

already profiting by trade with Cuba. Miami attorney Zamora, who gives legal advice to companies in the U.S. and throughout Latin America, said these are some of the major opportunities for American companies: Construction. Many houses, for example, are in need of repair. Resorts, including retirement communities, golf courses and other sports facilities. Oil refineries

(assuming the success of continued oil exploration). Infrastructure, especially highways, ports and power plants. (Earlier this month, some five million residents of western Cuba were without electricity after a massive blackout.) Biotechnology and

health-care

facilities. Travel to, from and on the island. Many businesses, especially in Florida, are already preparing for trade and investment in postembargo Cuba, and several Cuba trade groups have started up in Miami and Tampa, among other cities. Trade advocates point out that if

U.S. companies dont start doing business in Cuba, foreign corporations are almost certain to step up their activities there. The French, for example, pulled back their investments when European economies tanked several years ago. They
now hope to increase investment in Cuba from a recent level of 150 million euros (about $196 million) to 250 million euros (about $327 million) a year.

Now key to US-Cuban rapprochement Castros efforts to improve econ and support from Cuban-Americans Padgett 7/3 - Tim Padgett, Bureau Chief of Mexico for Newsweek and of Latin America for Time (Why This
Summer Offers Hope For Better U.S.-Cuba Relations WLRN Miami Herald News, 7/3/13, http://wlrn.org/post/why-summer-offers-hope-better-us-cuba-relations, Accessed 7/4/13, AM) 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 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.

SOLVENCY ADVOCATES

Executive Order
Obama wants to end embargo Ford 09-Glen Ford, writer and reporter for black agenda report(Obama Slowly Edges Toward Ending Failed U.S.
Embargo of Cuba, Black Agenda Report, 4/15/2009, http://blackagendareport.com/content/obama-slowly-edgestoward-ending-failed-us-embargo-cuba,

No matter how you measure it, the US embargo of Cuba has been a failure, and worse, a crime against both the US and the Cuban peoples. Instead of isolating Cuba, it isolates the US and its people from Cuban cultural contributions and US businesses from the profits of Cuban trade. Still, the First Black President moves slowly, much slower than hos voters would like, toward the inevitable. Obama Slowly Edges Toward Ending Failed U.S. Embargo of Cuba A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford President Obama will attend a summit meeting of the OAS, most of whose members now maintain good relations with Cuba and wish the U.S. would lift the trade embargo. For half a century, U.S. hatred of the Cuban revolution has driven Washington to commit the full spectrum of international crimes against its small island neighbor: invasion, biological warfare, a relentless campaign of assassination and terror, and the worlds longest trade embargo. Yet the Castro brothers and the socialist government still stand. Forty-seven years ago, when all of Latin America except for Cuba was under Washingtons thumb, the United States directed the Organization of American States the OAS to expel Cuba, which, of course, was promptly done. That was the same year, 1962, that the U.S. imposed its trade blockade on Cuba. Later this week, President Obama will attend a summit meeting of the OAS, most of whose members now maintain good relations with Cuba and wish the U.S. would lift the trade embargo. Some of them will surely tell Obama so, and in this day and age, the president of the United States has no choice but to listen. The Caribbean Community is also on record against the embargo, as is the General Assembly of the United Nations. Captains of U.S. industry, and their foreign counterparts, have for years lobbied for an end to the embargo, for the simple reason that its bad for business, putting American firms at a disadvantage in the global marketplace. The embargo against Cuba, designed to isolate the revolution, today isolates the United States from the community of nations. Cuban leader Raul Castro offered to exchange the Cuban Five for any jailed Cuban dissidents the U.S. wants. Barack Obama got ready for his Friday meeting with the leaders of the rest of the Americas by dropping a range of restrictions on Cuba, mostly involving visits Cuban Americans will be allowed to make to the island and the money and gifts they can send. The older generation of Miami Cubans last week finally bowed to the stability and longevity of the Cuban revolution. Acknowledging the handwriting that has long covered the walls, the farrightwing Cuban American National Foundation called for a significant loosening of restrictions on Cuban American contact with the island. The old reactionaries stopped short of calling for an end to the embargo, but said the issue was only symbolic and no longer important anymore. One of the Cuban American National Foundations heroes, the infamous terrorist Luis Posada, moved a little closer to his eventual encounter with justice, when a federal grand jury served up a new indictment against him in connection with bombings at Cuban tourism destinations, back in

1997. One Italian tourist was killed in the terror campaign. Posada has long been wanted by Havana in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people. But nowadays the Cuban government would be much happier for the return of the so-called Cuban Five, a group of intelligence agents sent by Cuba to infiltrate Miamis exile groups, where younger versions of Luis Posada planned terrorist attacks on Cuban soil. Instead of being thanked by the FBI for doing the Bureaus job, the Cuban Five were sentenced to long terms in prison on espionage charges. Cuban leader Raul Castro offered to exchange the Cuban Five or any jailed Cuban dissidents the U.S. wants. Sounds like a good deal. And then the U.S. can end the embargo, and look a little bit less evil in the eyes of the world. For Black Agenda Radio, Im Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.

Obama should lift the Cuba embargo for an open economy Goodman 2/20 Joshua Goodman, Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School (Obama
Can Bend Cuba Embargo to Help Open Economy, Groups Say, Bloomberg, 2/20/13, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-20/obama-should-bend-cuba-embargo-to-buoy-free-markets-reportssay.html, accessed: 6/26/13)

President Barack Obama should break free of the embargo on Cuba and assert his authority to promote a free-market overhaul taking place on the communist island.
The recommendation is contained in concurrent reports to be published today by the Cuba Study Group and the Council of the Americas, two groups seeking to end a decades-old deadlock on U.S. policy toward Cuba.

Among steps Obama can take without violating sanctions passed by Congress are opening U.S. markets, as well as authorizing the sale of American goods and services, to the estimated 400,000 private entrepreneurs that have arisen since Cuban President Raul Castro started cutting state payrolls in 2011. The reports also recommend allowing U.S. credit card and insurance companies to
provide basic financial services to licensed U.S. travelers to Cuba. Weve been sitting on the sidelines with our hands tied by an antiquated law thats being too strictly interpreted, said Chris Sabatini, an author of the report and senior policy director for the Council of the Americas, a businessbacked group based in New York. Theres more Obama can do to be a catalyst for meaningful economic change.

Obama can lift important parts of the embargo by XO Bloomberg 2/20/13- Joshua Goodman, editor of Bloombergs political and economic coverage from Latin
America (Obama Can Bend Cuba Embargo to Help Open Economy, Groups Say, Bloomberg, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-20/obama-should-bend-cuba-embargo-to-buoy-free-markets-reportssay.html, accessed: 6/28/13, ML) President Barack Obama

should break free of the embargo on Cuba and assert his authority to promote a free-market overhaul taking place on the communist island. The recommendation is contained in concurrent reports to be published today by the Cuba Study Group and the Council of the Americas, two groups seeking to end a decades-old deadlock on U.S.
policy toward Cuba. Among steps Obama can take without violating sanctions passed by Congress are opening U.S. markets, as well as authorizing the sale of American goods and services, to the estimated 400,000 private entrepreneurs that have arisen since Cuban President Raul Castro started cutting state payrolls in 2011. The reports

also recommend allowing U.S. credit card and insurance companies to provide basic financial services to licensed U.S. travelers to Cuba.
Weve been sitting on the sidelines with our hands tied by an antiquated law thats being too strictly interpreted, said Chris Sabatini, an author of the report and senior policy director for the Council of the Americas, a businessbacked group based in New York. Theres more Obama can do to be a catalyst for meaningful economic change.

Executive order solves Cuba. Perales 2010 [ 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. Jos Azel is a senior research associate at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, University of Miami. The Woodrow Wilson Center is one of Washingtons most respected institutio ns 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 contended that other stated goals of the Obama administration have suffered a similar fate, yet he also claimed this does not mean all is lost. In his view President Obama just needs to take the next step: with the stroke of the executive pen he can introduce regulatory modifications that can allow the federal bureaucracy to meet his stated goals regarding Cuba. Regardless of the U.S.
governments actions, a post-embargo,post-CastroCubadoesnotnecessarily imply a business bonanza for U.S. comp anies, added Professor Jose Azel of the University of Miamis Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies. Conventional wisdom holds that U.S. companies will rush in to invest in the island if and when the legal and political circumstances allow them. However, given Cubas difficult economic situation, the international community needs to significantly lower its expectations regarding U.S. foreign direct investment in Cuba.Azel predicted that U.S. exports to Cuba will surge following a (hopefully) peaceful regime transition on the island; however, exports will not lead to the technological transfers, expertise, and capital requirements that the country will desperately need to grow its economy. The United States will obviously want to invest in a post-Castro Cuba; but it is companies, not countries, that make investments. To support his view, Azel explained the three principal reasons that companies engage in foreign direct investment. First, companies are resource seeking; they invest to secure country-specific resources available only within that market. Oil, nickel, and tourism are examples of such resources in Cuba.These have and will continue to attract a certain level of foreign direct investment, argued Azel, regardless of who is in power or the countrys marketfriendliness.Second,companiesareefficiency 3 seeking; they invest to make efficiency gains. Companies engage in foreign direct investment for this reason because they are looking to take advantage of lower labor costs or of a privileged distribution location. However, Cuba lacks an ideal labor force in comparison to that of its neighbors. After more than half a century under a totalitarian regime and a centrally planned command economy, Cubas labor force has not been able to develop the kind of efficiencies needed to attract foreign direct investment. Finally, companies are market seeking; they invest to establish a foothold in a new market that is deemed strategic or dense. However, while the island nation has more than eleven million citizens, its impoverishment means that its market has few effective consumers. A far more rational strategy to supply a market exhibiting these conditions would be to manufacture finished goods elsewhere and export them to Cuba.

Executive orders solve travel key to breaking the Castros grip Tampa Tribune 6/9/13 Editorials section. (Ease travel restrictions to Cuba to boost freedom, The Tampa
Tribune, 6/9/13, http://tbo.com/list/news-opinion-editorials/ease-travel-restrictions-to-cuba-to-boost-freedom20130609/, accessed:7/3/13, amf)

There is a quick way for our nation to help overwhelm Cubas censorship and propaganda. Simply allow Americans the most effective ambassadors for democracy and free enterprise to travel more easily to Cuba. Having more Americans visit Cuba would almost surely boost capitalism in a country that is
cautiously experimenting with property rights and private enterprise.

This can be done without the political firefight of eliminating the 50-year-old Cuban embargo,
which greatly restricts trade and travel to Cuba.

We think the embargo no longer serves a useful purpose. Indeed, it gives the Cuban government a scapegoat for its failed economic policies. As John Caulfield, chief of Mission of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, says, Cubas financial woes are a result of Cubas choice of an economic model.
But eliminating the embargo or allowing unrestricted travel to Cuba will require congressional approval, a political challenge. In contrast, President Barack Obama by executive order can require general licenses be issued for all

approved travel to Cuba.

Americans now can receive a visa to travel for such specific purposes as education and cultural studies. These trips must be guided by licensed travel services that are required to follow a strict agenda. Everything is tightly regulated by the Office of Foreign Assets Control to ensure there are no violations of the sanctions against Cuba. (Cuban-Americans appropriately have no restrictions on traveling to visit family.)

The approval process for the specific visas can be cumbersome and time-consuming. Obtaining general license is far less complicated, so expanding its use would eliminate red tape and diminish barriers to travel. It could, depending on how the executive order was written, give travelers more flexibility in what they do in Cuba. It might allow Americans to travel outside of tours. This would likely benefit those Cubans trying to establish private businesses, such as small hotels or restaurants. In any event, making travel to Cuba less daunting would result in more American visitors, which we believe would generate more support for an open society in Cuba. In April, 59 members of Congress, including Hillsborough's Rep. Kathy Castor, wrote the president urging him to "allow all current categories of permissible travel, including people-to-people, to be carried out under a general license." It is, as the representatives stress, a logical next step for the president, who already has eased some travel restrictions, including allowing flights from Tampa to Cuba, which have proved popular.
The United States' tough trade and travel prohibitions unquestionably were necessary after Fidel Castro's communist takeover, when he confiscated property, ruthlessly suppressed opposition, sought to export revolution to Latin America and provided a base for the Soviet Union. But the Cold War is over and the Soviet Union is gone. Cuba remains an authoritarian state, but its grip

seems to be slipping. That control would be further eroded should Americans be allowed to spread the seeds of capitalism and freedom in a country whose people badly need them.

Obama can solve by XO authorizing sale of American goods and services allowing companies to provide financial services Goodman 13 Joshua Goodman, Staff Writer for Bloomberg, (Obama Can Bend Cuba
Embargo to Help Open Economy, Groups Say, Article for Bloomberg, February 20 2013, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-20/obama-should-bend-cuba-embargo-to-buoy-freemarkets-reports-say.html, Accessed 6/27/13, AW) President Barack Obama should break free of the embargo on Cuba and assert his

authority to promote a free-market overhaul taking place on the communist island.

The recommendation is contained in concurrent reports to be published today by the Cuba Study Group and the Council of the Americas, two groups seeking to end a decades-old deadlock on U.S. policy toward Cuba. Among steps Obama can take without violating sanctions passed by Congress are opening U.S. markets, as well as authorizing the sale of American goods and services, to the estimated 400,000 private entrepreneurs that have arisen since Cuban President Raul Castro started cutting state payrolls in 2011. The reports also recommend allowing U.S. credit card and insurance companies to provide basic financial services to licensed U.S. travelers to Cuba. Weve been sitting on the sidelines with our hands tied by an antiquated law thats being too strictly interpreted, said Chris Sabatini, an author of the report and senior policy director for the Council of the Americas, a business-backed group based in New York. Theres more Obama can do to be a catalyst for meaningful economic change . Obama in 2009 allowed companies for the first time to provide communications services to the Caribbean island of 11 million and lifted a travel ban for Cuban-Americans. The loosening of restrictions, while heralded by the White House as a way to undermine the Castro governments control of information, was seen as insufficient by potential investors including Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc. Economic Overhaul Now, in a second term, and with private business expanding in Cuba, Obama has a freer hand to do more, said Sabatini. An exception to the embargo allowing U.S. businesses and consumers to trade with non-state enterprises in Cuba would be small in scale though help empower a growing, viable constituency for change on the island, he said.

XO solves oil spill cleanup repealing the embargo is nonsense Crdenas 12 - Jos R. Crdenas, Acting Assistant Administrator for Latin America and the
Caribbean under the Bush Administration, Senior Advisor to the Bush Administration in the U.S. Department of State, the National Security Council, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, Senior Advisor at the Organization of American States and as a senior professional staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, (The phony Cuba embargo debate, Article for Foreign Policy: Shadow Government, 3/21/12, http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/03/21/the_phony_cuba_embargo_debate, Accessed 6/28/13, AW) In recent weeks, an unholy alliance of political activists and economic opportunists have been trying to convince anyone who will listen that the U.S. embargo of Cuba is inviting "catastrophic" damage to Florida by preventing the U.S. from responding to a potential oil

spill from a newly launched Cuban rig just outside U.S. waters. The claim is without

merit . The impetus for this contrived argument is that in late January, the Spanish oil
company Repsol began exploratory drilling in Cuban waters -- 80 nautical miles from the Florida Keys -- using a Chinese-made rig owned by an Italian company. The fact is, under

current U.S. policy , any U.S. President has broad authorities to ensure all U.S. resources and expertise can be deployed in case of a disaster off the southeastern U.S.
coast. And all indications are the administration has moved expeditiously -- with lessons learned from the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico -- to plan a U.S.

response -- with no changes needed in U.S. law. Yet, that has not stopped the doomsday
scenarios. For example, according to one alarmist analysis, in case of an accident: "The Coast Guard would be barred from deploying highly experienced manpower, specially designed booms, skimming equipment and vessels, and dispersants. U.S. offshore gas and oil companies would also be barred from using well-capping stacks, remotely operated submersibles, and other vital technologies." The arguments, frankly, are a hash of half-truths and erroneous and contradictory statements about the U.S. embargo. For example, we are told the U.S. embargo prevents interaction between the U.S. and Cuban officials to discuss response scenarios, only to learn that they already are interacting. Meetings between U.S. and Cuban officials (and those from Bahamas, Jamaica, and Mexico) have already taken place under the auspices of the U.N. International Maritime Organization. Then there is the ludicrous scenario posited of vintage Cuban crop dusters being forced into action because the embargo allegedly would prevent U.S. aircraft from dropping oil dispersants. Nonsense. In addition, there is
the de rigueur clumsy caricature of pro-embargo Cuban Americans, who "might protest any decision allowing U.S. federal agencies to assist Cuba or letting U.S. companies operate in Cuban territory." This seems not to be aware that most Cuban Americans live in South Florida and would have a decided interest in any despoiling of the state's environment. They would hardly be averse to any U.S. mobilization to counter a spill . What they do justifiably object to is any exploitation of the situation for political ends. Indeed, a particularly egregious example of the politicization of the issue has been the involvement of the Environmental Defense Fund, which has been positively sanguine about Cuban oil drilling. A powerful lobby able to mobilize hundreds of activists to oppose U.S. offshore drilling, they have been leading advocates of across-the-board U.S. cooperation with Cuba on offshore oil drilling, despite the latter's woeful inexperience and dearth of capabilities in offshore oil drilling. In this, they have been aided and abetted by assorted U.S. oil services companies who have been misrepresenting U.S. policy in a misguided attempt to create economic opportunity. In the end, the likelihood that Cuba possesses any commercially viable oil reserves off its shores is dubious. And, in the unlikely event that it does discover any, it's probable that they will be exploitable only after the Castro regime passes into the dustbin of history. In the meantime, however, allowing Cuba anywhere near a deepwater platform is akin to handing a hand-grenade to a monkey. The Obama administration could have done better by strong-arming foreign

companies from partnering with the Castro brothers on this project. But they appear to have

a handle on cleaning up any attendant mess -- without any superfluous changes to

U.S. policy towards the Castro dictatorship.

Humanitarian Aid Solvency Advocates

The USFG should do more to get humanitarian goods to Cuba Garfield 99 Richard Garfield, Richard Garfield, nurse and epidemiologist, is professor of clinical international
nursing at Columbia University. He is the co-chair of the Human Rights Committee of the American Public Health Association and director of a PAHO/WHO collaborating centre at Columbia University. He worked in the ministry of health in Nicaragua. (The Impact of Economic Sanctions on Health and Well -being, Relief and Rehabilitation Network Paper, November 1999, http://www.essex.ac.uk/armedcon/story_id/The%20Impact%20of%20Econmoic%20Sanctins%20on%20Health%20 abd%20Well-Being.pdf, accessed: 7/2/13, amf)

(In order to reduce damage the following should be considered) - Create streamlined procedures to speed up the approval of essential humanitarian goods. This could involve both a standard list of exempt items and blanket exemptions for a select group of international relief organisations. This should also involve the empowerment of a technical group to specify what goods are essential, what goods are unambiguously humanitarian, and which have a credible potential for dual use. In
most sanctions regimes it is not technical experts but politicians who define how to handle a given exemption request. While the desire of politicians to control matters is understandable, the result has been greater confusion among potential supply companies, delays in decision-making, and the politicisation of humanitarian assistance. Tragic examples include the denial of purchasing rights for spare parts for breast X-ray equipment for Cuba for the stated reason of the potential for medical terrorism[sic] and the denial of permits to import nitro-glycerine paste for Iraqi angina patients due to the mistaken belief that the medicine had a potential application in building bombs.

Lifting the entire embargo

Embargo fails trade with other countries reduces its effects Chapman 4/15 Steve Chapman, writer for the Chicago Tribune (It's Time to End the U.S. Embargo of Cuba,
Reason.com, 4/15/13, http://reason.com/archives/2013/04/15/its-time-to-end-the-us-embargo-of-cuba, Accessed 7/4/13, AM) Well, maybe I exaggerate. It's just possible that the musical couple's presence or absence was utterly irrelevant to Cuba's future. Americans have somewhat less control over the island than we like to imagine. The U.S. embargo of Cuba has been in effect since 1962, with no end in sight. Fidel Castro's government has somehow managed to outlast the Soviet Union, Montgomery Ward, rotary-dial telephones and 10 American presidents. The boycott adheres to the stubborn logic of governmental action. It was created to solve a problem: the existence of a communist government 90 miles off our shores. It failed to solve that problem. But its failure is taken as proof of its everlasting necessity. If there is any lesson to be drawn from this dismal experience, though, it's that the economic quarantine has been either 1) grossly ineffectual or 2) positively helpful to the regime. The first would not be surprising, if only because economic sanctions almost never work. Iraq under Saddam Hussein? Nope. Iran? Still waiting. North Korea? Don't make me laugh. What makes this embargo even less promising is that we have so little help in trying to apply the squeeze. Nearly 200 countries allow trade with Cuba. Tourists from Canada and Europe flock there in search of beaches, nightlife and Havana cigars, bringing hard currency with them. So even if starving the country into submission could work, Cuba hasn't starved and won't anytime soon. Nor is it implausible to suspect that the boycott has been the best thing that ever happened to the Castro brothers, providing them a scapegoat for the nation's many economic ills. The implacable

hostility of the Yankee imperialists also serves to align Cuban nationalism with Cuban communism. Even Cubans who don't like Castro may not relish being told what to do by the superpower next door.
Normally it is no business of the federal government where private citizens want to spend their vacation time. But among those who claim to speak for the Cuban exile community, it is anathema for anyone to visit the island as long as the communists hold power. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., was among those lambasting the couple for daring to venture where he doesn't want them to go. Rubio claimed that people who make visits to Cuba "either don't realize or don't care that they're essentially funding the regime's systematic trampling of people's human rights." Such activity, he said, "provides money to a cruel, repressive and murderous regime." That may be true. But U.S. law allows Americans to visit the island according to certain rules enforced by the Treasury Department, and some 500,000 people from the U.S. go each year. The rules for cultural trips were tightened last year after Rubio griped that they were too lax. "The trip was handled according to a standard licensing procedure for federally approved 'people to people' cultural tours to the island," reported Reuters, "and the power couple received no special treatment, said Academic Arrangements Abroad, the New York-based group that organized the trip."

When it comes to sending money to a "cruel, repressive, murderous regime," Rubio's outrage is strangely selective. The same accusation could be laid against anyone who travels to China, Vietnam or Burma -- all of which are open to American visitors, as far as Washington is concerned. Our willingness to trade with them stems from the belief that economic improvement and contact with outsiders will foster liberalization rather than retard it. But the opposite approach is supposed to produce
this kind of progress in Cuba.

Embargo failingCuba not a threat Griswold 05 --Daniel Griswold, Director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute (Four
Decades of Failure: The U.S. Embargo against Cuba, 10/12/05, Cato Institute Speeches, http://www.cato.org/publications/speeches/four-decades-failure-us-embargo-against-cuba, Accessed 6/27/13 jtc)
The real dividing line in U.S. policy toward Cuba is how best to undermine the Castro regime and ha sten the islands day of liberation. For almost half a century, the U.S. government has tried to isolate Cuba economically in an effort to undermine the regime and deprive it of resources. Since 1960, Americans have been barred from trading with, investing in, or traveling to Cuba. The embargo had a national security rationale before 1991, when Castro served as the Soviet Unions proxy in the Western Hemisphere. But all that changed with the fall of Soviet communism. Today, more

than a decade after losing billions in annual economic aid from its former sponsor, Cuba is only a poor and dysfunctional nation of 11 million that poses no threat to American or regional security. A 1998 report by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that, Cuba does not pose a significant military threat to the U.S. or to other countries in the region. The report declared Cubas military
forces residual and defensive. Some officials in the Bush administration have charged that Castros government may be sup porting terrorists abroad, but the evidence is pretty shaky. And even if true, maintaining a comprehensive trade embargo would be a blunt and ineffective lever for change. As a foreign policy tool, the embargo

actually enhances Castros standing by giving him a handy excuse for the failures of his homegrown Caribbean socialism. He can rail for hours about the suffering the embargo
inflicts on Cubans, even though the damage done by his domestic policies is far worse. If the embargo were lifted, the Cuban people would be a bit less deprived and Castro would have no one else to blame for the shortages and stagnation that will persist without real market reforms. If the goal of U.S. policy toward Cuba is to help its people achieve freedom and a better life, the

economic embargo has completely failed. Its economic effect is to make the people of Cuba worse off by depriving them of lower-cost food and other goods that could be bought from the United States. It means less independence for Cuban workers and entrepreneurs, who could be earning dollars from American tourists and fueling private-sector growth. Meanwhile, Castro and his ruling elite enjoy a comfortable, insulated lifestyle by extracting any meager surplus produced by their captive subjects. Cuba not a threat, embargo fails March 13William March, Tampa Tribune Reporter that has covered state and national politics since 1994
(Castor to Obama: Reform outdated Cuba embargo, travel ban, The Tampa Tribune, http://tbo.com/article/20130423/SERVICES02/130429992/1438, Accessed 7/4/13, jtc)

U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor of Tampa, fresh back from a trip to Cuba, has told President Barack Obama in a letter that the U.S. travel ban and trade embargo against Cuba are outdated, unproductive and harmful and should be reformed. In the four-page letter, Castor never quite says lift the embargo or end the travel ban, but she comes very close. America's policy of isolation toward Cuba, i.e. the travel ban and embargo of the last 50 years, has resulted in little change, she writes. It is time to refresh America's relationship with Cuba and develop a more
humane and smarter approach than the outdated Cold War policies of the past. Castor also quotes the Human Rights Watch organization

saying the embargo continues to impose indiscriminate hardship on the Cuban people and has done nothing to improve human rights in Cuba. She asks Obama to heed the words of many of the Cuban dissidents I
have spoken to who urge America to give greater attention to its island neighbor, lift the embargo and promote modernization of civil society in

argues in the letter that Cuba has made significant changes in allowing free enterprise for its citizens; that the travel restrictions violate the rights of Americans; that Cuba is not a state sponsor of terrorism; and that a policy of engagement would improve America's diplomatic standing in the region.
Cuba. As she has before, Castor

U.S. Should lift embargosmall steps undermines the regime Griswold 05 --Daniel Griswold, Director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute (Four
Decades of Failure: The U.S. Embargo against Cuba, 10/12/05, Cato Institute Speeches, http://www.cato.org/publications/speeches/four-decades-failure-us-embargo-against-cuba, Accessed 6/27/13 jtc) Instead of the embargo, Congress and the administration should take concrete steps to expand Americas economic and political influence in Cuba. First, the travel ban should be lifted. According to U.S. law, citizens can travel more or less freely to such axis of evil countries as Iran and North Korea. But if Americans want to visit Cuba legally, they need to be a former president or some other well-connected

VIP or a Cuban American. 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?

U.S. Should lift embargopromotes U.S. interest Peters 2000 (Philip Peters-Vice President at Lexington Institute, researcher on Cuban economics, A Policy
toward Cuba That Serves U.S. Interests 11/2/2000, Cato Institute Policy Analysis, http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/policy-toward-cuba-serves-us-interests) As Castro remains in control, new conditions have led to a reexamination of U.S. policy. Cubas threat to hemispheric security ended when the Soviet Union dissolved, Soviet military support disappeared, and Cuban support for revolutionary movements in Latin America ended. As American sanctions have increased, Cuban dissidents and religious authorities have increasingly voiced their opposition to the embargo and to policies that seek to isolate Cuba. Economic reforms in Cuba are still incipient, but small enterprise, foreign investment, incentivebased agriculture, and other changes have had important impacts: they helped the economy survive its post-Soviet crisis, and Cubans working in those sectors have gained experience with markets and augmented their earnings. Cuban Americans have increasingly joined this discussion, as a younger generation of exiles values contact with the island and some first-generation exiles begin to question the effectiveness of the trade embargo. The Elin Gonzlez crisis fueled doubts about the embargo when the young boys plight captured American attention and weakened the pro-embargo hard-line position in public and congressional opinion. The wide array of U.S. sanctions has failed to promote change in Cuba and has allowed Castro to reinforce his arguments that the United States promotes economic deprivation in Cuba and seeks to abridge Cuban sovereignty. It is time for the United States to turn to economic engagement. Whether or not the embargo is lifted completely, a policy that respects the

rights of Americans to trade with, invest in, and travel to Cuba would more effectively serve U.S. interests in post-Soviet Cuba: defending human rights, helping the Cuban people, and connecting with the generation of Cubans that will govern that country in the early 21st century.

Embargo fails- Ron Paul proves Sharockman 11 Aaron Sharockman, Times Staff Writer (U.S. Rep. Ron Paul: Cuba embargo propped up Castro, Tampa Bay Times, April 21 2011, http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/national/us-rep-ron-paul-cuba-embargo-propped-up-castro/1165236, Accessed: 7/4/13, EH)
TALLAHASSEE U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, the quixotic Republican from Texas, doesn't know anything about Gov. Rick Scott, can't remember much about U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, or name one of the Republicans challenging Nelson in 2012. But he'll talk your ear off about eliminating the Federal Reserve, ending the embargo with Cuba, or the United States' insistence on meddling in foreign conflicts. Paul, who ran for president in 2008 and is considering running again, brought his atypical brand of politics to Tallahassee on Thursday as part of a book tour. His policies have earned him a nationwide following uniting people in unlikely voting blocs hard-core conservatives who believe federal government spending has buzz-sawed out of control, and libertarians who want to legalize marijuana and repeal the Patriot Act. Speaking with reporters for 25 minutes Thursday, Paul, 75, drove home the difference between himself and most Republicans who are considering a challenge to President Barack Obama.

Talking about the Cuban embargo, Paul said the U.S. policy has failed. "If we wouldn't have had this embargo for 40 years, (Fidel) Castro would have been gone a long time ago," he said.
When told his position might offend people in Florida who fled Castro's regime, Paul answered: "They have their opinion and I have mine, because I look at mine through history. History shows you're more likely to get rid of a dictator if you undermine his support by trading with him." On intervening on the side of Israel against Iran, Paul said: "Israel has over 300 nuclear weapons. If we just leave them alone they'd just take care of themselves." And on legalizing drugs: "I don't think the federal government should be involved. They tried federally to prohibit the use of alcohol, and it was a total disaster. The war on drugs is a total disaster. We should just get rid of the federal war on drugs, it does a lot more harm than the drugs themselves." The only question Paul hedged on was whether he was running in 2012.

Embargo fails isolates the US and paints Cuba as the victim Vanden Heuvel 7/2--- Katrina Vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of the Nation magazine, vanden
Heuvel writes a weekly column for the Washington Post (The U.S. should end the Cuban embargo, July 2, 2013, Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/katrina-vanden-heuvel-us-should-endcuban-embargo/2013/07/02/8ab3a8de-e278-11e2-a11e-c2ea876a8f30_story.html?wpisrc=emailtoafriend, accessed July 4, 2013, MY)
Is there a greater example of utter folly than Americas superannuated policy toward Cuba? During

more than 50 years corrupted by covert actions, economic sabotage, travel bans and unending embargo, the United States managed to make Castro and Cuba an international symbol of proud independence. Intent on isolating Cuba, Washington has succeeded only in isolating itself in its own hemisphere. Intent on displacing Fidel Castro, the U.S. enmity only added to his nationalist credentials. A recent visit reveals a Cuba that is already beginning a new, post-Castro era. That only highlights the inanity of the continuing U.S. embargo, a cruel relic of a Cold War era that is long gone. Cuba is beginning a new experiment, driven by
necessity, of trying to build its own version of market socialism in one country. Just as populist movements in the hemisphere looked to Castro and Cuba for inspiration, now Cuba is learning from its allies as it cautiously seeks to open up its economy. A former minister of the economy spoke of how Cuba is committed to fostering private coops and businesses, and is beginning a push to make more state enterprises make their own way. This month, 100 state-run produce markets and 26 other establishments are scheduled to become private cooperatives. The government says many more establishments will follow, beginning in 2014, as an alternative to small and medium-size state businesses in retail and food services, transportation, light manufacturing and construction, among other sectors. Despite

the embargo, Jos Mart International Airport displays the new vitality. Hundreds of Cuban Americans fly into see relatives, bringing everything from flat-screen TVs to consumer basics. Since President Obama lifted restrictions on family visits in 2009, remittances and material support from Cuban Americans play a growing role in the microeconomy of the island. Whereas in the 1990s, Havana was willing to permit only limited private enterprise as an emergency measure, government officials now speculate openly about aiming toward 50 percent of Cubas GDP in private hands within five years. Of course, an expanding small business sector wont resolve some central issues facing the island:
access to large-scale credit and investment and the need to boost exports and address anemic productivity, not to mention the demands of an aging population. In Havana, there is more talk about Brazils investment in renovating Mariel Harbor than about Edward Snowden. Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht had to resist threats by Floridas state government to cut off any sta te contracts if it

invested in Cuba.

This enormous deep-water port is designed to handle trade with the United States and beyond in a post-embargo world, if the embargo is ever ended. The US should lift the embargo, Cuban suffering and French support Bel 5/31 --- Jean-Pierre Bel is the President of the French Senate (President of the French Senate: 'The
United States Ought to Lift Its Economic Sanctions Against Cuba', May 31, 2013, Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/salim-lamrani/president-of-the-french-s_b_3365482.html, accessed July 3, 2013, MY)
SL: The United States has imposed economic sanctions on Cuba for over half a century. They affect adversely the most vulnerable groups in this society. The vast majority of the international community - 186 countries in 2012 - is in favor of lifting them immediately. Has the time not come for Washington to normalize relations with Cuba? JPB: Far be it from me to meddle in the relations between two sovereign countries, but if I must give my opinion, I would say that the time is now, more than ever, to regain a sense of the realities involved. Only 170 kilometers separate these two nations that, throughout the course of history, have always regarded each other face to face. Now

it is time for these two peoples to begin to walk side by side, the one next to the other. It would be in everyone's interest if they were to set aside their differences and view the future collectively, through a peaceful lens. It is time to end the economic sanctions that have been in force for fifty years and that cause so much suffering to the Cuban people. The embargo is just a relic of the Cold War Sanchez 12 --- Yoani Sanchez, contributor to the Huffington Post, graduate of the University of
Havana, Time magazine listed her as one of the world's 100 most influential people in 2008 (The Embargo: Both Sides Are Still Living Out the Cold War, November 14, 2012, Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/the-embargo-both-sides-ar_b_2130520.html, accessed July 4, 2013, MY)

Year after year the issue of the U.S. embargo against Cuba is presented in the United Nations. Year after year, the majority of countries votes against this fossil of the Cold War. But even though the
existence of such economic sanctions has been condemned 21 times, they remain in force. On both sides of the Florida Straits there are too many interests who want to perpetuate the situation, even though the political discourse says otherwise. On

one side are the many who believe that financially strangling the Cuban government will produce democratic change in Cuba. These are the people who hold the view of the "pressure cooker" on which they just have to put greater and greater pressure until it
explodes. For these defenders of the embargo, if daily life on the island becomes ever more miserable due to lack of material goods, Cubans will finally throw themselves into the streets to overthrow the current system. This

theory has demonstrated its failure over

five decades. What has actually happened is that when the economy hits bottom, people prefer to escape from the Island, legally or
illegally -- in some cases to literally throw themselves into the sea -- rather than confront the powers-that-be. The others who dream of continuing the embargo are all those ideologues of the Cuban government who have run out of arguments to explain the dysfunction of this system. They are those who need, as in a child's fairy tale, a big bad wolf to blame for everything .

They say it is because of the "blockade" that we can't enjoy the Internet, that we can't freely associate with others who share our ideas, that we can't even travel freely. They try to justify everything based on the existence of this mistaken policy of Washington. Trapped in the middle of these two positions are eleven million Cubans, caught between
the absurd restrictions of some and the implausible justifications of others.

Cubans are ready for change, even Castro agrees Sweig 6/19 --- Julia E. Sweig is the Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America
Studies and Director for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and specializes in Latin America and U.S.-Latin America foreign policy (Developments in Cuba, June 19, 2013, http://www.cfr.org/cuba/developments-cuba/p30961, accessed July 3, 2013, MY)
In 2010 I participated in

a conversation with Fidel Castro, when, in reply to a question about whether Cuba was still 'exporting' inadvertently caused an international media firestorm by replying"the Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore." A statement of the obvious for most Cubans,
its 'model' to Latin America, he

and an affirmation that real change was afoot. Here are some still undigested takeaways from conversations with dozens of Cubans in and out of government about how they see that change. 1-) The death of Hugo Chavez and uncertainty in Venezuela reinforces a pre-existing rationale and time frame for Cuba to deepen trade, investment, and diplomatic ties with a variety of partners. Brazil is a prime example. Add the rest of Latin America, China, Russia, Angola, the EU and eventually the United States to that strategy. 2-) Remittances and material support from Cubans in the diaspora play a growing role in the micro-economy of the island, and help launch small family businesses. But Cubans trying to prosper in the private sector are still waiting for expanded access to bank credit and for wholesale markets to open, and for tax rates to stabilize. That may sound like a bland statement, but it suggests that major social change is afoot. 3-) The major macroeconomic step, eliminating the dual currency, will be painful and necessary. The state can't afford to subsidize everything for
everyone and no longer does so. But substantially cutting subsidies and devaluing the currency at the same time would amount to more shock therapy than the society can take at this stage.

Embargo a form of Genocide Amnesty International 10 Amnesty International is a global movement of people fighting injustice and promoting human rights.
We work to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth and dignity are denied. Currently the worlds largest grassroots h uman rights organization, we investigate and expose abuses, educate and mobilize the public, and help transform societies to create a safer, more just world. We received the Nobel Peace Prize for our life-saving work. (Is the U.S. Embargo on Cuba a Form of Genocide?, Amnesty International, September 8, 2010, http://www3.sympatico.ca/danchristienses/CubaFAQ137.html , Accessed: July 2, 2013, SD) What is genocide? To answer this question, we must define what is meant by genocide. According to Oxford English Dictionary, genocide is "the mass extermination of human beings, esp. of a particular race or nation." The Law Under

international law the legal definition

is given in Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention and covers a much wider range of crimes. Article 2 states: In the
present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a)

Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Item (c) would seem to be the most relevant in the case of the US embargo on Cuba. It tells us that, to prove the perpetrators of these sanctions are guilty of genocide, we do not need to prove that any deaths were directly attributable to these sanctions. We are required only to prove that the perpetrators deliberately inflicted on the Cuban people conditions of life calculated to bring about the group's physical destruction in whole or in part. This is relatively easy to prove. A
Brief History The US embargo first came into effect during the Kennedy administration in 1962. Thirty years later in 1992, shortly after the collapse of Cuba's main trading partner, the former USSR, the US regime moved in for the kill with intensified trade sanctions under its so-called Cuban Democracy Act, also known as the Torricelli Act. Four years later in 1996, with the Cuban people having weathered the worst of the economic collapse and as defiant as ever, the US embargo was tightened further still with the introduction of the so-called Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, also known as the Helms-Burton Act. Today, while there have since been limited openings in one-way trade in food and medicine, these two laws form the legislative underpinning of the US embargo, a master plan to wreck the Cuban economy and thereby deprive the population of many of the essentials of life. The all too predictable outcomes have been documented by various international humanitarian and human rights groups. From "The US attack on Cuba's health," Canadian Medical Association Journal, August 1, 1997: In 1992 Cuba was in a severe economic depression, largely resulting from a loss of preferential trade with the Soviet bloc. Cuba turned to US foreign subsidiaries, from whom it received $500-600 million per year in imports -- 90% of which was food and medicine. The American Public Health Association warned the US government that tightening the embargo would lead to the abrupt cessation of this supply of essential goods and result in widespread famine. Indeed, 5 months after passage of the CDA [Cuba Democracy Act] , food shortages in Cuba set the scene for the worst epidemic of neurologic disease this century. More than 50,000 people suffered from optic neuropathy, deafness, loss of sensation and pain in the extremities, and a spinal cord disorder that impaired walking and bladder control. That the US embargo has harmed the Cuban people has also been documented by the American Association for World Health. It performed a year-long review of the implications of embargo restrictions which included on-site visits to 46 treatment centers and related facilities, 160 interviews with medical professionals and other specialists, government officials, representatives of non-governmental organizations, churches and international aid agencies. Their 300 page report, "Denial of Food and Medicine: THE IMPACT OF THE U.S. EMBARGO ON HEALTH AND NUTRITION IN CUBA," dated March 1997, concluded: After a year-long investigation, the American Association for World Health has determined that the U.S. embargo of Cuba has dramatically harmed the health and nutrition of large numbers of ordinary Cuban citizens. As documented by the attached report, it is our expert medical opinion that the U.S. embargo has caused a significant rise in suffering -- and even deaths -- in Cuba. For several decades the U.S. embargo has imposed significant financial burdens on the Cuban health care system. Clearly then these sanctions were meant to kill. It was only thanks to the renowned fighting spirit of the Cuban people, and countless acts of international solidarity, that the death count was kept to a minimum. Despite these cruel sanctions, Cuba's health care system actually continued to improve and is widely regarded as the best in Latin

America. This in no way, however, diminishes the criminal responsibility of the US regime. In 2003, even Amnesty

International, after years of dithering, was finally forced to concede in a report actually critical of Cuba that, yes, the US embargo is: (a) "highly detrimental to Cubans' enjoyment of a range of economic, social and cultural rights... (b) "has had a very significant negative impact on the overall performance of the national economy, diverting the optimal allocation of resources from the prioritized areas and affecting the health programmes and services... (c) "compromises the quality of life of the population, specifically the children, the elderly and the infirm... (d) "is used to harm the most vulnerable members of society." And how did the Bush regime respond to these shocking revelations at the time? Had it
immediately lifted the embargo, it might be argued that these outcomes were unintentional. But the regime did just the opposite -- in 2004 they actually moved to intensify these cruel sanctions! Remittances and family visits were severely curtailed in hopes of cutting off an important source of hard currency and material support for Cuban families, along with unprecedented financial restrictions on payments for shipments of food and medicine bound for Cuba. The amount of food exported to Cuba from the US declined each year for several years immediately afterward. In another report critical of Cuba in 2004 (and reiterated in March 2005), the UN Human Rights Commission, as well, was forced to concede that, "It is also impossible to ignore the disastrous and lasting economic and social effects of the embargo imposed on the Cuban population over 40 years ago." In January of 2005 (and 2006), Human Rights Watch reiterated that, "The U.S. economic embargo on Cuba, in effect for more than four decades, continues to impose indiscriminate hardship on the Cuban people." In September, 2006, Christine Chanet,

the Personal Representative of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, in another of her reports critical of
Cuba, explicitly criticized the "severe restrictions caused by a disastrous embargo, exacerbated in 2004 by unbearable restrictions on the movement of persons and goods." She also said that the

US embargo, which she "deplores," was "not a path to democracy (sic), and should not continue." (UN HRC discussion) In November, 2006, the Miami Herald
gleefully reported: The Bush administration's vow to enforce U.S. regulations is stifling Cuba's ability to operate in international markets... U.S. companies are allowed to export agricultural products to Cuba, provided they receive cash payments before the goods are delivered. But even cash payments must move through banks, so the restrictions are giving U.S. corporations headaches... ''It's the hassle factor,'' said John Kavulich, senior policy advisor with the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, which tracks bilateral economic relations. "They've coupled rhetoric with enforcement, and it's worked!'' In January 2007, Amnesty International confirmed again that: Amnesty International has called for the US embargo against Cuba to be lifted, as it is highly detrimental to Cubans' enjoyment of a range of economic, social and cultural rights, such as the right to food, health and sanitation -- particularly affecting the weakest and most vulnerable members of the population. Conclusion The

genocidal intent of the Bush regime had never been more clear. Therefore, under the terms of the of the UN Genocide Convention, the US embargo does indeed appear to be a form of genocide. Follow-up, March 2009
Amnesty International reiterates its condemnation of the US embargo two months into the mandate of the new Barack Obama administration: Amnesty International urges the US government to lift the nearly five-decade long economic and trade embargo against Cuba as it is detrimental to the fulfillment of the economic and social rights of the Cuban people. It obstructs and constrains efforts by the Cuban government to purchase essential medicines, medical equipment and supplies, food and agricultural products, construction materials and access to new technologies. Source: "Cuba and the Fifth Summit of the Americas," Amnesty International, March 2009 Follow-up, September 2009 By September 2009, very little seemed to have actually changed as far as the US embargo was concerned. Eight months into President Obama's mandate, it seemed to this writer that Amnesty International had all but called for the arrests of the perpetrators of these crimes against the Cuban people! Citing the continued blocking and constraining of vital imports of medicines, supplies and technology, Amnesty called called these cruel and inhumane sanctions "immoral" and demanded that it be "lifted without further delay": The US embargo against Cuba is immoral and should be lifted. Its preventing millions of Cubans from benefiting from vital medicines and medical equipment essential for their health. Source: "President Obama should take lead in lifting embargo against Cuba," Amnesty International, September 2009 Amnesty International calls on the US Congress to take, without further delay, the necessary steps towards lifting the economic, financial and trade embargo against Cuba.... The UN General Assembly has repeatedly condemned the US embargo as contrary to the Charter of the United Nations and international law.... The InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights has also reiterated its position regarding the impact of such sanctions on the human rig hts of the Cuban people and, therefore, insists that the embargo be lifted...." [E]xports of food and agricultural products to Cuba remain regulated by the Department of Commerce and require a licence for export or re-export. The export of medicines and medical supplies continues to be severely limited.... The restrictions imposed by the embargo help to deprive Cuba of vital access to medicines, new scientific and medical technology, food, chemical water treatment and electricity.... The impact of economic sanctions on health and health services is not limited to difficulties in the supply of medicine. Health and health services depend on functioning water and sanitation infrastructure, on electricity and other functioning equipment such as X-ray facilities or refrigerators to store vaccines. The financial burden and commercial barriers have led to shortages or intermittent availability of drugs, medicines, equipment and spare parts. It has also hindered the renovation of hospitals, clinics and care centres for the elderly. Source: "The US embargo against Cuba: Its impact on economic and social rights," Amnesty International, September 2009 In addition to blocking essential imports, the US embargo also continued to impose a significant drag on the development of the Cuban economy, especially in the areas of agriculture and food production. According to at least one US agricultural expert, simply

lifting the economic and financial restrictions imposed on Cuban farmers by the US embargo would have a dramatic impact on their production levels: Cuban agriculture has such a big potential that if it were to be totally developed it
could surpass the volume of production of the Free Trade Treaty [the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) presumed]. William A.

Messina Jr., of the University of Florida's Agriculture Science Institute, said, that the communist island "has such good soil and it represents a challenge of such magnitude that, with the end of the embargo, the agricultural market impact on the continent would be larger that of the Free Trade Treaty.'' Source: "Cuba's agriculture shows promise," Miami Herald, September 29, 2009 Follow-up, September 2010 Amnesty

International reiterates its condemnation of the US embargo: [The US embargo's is] negatively affecting Cubans access to medicines and medical technologies and endangering the health of millions. United Nations agencies and programs operating in Cuba, such as UNICEF, UNAIDS and UNFPA, have reported that the US embargo has undermined the implementation of programs aimed at improving the living conditions of Cubans. Source: "Amnesty International criticises President Obama's decision on Cuba," Amnesty International, September 8, 2010 Follow-up, October 2010 On October 26, 2010 the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly again to condemn the US embargo. Only Israel voted with the US against the resolution. Israel trades freely with Cuba, so even this single vote cannot be seen as support for these cruel and inhumane sanctions. On this the US is truly isolated on the world stage. The only abstentions were the tiny US-island colonies in the South Pacific: Palau (pop. 20,000), Micronesia (pop. 110,000) and the Marshall Islands (pop. 60,000).

Lifting Embargo key to U.S. small businesses.

Hanson-Batten-Ealey 13
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. (Its Time for the U.S. to End its Senseless Embargo of Cuba, Forbes, January 1, 2013, http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/01/16/its-time-for-the-u-s-to-end-its-senseless-embargo-of-cuba/, Accessed: July 3,

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
2013, SD) Yet, estimates of the construction of an underwater communications link, circumventing its need to connect with US-owned networks close to its shores.

Lifting embargo improves American and Cuban economies and US foreign relations Storozynski 13 Nicholas Storozynski, senior at Phillips Exeter Academy (Dear President Obama: End the
Cuba Embargo, Huffington, Vol. 10, No. 1, January 15, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicholasstorozynski/dear-president-obama-end-_b_2434954.html, Accessed: 06/27/2013, sh) After traveling on an educational tour to Havana last summer and following the political situation between Cuba and the United States, I've become aware that the embargo of Cuba is pointless. It has done little to hurt Fidel Castro who, according to Forbes, has a greater net worth than the Queen of England. Instead, it has hurt several

generations of innocent Cuban people who remain poor and continues to limit the freedom of Americans who want to visit or do business with Cuba.
Officially, the embargo was put in place in 1960 during the Cold War to pressure the Cuban government to bring about democratic reforms. The United States doesn't have an embargo against communist China, Saudi Arabia or other countries that are on the Freedom House list of "World's Most Repressive Societies." The world has changed dramatically since the fall of the USSR, and Cuba no longer poses a threat to the United States. There is no reason for Cuba to be on the U.S. government's list of "state sponsors of terrorism." In the past, Castro was a threat to the U.S. because he was trying to export communism and revolution to Latin America and Africa. But these days, Castro can't even feed his own people without ration cards, much less export terrorism. Last year, retired U.S. Army Brigadier Gen. John Adams went on an extensive research trip to Cuba and wrote in The Hill that "it is simply illogical and counterproductive to keep Cuba on the list. There is little, if any, evidence that Cuba provides support for terrorism, and the evidence further shows that they haven't for more than 20 years." Additionally, the embargo hurts US businesses willing to sell their products to Cuba. It doesn't

make sense during an economic slowdown to limit the customers that a business can sell to because of outdated politics. Duke Professor Phyllis Pomerantz recently wrote in the The Globe and Mail, "It's
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 Havana's old cars, Americans should be selling them new ones." Cuba is a country with thousands of miles of arable land, but because communism has taken away people's incentive to work, the nation has to import most of its food. Removing the embargo would likely speed up the transition to a capitalist economy in Cuba. Since Fidel's brother has taken the helm, Raul has been allowing people to open small businesses and introducing elements of a free market economy. But many Cubans don't

have access to goods they need because the Cuban government cannot produce and distribute these goods effectively. A New York Times article in November stated that allowing American companies to trade with the Cuban people wouldn't only benefit American companies, but also Cuban citizens. In the piece, a
Cuban mechanic said, "legalizing imports and investment would create a flood of the supplies that businesses needed, overwhelming the government's controls while lowering prices and creating more work apart from the state." This would strengthen the developing private sector in Cuba. The Cuban government plans to remove more than one million government jobs. The people currently holding these jobs would be able to find jobs in the private sector, spurred on by the American capital that would flow in. Removing the embargo would also

lead the Cuban people to demand better treatment from their government. Cubans would see that American tourists have a higher quality of life, and they'll want the same for themselves.
Currently, the Castro brothers blame the poor conditions in Cuba on the embargo. Without this excuse, Cubans will find that their government is simply unable to take care of them, and demand a change. Not only has the embargo been entirely ineffective in achieving its goals, but also it has hurt U.S. policy with other nations in the world. In November, the United Nations asked the U.S. to remove the embargo, with 188 countries out of 193 in the General Assembly supporting the movement. In fact, the United Nations has made this same request to the U.S. each year for the past 21 years. I hope that when the UN asks for the 22nd time, President Obama will give them a different answer.

Obama easing embargo now. Snow 10 Anita Snow, Veteran international journalist, editor and news manager with two decades of
experience in Latin America. (Cuba Embargo: UN Vote Urges US to Lift Embargo, The Christian Science Monitor, October 26, 2010, http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2010/1026/Cuba-embargo-UNvote-urges-US-to-lift-embargo, Accessed: 6/28/13, sh) "We should not lose sight of that in a debate mired in rhetorical arguments of the past and focused on tactical differences, a debate that does nothing to help the Cuban people," he said.

Godard noted that the U.S. has taken steps to engage Cuba since Obama took office, lifting restrictions on family visits and remittances to the island, resuming bilateral talks on migration and starting discussions to re-establish direct mail service between the two countries
But the U.S. has made clear it is not prepared to lift the embargo entirely until the communist-run nation makes more far-reaching political and economic changes. "A new era in U.S.-Cuban relations cannot be fully realized," said Godard, "until the Cuban people enjoy the internationally recognized political and economic freedoms that this body has done so much to defend in other countries around the world."

Embargo fails hasnt pushed Castro out of power Ruiz 12 Albor Ruiz, Albor Ruiz has been a columnist for the New York Daily News since 1997 where he was
hired in 1993, becoming the first Latino member of its Editorial Board. Ruiz was also the Editor-in-Chief of El Daily News, the first bilingual newspaper in the country, and Chief Editorial Writer and columnist at New York's El Diario-La Prensa. Albor Ruiz will participate in a round table on Latino media. (U.S. Economic Embargo of Cuba Marks its Half-Century of Failed Foreign Policy [NY Daily News, February 8, 2012, http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/u-s-economic-embargo-cuba-marks-half-century-failed-foreign-policyarticle-1.1018614, Accessed: 6/28/13, sh) More than 400,000 Cuban-Americans took advantage last year of President Obamas new regulations to visit to the island. Yesterday, believe it or not, marked the 50th anniversary of the U.S. economic embargo of Cuba. Lets not wish it a happy birthday. The centerpiece of what passes for a U.S. -Cuba policy, a stale left-over from the Cold War era, has not been a success story.

In five decades,

the embargo has hurt the Cuban people, damaged U.S. interests and families, and failed to accomplish its goals, according to the think tank Washington Office on Latin America.
Aimed at toppling the Communist government and its then president, Fidel Castro, the embargo roundly condemned year after year by the United Nations was imposed by President Kennedy in 1962, after the humiliating defeat the year before of he CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion . Yet half century later, the revolution is still in power although now it is Fidels younger brother

Ra l who is the president. The embargos only success has been in making dail y life more difficult for the people of Cuba.
At a time in which Cuba has embarked on a profound process of economic and political transformation there is a question begging for an answer:How much longer until this obsolete policy hits the road? El bloqueo [the blockade\], as it is called in Cuba, not only has been the longest and harshest

embargo by one nation against another in modern history, but quite possibly it is the longest standing foreign policy failure the world has known. Cubans loyal to Castro want to improve US-Cuban relations Kitroeff 13 Natalie Kitroeff, she is a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations who works in the
Latin America program. (Cuban Blogger Who Reveres Castro Pushes for Reform, The New York Times, June 11 , 2013, http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/cuban-blogger-who-reveres-castro-pushes-for-reform/, Accessed: 7/2/13, sh)

Daz is a leader of a group of Cubans who are opening a new avenue for criticism in a country that, for the last 50 years, has offered its citizens only two options: with us or against us. Ms. Daz insists that there is a third way. Cuba has a lot to change, Ms. Daz said during a visit to New York last week, but I dont think you need to destroy the system to create something new.
Ms. Thats a convenient view, because that system is paying her salary. A professor of journalism at the University of Havana, a public institution, Ms.

Daz is an employee of the state. That has not stopped her from writing publicly and with disarming directness about the challenges of daily life in Cuba on her blog, La Polmica Digital, for the last five years. She is young, progressive and fiercely loyal to the Cuban government. But she says she is also determined to reform a socialist system that no longer works as well as it used to for the common man.
The delicacy of that relationship is not lost on Ms. Daz. Ive been scared that maybe Id write something that would be interpreted the wrong way, she said, and that I would be punished, or lose my job. She has managed to set herself apart in an increasingly cluttered Cuban blogosphere, earning respect for her thorough reporting and simple, moving prose. Last year she traveled abroad for a meeting of global bloggers in Nairobi, and last month she arrived in the United States for the annual Latin American Studies Association conference in Washington. So far, Ms. Daz said, she hasnt heard a peep from the authorities about her writing. Indeed, the government has been surprisingly tolerant of Ms. Daz and her colleagues loosely affiliated under the moniker Bloggers Cuba a fact that some experts attribute to the groups willingness to self-censor. Ted Henken, an expert on social media in Cuba, called these younger bloggers silent dissidents, adding, Their big problem is that theyre constantly biting their tongue. Cubas more famous and far more radical critic, Yoani Snchez, shares that view. When Ms. Daz abruptly took a leave from her blog last August, Ms. Snchez speculated that she had been forced off the keyboard by a government that had lost patience with her. Ms. Snchez, taking a jab at Ms. Dazs ties to the government, called her the official Cuban blogger and wrote that Elaine Daz has transgressed the limits of criticism permissible for an employee of the state. Ms. Daz insists that she stopped writing only to focus more intently on her teaching, and she has since resumed the blog. But Ms. Daz does acknowledge that there are taboo subjects, like the state of education or health care, that she is hesitant to discuss casually. If I go to a dirty hospital, Im not going to write about it, she said, because I have a commitment to the system. Universal health care and free education are seen as the revolutions most

significant success stories, which makes it imperative to keep them intact, even as they quickly become well-worn myths. In fact, for government loyalists like Ms. Daz, it seems that, as you get closer to the core of the communist narrative holding Cuba together, the space for genuine debate shrinks. Rattling off a series of topics that she would be careful about touching, Ms. Daz paused before the kicker: Fidel Castro, for example, is sacred to us, she said in an almost reverent tone. At least in the world that I move around in, theres a respect and historical gratitude toward him. Hes a figure that, when you launch into criticism, its very difficult, she added. That approach may be more cautious than the tack taken by Ms. Snchez and more extreme elements of the opposition, but that doesnt mean it should be discounted. Its as important or more important when people who consider themselves believers express criticism because they cant be as easily disqualified as people on the out and out, in the opposition, said Mr. Henken, the expert on Cubas Internet. Yoani is the acerbic agnostic, whereas Elaine is the critical believer, he added. Even the United States government is taking notice. Last month, Conrad Tribble, the deputy chief of the United States Interests Section in Havana, Washingtons diplomatic outpost in Cuba, made an unannounced visit to a public meeting of what The Associated Press called Cubas pro -government Twitteratti. A brief video clip of the encounter posted on Crnicas de Cub a, the journalist Jorge Legaoa Alonsos blog, showed Mr. Tribble, sporting a fuchsia Hawaiian shirt, saying he had come to talk with the group about things that the United States and Cuba share baseball, music, et cetera and on issues in dispute. His presence was an olive branch in a diplomatic relationship where engagement on both sides has consisted mainly of covert operations and official bluster. It was also a sign of the growing influence of this corps of young bloggers, whom the State Department wants to cultivate a relationship with, despite their pro-Castro bent. Ms. Daz, who could not make the meeting but has interacted with Mr. Tribble on Twitter this year, said she appreciated the gesture. He didnt go there to make a speech or convince anyone, or try to impose anything, she said. Hes welcome. Any steps toward a closer engagement between the United States and Cuba, even if theyre small, are good. Ms. Daz would know. In the two weeks she has spent in the United States, she said, there have

been moments that have changed my life, and have nearly made me cry.
She recalled arriving at the Miami airport and being handed a cellphone by a stranger who saw that she was lost. Or a man in New York City who walked her to her hosts house when she was lost in a sea of apartment buildings in Washington Heights. I had the impression that in the United States, no one cares what you have to say, no one will

talk to you, everyone is absorbed in their own world, she said, adding that the image of a very individualistic culture, its not what Ive found.
When she returns to Cuba in a week, Ms. Daz said she would write about the experience on her blog. For now, shes enjoying her stay in enemy territory.

Plan solves 9 point plan (Beware of Extra-T portions!) Arzeno 3 Mario Arzeno, Major in the United States Military, MBA from The University of Florida in Military Art and Science, (The US Embargo on Cuba: Time for a Change?, A thesis presented to the Faculty of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree, 2003, http://www.dtic.mil/cgibin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA416135, Accessed 7/03/13, AW) Congressman Flake is best known for introducing legislation to lift t he travel ban to Cuba and Congressman Rangel is best known for introducing legislation to lift the embargo in its entirety. Together with the Cuba Working Group, they have developed a 9-Point Plan for reform in Cuba, released in May 2002, which is outlined below. Point 1. Repeal the Travel Ban. The travel ban is a result of the embargo and was codified into law in 2000, effectively removing the Presidents authority to remove the ban without congressional approval. The travel ban is highly criticized because no other travel ban exists for Americans in the

world. Americans are allowed to travel to other and more repressive countries like Iraq and North Korea if they choose to. Freedom to travel is a basic right of Americans. Allowing American s to freely travel to Cuba will expose the Cuban people to our ideas, values, and culture, resulting in a major source of American influence. The federal travel licensing process should be lifted to allow this free flow of ideas, as well as ending all penalties associated with Americans traveling to Cuba without a license. 30 Repealing the travel ban will remove barriers to increased agricultural, educational, professional and medical benefits associated to free markets. It will generate revenues that will go directly to private restaurants, taxis, artisans and home rentals that are owned and operated by the average Cuban citizen. It will increase U.S. exports by creating an increased demand of U.S. products introduced into the island as a secondary effect to lifting the ban. It will end the restrictions that limits Cuban exiles from traveling to the island only once a year and most importantly create opportunity for us to detect terrorist or drug cartel activities that may influence our borders. Point 2. Allow normal, unsubsidized exports of agricultural and medical products. To include private financing of agricultural and medical exports. U.S. law allows the sale of food and medicine to Cuba on a cash basis and under complicated restrictions and procedures that discourage American companies from engaging in the sale of food and medicine to Cuba. Allowing a normal exchange permits private American companies to decide, according to their own criteria, whether to assume the risk of financing products to Cuba. Point 2 also recommends ending the requirement for charity organizations and private companies to monitor the use of donated products to Cuba. Lastly, point 2 recommends ending the provisions of the Torricelli Bill that bans any ships visiting Cuba from entering a U.S. port with 180 days after departing Cuba. Point 3. End restrictions on remittances. Cuban Americans are only allowed to send $100 per month per household. The restriction is criticized as a U.S. government intrusion for imposing a monetary limit to Cuban exiles sending money to their family members. Remittances make a significant impact on the quality of life and economy of Cuba and have the additional benefit of freeing Cubans from government support. 31 Ironically, thi s is another example of a failed policy in that this is the least observed and enforced law of the embargo. Remittances bring in an estimated $800 million into the Cuban economy, all coming from Cuban exiles in Miami who demanded the restriction in order to prevent Castro from using the dollars to fuel the economy. Point 4. Sunset the Helms-Burton Act. The Helms-Burton Act is controversial for the many reasons outlined in chapter two. The fundamental purpose of the Helms- Burton Act is the unconditional and instantaneous removal of Castro and the compensation of property. Helms-Burton should be reviewed and modified before we can hope to achieve freedom and prosperity for the Cuban people. The Cuba Working Group encourages the review of the act as one of the first steps towards change. Point 5. Repeal Section 211. Section 211 of the Fiscal 1999 Omnibus Appropriations Act prevents the U.S. from accepting payment for trademark licenses that were used in connection with a business or asset in Cuba that was confiscated by the Castro regime, unless the original owner of the trademark consents. Section 211 was introduced for the benefit of the Bahamas based Bacardi Corporation. Its controversy lies in that the U.S. is failing to recognize the Cuban Havana Club rum brand name in the United States, in violation of U.S. and international trademark laws. Havana Club is internationally recognized as a Cuban rum, produced in Cuba as part of a joint venture with a French liquor company with a U.S. registered trademark since 1976. However, based on Section 211, the original 1976 U.S. trademark is not being honored due to the newly introduced confiscated property definition of

the law. Instead, the U.S. would recognize the Bahamas based Bacardi 32 Corporation if they acquired the Havana Club brand name from its original owners and sold it in the United States as a Bacardi brand of rum. The original owners of the Havana Club brand name abandoned the product following Castros coup and it remained unused years after the takeover. Therefore, legal experts argue, the original trademark owners do not have a claim and the Cuban-French joint venture have the right to claim the trademark on a first claim basis. As opposed to the Bacardi family who continued to make their rum in the Bahamas and Puerto Rico, keeping their brand recognition and property rights for Bacardi Rum intact. Nevertheless, recognizing Havana Club as a Bacardi product and not as a Cuban product is a violation of international trademark laws, as the rest of the world recognizes Havana Club as a Cuban product. The Inter-American Convention on Trademarks ruled the U.S. is breaching obligations to honor Cuban trademarks and the World Trade Organization (WTO) judged it to be in violation of Americas obligation to protect intellectual property rights. This is tantamount to Cuba producing an American product like Coke or Pepsi and selling it as a Cuban product. Repealing Section 211 is important because it secures some 5,000 U.S. trademarks already registered in Cuba to protect their brand names or positioned for the day the embargo is lifted. Legal experts argue as long as Section 211 is in effect, Cuba has the legal right not to recognize U.S. trademarks registered in Cuba as a result of the legal impropriety the U.S. is exercising by invoking Section 211 in not honoring Cuban trademarks. Point 6. Redirect Funding for TV/Radio Marti. TV and Radio Marti are part of an aggressive information campaign strategy targeted with providing Cubans with news 33 and information they would not otherwise get through the controlled media of the Cuban government. At an estimated cost of $12 million per year and a total of $400 million since its inception in 1985, it is another

example of a failed strategy . The TV broadcast does not reach its intended audience.
Primarily because the Cuban Government jams the signal and secondly because it is transmitted between the hours of 0330 and 0800 when it is unlikely that anyone will be up watching. The early morning broadcast is due to international law that prevents the U.S. from interfering with Cuban broadcast transmissions during prime time hours. Radio Martis listening audience has declined to an estimated five percent of the population because of the radio stations recent shift from news and information to Fidel Castro bashing. The Cuban people already know first hand that Castro is a tyrant and are not interested in tuning in to hear that on the radio. When the radio station was focused on independent news, its listening audience was estimated at seventy five percent of the population. Allegations of mismanagement are also hurting the TV/Radio station, which is causing it to lose credibility and effectiveness in achieving its information campaign goals. The Cuba Working Group recommends a comprehensive review of the TV/Radio station, including audits and independent assessments of audience reaction and program quality. The TV broadcast appears to be ineffective due to the jamming, but the radio station maybe salvageable with the right programming. If the radio station cannot be saved, the funding should go towards other programs to help the Cuban people achieve reform. 34 Point 7. Scholarships. In place of TV/Radio Marti, the funding could be used towards educational programs like Fulbright scholarships that promote communication and exchange. Fulbright scholarship programs proved to be effective in Vietnam, but require commitment and scrutiny to ensure the Cuban Government has no role in selecting the participants. Point 8. Expand Security Cooperation. The Cuba Working Group is proposing to expand the M of the DIME (Diplomatic,

Information, Military, and Economic) in the instruments of power, through engagement and cooperation with the Cuban military. Cuba and the United States already have limited cooperation in the areas of migration and drug trafficking, but it is not centralized and sporadic at best. Incorporating Cuba into one of the Unified Commands expands this idea, whether it is incorporated into SOUTHCOM, JFCOM or NORTHCOMs Area of Responsibility (AOR) does not matter for achieving this objective. Including Cuba in one of the Unified Commands will ensure it gets unbiased attention and focused peacetime engagement with resources and oversight. The focus of the peacetime engagement should be migration, drug interdiction, terrorism, and contingency planning for humanitarian relief efforts in the wake of natural disasters like hurricanes and tropical storms. Security cooperation has an invaluable benefit in establishing and strengthening strategic partnerships in order to prepare us to meet future crises. Point 9. Certified Property Claims. One of the most controversial issues of the embargo and one of the primary reasons the embargo was imposed in 1959--the expropriation of property. Political and economic relations will get better in Cuba some 35 day. It is inevitable. The world demands it. Yet there is no plan to handle the settlement of claims for an estimated $1.2 billion in expropriated property. The U.S. has reached settlements with Vietnam, China, and the Eastern European countries. However, it has no plan for our biggest expropriation issue in our own hemisphere in Cuba. An independent bipartisan commission should be established to study the issue in order to develop feasible courses of action to negotiate with Cuba. Answer Politics even the 113th congress recognizes the harms of the embargo Sullivan 3/29 --- Mark P. Sullivan, Specialist in Latin American Affairs for the Congressional Research Office (Cuba: U.S. Policy and Issues for the 113th Congress, March 29, 2013, FAS, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R43024.pdf, accessed June 28, 2013, MY)
In general, those

who advocate easing U.S. sanctions on Cuba make several policy arguments. They assert that if the United States moderated its policy toward Cubathrough increased travel, trade, and dialoguethen the seeds of reform would be planted, which would stimulate forces for peaceful change on the island. They stress the importance to the United States of avoiding violent change in Cuba, with the
prospect of a mass exodus to the United States. They argue that since the demise of Cubas communist government does not appe ar imminent, even without Fidel Castro at the helm, the

United States should espouse a more pragmatic approach in trying to bring about change in Cuba. Supporters of changing policy also point to broad international support for lifting the U.S. embargo, to the missed opportunities for U.S. businesses because of the unilateral nature of the embargo, and to the increased suffering of the Cuban people because of the embargo. Proponents of change also argue that the United
States should be consistent in its policies with the worlds few remaining communist governments, including China and Vietnam .

Obama cant solve the travel ban Congress key Arzeno 3 Mario Arzeno, Major in the United States Military, MBA from The University of
Florida in Military Art and Science, (The US Embargo on Cuba: Time for a Change?, A thesis presented to the Faculty of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree, 2003, http://www.dtic.mil/cgibin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA416135, Accessed 7/03/13, AW) Repeal the Travel Ban. The travel ban is a result of the embargo and was codified into law in 2000, effectively removing the Presidents authority to remove the ban without congressional
approval

Congress key XO is insufficient Johnson, Spector and Lilac 10 - Andy Johnson, Director, National Security Program,
Kyle Spector, Policy Advisor, National Security Program , Kristina Lilac, National Security Program, Senior Fellows of The Third Way Institute, (End the Embargo of Cuba, Article for The Third Way Institute, 9/16/10, http://content.thirdway.org/publications/326/Third_Way_Memo__End_the_Embargo_of_Cuba.pdf, Accessed 7/02/13, AW) Although the Obama administration took the largely symbolic step of extending the embargo f or another year under the Trading with the Enemy Act last year, the President did relax some longstanding restrictions by taking action to make it easier for Cuban - Americans to visit and send remittances to family members in Cuba. The administration also recently hinted at plans to reduce travel restrictions for academic, cultural, and religious groups later this year. 12 While the executive branch can continue to chip away at these longstanding restrictions, the law requires that Congress will ultimately nee d to pass legislation to repeal the embargo. nder existing law, established by the Helms - Burton Act, the embargo cannot be lifted until the Cuban people democratically elect a new government and the transition government is in place. While President Obama could take an initial step by refusing to issue the annual extension of Cubas national emergency status under the Trading with the Enemy Act, 13 lifting the embargo will ultimately

require that Congress pass and the President sign into law legislation t o repeal both the Torricelli Act and the Helms - Burton Act . Passing HR 4645
would be a positive first step, but Congress will need to take further action to see that the embargo is lifted in its entirety. Solves US economy and sustains growth ag sector Zimmerman 10 CHELSEA A. ZIMMERMAN, Fellow of the Center for The Study of the Presidency and Congress, Member of The Juvenile Rights Project and the Legal Aid Society, Barnard College, (Rethinking The Cuban Trade Embargo: An Opportune Time To Mend a Broken Policy, The Presidency 2010 Fellows, NO DATE (Paper was written in 2010), http://www.thepresidency.org/storage/documents/Fellows2010/Zimmerman.pdf, Accessed 6/27/13, AW) Trade levels between Cuba and the U.S. could reach $5 billion annually by removing the trade embargo, resulting in a boost to American agribusinesses while also helping to alleviate hunger among Cubans.

Politics link turns

Plan is popular trade association lobby Rodman 01 Kenneth A. Rodman, Professor of Government at Colby College, (Volume 9:
Article 10: Sanctions beyond Borders: Multinational Corporations and U.S. Economic Statecraft, Book published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, August 2001 (Publish Date), http://www.dundee.ac.uk/cepmlp/journal/html/vol9/article9-8.html, Accessed 7/02/13, AW) As a result, corporate trade associations became more aggressive in using the political system to set limits on the exercise of sanctions. This was evident during the Polish crisis, when the American business community lobbied heavily against the pipeline sanctions and the House of Representatives came within three votes of overturning them. Shortly thereafter, they succeeded in persuading Congress to amend the Export Administration Act to make it more difficult for the president to abrogate contracts, even during a declared embargo. Therefore, the hegemonic decline model predicts increased interest group and

congressional limits on unilateral and extraterritorial sanctions.

Lifting the embargo is popular every commodity group will lobby in Congress empirically passes legislation Gegg and Larose 7 Betty Valle Gegg and John Larose, Members of the MidAmerica
Farmer Grower, (Commodity Groups Exert Strong Push to Remove Cuban Embargo, Publication for the MidAmerica Farmer Grower Organization, NO DATE (most recent year referenced was 2007), http://www.mafg.net/Files/Commodity%20Groups%20Exert%20Strong%20Push%20To%20Lift %20Cuban%20EmbargogNfhoi.pdf, AW) *******NOTE: MidAmerica Farmer Grower inter-viewed the Presidents and CEOs of six national commodity organizations and president of the American Farm Bureau to learn their opinions on trade with Cuba. This is the first of a series of two articles on that issue****** I f trade with Cuba were an issue that the United States commodity organizations could effect, it would be a done deal immediately. Unfortu- nately, the red tape of government has made nearly every effort of these groups seem futile. Representatives of every commodity group have expressed support for lift- ing the embargo with Cuba. All recog- nize the benefit to both U.S. producers, suppliers and exporters as well as to the people of Cuba who must pay exorbitant prices to import from distant countries while receiving commodities of lesser quality than is available 90 miles away in the United States. All these groups have traveled to Cuba to help normalize relations, some as many as 10-12 times in recent years. Most or- ganizations lobby Congress and have published position papers that firmly state their desire to lift the embargo. . All cite the need for a change . A Word From The America Soybean Associ- ation Stephen L. Censky, Chief Executive Officer with the American Soybean Association (ASA) said his organization feels the embargo has been ineffective in bringing about political change in Cuba. Instead, it has resulted in lost sales opportunities for U.S. manufacturing and agriculture. The ASA worked with other commodity groups to lobby Congress in 2000 to pass legislation that allowed for the sale of food and medicine to Cuba

Plan is popular in Florida preventing spills is popular Crdenas 12 - Jos R. Crdenas, Acting Assistant Administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean under the Bush Administration, Senior Advisor to the Bush Administration in the U.S. Department of State, the National Security Council, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, Senior Advisor at the Organization of American States and as a senior professional staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, (The phony Cuba embargo debate, Article for Foreign Policy: Shadow Government, 3/21/12, http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/03/21/the_phony_cuba_embargo_debate, Accessed 6/28/13, AW) In addition, there is the de rigueur clumsy caricature of pro-embargo Cuban Americans, who "might protest any decision allowing U.S. federal agencies to assist Cuba or letting U.S. companies operate in Cuban territory." TThis seems not to be aware that most Cuban Americans live in South Florida and would have a decided interest in any despoiling

of the state's environment. They would hardly be averse to any U.S. mobilization to
counter a spill. What they do justifiably object to is any exploitation of the situation for political ends.

Popular in Congress perceived as stopping China Claver-Carone 8 - Mauricio Clever-Carone, Executive Director of Cuba Democracy
Advocates, Served as Attorney-advisor for the U.S. Department of the Treasury, (How the Cuban embargo protects the environment, Article for the New York Times, 7/25/08, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/25/opinion/25iht-edcarone.1.14793496.html?_r=0, Accessed 7/03/13, AW) The energy debate in the United States introduces one more powerful argument in support of current U.S. policy toward Cuba: environmental protection. For years the Castro brothers have been courting foreign oil companies, and in recent years none have been courted more assiduously than China's Sinopec. Why Sinopec? The answer is simple: If the Chinese were to start drilling in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Cuba - so very close to the coast of Florida - it would send a "red scare" through the halls of the U.S. Congress, creating a new and otherwise improbable coalition for unilaterally lifting the current embargo. Longtime advocates of lifting trade sanctions against Cuba would join with conservative Republicans, who, though they now support the trade embargo, are strong advocates for allowing U.S. companies to drill offshore, and with liberal environmentalists who would rather have strictly regulated U.S. companies drilling than unregulated Chinese companies. In Cuba that looks like a winning trifecta for changing U.S. policy. As early as 2006, the Reuters news bureau in Cuba was reporting: "Havana is eager to see American oil companies join forces with the anti-embargo lobby led by U.S. farmers who have been selling food to Cuba for four years." In recent weeks this strategy has taken center stage in Washington with political and public opinion leaders openly discussing the irony of "the Chinese drilling 60 miles from Florida's coast," while U.S. law prevents American companies from doing the same along the outer continental shelf. The premise of the argument, however, is just not true. Chinese companies are not drilling in Cuba's offshore waters. Nor do the Chinese have any lease agreements with Cuba's state-owned oil company, Cupet, to do so. As a matter of fact, the last drilling for oil off Cuba's coast took place in 2004 and was led by the Spanish-Argentine consortium Repsol YPF. It found oil but not in any commercially viable quantity. Inactivity since suggests that Repsol YPF is not

eager to follow up with the required investment in Castro's Cupet. For almost a decade now, the Castro regime has been lauding offshore lease agreements. It has tried Norway's StatoilHydro, India's state-run Oil & Natural Gas Corporation, Malaysia's Petronas and Canada's Sherritt International. Yet, there is no current drilling activity off Cuba's coasts. The Cuban government has announced plans to drill, then followed with postponements in 2006, 2007 and this year. Clearly, foreign oil companies anticipate political changes in Cuba and are trying to position themselves accordingly. Plan popular Environmental Defense Fund lobbies Crdenas 12 - Jos R. Crdenas, Acting Assistant Administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean under the Bush Administration, Senior Advisor to the Bush Administration in the U.S. Department of State, the National Security Council, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, Senior Advisor at the Organization of American States and as a senior professional staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, (The phony Cuba embargo debate, Article for Foreign Policy: Shadow Government, 3/21/12, http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/03/21/the_phony_cuba_embargo_debate, Accessed 6/28/13, AW) What they do justifiably object to is any exploitation of the situation for political ends. Indeed, a particularly egregious example of the politicization of the issue has been the involvement of the Environmental Defense Fund, which has been positively sanguine about Cuban oil drilling. A powerful lobby able to mobilize hundreds of activists to oppose U.S. offshore drilling, they have been leading advocates of across-the-board U.S. cooperation with Cuba on offshore oil drilling, despite the latter's woeful inexperience and dearth of capabilities in offshore oil drilling. In this, they have been aided and abetted by assorted U.S. oil services companies who have been misrepresenting U.S. policy in a misguided attempt to create economic opportunity. Farm lobby extremely powerful pays large amounts of money and already established loopholes to Cuba sanctions Palen 11 - Marc-William Palen, writer for Foreign Policy in Focus, a think tank of more than 600 scholars, a
project of the Institute for Policy Studies. (How the Farm Lobby Distorts U.S. Foreign Policy, FPIF, 1/7/2011, http://fpif.org/how_the_farm_lobby_distorts_us_foreign_policy/, Accessed 7/10/13, AM) Thanks to the hard work of the U.S. Farm Lobby, Americas love of cheap food has stretched more than an engorged waistline. It now stretches the limits of American foreign policy. Over the past century, the Farm Lobbys influence on the U.S. government has increased alongside the consolidation and growth of U.S. agribusinesses, the principle recipients of federal farm subsidies. The redistribution of taxpayer dollars to American agribusinesses not only creates artificially cheap global prices, it also continues to undermine the development of agrarian-oriented economies throughout the world. Now it appears the Farm Lobbys efforts are hamstringing American national security, as well. The New York Times has just discovered that the Farm Lobby has been circumventing U.S. economic sanctions

against the worlds leading rogue states.

Bypassing Sanctions In other words, at the same time that war hawks in government denounce economic sanctions as ineffective, their American Farm Lobby allies, among other groups, have been quietly bypassing the regulations. After filing a Freedom of Information lawsuit and overcoming strong resistance from the Treasury Department, The New York Times has revealed that, for the past decade, the Farm Lobby has ignored economic sanctions by using a Treasury Department legal loopholea loophole the Farm Lobby helped craftin order to trade with Iran and other countries listed as state sponsors of terror.

The Treasury Department law, drawn up in 2000, included the loophole principally to help American farmers export their devalued surplus goods. Falling under the vague label of humanitarian aid, nearly 4,000 U.S. businesses have since done billions of dollars in trade with blacklisted countries.
So-called humanitarian products even include cigarettes and hot sauce. A spokesperson for the American Pop Corn Company, for instance, defended his product as humanitarian, noti ng that popcorn has fibers which are helpful to the digestive system. The law was defined so broadly that humanitarian aid included any item on the Department of Agricultures list, from seeds to soda, and grains to gum. U.S. exports to Iran, for instance, have skyrocketed from almost nothing to about $1.7 billion, and those to Cuba have reached about $3 billion since passage of the law . Its not just gum and soda. In one instance, reports the Times, an American company was permitted to bid on a pipeline job that would have helped Iran sell natural gas to Europe, even though the United States opposes such projects. Several other American businesses were permitted to deal with foreign companies believed to be involved in terrorism or weapons proliferation. Damaging Loopholes The Obama administration has since dismissed the report as minor. But the foreign policy community cant ignore the creation of loopholes that you can drive a Mack truck through, says Stuart Eizenstat, who was in charge of sanctions policy in the Clinton administration. You are giving countries something for nothing, and they just laugh in their teeth. I think there have been abuses. Eizenstat told the BBC in a related interview that U.S. sanctions policy was riddled with exceptions that are neither humanitarian nor related to democracy promotion, and could undermine support for international sanctions. As the Times also points out, s ome diplomats and foreign affairs experts worry that by allowing the sale of even small-ticket items with no military application, the United States muddies its moral and diplomatic authority, especially in countries like Iran where it is increasingly difficult to separate exceptions that help the people from those that enrich the state. The heavily redacted files obtained by the Times offer a snapshotalbeit a piecemeal oneof a system that at times appears out of sync with its own licensing policies and Americas goals abroad. In some cases, licensing rules failed to keep pace with changing diplomatic circumstances, as evinced, for example, by the continuation of outdated and loose trade restrictions with North Korea and Cuba. Specialists of U.S.-Cuban relations are already expressing their outrage, and Jewish groups are indignant over revelations concerning Iran. American sales of marinades, cake sprinkles, and salt substitutes have ended up in Iranian stores whose investors include blacklisted banks and high-ranking officials from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.But selling luxury food products to stores owned by IRGC officials and banks on the American blacklist is just scratching the surface of the Farm Lobbys insidious influence upon Americ an foreign policy. And it all leads back to the Farm Lobby and federal subsidies of American agriculture. Inordinate Influence The U.S. Farm Lobby maintains an inordinate amount of governmental influence , and it paysliterally. Despite promises to the contrary, taxpayer money keeps on feeding the Farm Lobby coffers; agricultural subsidies now average between $10 and $35 billion year. With such overt federal support and at least tacit federal approval, the Timess most recent revelation is only the newest in an ongoing list of the Farm Lobbys injurious impact on U.S. foreign relations. For many years now, poor nations throughout the globe have complained that U.S. agricultural subsidies encourage enormous crop overproduction, which in turn drives massive exportation, thereby glutting the global market and depressing prices worldwide. U.S. farmers, completing the vicious self-perpetuating protectionist cycle, turn to the U.S. government for subsidies in order to supplement these lower global prices their overproduction created. Corn subsidies, which received $41.9 billion from 1995 to 2004 alone, are particularly detrimental to the world economy and ecology, and this Decembers compromise tax deal unsurprisingly included further taxpayer subsidies to corn ethanol production. Since NAFTA was enacted in 1994, for instance, subsidized U.S. corn has been overflowing Mexican markets, destroying Mexican corn-growing, and thereby displacing Mexican farmers. USAID, meanwhile, has consistently threatened to cut off food aid to various African countries that are unwilling to accept genetically modified crops, particularly corn. Other studies show how U.S. corn subsidies are even tied to the destruction of the Amazon. Furthermore, over the past decade the World Trade Organization has castigated the United States for its ongoing and massive program of agricultural

subsidization. In recent years, the European Union, Australia, Brazil, Argentina and Canada embarrassingly took
Americas illegal corn subsidization to task, and Brazil also recently won a similar World Trade Organization victory over American cotton subsidies. Reining in the Lobby The next time a politician or pundit begins banging the drum for war to bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran as John McCain so melodically put itremember why it is that economic sanctions never seem to work effectively. The powerful American Farm Lobby deserves its fair share of the blame, as does the U.S. Congress, which continues to massively subsidize American agriculture and thus, indirectly at least, the Farm Lobby itself. Many of the less-than-humanitarian products being traded to Iran, for instance,

gained their exemption through the efforts of various U.S. congressmen. Empirically- Agricultural lobbying garners congressional votes Gawande & Hoekman 09 - Kishore Gawande earned his PhD in economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. His areas
of specialty are empirical political economy and trade policy in which he has published extensively. His current research interests focus on the politics of free trade areas, globalization and regime quality, and determinants of conflict. Gawande's teaching interest is in international economics and politics, emerging economies, and applied econometrics. Gawande is a professor at the Bush School and holds the Helen and Roy Ryu Chair in International Affairs. Bernard Hoekman is the Sector Director of the Trade Department (PRMTR) in the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Vice-Presidency (PRMVP). "Why Governments Tax or Subsidize Trade: Evidence from Agriculture," Agricultural Distortions Working Paper 50300, World Bank. LOBBYING AND AGRICULTURAL PROTECTION IN THE UNITED STATES: IMPLICATIONS FOR INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION, http://www.wcfia.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/GawandeHoekmanND.pdf, Accessed: 7/10/13, MC)

Agricultural PAC spending data for the five congressional election cycles between 1991-2000 (103rd through 106th Congress) were downloaded from the Federal Election Commission the (inverse) demand elasticity, the greater the level of intervention, that is, the higher the price relative to its non -distorted price. This is a confirmation of the Grossman-Helpman intuition that it is most efficient to tax commodities with the lowest price elasticities of demand, and is the basis for Gardners conclusion that interventions in U.S. agriculture have been efficient. 12 (FEC) website (www.fec.org).10 It is useful and relevant to understand whether PAC spending in agriculture is in line with the Grossman-Helpman idea of money buying influence (as different from money buying mere access to policymakers).

Farm PACs contributed between $5.5 million and $7 million during each of the five election cycles. Among farm products, the most politically active were sugar PACs, dairy PACs and ranch PACs. Together these three PACS accounted for about 75% of total farm PAC contributions.11 Over 200 PACs were politically active during this period. Cotton, dairy and wheat had the
highest degree of PAC concentration, and represented by the equivalent of three or four equal sized PACs. Ranch, sugar, and fruits and vegetables were represented by the equivalent of eight to ten equal-sized PACs.12 PAC

money is clearly influential in agriculture. A study of the 1985 and 1990 voting during sugar legislations by Brooks, Cameron and Carter (1998) finds that in the House and Senate both votes were responsive to sugar PAC contributions. Further, the value of sugar production in their constituency also determined how congresspersons voted. Sugar lobbies also targeted candidates that were likely to advance pro-sugar policies. Lopez (2001) finds that PAC contributions actually influenced agricultural policies. Two-thirds of agricultural PAC money went to House candidates and one-third to Senate candidates. Figure 2.1 indicates the top twenty recipients in the House
of agriculture PAC contributions during the 1991-92 election cycle.13 During this cycle, 15 of the top 20 House recipients of agricultural PAC money fifteen were members of the influential House 10 For the graphs below, mapping PACs into SIC-based agriculture-related sectors was done via a concordance constructed by Beaulieu and Magee (2002). In most cases many PACs mapped into one SIC code, so SIC level contributions are simply the aggregate of the mapped PACs. For one-to-many maps, political contributions from each PAC were fractionally assigned equally to each SIC code into which the PAC mapped. To check for consistency we compared our data with the data on the opensecrets.com website. For the few sectors in which opensecrets.com reports such information our data closely matched theirs. 11 Food manufacturing PACs, forestry and nursery PACs, agriculture service PACs and agriculture distribution PACs contributed more than did farm PACs. 12 Based on Herfindahl indices computed by the author. 13 The PAC data are in three relational data files: candidate information files (CN), PAC committee information files (CM), and files containing transactions between PACs and candidates (PAS). For each election cycle, aggregate contributions by each PAC to every candidate were computed from the PAS files, and

then merged with the relevant cycles CN files. Agriculture committee and sub -committee assignments for each Congress were obtained from Congressional Quarterly (1991-1999). 13 Agricultural committee (Figure 2.1). They included the committee chair (de la Garza ) and three subcommittee chairs (Huckaby, Stenholm, Rose). Figure 2.2 bears out much the same story for the 1999-2000 election cycle, the last period in our sample. The pattern of

giving in these figures clearly indicates that agricultural PACs targeted politicians with influence over agriculture policy. The amounts are not inconsequential. Agricultural PACs delivered between 8% (Fazio) and 60% (de la Garza) of the total PAC money received by candidates in the ag PAC top 20.14 Rather than being driven by party or ideology, agricultural PAC money sought influence. A natural
experiment that the five cycles provide is the switch from Democratic to Republican majority in 1995 and thereafter. Whereas, the top-twenty recipients who were agriculture committee members comprised largely Democrats during the 1991-92 and 1993- 94 congresses, they were mainly Republicans in the three later congresses. Figures 3.1 and 3.2 display the top twenty Senate recipients of Ag PAC money for the first and last cycles in the 1990s.

Contributions to Senate candidates were similar in magnitude to contributions to House candidates. Since a Senate election cost approximately ten times as much as a House election on average, receipts
as a percentage of their total PAC receipts do not exceed 25% and are generally lower than 10% even for the largest agricultural PAC recipients.15 Trade, Output and Protection The USDAs Production, Supply and Distribution database PSD Online (at http://www.fas.usda.gov/psd/complete_files/default.asp) was the source for trade and production data used to construct the inverse import-to-output ratios (z). Time series data 14 Top 20 list-makers who were not on the Agricultural committee represented districts with influential agricultural constituents (CA, OK, VA, MI). For example, Fazios district (CA, district 3) was among the 30 leading districts by market value of agricultural products (1997 Census of Agriculture). 15 In 1992 the average winning Senate candidate spent $3.9 mn. while the average House winning candidate spent $0.5 mn., approximately an 8:1 ratio,. The average Senate loser spent $2.0 mn. While the average House loser spent $0.2 mn., a 10:1 ratio. In other election cycles the ratios were similar. Further, total PAC receipts as a proportion of total campaign spending averaged approximately 20% for winning Senate candidates while they averaged approximately 50% for winning House candidates. These figures are computed from in formation on the opensecrets.org (opensecrets 2002) web site. 14 over 1985-2001 for farm products at the 4- and 5-digit Harmonized System (HS) level are available at the site.16

AT Gross stops normalized relations

We fiat over that the plan normalizes relations despite Gross Gross presents a unique opportunity for change in political approach McGovern 12 Representative Jim McGovern, U.S. Representative for Massachusetts's 2nd
congressional district. (McGovern: U.S. Needs Effective, Mature Policy in Cuba, Roll Call, February 21, 2012, http://www.rollcall.com/issues/57_98/jim_mcgovern_united_states_needs_effective_mature_cuba_p olicy-212553-1.html, accessed: 7/3/13, LR)
The impasse between Washington and Havana over the arrest of U.S. Agency for International Development contractor Alan Gross, cited by some as a reason to further shut down our Cuba policy options , actually presents us an opportunity to change our outdated and self-defeating approach toward the island, including shedding a range of democracy promotion programs aimed at regime change. These programs and their generous funding $200 million during the past decade were the centerpiece of the George W. Bush administrations Cuba policy and far different from the new beginning with Cuba that President Barack Obama promised just weeks after his inauguration. They are relics from the Cold War and are based more on U.S. domestic politics than on what constitutes rational and sound foreign policy. For more than five decades we have been obsessed with getting rid of the Castro brothers. Our government has tried to invade Cuba, assassinate its leader, crush its economy and support organizations and programs designed to overthrow the regime. We have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to achieve this quest. By any measure, our policies have failed miserably. If anything, our policies have been used as an excuse to justify the failures of the Cuban system and strengthen Havana hardliners opposed to change. Every time a U.S. lawmaker gets up to rattle the sabers, the Cuban people, including most of the pro-democracy activists, recoil. All the huffing and puffing U.S. lawmakers engage in may play well at fundraisers in the United States but do absolutely nothing to improve the lives of the average Cuban family, let alone help support human rights or freedoms in Cuba.

AT Delay
Changes under Raul mean now is best Hanson and Lee 1/31 Stephanie Hanson and Brianna Lee, members of the Council on Foreign
Relations, U.S.-Cuba Relations, Council on Foreign Relations, January 31, 2013, http://www.cfr.org/cuba/us-cuba-relations/p11113#p3, accessed: 7/4/13, LR)

Ral Castro has implemented a number of significant changes to the structure of the Cuban government and economy. Several changes related to agriculture, including a decision in 2008 to give individuals land for farming, were meant to spur food production on the island. He liberalized the real estate and auto markets, created space for small businesses, and cracked down on corruption. "Ral Castro, though no democrat, is clearly a more practical man than his brother," said a 2010 Economist article. "He
recognizes that time is running out for his island. The population is shrinking and ageing, the economy is hopelessly unproductive and the state can no longer pay for the paternalist social services of which Cuba was once proud." However, Ral Castro's steps toward capitalism have been "both remarkable and extremely limited," writes Damien Cave for the New York Times. "What Cuba has ended up with is handcuffed capitalism: highly regulated competitive markets for low-skilled, small family businesses." In 2012, Ral Castro made a historic change to the country's travel laws. Under the new policy, which took effect in January 2013, Cubans are eligible to apply for passports to travel abroad, rather than having to acquire a formal letter of invitation and exit visa. Furthermore, Cubans are able to stay outside of the country for twenty-four months--extended from eleven months--without losing their status as Cuban residents. The new policy makes exceptions for "citizens who have obligations with the state or are not authorized under rules designed to preserve the skilled workforce and protect official information," in which case the state exercises its own judgment. Ral Castro has signaled he is willing to engage in dialogue with Washington. At the same time...seeking normalized bilateral relations is clearly not a priority for the Cuban government, which has moved to diversify its relationships in the region.

Turn: Cuba worries that US will block access to medical supplies (turn to neolib k) CNN 09- (Report: U.S. sanctions put Cubans' health at risk, CNN,
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/09/01/amnesty.cuba.health/, 9/2/09, accessed: 7/3/13, ML) She also said the embargo affects the way doctors think about the future. "Doctors in Cuba always worry that an international supplier will be bought out by a U.S. company, leaving medical equipment without replacement parts and patients without continuity of medications," Reed said. Gerardo Ducos, an Amnesty researcher for the Caribbean region, told CNN that although medicines and medical supplies can be licensed for export to Cuba, the conditions governing the process make their export virtually impossible. According to the report, the U.S. exported $710 million of food and agricultural products to Cuba in 2008, but only $1.2 million of medical equipment and products. Reed said the embargo does not permit the sale of active ingredients or raw materials to the Cuban pharmaceutical industry.

Turn: embargo restricts access to specific treatments for women (turn to gender k) CNN 09- (Report: U.S. sanctions put Cubans' health at risk, CNN,
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/09/01/amnesty.cuba.health/, 9/2/09, accessed: 7/3/13, ML)

She gave the example of methotrexate, used to treat breast cancer, telling CNN that an export license was denied to a firm wanting to sell the U.S.-produced active ingredient to Cuba, to be used in domestic production of the drug on the island. "Four times as many women may be treated with methotrexate if the drug could be produced domestically, so that Cuban importers were not forced to purchase the finished product on the international pharmaceutical market," she said. The report says that products patented in the U.S. are covered by the embargo. Ducos told CNN that this particularly affects HIV/AIDS treatments. " The latest medicines are usually covered by U.S. patents,

which means Cuba must wait several years for the patent to run out before they can buy generic products," he said.
In the statement, Khan added, "Although responsibility for providing adequate health care lies primarily with the Cuban authorities, governments imposing sanctions such as embargoes need to pay special attention to the impact they can have on the targeted country's population."

The Cuban pop has been suffering brain drain for a while. (nu brain drain) Sweig and Bustamante 13- Julia E. Sweig, Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America
Studies and Director for Latin America Studies; Michael Bustamante, PhD candidate specializing in Latin American and Caribbean History at Yale, dissertation about the cultural politics of Cuban collective and historical memory, on and off the island, in the wake of the 1959 Revolution, served as Research Associate for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. (Cuba After Communism, Council on Foreign Relations, http://www.cfr.org/cuba/cuba-after-communism/p30991, July/August 2013, accessed: 7/3/13, ML)

Small-time diaspora capital may prove easier to regulate and rely on than funds from multinational corporations driven strictly by profits. Under the repatriation provisions of the island's new
migration law, some Cubans may even retire to the island with their pensions and savings after decades of working abroad. Yet opening the doors for more young citizens to leave could prove risky for a quickly aging, low-birthrate society that has been suffering from a brain drain for some time. Besides, along with remittance dollars, Cuba urgently needs both medium and large investors. Ultimately, only larger

outlays can help fix Cuba's most fundamental economic problem: its depleted productive base. Castro appears to recognize that attracting foreign investment, decentralizing the government, and further expanding the private sector are the only ways to tackle this long-term predicament.
The government is unlikely to proceed with anything but caution, however. Officials are wary of rocking the domestic political boat, and citizens and party leaders alike recoil from the prospect of more radical shock therapy. Rising public protests in China and Vietnam against inequality and rampant corruption have only reinforced the Cuban government's preference for gradualism. Striking an adequate balance will be no easy task. In late 2012, Havana legalized the creation of transportation cooperatives -- private, profit-sharing entities owned and manage by their members -- to fix bottlenecks in agricultural distribution. Meanwhile, 100 state enterprises are now running their finances completely autonomously as part of a yearlong pilot program. The government is also reportedly considering ways to offer a wider array of potential foreign partners more advantageous terms for joint ventures. But the Communist Party is working through numerous contradictions -- recognizing a place for market economics, challenging old biases against entrepreneurs, and hinting at decentralizing the budget while incongruously insisting, in the words of its official 2011 guidelines, that "central planning, and not the market, will take precedence."

Traditional impact calculus doesn't apply - embargoes cause the underlying conditions that result in war and economic crisis and those events obscure the true impacts of embargoes
Garfield 99 Richard Garfield, Richard Garfield, nurse and epidemiologist, is professor of clinical international
nursing at Columbia University. He is the co-chair of the Human Rights Committee of the American Public Health

Association and director of a PAHO/WHO collaborating centre at Columbia University. He worked in the ministry of health in Nicaragua. (The Impact of Economic Sanctions on Health and Well-being, Relief and Rehabilitation Network Paper, November 1999, http://www.essex.ac.uk/armedcon/story_id/The%20Impact%20of%20Econmoic%20Sanctins%20on%20Health%20 abd%20Well-Being.pdf, accessed: 7/2/13, amf)

The methodological challenges to establishing a valid assessment of the impact of an embargo are daunting: Embargoes spread a small increase in risk of death, illness, or social stress among a large group of
people. Small risks are difficult to measure with precision. This small change in risk may be obscured by concurrent events that contribute independently to the negative outcomes which may result from an embargo, such as war, mass migration, or economic

crisis.
The impact of trade sanctions on health and well-being is mediated by a countrys economic and social systems. However, sanctions impact considerably on the production, importation and distribution of

essential goods. There are thus multiple pathways and steps by which influence is exerted on health and well-being outcomes.
Each sanction on economic trade is a type of natural experiment, where the intervention is national in scope and control groups with which to make comparisons do not exist. Baseline information available in sanctioned countries is usually limited in coverage or quality and, with the exception of Cuba, the quality of information on health and well-being has declined under sanctions. Change in the distribution of essential goods within the family or due to political or social

mobilisation modify the impact of resource change brought on by trade sanctions. These modifying influences are difficult to isolate and often go unrecognised or unmeasured. Even a dramatic
decline in key resources does not always or immediately lead to an increase in morbidity or mortality due to the resilience of health assets as public education, healthy behaviours, trained health workers, and infrastructure, which deteriorate only gradually.

Your politics link arguments are based on old analysis - new cuban american's don't support the embargo.
Bandow 12/11/12 Doug Bandow, Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special
Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is the author of several books, including Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire. (Time to End the Cuban Embargo, The National Interest, 12/11/12, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-pointless-cuba-embargo-7834?page=1, accessed: 7/3/13, amf)

The embargo survives largely because of Floridas political importance. Every presidential candidate wants to win the Sunshine States electoral votes, and the Cuban American community is a significant voting bloc. 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.

Obama has Cuban-American support can afford to do the plan Padgett 13 - Tim Padgett, 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, for Newsweek as its Mexico City bureau chief from 1990 to 1996, and for Time as its Latin America bureau chief, first in Mexico from 1996 to 1999 and then in Miami, where he also covered Florida and the U.S. Southeast, from 1999 to 2013. Padgett has also written for publications such as The New Republic and America, and he has been a frequent analyst on CNN, Fox and NPR, as well as Spanish-language networks such as Univision. (Why This Summer Offers Hope For Better U.S.-Cuba Relations, WLRN, latest known date was early June, when Snowden leaked NSA information, http://wlrn.org/post/why-summer-offers-hope-better-us-cuba-relations, accessed: 7/3/13, amf) 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 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. Obamas decision on Syria was correct no loss of PC Geraghty 7/4/13 Jim Geraghty, Geraghty, a contributing editor at National Review, lived in Ankara from 2005
to 2007. (Obama tunes out the world, The New York Daily News, 7/4/13, http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/obama-tunes-world-article-1.1389707, accessed: 7/4/13, amf)

Some on the right snickered when President Obamas effort to enforce a red line in Syria failed. Despite an August 2012 ultimatum, Bashar Assads regime eventually used chemical weapons against a
rebellious insurrection. But we shouldnt ridicule

or discourage the Presidents all-too-rare firm stances on dangerous

regimes.
Yes, the Obama administration never quite spelled out the precise consequences of crossing that red line, and the President privately and semipublicly indicated he foresaw great risks in getting too involve d in Syrias civil war. Yes, its fair to question the wisdom of sending arms to the Syrian rebels, particularly after bloodthirsty acts like the al-Nusra Fronts beheading of a Catholic priest on June 23. (The CIA is trying to ensure U.S. weapons go to se cular, nominally pro-Western rebels instead of the Islamists.)

The red line failure is frustrating, but disengagement will be much worse. A push toward clarity is imperative given a series of popular revolutions-in-the-making some slow motion, some rapid:
-In Turkey, a dispute over a public park turned into a widespread uprising against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with a violent police crackdown against disparate opposition groups making the NATO allys cities resemble war zones. -In Brazil, increases in bus, train and metro ticket prices in some Brazilian cities spurred more than 2 million to march in the streets in opposition to a government they deem arrogant and unresponsive, bringing the countrys daily life to a standstill. While Brazils government isnt as repressive as some Middle Eastern regimes, the current left-wing ruling party has been friendly with anti-American regimes in Cuba and Venezuela and deserves some U.S. criticism for failing to live up to its promises to the poor. -In Egypt, millions of protesters had it with President Mohammed Morsi, concluding he wasnt serious about addressing the countrys increasingly dire problems and was focused solely on consolidating power for the Muslim Brotherhood. By Wednesday, the Egyptian military informed Morsi he was no longer president a development that appears bad for establishing democracy and rule of law, but perhaps good for secularism and pluralism. In response to each crisis, the incessant even-toned declarations from State Department spokesmen that we remain engaged with all sides and were watching the situation closely are starting to feel rote. When thick clouds of tear gas blanket barricaded streets (Turkey), rubber bullets are flying and rioting has begun (Brazil) and party headquarters are being stormed by angry mobs (Egypt), our governments murmur that it wishes to see all sides remain calm seems detached and almost apathetic.

Sure, wed like to see all sides renounce violence. But thats not happening, so now what?
Certainly, the U.S. government has limited options to influence the internal actions of other countries and the

U.S. in particular must be careful about appearing to meddle.

But, as the administration never ceases to remind us with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, imperfect options dont justify detachment. The Bush administration reacted to the 9/11 attacks with two invasions and a global war on terror, a doctrine of democracy promotion that was criticized at home and abroad as being too meddling and arrogant. That approach undoubtedly had flaws. But its antidote is not chronic passivity. Especially because, it has become increasingly clear that the protests and violence beyond our borders in the Bush years were not a response to a provocative U.S. administration policy. It increasingly appears that scattered, violent popular uprisings and anti-American conspiracy theories have established a sort of baseline in our globalized world.

Its understandably tempting that an American President and public want to say, To heck with the rest of the world and turn inward. But the history of the past century suggests a disengaged America leads to an

even more chaotic world. If invasion and occupation are clumsy tools for our unstable world, abandoning forceful condemnations and the occasional ultimatum are equally problematic. Theres nothing wrong with the President of the United States calling out a foreign leader caught
abusing citizens of his nation. He just needs a plan to enforce some consequences to that abuse be it strong economic and diplomatic steps, covert action, overt action, foreign asset seizure, cyberwarfare and the will to act. Thats leadership in a complicated world

1AC Impact cards

Narcotic trafficking undermines democracy around the globe
Sabatini 04Christopher Sabatini, National Endowment for Democracy (Countering the Corrosive Effects of
Narcotics Trafficking and Organized Crime on Democratic Development: How Broader Civil Society Forces Can Help, 2004, http://www.wmd.org/assemblies/second-assembly/reports/topical-workshops/countering-corrosiveeffects-narcotics-traffick, Accessed: 7/10/13, zs) There are different types of illegal conduct that directly threaten democracies, and narco-trafficking is one of them. It mostly affects democracy through blackmail, corruption, and the use of violence,

and it works against the institutions of the state, by undermining public authorities and agencies, and also against the electoral process. Its intimidating effects gravely influence those in different sectors of civil society, especially journalists who investigate the problem. To the degree that narco-trafficking spreads to different countries, the growth of corruption and violence around the world threatens to debilitate the spread and growth of democracy. Big profit margins resulting from the process of drug production and distribution are invested in arms to meet the demands of terrorists, organized crime, or armed groups that seek to seize power through violence. Democracy solves multiple scenarios for extinction Halperin 11Morton Halperin, senior advisor to the Open Society Institute and co-author of The Democracy
Advantage (DEMOCRACY IS STILL WORTH FIGHTING FOR, 1/13, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/02/unconventional_wisdom?page=0,1, Accessed: 7/10/13, zs)

democratic governments are more likely than autocratic regimes to engage in conduct that advances U.S. interests and avoids situations that pose a threat to peace and security. Democratic states are more likely to develop and to avoid famines and economic collapse. They are also less likely to become failed states or suffer a civil war. Democratic states are also more likely to cooperate in dealing with security issues, such as terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
For there is one thing the neocons get right: As I argue in The Democracy Advantage,

Malaria leads to over 1 millions deaths a year JHMRI 13 John Hopkins Malaria Research Institute (About Malaria, John Hopkins University,
2013, http://malaria.jhsph.edu/about_malaria/ Date Accessed: July 10, 2013, SH) Despite mankind's longstanding struggle to control mosquito populations ,

the World Health Organization currently estimates that each year malaria causes 300 to 500 million infections and over 1 million deaths each year. Malaria is perhaps even tougher to combat than HIV or tuberculosis because of its multiple distinct life-cycle stages and its genetic complexity, which allows Plasmodium to adapt rapidly to drugs
and to our immune system's efforts to render it ineffective. With billions of parasites circulating in a single human host, Plasmodium species are poised to resist immunologic and chemotherapeutic attacks. With the aid of mosquito vectors, a single infected individual can transmit to hundreds of other individuals within months,

far outstripping the infectiousness of HIV or tuberculosis.

WHAT IS MALARIA? Malaria is a febrile, mosquito-borne infection, classically characterized by periodic chills, rigors, and high fevers followed by profuse sweating, which occur at regular intervals of 48 to 72 hours. Infection in humans begins when the infected female anopheline mosquito injects the sporozoite parasitic form from its salivary glands into the

bloodstream during a blood meal. The sporozoites are carried to the liver, where they undergo asexual. When these infected liver cells burst, merozoites are released into the blood, where they invade red blood cells. The intraerythrocytic parasite develops through ring forms into schizonts that produce more infectious merozoites that affect additional red cells. The periodic fever is the result of synchronization of red cell lysis and release of more merozoites. Some of the organisms develop into distinct sexual forms (gametocytes) which, if ingested by the Anopheles mosquito during a feeding, can undergo sexual reproduction that starts the cycle over again.

Malaria is prevalent throughout most of the tropical world, producing a situation in which 40% of the world's population is at risk for acquiring this disease. Affecting 300 to 500 million people yearly, malaria is considered one of the most common infectious diseases and the most important of the parasitic diseases. Infections in humans are caused by four different species of the genus Plasmodium.
Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium malaria, Plasmodium vivax, and Plasmodium ovale are associated with different clinical presentations, progression, prevalence, and antimalarial resistance patterns. P. falciparum infection results in the highest morbidity and mortality, accounting for almost all of the over 1 million deaths caused by malaria annually.

Miscellaneous
Cuba changingtime to lift embargo and fuel change Haven 1/26Paul Haven, Associated Press bureau chief in Havana (Kerry, Hagel On Cuba: Cabinet Nominees
Could Help Ease Relations, Lift Trade Embargo, Huff Post World, 1/26/13, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/26/kerry-hagel-cuba-us-trade-embargo_n_2559023.html, Accessed 7/2/13, jtc)
"I think having a secretary of state and secretary of defense who understand and are willing to speak publicly that isolation is counterproductive is a very good start," said Tomas Bilbao, executive director of the nonpartisan Cuba Study Group, which advocates using engagement to spur democratic change. "I'm optimistic about the opportunity." Carlos Alzugaray, an ex-Cuban ambassador to the European Union and the author of several studies about Cuba-US relations, said that if both men are confirmed, no Cabinet since the Carter administration would have such highlevel voices in favor of rapprochement. At the same time, the composition of Cuban-Americans in Florida

is evolving, with younger voters less emotionally attached to the issue than their parents and grandparents. Exit polls showed 49 percent of Cuban-Americans in the state voted for Obama, roughly the same percentage as four years ago, an indication the group no longer plays the make-or-break role it once did in presidential politics. The atmosphere is changing in Cuba as well. Alzugaray noted that the island has taken many steps that would normally be welcomed by Washington such as freeing dozens of political prisoners, opening the economy to limited capitalism, hosting peace talks for war-torn Colombia and eliminating most restrictions on travel for its own citizens. "Cuba is changing, and it is changing in the direction that the United States says Cuba must change," Alzugaray told The Associated Press in an interview in his Havana apartment Inherency- Plan popular, congress hasnt acted yet Ratliff 09William Ratliff, Research fellow at the independent institute and a member of the
Board of Advisors of the Institutes Center on Global Prosperity. (Why and How to Lift the U.S. Embargo on Cuba, The Independent Institute, May 7 2009, http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2496 , Accessed: 7/3/13, EH)
Most Latin American leaders slammed the 47-year-old U.S. embargo of Cuba at the mid-April Summit of the Americas in Trinidad. Fidel Castro hadnt been invited, so he ranted about the blockadeand President Obamafrom Havana. This all sounds familiar, but there is an important new twist today. The Obama team, and shifts in Cuban American opinion, give hope that we may finally move toward eliminating the embargoif we can jettison unrealistic demands and expectations. The embargo made sense during the Cold War, but no longer. A majority of Americans and Cubans now oppose it, including a

majority of Cuban dissidents in Cuba and Cuban-Americans in Miami. Only the U.S. Congress still wont move as a body, bound as it is by inertia and domestic political calculations. Alas, its role is critical since the passage of the 1996 Helms Burton Act,
which codifies the embargo. How has the embargo failed? It has not brought down the Castro brothers, advanced democracy, freedom, human rights or prosperity in Cuba, or gotten compensation for Americans whose assets Cuba seized decades ago. It largely denies Americans the freedom to travel to Cuba, or to trade freely and otherwise interact Cubans on the island. And in recent decades it has given Fidel the scapegoat he needsusto excuse his economic utopianism and brutality.

The embargo undermines US influence and soft power Hansing 11 Katrin Hansing, Associate Professor of Black and Hispanic Studies at Baruch
College (10 Reasons to Oppose the Embargo, Center for Democracy in the Americas, October 21 2011, http://www.democracyinamericas.org/blog-post/10-reasons-to-oppose-the-embargo/, Accessed: 6/28/13, EH)
In light of the UN Secretary-Generals report on the U.S. embargo of Cuba, and in advance of Tuesdays vote against it, we offer a series of statements from a variety of sourcesincluding a retired General, Ronald Reagans Agriculture Secretary, an environmentalist, a physician, an actor/human rights advocate, several scholars, and one of Washingtons leading voices on foreign policyon why the U.S. should end the embargo. We hope you read them all.

The embargo undermines U.S. foreign policy interests Failure of the U.S. to finally snuff out the last vestiges of the Cold War in the U.S.-Cuba embargo signals impotence in American strategic vision and capability. Those who support the embargo undermine the empowerment of Cuban citizens, harming
them economically and robbing them of choices that could evolve through greater engagement exactly what we have seen in transitioning Communist countries like Vietnam and China. The world is dismayed and rejects yet again Americas nonsensical

embargo, which ultimately makes the U.S. look strategically muddled and petty rather than a leader committed to improving the global order.
Steve Clemons, Washington Editor-at-Large, The Atlantic Senior Fellow & Founder, American Strategy Program New America Foundation The embargo hurts U.S. national security interests The U.S. embargo against Cuba is a Cold War relic that hurts America and Cuba by preventing normal trade and travel between our two countries. From the perspective of U.S. national security, not only does the embargo prevent our cooperation with Cuba on common security issues such as crime and terrorism, it hurts U.S. standing throughout the world by highlighting our aggression against a neighboring country that poses no threat. The United States demeans itself by this futile and hypocritical policy. It is long past time to repeal the U.S. embargo against Cuba. John Adams, Brigadier General US Army (Retired)

Lifting the embargo solves illegal emigration and soft power Gerz-Escandon 08 Jennifer Gerz-Escandon, independent scholar and former professor of
political science based in Atlanta (End the US-Cuba embargo: Its a win-win, Christian Science Monitor, October 9 2008, http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2008/1009/p09s02-coop.html, Accessed: 7/4/13, EH)
For its part, by ending the embargo, the US simultaneously gains security through stability in Cuba. More important, by investing in the future prototype for emerging markets a 42,803-square-mile green energy and technology lab called Cuba America gains a dedicated partner in the search for energy independence. Finally, a key component of renewing relations is ending illicit emigration . At issue is the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, amended in 1995. It encourages disaffected Cubans to risk their lives for the reward of an expedited path to US citizenship upon reaching American soil. They also receive immediate access to a work permit and the ability to acquire residency in one year. A 2002 article from The Miami Herald reported that 1 in 20 Cubans being smuggled to the shores of the United States dies in the attempt. Meanwhile, smugglers collect up to $10,000 a person. Retiring the "wet-foot, dry-foot" policy and normalizing immigration laws could stop the Cuban brain drain, end charges of a US immigration double standard, and save hundreds of millions of dollars for the US taxpayers who must fund four different agencies to implement this policy. Supporters of the embargo say it serves as an important symbolic protest of Cuba's deplorable human rights record and its lack of political, civil, and economic freedoms. Yet constructive engagement with the reform-ready regime of Mr. Castro utilizing a framework based on mutual economic interests similar to US-China relations could give observers more cause for optimism. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's willingness to speak openly with Newsweek/CNN journalist Fareed Zakaria last month about democratization is evidence of progress. While phasing out the Cuban embargo won't render a quick solution to fractured US-Cuba relations or end the evaporation of esteem the US is suffering throughout Latin America, it would mark a significant achievement of hemispheric leadership on a divisive issue. By ending the embargo, the US may learn that under the right circumstances, the soft power of diplomacy proves more effective in reshaping America's perception in Latin America than the hard power of economic isolation ever did.

Lifting the embargo solves soft power and Latin American relaitons Rowen 13 Dolores Rowen, Graduate student at the Whitehead School of Diplomacy at Seton Hall
University, focusing in International Economics/Development and Latin America and the Caribbean. (What about Cuba?, Maplewood, April 19 2013, http://thealternativepress.com/articles/what-about-cuba, Accessed: 7/4/13, EH)
In 2012, only 29 percent of Americans felt that the 52-year-old trade embargo on Cuba should remain a US policy. The majority of Americans believe that the economic embargo should be lifted. It is even more interesting to know that many Cubans look favorably on the US and want to see an end to this ineffective and archaic policy. The question therefore is if so many Americans and native Cubans support an end to the embargo, why does it still exist? The answer is not far-fetched. It exists mainly because the large Cuban lobbying constituency that desires an end to the Castro regime actively lobbies to keep such policies in place. Yet those that advocate for a continuation of this policy may not realize that this embargo is ultimately a lost economic opportunity for the United States. Cuba has resources such as sugar, cocoa, nickel, and fertile soil all of which should appeal to US businesses.

For the US, this ineffective embargo has only resulted in increased tensions and anti-American sentiment in Latin America and the Caribbean. It has failed at its primary purpose of disposing Fidel and Raul Castro and their Communist regime and of
restoring democracy to Cuba. It has, however, had a profoundly negative effect on the Cuban economy. Given the current economic and political climate, the time for economic reform and the restoration of bilateral economic ties with Cuba is now, as it would be strategically beneficial for both countries to end the embargo. In the past, efforts to increase the effect of the embargo, such as the creation of the Cuban-Democracy Act (1992) and the Helms-Burton Act (1996) have neither resulted in regime change nor economic collapse. Somehow, Cuba has endured throughout the years. But, the reality for Cuba is that there is little to no economic growth or prosperity in the country. Cuban officials have been well aware of the fact that since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the introduction of the special period that there has been a need to reform Cubas economic policies. However, this process has been slow, subtle, and ineffective.

In the 1990s, Cuba began to privatize small businesses. Its main focus was tourism, with the hope that this industry would revitalize its economy. In 2007, tourism accounted for about 16.7% of overall investment in Cuba. Due to the embargo, Americans are limited in their travel to Cuba. This is purely a lost economic opportunity for both Cuba and the US. Without tourists from the US, tourism untimely provides temporary economic stability, but does not provide long lasting economic growth. Cuba is a potential market for US exports and such opportunities should not be overlooked during in this present economic climate. Cuba is the largest country in the Caribbean with a large population of about11 million. Moreover, its unused agricultural land and limited technology should also be viewed as an opportunity for American businesses and entrepreneurs. Cuban society is highly educated and many of these individuals are currently working in positions that cater to the tourist industry rather than in their desired professional fields. The international community does not look favorably upon the perpetuation of this embargo. Our Latin American neighbors are adamantly opposed to it. Normalizing relations with Cuba would probably improve our overall relations with Latin American and Caribbean states, resulting in better relations within the Western Hemisphere, and prove to bolster the US soft power

in the region.
In March 2013, I attended a lecture given by Cuban Ambassador to the United Nations Rodolfo Reyes Rodrguez. Ambassador Rodrguez specifically spoke on US-Cuba relations and the embargo. He affirmed that Cuba has much to improve on in the fields of education, health, patterns of consumption, and sustainability as it is still a developing country. He admitted that there are significant problems of inadequate social justice and liberty that need to be addressed. Cuba is willing to discuss the embargo and have productive dialogue as long as the US respects the countrys sovereignty The political climate is also conducive to change. Raul Castro has already demonstrated a willingness to make economic reforms, a point hampered upon by Ambassador Rodriquez. Meanwhile President Obama has improved relations with Cuba by making it easier for CubanAmericans, students, educators, and clergy to travel to Cuba. His administration has also increased remittance allowances that Cuban-Americans send to Cuba. The Cuban Communist government cannot be an excuse for the US to continue its economic embargo as it actively engages in trade with China and other Communist countries in Vietnam. Ultimately the embargo should end. Its history has shown that provides no necessary or beneficial function to either country.

The plan does economic not the rest Arzeno 3 Mario Arzeno, Major in the United States Military, MBA from The University of
Florida in Military Art and Science, (The US Embargo on Cuba: Time for a Change?, A thesis presented to the Faculty of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree, 2003, http://www.dtic.mil/cgibin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA416135, Accessed 7/03/13, AW) Diplomatic . Open dialogue with the government of Cuba. Fidel Castro says he wants to open negotiations with the U.S. The U.S. should capitalize on this new stance of openness and use it to its advantage. The U.S. has open dialogue with China; Cuba should be no different. This idea will also open doors to establish relationships with the progressive Cuban leadership willing to consider change. The Bush Administration should also consider supporting the Cuba Working Groups 9-Point Plan as a tool to initiate reform. Information . Reform TV and Radio Marti by taking it out of the Cuban American National Foundations span of influence. Place it under the control of a non-partisan government organization that can develop a robust and meaningful information campaign targeted towards the Cuban people and reform. Conduct an information campaign within our own borders to educate the American public on the costs and benefits of helping the Cuban people. Military . Militarily engage Cuba by including it in one of the Unified Commands. Develop long term bilateral cooperation with the Cuban military and incorporate their armed forces in multilateral cooperation throughout the Caribbean region. 50 Economic . Incrementally lift the embargo beginning with the

lifting of the travel ban and the restrictions on the sale of food and medicine, followed by reforming the Torricelli Bill and the Helms-Burton Act.

Strengthening embargo good tipping point for change now Bustillo 13 - Mitchell Bustillo, Writer for International Policy Digest, Columbia University
Graduate, (Time to Strengthen the Cuban Embargo, Article for International Policy Digest, 5/9/13, http://www.internationalpolicydigest.org/2013/05/09/time-to-strengthen-the-cubanembargo/, Accessed 7/03/13, AW) When thinking of U.S.-Cuba relations, the trade embargo, When thinking of U.S.-Cuba relations, the trade embargo, or el bloqueo, is first and foremost on peoples minds. In 2009, President Barack Obama eased the travel ban, allowing Cuban-Americans to travel freely to Cuba, and again in 2011, allowing students and religious missionaries to travel to Cuba, as recently demonstrated by American pop culture figures, Beyonc and her husband Jay-Z. Despite a history of hostile transgressions, the U.S. is inconsistent with its implementation of the embargo, which sends mixed signals to Havana and displays our weak foreign policy regarding Cuba. Undoubtedly, Cuba is capitalizing on this weakness by using the embargo as a scapegoat for all of its woes without any immediate fear of reinstated restrictions. Because the goal is to promote Cuban democracy and freedom through non-violent and non-invasive means while refraining from providing any support to the current oppressive Cuban government, the current legislation regarding the embargo and travel ban against Cuba needs to be modernized and strengthened. The need for an embargo has never been more important or potentially effective, even considering the current human rights and economic arguments against the embargo. Washingtons goal in its dealings with Havana is clear: facilitate the introduction and growth of democracy while increasing personal freedoms. There are many who argue that the best way to spread democracy is by lifting the embargo and travel restrictions. U.S. Rep. Michael Honda argues that an influx of politically enlightened U.S. travelers to Cuba would put Havana in a difficult place, leading to their own people calling for change. However, this is erroneous. Due to the fractured and weakened state of the embargo, over 400,000 U.S. travelers visited Cuba in 2011, making the United States the second-largest source of foreign visitors after Canada, according to NPRs Nick Miroff. Obviously, this influx of what has been theorized to be liberty-professing tourists has not resulted in an influx of such democratic ideals into this overwhelmingly federally controlled country. One example is the case of Alan Gross, an American citizen working for USAID. He was arrested in Cuba in 2009 under the allegations of Acts against the Independence and Territorial Integrity of the State while distributing computers and technological equipment to Jewish communities in Cuba. He is currently serving the fourth of his fifteen-year conviction, is in poor health, and receiving little to no aid from the U.S., according to the Gross Family website. In light of this, it is hard to believe that the U.S. would be able to protect a large number of tourists in a hostile nation, especially when they plan to profess political freedom. This view is further promoted by the Ladies in White, a Cuban dissident group that supports the embargo. They fear ending it would only serve to strengthen the current dictatorial regime because the real blockade, they claim, is within Cuba. Allowing American travelers to visit Cuba does not help propel the cause of Cuban democracy; it hampers it. Still there is the idea that further increasing American tourism to this nearby Caribbean island will at least aid their impoverished citizens in some manner, but this is neither a straight-forward nor easy solution. From the annual throng of American visitors, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio declared at a 2011 Western Hemisphere Subcommittee Hearing that an estimated, $4 billion a year flow directly to the Cuban government from remittances and travel by Cuban Americans, which is perhaps the single largest source of revenue to the most repressive government in the region. These remittances are sent by Americans to help

their Cuban families, not support the Cuban government. It is also a common belief that the Cuban embargo is a leading cause of poverty among the Cuban citizens and that lifting the embargo would go a long way toward improving the Cuban standard of living. However, no amount of money can increase the living standards there as long as their current regime stands. After all, the authorities were already skimming 20 percent of the remittances from Cuban-Americans and 90 percent of the salary paid to Cubans by non-American foreign investors, states Alvaro Vargas Llosa, Senior Fellow of The Center on Global Prosperity at The Independent Institute. However unfortunate it may be, Cuba, in its current state, is a nation consisting only of a wealthy and powerful few and an impoverished and oppressed proletariat, who possess little to no means to escape or even improve their fate. Lifting the trade embargo will not increase the general prosperity of the Cuban people, but it will increase the prosperity of the government. Ergo, the poverty and dire situation of the Cuban people cannot be blamed on the United States or the embargo. No doubt, it has been a fruitless 50 years since the embargo was enacted. Little has changed as far as democracy and human rights are concerned. To maintain control, Cuba 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, according to Llosa. However, Venezuela is now undergoing a political transition of its own with the recent death of Hugo Chvez, its president for the past 14 years, and the controversial election of Nicols Maduro. Despite being Chvezs handpicked successor, Maduro only won by a narrow margin and will likely be forced to cut spending on social programs and foreign assistance in an effort to stabilize Venezuelas dire economic problems. Therefore, now is the ideal time to take action. Without Venezuelas support, the Cuban government will assuredly face an economic crisis. Strengthening the embargo to limit U.S. dollars flowing into Cuba would place further pressure on the Cuban government and has the potential to trigger an economic collapse. A change in the Cuban political climate is within reach.

Cuba is pivoting to capitalism privatization Lowenthal 12 - Abraham F. Lowenthal, Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institute,
(Disaggregating Latin America: Diverse Trajectories, Emerging Clusters and their Implications, Report for the Brookings Institute, 11/1/12, http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2011/11/01-latin-america-lowenthal, Accessed 7/03/13, AW) Even Cuba under the Castro brothers, who still proclaim themselves Socialist with a capital S, is radically reducing the number of state employees,

authorizing private ownership of housing, encouraging private agricultural production and markets as well as small businesses of many types , and otherwise experimenting with the reintroduction of material incentives and other capitalist practices. Few well informed observers doubt that in the next decade Cubas economy, whether through gradual reforms or rupture, will be significantly transformed, and that domestic and international investment in private enterprises will sooner or later spur

a burst of economic growth. Nationalism, not socialism, is likely to be the lasting

contribution of the Castro period to Cuban history. Trade increases peace solve progress Garwood 10 - Nebraska Farm Bureau Board Member and Staff Writer for The Independent, (End Cuban embargo to encourage human rights, Article for The Independent, 6/16/10, http://www.theindependent.com/opinion/another_opinion/end-cuban-embargo-to-encouragehuman-rights/article_30e7bf91-e1d2-5b19-bd34-22fdabe2c169.html, Accessed 6/28/13, AW) According to Texas A & M University, passage of the Travel Restriction Reform and Export Enhancement Act would add 44 jobs to Nebraskas economy and $11.3 million in additional business activity. I think we make a mistake if we equate trading with a country to endorsing its government. Rather, trade is an effective way to expose a countrys citizens to American culture, ideals and expectations and raise their standard of living. Im reminded of something President Ronald Reagan said in 1986: "The freer the flow of world trade, the stronger the tides of human progress and peace among nations."

Undermines intellectual property rights Arzeno 3 Mario Arzeno, Major in the United States Military, MBA from The University of
Florida in Military Art and Science, (The US Embargo on Cuba: Time for a Change?, A thesis presented to the Faculty of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree, 2003, http://www.dtic.mil/cgibin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA416135, Accessed 7/03/13, AW) The Inter-American Convention on Trademarks ruled the U.S. is breaching obligations to honor Cuban trademarks and the World Trade Organization (WTO) judged it to be in violation of Americas obligation to protect intellectual property rights. This is tantamount to Cuba producing an American product like Coke or Pepsi and selling it as a Cuban product.

Key to prevent Chinese sphere of influence Zimmerman 10 CHELSEA A. ZIMMERMAN, Fellow of the Center for The Study of the Presidency and Congress, Member of The Juvenile Rights Project and the Legal Aid Society, Barnard College, (Rethinking The Cuban Trade Embargo: An Opportune Time To Mend a Broken Policy, The Presidency 2010 Fellows, NO DATE (Paper was written in 2010), http://www.thepresidency.org/storage/documents/Fellows2010/Zimmerman.pdf, Accessed 6/27/13, AW) Meanwhile, other countries are filling the vacuum c reated by the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba. China more than doubled its trade with Cuba in 2006 to $1.8 billion. Venezuela exports to Cuba increased from $2 billion in 2005 to $2.6 billion in 2006. China and Venezuela currently represent 3 5% of Cubas total trade ( Reuters , February 26, 2007) . Cuba recently entered into an agreement with Chi na for the sale of 4500 pickup trucks, and has develop ed a cooperative relationship with China in developing its energy resources

Cuba is liberalizing its economy through cooperatives Reuters 7/1 Marc Frank, writer for Reuters (Cuba says 124 non-farm co-ops up and running, more approved,
Reuters, 7/1/13, http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/01/cuba-reform-cooperatives-idUSL2N0F70RS20130701, Accessed 7/2/13, AM)

Communist-run Cuba ceded a bit more ground to private initiative and market forces on Monday, announcing the first non-farm cooperatives since the 1959 revolution were up and running. "Starting today, 124 cooperatives began to function on an experimental basis in diverse sectors of the economy such as construction, transportation, garbage collection and produce markets," the Communist Party daily, Granma, reported. The Council of Ministers, in a statement issued on Monday, said it had approved an additional 71 cooperatives in areas as diverse as bird raising, light manufacturing and food services. The measure was welcomed by Cubans. "Something had to be done, because as it is, nothing works properly," said Alberto Prada, who sells clothing and other items from his home in Havana. "Nor is there any reason for concern. Cooperatives are absolutely compatible with a socialist system," he said. Most of the first batch of cooperatives are former state-run produce markets with few employees now being leased to them as cooperative members. "We are allowing cooperatives to administer activities where the state has proved inefficient," Grisel Trista Arbesu, who is in charge of the Communist party's efforts to reform state companies, told Granma. "It also allows the state to free itself from matters that are not transcendental to the development of the economy," she said. The cooperatives will function independently of state entities and businesses, set prices in cases where they are not fixed by the state, operate on a democratic basis, divide profit as they see fit and receive better tax treatment than individually owned businesses, according to a decree law published in December. The law allows for an unlimited number of members and use of contracted employees on a three-month basis. The government says many more establishments will follow, beginning in 2014, as an alternative to small and medium-sized state businesses. President Raul Castro, who took over from his brother Fidel in 2008, has already taken steps to deregulate small private businesses in the retail sector, lease small state shops and taxis to individual employees and fallow state lands to would-be small farmers in search of improved production and efficiency. According to the government, more than 430,000 people now work in the non-state sector which consists of private entrepreneurs, their employees and individuals who own or lease taxis and the like. The figure does not include some 2,000 agricultural cooperatives and 400,000 small farmers. "It's no surprise that officials chose the cooperative as the legal form. Cooperatives represent a middle ground between state-ownership and individualistic forms of business organization," said Jose Gabilondo, associate professor of law at Florida International University. "If given free rein, these reforms are baby steps towards a hybrid economy with market pricing, widely-distributed business risk, and private initiative in targeted sectors," he said. "The invisible hand it's not, but at least the pinkie is being flexed

The US and Cuba need to reach an agreement on immigration policy (solvency advocate) Pascual et. al. 09 Carlos Pascual, director of foreign policy at Brookings Institution (Gustavo Arnavat Attorney
at law Ann Louise Bardach Author/Journalist University of California Santa Barbara dr. ramon Cols Co-Director Center for the Understanding of Cubans of African Descent dr. Jorge i. domnguez Vice-provost for international Affairs Antonio Madero professor of Mexican and latin American politics and Economics Harvard University daniel erikson Senior Associate for U.S. policy Director of Caribbean programs inter-American Dialogue dr. Mark falcoff resident Scholar Emeritus American Enterprise institute dr. damin J. fernndez provost and Executive Vice president purchase College dr. Andy s. Gomez Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings institution Assistant provost, University of Miami Senior Fellow, institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies Jess Gracia Former Spanish Ambassador to Cuba paul hare Former British Ambassador to Cuba francisco J. (pepe) hernndez president Cuban American National Foundation dr. William LeoGrande Dean, School of public Affairs American University dr. Marifeli prez-stable Vice president for Democratic Governance inter-American Dialogue Jorge r. pin Energy Fellow Center for Hemispheric policy University of Miami dr. Archibald ritter Distinguished research professor Emeritus Department of Economics and Norman paterson School of international Affairs Carleton University Andrs rozental Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings institution Former Deputy Foreign Minister of Mexico Carlos saladrigas CoChairman Cuba Study Group, Cuba: A New Policy of Critical and Constructive Engagement Brookings, April 2009,

Accessed 6/26/13, http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2009/4/cuba/0413_cuba.pdf)

To reduce illegal migration, enhance our security, and conserve our fisheries, the State Department should resume migration talks at the Deputy Assistant Secretary level and begin a dialogue between the respective heads of the interests Sections on other issues of mutual concern, including the environment, health, and counter-narcotics. Cuba opening up now plan undermines that Swieg 1/25 Julia Swieg, director of Latin American Relations at the Council on Foreign Relation (Talking to
Cuba Council on Foreign Relations, 1/25/13, http://www.cfr.org/cuba/talking-cuba/p29879, Accessed 6/27/13)

These elections also tell us something about decentralization: the municipal and provincial deputies are going to have a lot more power to tax and spend than ever before--on everything but health, education, and the military, as I understand it--while the new National Assembly may well start passing a lot more laws than before, to implement a slew of economic, legal, and governance reforms that are under way or coming down the pike. Finally, Ricardo Alarcon, who served as National Assembly president for the last nineteen years, before that as UN ambassador, and who for decades has taken the lead on U.S.-Cuban relations, will not appear on the electoral slate. No national security threat Bandow 12 Doug Bandow, senior fellow at Cato Institute, J.D. from Stanford University (Time to end the
Cuba embargo, Cato Institute, 12/11/12, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/time-end-cuba-embargo, Accessed 6/27/13)

During the Cold War, Cuba offered a potential advanced military outpost for the Soviet Union. Indeed, that role led to the Cuban missile crisis. With the failure of the U.S.-supported Bay of Pigs invasion, economic pressure appeared to be Washingtons best strategy for ousting the Castro dictatorship. However, the end of the Cold War left Cuba strategically irrelevant. It is a poor country with little ability to harm the United States. The Castro regime might still encourage unrest, but its survival has no measurable impact on any important U.S. interest.

Cuba adopting liberalizing economic reforms, no longer state-controlled NBC News 6/30 Mark Frank (Cuba: 100 produce markets to become private co -ops NBC News, 6/30/13,
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/cuba-100-produce-markets-become-private-co-ops-6C10488676, Accessed 7/4/13, AM) HAVANA - One hundred

state-run produce markets and 26 other establishments were scheduled to become private cooperatives on Monday as Communist-run Cuba continues to shed secondary economic
activity in favor of individual initiative and markets.

The cooperatives will be the first outside of agriculture since all businesses were nationalized in 1968. The government says many more establishments will follow, beginning in 2014, as an alternative to small and medium-sized state businesses in retail and food services, transportation, light manufacturing and construction, among other sectors.
The produce markets were supplied exclusively by the state, which also set prices and wages.

As cooperatives they will now purchase produce from any source and set their own prices, with
the exception of a few state supplied staples, for example rice, chick peas and potatoes in Havana. At one of the dozens of Havana markets set to become cooperatives this week, the mood was festive on Saturday as workers painted the dark and dingy premises, fixed broken bins and in general spruced up the place on their last day as state employees. "We were given the choice of working as a cooperative member or being laid off," Antonio Rivera, a worker turned member, said. "I think we will be better off so I joined," he said. On Sunday the 100 markets took inventory and made other preparations, before their adventure into

the country's growing "non-state" sector began. President Raul Castro, who took over from his brother Fidel in 2008, has already taken steps to deregulate small private businesses in the retail sector, lease small state shops and taxis to individual employees and
fallow state lands to would-be small farmers in search of improved production and efficiency. According to the government, more than 430,000 people now work in the non-state sector which consists of private entrepreneurs, their employees and individuals who own or lease taxis and the like.

The figure does not include some 2,000 agricultural cooperatives and 400,000 small farmers.
Market economics hailed

The new cooperative markets average 15 or fewer members and will lease their premises from the state. They will function independently of state entities and businesses, set prices in cases where they are not fixed by the state, operate on a democratic basis, divide profit as they see fit and receive better tax treatment than individually owned businesses, according to a decree law published in December.
The law allows for an unlimited number of members and use of contracted employees on a three-month basis.

The newly elected administrator of one market said that for weeks they had been making contact with farm cooperatives in preparation for Monday, and could also buy from individual farmers and state farms and wholesale markets. "I'm sure the public will benefit. The produce will be of better quality, there will be better service and people
will go where the prices are the lowest," he said, asking his name not be used because he feared he would get into trouble for talking to a foreign journalist. "There will be more competition and the winners will be those who do the best job," he said, adding, "everything will depend on us and we will have to look for merchandise wherever because if we don't we will not make anything." Consumers appeared to support the measure, though some fretted over a possible increase in prices. "They should have done this long ago," Soledad Martinez said as she shopped at the market on Saturday. "Now there will be a greater variety and we will be treated better. I just hope prices decrease a bit and do not go up," she said.

Cuban authorities began discussing three years ago how to transform bankrupt small and medium-sized state businesses - plagued by pilfering, embezzlement and general inefficiency - into cooperatives. The Communist Party adopted a sweeping five-year plan to "update" the economy in 2011, which

included moving more than 20 percent of the state labor force of 5 million people into a new "non-state" sector of private and cooperative businesses. Cuba beginning economic reform private cooperatives Global Times 7/2 Xinhua (Cuba launches private non-farm cooperatives, Global Times, 7/2/13,
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/793122.shtml#.UdXgz_mgXiQ, Accessed 7/4/13, AM)

Cuba launched its first batch of private nonagricultural cooperatives Monday, as part of reforms
pushed by Cuban leader Raul Castro.

There are 124 such cooperatives in the sectors of construction, transportation, waste collection and produce markets, which begin functioning from Monday, the official daily Granma reported. "Through this new measure, we are hoping to manage as (private) cooperatives those state-run economic activities that have not been efficient," Grisel Trista Arbesu, head of the Business Improvement
Group of the government Permanent Commission for Development and Implementation, was quoted as saying. "The measure also allows the state to gradually extricate itself from activities that are not of vital importance to economic development," Trista said. Ruben Toledo Diaz, also with the Development Commission, said such private-sector cooperatives are playing an increasingly more important role in the nation's economy, "though socialist state enterprises will continue to play the leading role." "The cooperatives are not the result of a process of privatization, but will manage state property, which ultimately belongs to all the people," Toledo said.

The Cuban government hopes the new cooperatives will boost productivity and allow the state to cut public spending by reducing the number of people on the government payroll and adjusting social spending, without eliminating it. Cuba's first private-sector cooperatives were created in the field of agriculture, where growers were free to sell their surplus on the open market. There are currently some 5,800 agricultural cooperatives in Cuba. Restrictions on travel should be removed (solvency advocate) Pascual et. al. 09 Carlos Pascual, director of foreign policy at Brookings Institution ( Gustavo Arnavat

Attorney at law Ann Louise Bardach Author/Journalist University of California Santa Barbara dr. ramon Cols Co-Director Center for the Understanding of Cubans of African Descent dr. Jorge i. domnguez Vice-provost for international Affairs Antonio Madero professor of Mexican and latin American politics and Economics Harvard University daniel erikson Senior Associate for U.S. policy Director of Caribbean programs inter-American Dialogue dr. Mark falcoff resident Scholar Emeritus American Enterprise institute dr. damin J. fernndez provost and Executive Vice president purchase College dr. Andy s. Gomez Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings institution Assistant provost, University of Miami Senior Fellow, institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies Jess Gracia Former Spanish Ambassador to Cuba paul hare Former British Ambassador to Cuba francisco J. (pepe) hernndez president Cuban American National Foundation dr. William LeoGrande Dean, School of public Affairs American University dr. Marifeli prez-stable Vice president for Democratic Governance inter-American Dialogue Jorge r. pin Energy Fellow Center for Hemispheric policy University of Miami dr. Archibald ritter Distinguished research professor Emeritus Department of Economics and Norman paterson School of international Affairs Carleton University Andrs rozental Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings institution Former Deputy Foreign Minister of Mexico Carlos saladrigas CoChairman Cuba Study Group, Cuba: A New Policy of Critical and Constructive Engagement Brookings, April 2009,

Accessed 6/26/13, http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2009/4/cuba/0413_cuba.pdf) President Obama should replicate these conditions through unilateral and unconditional actions that promote enhanced human contact by generously licensing all categories of travel permitted in the TSrA. He should, first,

follow his campaign promise to grant[ing]

Cuban Americans unrestricted rights to family travel and to send remittances to the island, since Cuban American connections to family are our best tool for helping to foster the beginnings of grass-roots democracy on the island. Further, the president should expand travel for all American citizens and permanent residents by instructing the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to license people-to-people travel for educational, cultural, and humanitarian purposes. Cuban citizens should also be permitted to travel to the United States for a variety of purposes including family, academic and cultural visitsin order to enhance their understanding of
our open and democratic society. The Secretary of State should instruct the Department of State and the United States interests Section (USiNT) in Havana to use standard criteria applied around the world for awarding nonimmigrant visas to Cubans. This more tolerant approach would strengthen the bonds of family and culture, while helping the Cuban people improve their lives and grow the social organizations necessary for a

democratic civil society

Cuba engaging in democratic reforms embargo old and unnecessary Swieg 1/25 Julia Swieg, director of Latin American Relations at the Council on Foreign Relation (Talking to
Cuba Council on Foreign Relations, 1/25/13, http://www.cfr.org/cuba/talking-cuba/p29879, Accessed 6/27/13)

The Cuban government's easing of travel restrictions this month marks another sign of its commitment to reforms and changing sentiments in Havana, says Julia Sweig, CFR's director for Latin American Studies. Washington should seize on such moves, she says, to initiate a new dialogue and begin solving the many problems impeding normalization of ties between the countries--such as the case of detained U.S. citizen Alan Gross--and U.S. influence in the region. "There are geostrategic reasons within the region, leaving apart the bilateral relationship, why it makes a great deal of sense for a strategy of rapprochement with Cuba," Sweig says. Cuban authorities this month eased a fifty-year-old travel restriction by allowing Cubans to travel with just a passport, and permitting lengthy stays away. How significant is this? This is a major step for Cuba domestically, for the Cuban economy, for Cuba in the world, and for Cubans living on and off the island. On the domestic front, this has been one of the most significant sources of unhappiness for the Cuban public, to not be able to travel freely. And what the Cuban government did when it announced this was explain that this is an attempt to bring Cuba in line with other countries. Cubans now need a visa still from the countries they want to visit, and they have to buy their plane tickets, but unlike the previous era, they won't risk losing their property or their residence status. They can travel abroad as economic migrants, come and go, live for a while abroad in the United States, presumably, go back and invest in their businesses, have two residences--really a huge potential economic boon for the country. In an interview with CFR.org a year ago, you said the United States now had a willing partner for normalization of ties with Havana but was failing to read the signals. Is this step one of those signals? This step is largely a domestic, reality-based policy decision. But there are knock-on effects that Washington could conclude suggest that Havana is taking another step in building a more open society and boosting the human rights of its population. If Washington chose to take this as a sign of greater freedom granted by the government to its citizens, it could surely be digested in that way. But I don't think pleasing Washington is the prime motivation.

How should we read Cuba's parliamentary elections scheduled for February 3? As another big demographic and political development: some 67 percent of the candidates for 612 spots are completely new picks, and of these, more than 70 percent were born after 1959. Women comprise 49 percent of the candidates, and Afro descendents 37 percent. Cubans will be asked to check yea or nay from this new list--so it's not a direct competition between candidates. But if you want to understand where the successors to Fidel and Raul may come from, I'd look closely at the new group that comes in next month. These elections also tell us something about decentralization: the municipal and provincial deputies are going to have a lot more power to tax and spend than ever before--on everything but health, education, and the military, as I understand it--while the new National Assembly may well start passing a lot more laws than before, to implement a slew of economic, legal, and governance reforms that are under way or coming down the pike. Finally, Ricardo Alarcon, who served as National Assembly president for the last nineteen years, before that as UN ambassador, and who for decades has taken the lead on U.S.-Cuban relations, will not appear on the electoral slate. Washington continues to point to what it says is the biggest impediment, which is the case of Alan Gross, the U.S. citizen who U.S. officials said was in Cuba to help with Internet access; Cubans say he was subverting the state. He continues to languish in Cuba. How to resolve this issue? "Havana's attempt to use [jailed U.S. contractor Alan] Gross to launch a dialogue, in addition to dealing with all of the myriad issues on the table, in its essence is also about pushing Washington to deal with Havana as a government." Well, like governments resolve issues, they get in the room and they talk. And they put the issues on the table that are connected indirectly and intrinsically to that particular issue. By the way, the DAI (Developments Alternative International), which was Alan Gross's employer, just released the contracts (PDF) between DAI and Alan Gross, and there is a lot of information in there about the equipment that Gross brought down there and reasons why he was bringing that equipment. And that will just, unfortunately, reinforce the sense that this wasn't just benign development or benign Internet assistance. This was part of a program funded by the U.S. government intended to destabilize the Cuban government, and the documentation really clearly shows that. And the lawsuit, now that the Gross family has filed against the State Department, also says that USAID should have trained Gross in counterintelligence. So, the way to stop this Alan Gross issue from becoming a political Frankenstein is to get in the room and settle a number of issues, including the Gross issue, including the Cuban 5 issue [five Cuban intelligence agents arrested by federal authorities in Miami in 1998 on charges of espionage], including other bilateral issues. Some see the case of Alan Gross as playing into a narrative that the Cubans are using this case for leverage and are not genuinely interested in justice or in properly handling this case. How do you respond to that perspective? Well, they are interested in using the case as leverage. President Obama, at the first Summit of the Americas he attended, pledged to open a new chapter in U.S.-Cuban relations and acknowledged that the embargo and U.S. policy had failed. Then he left in place the very policies he had inherited from George W. Bush. Some call them democracy promotions; some call them regime change--explicitly designed to destabilize Cuba. Which is very, very consistent with the bipartisan approach to Cuba over the last fifty years.

So, Gross is leverage, unfortunately, and Washington's position now seems to be, "There are lots of things we can do, but we won't do any of it until you first unilaterally release Gross." Havana's position is: "Washington has promised us things before and not done them. We have no incentive to do anything unilaterally because once we give you what you want, neither do you." Because the status quo of domestic politics dominating this issue and perverting it and the status quo of a pretty safe and regular flow of people between Havana and Miami and a succession that is very stable in Cuba means there is very little incentive for Washington to move aggressively toward a better Cuba policy. Havana's attempt to use Gross to launch what it calls a political dialogue, in addition to dealing with all of the myriad issues on the table, in its essence is also about pushing Washington to deal with Havana, government to government. That is sort of a deep strategic driver on this [Gross case]. One of the biggest regime surprises of the last year was Myanmar, a country that had very poor relations with Washington. Suddenly there seemed to be this breathtaking series of events and you have the president of the United States at the end of the year visiting the country. Are there any lessons we can take from what happened there and apply it toward Cuba? This is a very unpopular view in this town, but I'll say this: The Cuban government has far more legitimacy among its population. Cuba doesn't have a military junta running the country. I'm not saying the Cuban Communist Party gets universal high marks from Cubans, but even then there have been some significant reforms intended to make the party far less involved in government and far less imposing of its ideology on people's lives. Stripping this whole thing bare, as far as I can tell, there is really no foreign policy reason why the United States does not have a normal, or least more natural, diplomatic and economic relationship with Cuba. In fact, there is a serious foreign policy downside for not having that. In Latin America, we just saw the president earlier in 2012 attend the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, where there was a full court, unanimous message from the center, center-left, right, center-right, and every single country in the region, including Washington's closest allies, telling Washington to get it together with Havana, it is time to move forward. "The fact is that with events in Venezuela, the United States is sitting on the margins of one of the biggest political moments in Latin America, [which] runs through Havana." Take Colombia, where President [Juan Manuel] Santos has a great relationship with Washington and with Havana, which is hosting talks between his government and the FARC [rebel group] right now. Yet Washington keeps Havana on its terrorist list. Another moment we are living through right now: President Hugo Chavez is very, very ill in Havana, and it seems to me that the shuttle diplomacy that is taking place doesn't involve anybody from Washington. It involves Cubans, Venezuelans, Argentines, and Brazilians. The fact is that with events in Venezuela, the United States is sitting on the margins of one of the biggest political moments in Latin America, [which] runs through Havana. So there are geostrategic reasons within the region, leaving apart the bilateral relationship, why it makes a great deal of sense for a strategy of rapprochement with Cuba. Some have claimed Cuba is in a very strong position to influence the succession in Venezuela. Is that true? There are really three or four phases of the Cuba-Venezuela relationship, and the contemporary period starts before Chavez became president after he tried to stage a coup and failed in 1992 and flew to Havana. And that began a decade-long, and more,

relationship with Fidel Castro. And over the course of this past decade, from around 2002 until now, until his illness, that relationship has gotten much deeper. Havana's influence on the transition is absolutely clear--very direct. And what has happened since, let's say around 2002, when there was a brief and failed coup against Chavez, is that Cuba has become very involved in many aspects of Venezuelan domestic life. The political actors around Chavez, in Chavez's party, have likewise deepened their relationship with Havana. Let's get back to the Cuban leadership. The Castros are both over eighty, and there are a number of other leading officials in their seventies. What kind of cadre is waiting in the wings, and to what extent has the United States reached out to them? We have a second- and third-generation wave of leaders coming up in the ranks, and Washington doesn't know them. Fidel stepped aside in 2006, and fairly rapidly after that, Raul Castro replaced almost every cabinet member and got rid of a couple of key people who had been working with Fidel for quite some time. He's made it very clear that leadership successors, potential successors, are going to come from the ranks of people who are problem solvers, holding office in what in the United States would be thought of as governorships, the provincial party heads. There are fifteen provinces in Cuba and the heads of the Communist Party in each province are now in their forties and fifties, almost all of them. Many of them are women, or men, and women of African descent. Right now, we can count on one hand, at the most, the number of people who are the old original revolutionaries from 1959, who might have fought with Fidel, those called the historicos, who are still in major government posts. Almost none of the founding generation are actually wielding portfolios of significance other than Raul Castro and a few others. The Obama administration, part two, is now beginning, and there is some congressional turnover. Can you talk about any significant changes and how they might influence Cuba policy? Embargo unnecessary Cuba opening up economy WAPO 7/2 Katrina vanden Heuvel, writer for Washington Post (The U.S. should end the Cuban embargo,
Washington Post, 7/2/13, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/katrina-vanden-heuvel-us-should-end-cubanembargo/2013/07/02/8ab3a8de-e278-11e2-a11e-c2ea876a8f30_story.html, Accessed 7/4/13, AM) Is there a greater example of utter folly than Americas superannuated policy toward Cuba? During more than

50 years corrupted by covert actions, economic sabotage, travel bans and unending embargo, the United States managed to make Castro and Cuba an international symbol of proud independence. Intent on isolating Cuba, Washington has succeeded only in isolating itself in its own hemisphere.
Intent on displacing Fidel Castro, the U.S. enmity only added to his nationalist credentials. A recent visit reveals a Cuba that is already beginning a new, post-Castro era. That only highlights the inanity of the continuing U.S. embargo, a cruel relic of a Cold War era that is long gone. Cuba is beginning a new experiment, driven by necessity, of trying to build its own version of market socialism in one country. Just as populist movements in the hemisphere looked to Castro and Cuba for inspiration, now Cuba is learning from its allies as it cautiously seeks to open up its economy. A former minister of the economy spoke of how Cuba is committed to fostering private coops and businesses, and is beginning a push to make more state enterprises make their own way. This month, 100 state-run produce markets and 26 other establishments are scheduled to become private cooperatives. The government says many more establishments will follow, beginning in 2014, as

an alternative to small and medium-size state businesses in retail and food services, transportation, light manufacturing and construction, among other sectors. Despite the embargo, Jos Mart International Airport displays the new vitality. Hundreds of Cuban Americans fly into see relatives, bringing everything from flat-screen TVs to consumer basics. Since President Obama lifted restrictions on family visits in 2009, remittances and material support from Cuban Americans play a growing role in the microeconomy of the island.
Whereas in the 1990s, Havana was willing to permit only limited private enterprise as an emergency measure, government officials now speculate openly about aiming toward 50 percent of Cubas GDP in private hands within five years. Of course, an expanding small business sector wont resolve some central issues facing the island: access to large-scale credit and investment and the need to boost exports and address anemic productivity, not to mention the demands of an aging population. In Havana, there is more talk about Brazils investment in renovating Mariel Harbor than about Edward Snowden. Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht had to resist threats by Floridas state government t o cut off any state contracts if it invested in Cuba. This enormous deep-water port is designed to handle trade with the United States and beyond in a post-embargo world, if the embargo is ever ended.

Cuba working to reduce corruption Grogg 7/3 Patricia Grogg, writer for Inter Press News Service (Getting tough on corruption in Cuba Inter
Press News Service, 7/3/13, http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/07/getting-tough-on-corruption-in-cuba/, Accessed 7/4/13, AM) As two separate trials of foreign businessmen continued amid extreme discretion, the Cuban government passed new anti-corruption measures, apparently indicating the Ra l Castro governments desire to avoid loose ends with this thorny problem. Castro, who is in his second and last five-year presidential term, said the shameful matter of acts of indiscipline and illegalities would be addressed in-depth during the parliament meeting set for Saturday Jul. 6. More than once, the president has said that such actions are a threat to the foundations of the countrys social system. People posting comments on Caf 108, the interactive section of the IPS Cuba bureaus website, expressed scepticism about the possibility of short-term results in the crackdown on corruption, a problem that some described as a product of the crisis or a phenomenon present in everyday life for Cubans. It is damaging to the country, a bad example for the coming generations, insufficiently fought , tolerated, insufficiently reported by the media, not criticised at all among the populace, permitted in the family, a way of life for meeting household needs, and a breeding ground for the enemy, wrote one participant, who signed as Naue, and also noted what had happened to essayist Esteban Morales after he published articles on the issue. For about a year, between 2010 and 2011, Morales was removed from the ranks of the Communist Party

of Cuba after writing about the magnitude of corruption as a problem, saying that it was much more dangerous than the so-called internal dissidence.
In a recent interview that circulated on the Internet, Morales said that the problem was being tackled, but still insufficiently. In his opinion, the public should be urged to act. Innovation is needed for combating corruption, because none of the methods used until now have managed to eliminate the problem. And I think innovation could lie in organising the masses, not the bureaucrats, for this battle, he told IPS. While other analysts agree that legal measures alone are not enough for addressing this delicate matter, changes and steps taken in that area are part of a broader effort toward institutionalisation in Cuba undertaken by Castro, who began by creating the Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic in 2009. In June, Cuba`s Central Bank began enforcing a number of general regulations for detecting and

preventing illegal movements of capital, money laundering and the financing of terrorism, and

changes to the penal code and procedural law were introduced. These regulations followed the creation
in March of a state oversight agency tasked with uprooting administrative corruption. Economists consulted by IPS said bank regulations would not discourage foreign investors. However, a Latin American executive doing business in Cuba warned that operations with foreign clients would become more complicated due to the larger amount of information that will have to be requested by Cuban banks, which are also obligated to establish verification procedures. The executive, who is associated with the banking sector, said these rules were not new to him, given that regulations in the sector were passed some time ago in his country. And Pvel Vidal, an academic and specialist in financial matters, told IPS that the regulations are in line with the new times. At an international level, banks are tending to use more caution and control for all types of transactions, he said. Among other measures, financial institutions must verify a clients identity with reliable data from independent sources, continuously monitor the commercial relationship, and prevent the opening of coded or numbered accounts. In another decision this year, the Council of State, presided over by Castro, announced a decision to create a state oversight commission, whose principal mission will be the presentation, analysis and study of significant cases where illegality, suspected criminal actions and corruption are manifest.

The new body, charged with intensifying the study of the causes and conditions that give rise to acts of corruption, and with curbing and eliminating the problem, replaces and confers the rank of state agency on a government commission with the same purpose that existed since 2008 as a government
advisory body. The commissions president is Gladys Bejerano, who has been Comptroller General of the Republic since that office was created to increase internal control and to directly confront any manifestation of corruption. Bejerano has gained a reputation for vigorously fulfilling her duties. In the context of what the official media calls the perfecting of Cubas criminal justice system, in October a number of changes to the penal code and criminal procedural law will go into effect, with the goal of updating current regulations and bringing them into harmony with other changes taking place in the countrys social and economic life. At the same time, the Supreme Court instructed that particular attention was to be paid to cases involving foreign suspects or Cubans who are permanent residents of other countries; that the former should be guaranteed consular access as an essential requirement for their defence; and that they should not be tried without the proper diplomatic steps being taken. In May, foreign businessmen were tried on corruption-related charges in two separate trials. Neither the trials, held behind closed doors in Havana, nor the sentences handed down were reported in the state media. There were no official announcements about the matter, either, even though international news agencies reported on the cases. The foreign press reported that Canadian businessman Sarkis Yacoubian, originally from Armenia and

owner of the import company Tri-Star Caribbean, and Lebanese citizen Krikor Bayassalian were sentenced in late June to nine and four years in prison, respectively.
Meanwhile, Amado Fakhre and Stephen Purvis, executives of the British investment firm Coral Capital Group Ltd, who were found guilty on lesser charges, were released on time served after they were arrested in 2011, according to diplomatic sources quoted in foreign media reports. Between 2011 and 2012, numerous Cuban citizens, a French businessman, and two Chileans (tried in

absentia) were sentenced in Havana on corruption-related charges. Cuba says yes Harding and Rojas-Ruiz 12 Andrew Harding and Jorge Rojas-Ruiz, research associates on the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (An Economic Analysis of the Cuban Embargo, Council on the Hemispheric Affairs, 8/24/12, Proquest, Accessed 7/3/13, AM) Clearly, Cuba has plenty of potential for economic development and trade, but nothing will be realized unless United States repeals the embargo. Recent moves by Cuba's Raul Castro

indicate that the government is willing and able to sit down with the U.S. and discuss differences in order to achieve consensus. In recent remarks, Castro emphasized that the discourse must be "a conversation between equals," and that "any day they [the United States] want, the table is set," signaling an important step towards more conciliatory interactions. The U.S. should act upon Senator Richard Lugar' s February 2009 report from the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations and implement his recommended policy changes by "seizing the initiative... [which] would relinquish a conditional posture that has made any policy changes contingent on Havana, not Washington." Cuba says yes open to more cooperation with US WAPO 6/21 Associated Press (Cuba, US take cautious steps toward rapprochement, but long, complicated
path lies ahead, Washington Post, 6/21/13, http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-06-21/world/40105268_1_u-sdiplomats-cuba-s-cubans, Accessed 7/4/13, AM) 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, Cubas 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 Cubas 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. Among the things that have changed, John Kerry has taken over as U.S. secretary of state after being an outspoken critic of Washingtons policy on Cuba while in the Senate. President Barack Obama no longer has re-election concerns while dealing with the Cuban-American electorate in Florida, where there are also indications of a warming attitude to negotiating with Cuba. Castro, meanwhile, is striving to overhaul the islands Marxist economy with a dose of limited freemarket capitalism and may feel a need for more open relations with the U.S. While direct American investment is still barred on the island, a rise in visits and money transfers by Cuban-Americans since Obama relaxed restrictions has been a boon for Cubas cash-starved economy. Under the table, Cuban-Americans are also helping relatives on the island start private businesses and refurbish homes bought under Castros limited free-market reforms. Several prominent Cuban dissidents have been allowed to travel recently due to Castros changes. The trips have been applauded by Washington, and also may have lessened Havanas worries about the threat p osed by dissidents. Likewise, a U.S. federal judges decision to allow Cuban spy Rene Gonzalez to return home was met

with only muted criticism inside the United States, perhaps emboldening U.S. diplomats to seek further openings with Cuba.
To be sure, there is still far more that separates the long-time antagonists than unites them. The State Department has kept Cuba on a list of state sponsors of terrorism and another that calls into question Havanas commitment to fighting human trafficking. The Obama ad ministration continues to demand democratic change on an island ruled for more than a half century by Castro and his brother Fidel. For its part, Cuba continues to denounce Washingtons 51 -year-old economic embargo. And then there is Gross, the 64-year-old Maryland native who was arrested in 2009 and is serving a 15-year jail sentence for bringing communications equipment to the island illegally. His case has scuttled efforts at engagement

in the past, and could do so again, U.S. officials say privately. Cuba has indicated it wants to trade Gross for four Cuban agents serving long jail terms in the United States, something Washington has said it wont consider. Ted Henken, a professor of Latin American studies at Baruch College in New York who helped organize a recent U.S. tour by Cuban dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez, said the Obama administration is too concerned with upsetting Cuban-American politicians and has missed opportunities to engage with Cuba at a crucial time in its history. 2 of 2 I think that a lot more would have to happen for this to amount to momentum leading to any kind of major diplomatic breakthrough, he said. Obama should be bolder and more audacious. Even these limited moves have sparked fierce criticism by those long opposed to engagement. Cuban-American congressman Mario Diaz Balart, a Florida Republican, called the recent overtures disturbing. Rather than attempting to legitimize the Cuban peoples oppressors, the administration should demand that the regime stop harboring fugitives from U.S. justice, release all political prisoners and American humanitarian aid worker Alan Gross, end the brutal, escalating repression against the Cuban people, and respect basic human rights, he said. Another Cuban-American politician from Florida, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, scolded Obama for seeking dialogue with the dictatorship. Despite that rhetoric, many experts think Obama would face less political fallout at home if he chose

engagement because younger Cuban-Americans seem more open to improved ties than those who fled immediately after the 1959 revolution.
Of 10 Cuban-Americans interview by The Associated Press on Thursday at the popular Miami restaurant Versailles, a de facto headquarters of the exile community, only two said they were opposed to the U.S. holding migration talks. Several said they hoped for much more movement. Jose Gonzalez, 55, a shipping industry supervisor who was born in Cuba and came to the U.S. at age 12, said he now favors an end to the embargo and the resumption of formal diplomatic ties. There was a reason that existed but it doesnt anymore, he said. Santiago Portal, a 65-year-old engineer who moved to the U.S. 45 years ago, said more dialogue would be good. The more exchange of all types the closer Cuba will be to democracy, he said. Those opinions dovetail with a 2011 poll by Florida International University of 648 randomly selected CubanAmericans in Miami-Dade County that said 58 percent favored re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba. That was a considerable increase from a survey in 1993, when 80 percent of people polled

said they did not support trade or diplomatic relations with Cuba. In general, there is an open attitude, certainly toward re-establishing diplomatic relations, said Jorge Duany, director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University. Short of
perhaps lifting the embargo ... there seems to be increasing support for some sort of understanding with the Cuban government.

US taking steps to lift embargo, holds promise for future Ayuso and Risco 6/23/13 - Silvia Ayuso and Isaac Risco, journalists for the Havana Times.
(Cuba/USA to Resume Immigration Talks, The Havana Times, 6/23/13, http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=94992, accessed: 6/27/13, amf)

In a months time, the United States and Cuba will resume the migratory talks suspended about two years ago, a US government source told DPA on Wednesday.
According to the spokesman for Washingtons Western Hemisphere Affairs Bureau, William Ostick, the US State Department and Cuban government representatives will meet in the US capital on July 17. There, the two countries are to resume the talks surrounding the thorny issue of immigration, half a year after Raul Castros administration set a historic migratory reform in motion to remove restrictions on international travel by Cubans living on the island.

Home to over 1.5 million people of Cuban origin, the

United States is the country with the greatest number of Cuban migrs in the world. Today it remains the chief destination of Cubans seeking to emigrate. Latin American countries upset over recent colonial action grounding Bolivian presidents plane Egan 7/4/13 Louise Egan, Senior Correspondent to Reuters, covering cover economics, fiscal policy, central
banking, and G20. (Latin America furious over Bolivia incident in Snowden saga , Reuters, 7/4/13, http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/07/03/usa-security-latinamerica-idINDEE9620GQ20130703, accessed: 7/4/13, amf) (Reuters) - Latin

American leaders slammed European governments on Wednesday for diverting Bolivian President Evo Morales' plane on rumors it was carrying a wanted former U.S. spy agency contractor, adding a new diplomatic spat to the Edward Snowden saga.
Morales was returning from Moscow on Tuesday when France and Portugal abruptly banned his plane from entering their airspace due to suspicions that Snowden, wanted by Washington for leaking secrets, was onboard. Italy and Spain also banned the Bolivian plane from their skies.

The unusual treatment of the Bolivian military aircraft touched a sensitive nerve in the region, which has a history of U.S.-backed coups. Several furious presidents from across the region rallied behind Morales and protests erupted on the streets of Bolivia. "(These are) vestiges of a colonialism that we thought were long over. We believe this constitutes not only the humiliation of a sister nation but of all South America," Argentine President Cristina
Kirchner said in a speech in Buenos Aires. Heads of state in the 12-nation South American bloc Unasur denounced the " unfriendly and unjustifiable acts" and some members wanted an emergency summit in Bolivia. Ministers from the bloc will meet to discuss the affair in Lima on Thursday. The bloc includes the leftist leaders of Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina and Bolivia as well as more moderate ones in Chile and Brazil. Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela and Ecuador were among the other Latin American

countries speaking out against the Europeans' actions. "These are times of sovereign, democratic, popular governments that won't be pushed around by foreign powers," said Venezuelan communications minister Ernesto Villegas.
Brazil's foreign ministry spokesman said the government would not comment on its own because Unasur would do so collectively. The Chilean foreign ministry issued a statement saying it "lamented" what happened to Morales and that more clarity was needed on the facts.

It is time to end the embargo. Tisdall 2013 [Simon Tisdall. Tisdall is a writer for CNN. Time for U.S. and Cuba to kiss and make up.
CNN. http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/08/opinion/opinion-simon-tisdall-cuba Accessed: June 28, 2013. AK] (CNN) -- Right-wing U.S. Republicans are up in arms over Cuba again. Their ostensible cause for concern is last week's visit to the island by Beyonc and Jay-Z, who were photographed in Havana, apparently celebrating their wedding anniversary. Read more: Lawmakers ask why Beyonc and Jay-Z went to Cuba These blinkered conservatives need to get over themselves. The 60-year stand-off between the U.S. and Cuba is absurd. It is counterproductive April 8, 2013.

and harmful to both countries. It is time to end this Cold War anachronism, kiss and make up. Anger over
Beyonc's supposed breach of the U.S. embargo rules restricting American citizens' travel to Cuba is symbolic of a deeper fear among right-wingers. Two key factors have changed since the days -- not so long ago -- when Washington seemed to be regularly threatening the Castro government with Iraq-style overthrow. Simon Tisdall One is that George W. Bush has been replaced by a Democrat. As Barack Obama enters his second and final term, immune to electoral imperatives, conservatives worry he may use his freedom of action to effect an historic rapprochement with Cuba. American liberals certainly believe he should do so. The second change is in Cuba itself, where the government, now led by Fidel Castro's

brother, Raoul, has embarked on a cautious program of reform. The government -- dubbed the world's longest-running dictatorship by the American right -- has even set a date for its own dissolution. Doing what "dictators" rarely do, Raoul Castro announced in February that in 2018, he would hand over power and that any successor would be subject to term limits. The Castro brothers have reportedly chosen a career communist, first vice president Miguel Diaz-Canel, to succeed them. But in reality, once their grip on power is relaxed, anything may happen. The two Florida Republicans who have been making a fuss about the Beyonce visit are Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart. They are veterans, and beneficiaries, of the anti-Castro campaign that has long been waged from Little Havana, in Miami, the home to the state's large Cuban exile population. The Cuban vote, as it is known, has traditionally gone to Republicans. Is this Cuba's next president? Cuban blogger hits the road Should Cuba sanctions be lifted? Rep. McGovern:Time to change Cuba policy 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 RosLehtinen 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.

Investment requires Cuban action. Perales 2010 [ Jose Perales. Perales is a senior program associate at the Woodrow Wilson Center Latin American
Program. Jos Azel is a senior research associate at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban -American Studies, University of Miami. 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] Yet Cuban

American investors will not just automatically flock to the island; this capital needs to be pursued actively by Havana. One promising method to do this, according to Azel, is to foster a competitive urgency to invest. Offering companies a sustainable competitive advantage for being the first movers or for investing within a sunset date could accomplish this. Only with such inducements can Havana credibly expect efficiency-seeking and market-seeking foreign direct investment to start flowing into the island. Chinese drilling in Cuba causes lifting of entire embargo. Claver-Carone 08 Mauricio Claver-Carone is the Executive Director of Cuba Democracy Advocates in
Washington, D.C., a non-partisan organization dedicated to the promotion of a transition in Cuba towards human rights, democracy and the rule of law. In an independent capacity, Mauricio serves on the Board of Directors of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, the largest, single foreign-policy political committee in the United States. Until November 2003, Mauricio was an attorney-advisor for the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Poder Magazine recently recognized Mauricio as one of 20 entrepreneurs, executives, leaders and artists under 40 who are shaping the future of the U.S. and the world. (How the Cuban Embargo Protects the Environment, The Ney York Times, July 25, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/25/opinion/25iht-edcarone.1.14793496.html?_r=0 , Accessed: 06/27/2013, sh)

The answer is simple: If the Chinese were to start drilling in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Cuba - so very close to the coast of Florida - it would send a "red scare" through the halls of the U.S. Congress, creating a new and otherwise improbable coalition for unilaterally lifting the current embargo. Longtime advocates of lifting trade sanctions against Cuba would join with conservative Republicans, who, though they now support the trade embargo, are strong advocates for allowing U.S. companies to drill offshore, and with liberal environmentalists who would rather have strictly regulated U.S. companies drilling than unregulated Chinese companies. In Cuba that looks like a winning trifecta for changing U.S. policy. China not going to drill for oil in Cuba Claver-Carone 08 Mauricio Claver-Carone is the Executive Director of Cuba Democracy Advocates in
Washington, D.C., a non-partisan organization dedicated to the promotion of a transition in Cuba towards human rights, democracy and the rule of law. In an independent capacity, Mauricio serves on the Board of Directors of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, the largest, single foreign-policy political committee in the United States. Until November 2003, Mauricio was an attorney-advisor for the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Poder Magazine recently recognized Mauricio as one of 20 entrepreneurs, executives, leaders and artists under 40 who are shaping the future of the U.S. and the world. (How the Cuban Embargo Protects the Environment, The Ney York Times, July 25, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/25/opinion/25iht-edcarone.1.14793496.html?_r=0 , Accessed: 06/27/2013, sh)

The premise of the argument, however, is just not true. Chinese companies are not drilling in Cuba's offshore waters. Nor do the Chinese have any lease agreements with Cuba's state-owned oil company, Cupet, to do so. As a matter of fact, the last drilling for oil off Cuba's coast took place in 2004 and was led by the Spanish-Argentine consortium Repsol YPF. It found oil but not in any commercially viable quantity. Inactivity since suggests that Repsol YPF is not eager to follow up with the required investment in Castro's Cupet. Castro removing key members of the Communist Party central committee Associated Press 13 Associated Press of the Washington Post (Castro Wants Money, Not a Dialogue,
The Washington Post, July 2, 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/cuba-removes-exparliament-chief-alarcon-others-from-communist-party-central-committee/2013/07/02/3c6df79c-e381-11e2-bffd37a36ddab820_story.html, Accessed: 7/3/13, sh) HAVANA Cubas

president has announced the removal of former Parliament chief Ricardo Alarcon and several other leaders from the Communist Partys powerful Central Committee. In comments broadcast on state-television Tuesday, Raul Castro made clear that those leaving the 118strong committee had not made any mistakes or committed any crimes. He said they were moving on
in the normal course of events. This door leads out, without it constituting any demerit, Castro unannounced meeting of the Central Committee.

said. He spoke at a previously

Alarcon, 76, was one of Cubas most visible politicians and the point person for relations with the United States. He stepped down as parliament chief in February.
Among the others removed were Jose Miguel Miyar Barruecos, 81, who was secretary of the Council of State for three decades, and Misael Enamorado, 60, the party chief in Santiago de Cuba.

Solvency Specifics ways US should regulate embargo

Americas Society and Council of the Americas (Seven Steps the U.S. President Can Take to Promote
Change in Cuba by Adapting the Embargo, ASCOA, No Date (Last refers to 2011), http://www.ascoa.org/articles/seven-steps-us-president-can-take-promote-change-cuba-adapting-embargo, accessed: 7/4/13, ckr) A careful reading of U.S. policy goals toward Cuba and the set of regulations and laws

governing the U.S. embargo on Cuba reveal a series of changes that are essential to ensuring the U.S. administrations goal of encouraging independent economic and political activity in Cuba. More
important, they are also legally possible and within the Presidents authority under existing regulations. To that end, we propose the following steps that President Obama can take to encourage private organizations and individuals to directly and indirectly serve as catalysts for meaningful economic change in Cuba.

Grant exceptions for commerceincluding sales and importsfor businesses and individuals
engaged in certifiably independent (i.e., non-state) economic activity.

Allow for the export and sale of goods and services to businesses and individuals engaged in certifiably independent (i.e., non-state) economic activity. Allow licensed U.S. travelers to Cuba to have access to U.S.-issued pre-paid cards and other financial servicesincluding travelers insurance. Expand general licensed travel to include U.S. executives and their duly appointed agents to Cuba in financial services, travel and hospitality-related industries, such as banking, insurance, credit
cards, and consumer products related to travel. Expand general licensed travel to include: law, real estate and land titling, financial services and credit, and any area defined as supporting independent economic activity.

Allow for the sale of telecommunications hardwareincluding cell towers, satellite dishes, and handsetsin Cuba. Allow for the possibility for Cuba to request technical assistance from International Financial Institutions (IFIs) in the area of economic and institutional reform.
In a separate annex (Annex I) this document lays out the legal and statutory basis for Presidential authority to make these necessary reforms to further U.S. policy to Cuba.

Embargo is unjust and hypocritical Cuba independently achieves humanitarian success Ventresca 12 Curt Ventresca, writer at policymic (Cuba Embargo is Unjust and Hypocritical, PolicyMic,
2012(no specific day), http://www.policymic.com/articles/10129/cuba-embargo-is-unjust-and-hypocritical, accessed: 7/2/13, ckr) It is time for the United States to remove the embargo against Cuba. The embargo has failed to achieve all of its stated goals (the removal of Fidel Castro) and in spite of it, Cuba has achieved more success in its social programs than any other Latin American country. Here is a list of facts about Cuba that will surprise many and will help reveal how hypocritical U.S. foreign policy really is. 1. Cuba has a 99.7 percent literacy rate. This is the highest literacy rate in all of Latin America and it is due to Cubas very strong education system which gives every Cuban the opportunity to pursue an education up to the highest level. 2. Cuba has the most doctors in the world per capita. Cuba has 67 doctors per 10,000 people. For comparison, the United States has 24. Cubas health care system is ranked the strongest in Latin America by the World Health Organization. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has been receiving medical treatment in Cuba since he was diagnosed with cancer last year. 3. Cuba has sent more doctors to third world countries than all G-8 countries combined. Cubas medical

humanitarianism has been one of the great achievements of the revolution. Cuba has over 30,000 medical workers working overseas. Cuba is often the first country to offer aid to foreign countries after major

natural disasters. Cuba even

offered to send 1,100 doctors to the U. S. after Hurricane Katrina but the Bush Administration declined the offer.

The US can lift the embargo by lifting certain restrictions Bloomberg 13 - Bloomberg News [The U.S. is Helping to Keep Castros Regime Alive, Bloomberg, March 3, 2013,
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-03/cuba-sanctions-help-keep-castros-regime-alive.html, accessed: 6/28/13, JK] In 2009 and 2011, the

Obama administration wisely lifted some restrictions on travel and cash remittances. It can further encourage more direct contacts with the Cuban people by re- establishing ferry services, authorizing financial and technical help to small businesses, permitting Americans to donate and trade in goods and services with entrepreneurs and independent farmers and professionals, and expanding the licensing system for travel to Cuba. (If Dennis Rodman had tried to go to Cuba instead of North Korea, he
might have had to wait months or years for permission from the U.S. government.)

Time-phased removal no-links your disads Dickerson 10 Sergio Dickerson, Lt.Col. in U.S. Army [United States Security Strategy in Cuba, DTIC, 1/14/13,
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf, accessed: 6/28/13, JK] If we accept that reestablishing relations with Cuba is the first real step to a democratic endstate then the

first action must be to appoint an Ambassador to Cuba. This diplomatic gesture signals that U.S. is serious about foreign relations. The Ambassadors first actions must include setting the conditions with Cuba to allow a loosening of embargo restrictions. President Obama, in the spirit of multilateralism, should pursue international solidarity since some countries enjoying exclusive trade with Cuba would certainly protest the immediate competition. Choosing a timephased removal would protect U.S. assets and interests in the remote possibility that Cuba fails to comply with the agreed bi-national or international terms. It might also sooth domestic and partisan anxiety regarding open
trade with Cuba.

War between US and Cuba will erupt in the squo; the US isnt ready for a war. Amash 12 - Brandon Amash, writer for the Prospect Journal of International Affairs at the University of California at San Diego
[Evaluating the Cuban Embargo, Prospect Journal, 7/23/12, http://prospectjournal.org/2012/07/23/evaluating-the-cuban-embargo/, accessed: 7/4/13, JK]

The current policy may drag the United States into a military conflict with Cuba. Military conflict may be inevitable in the future if the embargos explicit goal creating an insurrection in Cuba to overthrow the government is achieved, and the United States may not be ready to step in. As Ratliff and Fontaine detail, Americans are not prepared to commit the military resources [] (Fontaine 57), especially after unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Much like Americas current situation with isolated rogue states such as Iran and North Korea, Cubas isolation may also lead to war for other reasons, like the American occupation of Guantanamo Bay. These consequences are inherently counterproductive for the democratization of Cuba and the improvement of human rights. Terrorist attacks are overrated more people die from drowning in bathtubs Mueller, 08- John Mueller John Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center Professor of Political Science Department of Political Science, Ohio State University. (THE ATOMIC TERRORIST: ASSESSING THE LIKELIHOOD Prepared for presentation at the Program on International Security Policy, January 15, 2008 http://politicalscience.osu.edu/faculty/jmueller/apsachgo.pdf, Accessed July 4, 2013, KH)

It may be useful in this connection to consider al-Qaeda's capacity more broadly. Two publications from Washington think tanks, one authored by Anthony Cordesman of CSIS (2005, 29-31), the other by Brian Jenkins of RAND (2006, 179-84), have independently provided lists of violence committed by Muslim extremists outside of such war zones as Iraq, Israel, Chechnya, Sudan, Kashmir, and Afghanistan, whether that violence be perpetrated by domestic terrorists or by ones with substantial international connections. Included in the count are such terrorist attacks as those that occurred in Bali in 2002, in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Turkey in 2003, in the Philippines, Madrid, and Egypt in 2004, and in London and Jordan in 2005. The lists include not only attacks by al-Qaeda, but also those by its imitators, enthusiasts, and wannabes as well as ones by groups with no apparent connection to it whatever. Although these tallies make for grim reading, the total number of people killed in the five years after 9/11 in such incidents comes to some 200-300 per year. That, of course, is 200-300 too many, but it hardly suggests that al-Qaeda's destructive capacities are

monumental. By comparison, over the same period far more people have perished in the United States alone in bathtubs drownings (Stossel 2004, 77) or in automobile accidents by people who have abandoned short-haul air flights because of the increased costs and waiting time imposed after 9/11 by the Transportation Security Administration (Ellig et al. 2006, 35). Russian Oil companies delayed by embargo Kramer 12-Andrew Kramer, reporter for the New York times, Masters in Journalism, (Russian Oil Drilling Off
Cuba Is Delayed by Old Embargo, New York Times, July 11, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/12/business/global/russian-company-delays-cuban-oil-exploration-plans.html, Accessed: July 4, 2013, KH)

MOSCOW A Russian oil company will delay drilling its first exploratory well off the northern coast of Cuba, about 180 miles from Florida, after apparently struggling to find a drilling rig that would not violate a United States embargo. The Russian company, Zarubezhneft, said in a statement on Wednesday that it had planned to drill in August but now planned to start in November. Finding rigs can be a challenge for oil companies operating in Cuba. To avoid violating the trade embargo the United States imposed on Cuba 50 years ago, rigs can have only a small portion of their parts manufactured in the United States. Zarubezhneft, a small state-owned company, obtained the exploration rights to potential oil fields in the waters off Cuba three years ago. Last month, it obtained a rig from the Cyprus-based drilling operator, Songa Offshore. Cuba produces little oil now, but petroleum experts say the countrys northern coastal waters could hold reserves, which may help revive the islands economy and ease its dependence on oil imported from Venezuela. Half a dozen companies have signed deals to work in Cuban waters on projects that concern United States authorities. Many of the projects would be close to the United States but beyond the reach of its safety regulators. Cubas maritime border is in some places 50 miles from the coast of the United States. Zarubezhneft updated its plans during a visit from Ra l Castro, Cubas leader and the brother of Fidel Castro, who is on a tour of former Communist allies. Seeking money for Cuba, Castro met with President Vladimir V. Putin after visiting China and Vietnam. Songa Offshore once operated from offices in Houston, but has since moved to Singapore and Cyprus, according to its Web site.

After it contracted for the Songa rig, Zarubezhneft hired a third-party auditing company to confirm that the machine had fewer than 10 percent United States-made parts, the Russian company said in a statement. The rig is on its way from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Cuba. The company plans to drill at a site called Block L near the Cuban coastal town of Cayo Santa Maria. 20bn barrels of oil in Cuba- embargo prevents Cuba from extracting safely Carroll 08-Rory Carroll, Rory Carroll is a US west coast correspondent based in Los Angeles,( 20bn barrel oil discovery puts Cuba in the big league, the guardian, 17 October 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/18/cuban-oil, Accessed: July 4, 2013, KH) Friends and foes have called Cuba many things - a progressive beacon, a quixotic underdog, an oppressive tyranny - but no one has called it lucky, until now . Mother nature, it emerged this week, appears to have blessed the island with enough oil reserves to vault it into the ranks of energy powers. The government announced there may be more than 20bn barrels of recoverable oil in offshore fields in Cuba's share of the Gulf of Mexico, more than twice the previous estimate. If confirmed, it puts Cuba's reserves on par with those of the US and into the world's top 20. Drilling is expected to start next year by Cuba's state oil company Cubapetroleo, or Cupet. "It would change their whole equation. The government would have more money and no longer be dependent on foreign oil," said Kirby Jones, founder of the Washington-based US-Cuba Trade Association. "It could join the club of oil exporting nations." "We have more data. I'm almost certain that if they ask for all the data we have, (their estimate) is going to grow considerably," said Cupet's exploration manager, Rafael Tenreyro Perez. Havana based its dramatically higher estimate mainly on comparisons with oil output from similar geological structures off the coasts of Mexico and the US. Cuba's undersea geology was "very similar" to Mexico's giant Cantarell oil field in the Bay of Campeche, said Tenreyro. A consortium of companies led by Spain's Repsol had tested wells and were expected to begin drilling the first production well in mid-2009, and possibly several more later in the year, he said. Cuba currently produces about 60,000 barrels of oil daily, covering almost half of its needs, and imports the rest from Venezuela in return for Cuban doctors and sports instructors. Even that barter system puts a strain on an impoverished economy in which Cubans earn an average monthly salary of $20. Subsidised grocery staples, health care and education help make ends meet but an old joke - that the three biggest failings of the revolution are breakfast, lunch and dinner - still does the rounds. Last month hardships were compounded by tropical storms that shredded crops and devastated coastal towns.

"This news about the oil reserves could not have come at a better time for the regime," said Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado, a Cuba energy specialist at the University of Nebraska. However there is little prospect of Cuba becoming a communist version of Kuwait. Its oil is more than a mile deep under the ocean and difficult and expensive to extract. The four-decadeold US economic embargo prevents several of Cuba's potential oil partners - notably Brazil, Norway and Spain - from using valuable first-generation technology. "You're looking at three to five years minimum before any meaningful returns," said BenjaminAlvarado. Even so, Cuba is a master at stretching resources. President Raul Castro, who took over from brother Fidel, has promised to deliver improvements to daily life to shore up the legitimacy of the revolution as it approaches its 50th anniversary. Cuba's unexpected arrival into the big oil league could increase pressure on the next administration to loosen the embargo to let US oil companies participate in the bonanza and reduce US dependency on the middle east, said Jones. "Up until now the embargo did not really impact on us in a substantive, strategic way. Oil is different. It's something we need and want." US credibility on the international stage is low now-increased engagement key Duddy & Mora 2013,Patrick Duddy served as U.S. ambassador to Venezuela from 2007 until 2010 and is
currently visiting senior lecturer at Duke University. Frank O. Mora is incoming director of the Latin American and Caribbean Center, Florida International University, and former deputy assistant secretary of Defense, (Western Hemisphere (2009-2013)] 05.01.2013 Latin America: Is U.S. influence waning? 5/1/13 http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/05/01/3375160/latin-america-is-us-influence.html, Accessed July 4, 2013, KH) Is U.S. influence in Latin America on the wane? It depends how you look at it. As President Obama travels to Mexico and Costa Rica, its likely the pundits will once again underscore what some perceive to be the eroding influence of the United States in the Western Hemisphere. Some will point to the decline in foreign aid or the absence of an overarching policy with an inspiring moniker like Alliance for Progress or Enterprise Area of the Americas as evidence that the United States is failing to embrace the opportunities of a region that is more important to this country than ever. The reality is a lot more complicated. Forty-two percent of all U.S. exports flow to the Western Hemisphere. In many ways, U.S. engagement in the Americas is more pervasive than ever, even if more diffused. That is in part because the peoples of the Western Hemisphere are not waiting for governments to choreograph their interactions. A more-nuanced assessment inevitably will highlight the complex, multidimensional ties between the United States and the rest of the hemisphere. In fact, it may be that we need to change the way we think and talk about the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. We also need to resist the temptation to embrace overly reductive yardsticks for judging our standing in the hemisphere. As Moises Naim notes in his recent book, The End of Power, there has been an important change in power distribution in the world away from states toward an expanding and increasingly mobile set of actors that are dramatically shaping the nature and scope of global relationships. In Latin America, many of the most substantive and dynamic forms of engagement are occurring in a web of cross-national relationships involving small and large companies, people-to-

people contact through student exchanges and social media, travel and migration. Trade and investment remain the most enduring and measurable dimensions of U.S.

Oil in Cuba another reason to lift embargo

Lloyd 11-Delia Lloyd, (a writer based in London. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The International
Herald Tribune, and The Financial Times. Previously,she worked as a producer at Chicago Public Radio and taught political science at the University of Chicago, Ten Reasons to Lift the Cuba Embargo, Politics Daily, http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/08/24/ten-reasons-to-lift-the-cuba-embargo/, June 27, 2013, KH)

A comprehensive review of U.S. unilateral economic sanctions is overdue. From the five-decade old embargo on Cuba to proposals for extraterritorial sanctions on other countries, unilateral sanctions bring a host of unintended and unhelpful consequences. Its time to put an end to these damaging policies. Back when I worked as a producer for Chicago Public Radio in the early part of the decade, we would periodically revisit the question of whether to do a show on Cuba. Every year, the same anniversaries would roll around -- Fidel Castro's 1959 overthrow of the U.S.-backed Batista government, President Kennedy's failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion -- and every year we'd invariably conclude that things really weren't changing enough to warrant an update. What a difference a few years makes. As my colleague Luisita Lopez Torregrosa reported back in May, the Obama administration has been working quietly behind the scenes with the Cuban government on a host of bilateral issues. In May 2009, President Obama lifted travel restrictions for Cuban Americans wishing to visit their relatives on the island. This summer, that apparent thaw in Cuban-American relations accelerated dramatically. In June, the House Agriculture Committee voted to reverse a decades-long ban on U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba and to ease restrictions on the sale of American commodities there. In July, two senators followed suit by announcing a bipartisan bill that would also facilitate travel to Cuba, which they claimed enjoyed two-thirds support in Congress. And last week, the White House reportedly stepped into the fray again, with signals that the president would issue an executive order to further open existing travel opportunities for American students, teachers and researchers, possibly before Labor Day. For its part, Cuba released 52 of its 167 political prisoners in a July deal brokered by the Catholic Church, which many see as an important precursor for normalization of relations between the two countries. It's not yet clear what all of this will amount to. The congressional bills still need to wend their way through several other committees, where they may face entrenched opposition to altering Cuba policy, especially on the longstanding trade embargo. And even the presidential order (if it comes) will only return Cuban policy to where it was under President Clinton after a decade of more severe restrictions under President Bush. Still, all of this has lots of people speculating that there's a sea change afoot in U.S.-Cuban relations, one that has the potential to not only ease travel restrictions but possibly even overturn the embargo itself. In that spirit, here are 10 reasons that lifting the embargo makes sense: 1. It's good economics. It's long been recognized that opening up Cuba to American investment would be a huge boon to the tourism industry in both countries. According to the Cuban government, 250,000 Cuban-Americans visited from the United States in 2009, up from roughly 170,000 the year before, suggesting a pent-up demand. Lifting the embargo would also be an enormous boon the U.S. agricultural sector. One 2009 study estimated that doing away with all financing and travel restrictions on U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba would have boosted 2008 dairy sales to that country from $13 million to between $39 million and $87 million, increasing U.S. market share from 6 percent to between 18 and 42 percent. 2. It's good politics. Supporters of the trade embargo -- like Cuban-American Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) -have long argued that easing the restrictions would only reward Castro for the regime's ongoing repression of political dissidents. We need to keep up the economic pressure on Cuba, so this logic goes, in order to keep pressure on the regime to do something about human rights. But there's a long-standing empirical relationship between trade and democracy. The usual logic put forth to explain this relationship is that trade creates an economically independent and politically aware middle class, which, in turn, presses for political reform. It's not clear that this argument actually holds up when subjected to close causal scrutiny (although the reverse does seem to be true -- i.e., democratic reform creates pressure for trade liberalization). Still, it's difficult to disagree with the proposition that by enabling visiting scholars and religious groups to stay in Cuba for up to two years (as the presidential order would

allow) rather than a matter of weeks (as is currently the case) we'd be helping, not hurting, democracy in Cuba. First, easing the current travel restrictions would allow for far deeper linkages between non-governmental organizations from both countries, which some see as a powerful mechanism for democratic reform. Second, because American visitors would be staying on the island longer, scholars and activists alike would gain much better insight into where the pressure points for democracy actually exist. 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. 5. It doesn't work. Of course, if the embargo were the last outpost of Cold War politics and it produced results, that might be an argument for continuing it. But scholars and analysts of economic sanctions have repeatedly questioned the efficacy of economic statecraft against rogue states unless and until there's been regime change. And that's because, as one scholar put it, "interfering with the market (whether using sanctions, aid, or other government policies) has real economic costs, and we rarely know enough about how the target economy works or how to manipulate the political incentives of the target government to achieve our goals." 6. It's counter-productive. Isolating Cuba has been more than ineffective. It's also provided the Castro brothers with a convenient political scapegoat for the country's ongoing economic problems, rather than drawing attention to their own mismanagement. Moreover, in banning the shipment of information-technology products, the United States has effectively assisted the Cuban government in shutting out information from the outside world, yet another potential catalyst for democratization. 7. It's inhumane. If strategic arguments don't persuade you that it's time to end the embargo, then perhaps humanitarian arguments will. For as anyone who's traveled to the island knows, there's a decidedly enclave-like feel to those areas of the economy where capitalism has been allowed to flourish in a limited sense (e.g. tourism) and the rest of the island, which feels very much like the remnant of an exhausted socialist economic model. When I went there in the 1990s with my sister, I remember the throngs of men who would cluster outside the tourist haunts. They'd hope to persuade visitors like me to pretend to be their escort so they could sneak into the fancier hotels and nightclubs, which they could not enter otherwise. Horse -- yes, horse -- was a common offering on menus back then. That situation has apparently eased in recent years as the government has opened up more sectors of the economy to ordinary Cubans. But the selective nature of that deregulation has only exacerbated economic inequalities. Again, one can argue that the problem here is one of poor domestic policy choices, rather than the embargo. But it's not clear that ordinary Cubans perceive that distinction. Moreover, when you stand in the airport and watch tourists disembark with bucket-loads of basic medical supplies, which they promptly hand over to their (native) friends and family, it's hard not to feel that U.S. policy is perpetuating an injustice. 8. There's oil there. Another reason to think that it might be time to reconsider our Cuba policy is this natural resource. Cuba has begun exploratory drilling in search of oil in its territorial waters, with some reports estimating the island could become a major oil producer -- and refiner -- over the next five to 10 years. In an era where geopolitical realities may make places like Venezuela and the Middle East less reliable sources of oil for the United States, we need all the friends we can get, particularly when they're right next door. 9. It's unpopular. According to the travel-service provider Orbitz Worldwide, 67 percent of Americans favor lifting the travel ban, and 72 percent believe that expanding travel to Cuba would positively impact the lives of Cubans. Orbitz has collected more than 100,000 signatures in favor of restoring travel to Cuba through its OpenCuba.org drive. And according to Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), one of the leading proponents of lifting the embargo, if a vote in

Congress were taken secretly, the ban on travel and trade would most likely fall. In other words, the environment to lift sanctions may be ripe politically in a way that it wasn't even six months ago. 10. It restricts Americans' freedom of movement. Cuba is the only country in the world where Americans are restricted by their own government from visiting freely. Yes, that's right. It's easier to go to North Korea (from the American end of things) than it is to travel to our Caribbean neighbor. In a country whose "great American novelist" -- that would be Jonathan Franzen -- just published a national epic titled "Freedom," one need not underscore this irony.

Embargo is unpopular
Lloyd 11-Delia Lloyd, (a writer based in London. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The International
Herald Tribune, and The Financial Times. Previously,she worked as a producer at Chicago Public Radio and taught political science at the University of Chicago, Ten Reasons to Lift the Cuba Embargo, Politics Daily, http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/08/24/ten-reasons-to-lift-the-cuba-embargo/, June 27, 2013, KH)

A comprehensive review of U.S. unilateral economic sanctions is overdue. From the five-decade old embargo on Cuba to proposals for extraterritorial sanctions on other countries, unilateral sanctions bring a host of unintended and unhelpful consequences. Its time to put an end to these damaging policies. Back when I worked as a producer for Chicago Public Radio in the early part of the decade, we would periodically revisit the question of whether to do a show on Cuba. Every year, the same anniversaries would roll around -- Fidel Castro's 1959 overthrow of the U.S.-backed Batista government, President Kennedy's failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion -- and every year we'd invariably conclude that things really weren't changing enough to warrant an update. What a difference a few years makes. As my colleague Luisita Lopez Torregrosa reported back in May, the Obama administration has been working quietly behind the scenes with the Cuban government on a host of bilateral issues. In May 2009, President Obama lifted travel restrictions for Cuban Americans wishing to visit their relatives on the island. This summer, that apparent thaw in Cuban-American relations accelerated dramatically. In June, the House Agriculture Committee voted to reverse a decades-long ban on U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba and to ease restrictions on the sale of American commodities there. In July, two senators followed suit by announcing a bipartisan bill that would also facilitate travel to Cuba, which they claimed enjoyed two-thirds support in Congress. And last week, the White House reportedly stepped into the fray again, with signals that the president would issue an executive order to further open existing travel opportunities for American students, teachers and researchers, possibly before Labor Day. For its part, Cuba released 52 of its 167 political prisoners in a July deal brokered by the Catholic Church, which many see as an important precursor for normalization of relations between the two countries. It's not yet clear what all of this will amount to. The congressional bills still need to wend their way through several other committees, where they may face entrenched opposition to altering Cuba policy, especially on the longstanding trade embargo. And even the presidential order (if it comes) will only return Cuban policy to where it was under President Clinton after a decade of more severe restrictions under President Bush. Still, all of this has lots of people speculating that there's a sea change afoot in U.S.-Cuban relations, one that has the potential to not only ease travel restrictions but possibly even overturn the embargo itself. In that spirit, here are 10 reasons that lifting the embargo makes sense: 1. It's good economics. It's long been recognized that opening up Cuba to American investment would be a huge boon to the tourism industry in both countries. According to the Cuban government, 250,000 Cuban-Americans visited from the United States in 2009, up from roughly 170,000 the year before, suggesting a pent-up demand. Lifting the embargo would also be an enormous boon the U.S. agricultural sector. One 2009 study estimated that doing away with all financing and travel restrictions on U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba would have boosted 2008 dairy sales to that country from $13 million to between $39 million and $87 million, increasing U.S. market share from 6 percent to between 18 and 42 percent.

2. It's good politics. Supporters of the trade embargo -- like Cuban-American Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) -have long argued that easing the restrictions would only reward Castro for the regime's ongoing repression of political dissidents. We need to keep up the economic pressure on Cuba, so this logic goes, in order to keep pressure on the regime to do something about human rights. But there's a long-standing empirical relationship between trade and democracy. The usual logic put forth to explain this relationship is that trade creates an economically independent and politically aware middle class, which, in turn, presses for political reform. It's not clear that this argument actually holds up when subjected to close causal scrutiny (although the reverse does seem to be true -- i.e., democratic reform creates pressure for trade liberalization). Still, it's difficult to disagree with the proposition that by enabling visiting scholars and religious groups to stay in Cuba for up to two years (as the presidential order would allow) rather than a matter of weeks (as is currently the case) we'd be helping, not hurting, democracy in Cuba. First, easing the current travel restrictions would allow for far deeper linkages between non-governmental organizations from both countries, which some see as a powerful mechanism for democratic reform. Second, because American visitors would be staying on the island longer, scholars and activists alike would gain much better insight into where the pressure points for democracy actually exist. 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. 5. It doesn't work. Of course, if the embargo were the last outpost of Cold War politics and it produced results, that might be an argument for continuing it. But scholars and analysts of economic sanctions have repeatedly questioned the efficacy of economic statecraft against rogue states unless and until there's been regime change. And that's because, as one scholar put it, "interfering with the market (whether using sanctions, aid, or other government policies) has real economic costs, and we rarely know enough about how the target economy works or how to manipulate the political incentives of the target government to achieve our goals." 6. It's counter-productive. Isolating Cuba has been more than ineffective. It's also provided the Castro brothers with a convenient political scapegoat for the country's ongoing economic problems, rather than drawing attention to their own mismanagement. Moreover, in banning the shipment of information-technology products, the United States has effectively assisted the Cuban government in shutting out information from the outside world, yet another potential catalyst for democratization. 7. It's inhumane. If strategic arguments don't persuade you that it's time to end the embargo, then perhaps humanitarian arguments will. For as anyone who's traveled to the island knows, there's a decidedly enclave-like feel to those areas of the economy where capitalism has been allowed to flourish in a limited sense (e.g. tourism) and the rest of the island, which feels very much like the remnant of an exhausted socialist economic model. When I went there in the 1990s with my sister, I remember the throngs of men who would cluster outside the tourist haunts. They'd hope to persuade visitors like me to pretend to be their escort so they could sneak into the fancier hotels and nightclubs, which they could not enter otherwise. Horse -- yes, horse -- was a common offering on menus back then. That situation has apparently eased in recent years as the government has opened up more sectors of the economy to ordinary Cubans. But the selective nature of that deregulation has only exacerbated economic inequalities. Again, one can argue that the problem here is one of poor domestic policy choices, rather than the embargo. But it's not clear that ordinary Cubans perceive that distinction. Moreover, when you stand in the airport and watch tourists disembark with bucket-loads of basic medical supplies, which they promptly hand over to their (native) friends and family, it's hard not to feel that U.S. policy is perpetuating an injustice.

8. There's oil there. Another reason to think that it might be time to reconsider our Cuba policy is this natural resource. Cuba has begun exploratory drilling in search of oil in its territorial waters, with some reports estimating the island could become a major oil producer -- and refiner -- over the next five to 10 years. In an era where geopolitical realities may make places like Venezuela and the Middle East less reliable sources of oil for the United States, we need all the friends we can get, particularly when they're right next door. 9. It's unpopular. According to the travel-service provider Orbitz Worldwide, 67 percent of Americans favor lifting the travel ban, and 72 percent believe that expanding travel to Cuba would positively impact the lives of Cubans. Orbitz has collected more than 100,000 signatures in favor of restoring travel to Cuba through its OpenCuba.org drive. And according to Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), one of the leading proponents of lifting the embargo, if a vote in Congress were taken secretly, the ban on travel and trade would most likely fall. In other words, the environment to lift sanctions may be ripe politically in a way that it wasn't even six months ago. 10. It restricts Americans' freedom of movement. Cuba is the only country in the world where Americans are restricted by their own government from visiting freely. Yes, that's right. It's easier to go to North Korea (from the American end of things) than it is to travel to our Caribbean neighbor. In a country whose "great American novelist" -- that would be Jonathan Franzen -- just published a national epic titled "Freedom," one need not underscore this irony.

Lifting embargo key to Cuban autonomy Harris 02- Jonathan Harris ( U.S. should lift embargo, respect Cuban autonomy, 7/29/02,

http://www.dukechronicle.com/articles/2002/07/30/us-should-lift-embargo-respectcuban-autonomy, Accessed: 6/27/13, CAS)

I am disturbed by the dichotomist options that the current debate has left us with, forcing us to decide whether the United States should: a) maintain the embargo or b) lift the embargo and allow Cubans to experience the "wonders" of free market capitalism. Cuba needs neither. Contrary to the dictates of our country's power-brokers, capitalism does not work for everyone. Cubans in Cuba have chosen a socialist economy, and they should not be punished or patronized for that decision. Indeed, it is a tough lesson to learn that we in the United States do not know what is right for all the world's inhabitants. I am not an apologist for the Cuban revolutionary government. I simply ask that we learn more about how things really work before judging a people and their right to self-determination. We can begin this process by respecting Cuba as an autonomous nation and lifting the unjust embargo.

Embargo prevents foreign and private actors from intervening effectively Siegelbaum 11- Portia Siegelbaum, CBS news producer that was based in Cuba, (Cuba: U.S. embargo causes $1 trillion in losses, 9/14/11, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301503543_162-20106159-503543.html, 7/3/13, CAS) Moreno particularly attacked the extra-territoriality of the embargo listing various fines imposed by the
U.S. on third country entities such as a $500 million fine against the Dutch Bank ABN Amro last year for "having carried out unauthorized financial transactions in which Cuba or Cuban Nationals had interests." The vice foreign minister noted that in all from March 2010 to April 2011 there were several multimillion

dollar fines levied against U.S. and foreign banking institutions for having conducted operations with Cuba. 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.

NEG STUFF

T
Economic engagement means offering incentives credits, promotion, technology, loans, economic aid, or removal of penalties. Haass and OSullivan 2k - Richard N. Haass and Meghan L. OSullivan, Richard N. Haass, formerly a senior aide to President
George Bush, is Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, Washington DC, and author of The Reluctant Sheriff: The United States After the Cold War (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1997). Meghan L. OSullivan is a F ellow with the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. Together, they are editors of Honey and Vinegar: Incentives, Sanctions, and Foreign Policy (Brookings Institution Press, 2000). (Terms of Engagement: Alternatives to Punitive Policies, The International Institution for Strategic Studies, Summer 2000, http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/articles/2000/6/summer%20haass/2000survival.pdf , accessed: 6/27/13, amf)

Economic engagement might offer tangible incentives such as export credits, investment insurance or promotion, access to technology, loans and economic aid. Other equally useful economic incentives involve the removal of penalties such as trade embargoes, investment bans or high tariffs, which have impeded economic relations between the United States and the target country. Economic engagement means expanding economic ties to improve bilateral political relations Kahler and Kastner later than June, 04 - Miles Kahler and Scott L. Kastner, Miles Kahler: Graduate School of
International Relations and Pacific Studies University of California, San Diego, Scott L. Kastner: Department of Government and Politics University of Maryland. (STRATEGIC USES OF ECONOMIC INTERDEPENDENCE: ENGAGEMENT POLICIES IN SOUTH KOREA, SINGAPORE, AND TAIWAN, last reference was June, 2004, date of publication unknown, https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CC8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bsos.umd.edu%2Fgv pt%2Fkastner%2FKahlerKastner.doc&ei=ENTNUcPjHqvD0AHYjYGYCA&usg=AFQjCNFNFta1M5d4wNmGEXYkeG86I4Ehdw&sig2=_D_ _APKqbBZZJy-V2CQMLg, accessed: 6/27/13, amf)

Economic engagementa policy of deliberately expanding economic ties with an adversary in order to change the behavior of the target state and effect an improvement in bilateral political relationsis the subject of growing, but still limited, interest in the international relations literature. The bulk of the work on economic statecraft continues to focus on coercive policies such as economic sanctions. The emphasis on negative forms of economic statecraft is not without justification: the use of economic sanctions is widespread and well-documented, and several quantitative studies have shown that
adversarial relations between countries tend to correspond to reduced, rather than enhanced, levels of trade (Gowa 1994; Pollins 1989). At the same time, however, relatively little is known about how widespread strategies of economic engagement actually are: scholars disagree on this point, in part because no database cataloging instances of positive economic statecraft exists (Mastanduno 2003). Furthermore, beginning with the classic work of Hirschman (1945), most studies in this regard have focused on policies adopted by great powers.i But engagement policies adopted by South Korea and the other two states examined in this study, Singapore and Taiwan, demonstrate that engagement is not a strategy limited to the domain of great power politics; instead, it may be more widespread than previously recognized.

Only 19 parts of the embargo are economic the aff must remove one of those Garfield 99 Richard Garfield, Richard Garfield, nurse and epidemiologist, is professor of clinical international
nursing at Columbia University. He is the co-chair of the Human Rights Committee of the American Public Health Association and director of a PAHO/WHO collaborating centre at Columbia University. He worked in the ministry of health in Nicaragua. (The Impact of Economic Sanctions on H ealth and Well-being, Relief and Rehabilitation Network Paper, November 1999,

http://www.essex.ac.uk/armedcon/story_id/The%20Impact%20of%20Econmoic%20Sanctins%20on%20Health%20 abd%20Well-Being.pdf, accessed: 6/30/13, amf) Diplomatic and Political Measures public protest, censure, condemnation; postponement, cancellation of official visits, meetings, negotiations for treaties and agreements; reduction, limitation of scale of diplomatic representation affecting status of post, diplomatic personnel, consular offices; severance of diplomatic relations; withholding recognition of new governments or new states; vote against, veto admission to international organisations; vote for denial of credentials, suspension or expulsion; removal of headquarters, regional offices of international organisations from target. Cultural and Communications Measures curtailment,

cancellation of cultural exchanges, scientific cooperation, educational ties, sports contacts, tourism; restriction, withdrawal of visa privileges for target nationals; restriction, cancellation of telephone, cable, postal links; restriction, suspension, cancellation of landing and overflight privileges; water transit, docking and port privileges; land transit privileges. Financial Measures reduction, suspension, cancellation of development assistance, military assistance; reduction, suspension, cancellation of credit facilities at concessionary or market rates; freeze, confiscation of bank assets of target government, target nationals; confiscation, expropriation of other target assets; freeze interest, other transfer payments; refusal to refinance, reschedule debt repayments (interest, principal); vote against loans, grants, subsidies, funding for technical or other assistance from international organisations. Commercial and Technical Measures import, export quotas; restrictive licensing of imports, exports; limited, total embargo on imports, exports (Note: arms embargoes); discriminatory tariff policy, including denial of most favoured nation trade, access to General Preferential Tariff; restriction, cancellation of fishing rights; suspension, cancellation of joint projects; suspension, cancellation of trade agreements; ban on technology exports; blacklisting those doing business with the target; curtailment, suspension, cancellation of technical assistance, training programmes; ban on insurance and other financial services; tax on targets exports to compensate its victims.

Democracy Neg
1. The embargo will fall in the squo A. waning political support 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)

Political support for the embargo is eroding. Another problem for embargo aficionados is that younger Cuban Americans in Florida, the all-important next generation of voters, just aren't as passionate about it as their parents and grandparents were. "When I lecture down there, they couldn't care less about
Castro and the embargo," says Roett. A recent poll by Florida International University in Miami bears this out. It found that just 50% of

Cuban-Americans still support the embargo, and 80% think it has failed. It's also worth noting that Obama got a lot more of
the Cuban-American vote in Florida in the 2012 election, despite the awareness that he is more willing to lift the embargo, says Hidalgo. With their constituents defecting on the issue, congressional backers of the embargo may be losing ground. "The Cuban vote in Florida is changing, thus sticking with the embargo doesn't makes sense," believes Hidalgo. 3. Venezuelan President Hugo Chvez may be on his deathbed The big wild card in all this is Venezuelan President Hugo Chvez, who may be rapidly losing his fight against cancer. Here's why his

demise

could lead to an end to the embargo. Chvez has an unusually close personal and ideological relationship with Fidel Castro that goes back many years. This explains why Venezuela subsidizes the Cuban economy to the tune of about $8 billion worth of oil a year. It's not clear that whoever succeeds Chvez would continue the oil subsidy. Without it, says Roett, the Cuban economy would tank and a social crisis would ensue. That might either force out the Castro brothers or pressure them to pass the torch and make the political and economic reforms needed for the U.S. to lift its embargo and possibly lend the economic aid that would avert chaos. B. Loss of oil subsidies Allen 13 Michael Allena - Special Assistant for Government Relations and Public Affairs at the National Endowment for Democracy,(Bad
news for Cuba in Venezuela vote: end of subsidies could trigger social upheaval,demdigest.net,04/13,http://www.demdigest.net/blog/2013/04/bad-news-for-cuba-in-venezuela-vote-end-of-subsidies-could-triggersocial-upheaval/,accessed:7/10/13jw,)

Venezuelas disputed poll result is bad news for Cubas Communist regime, which relied on former leader Hugo Chavez for hard currency and an annual supply of $6bn of subsidized oil . The end of chavista subsidies could trigger social upheaval on the island, analysts suggest. Cubans cant be cheering this result. They have to be worried that Maduro proved so politically weak. The opposition has the momentum and will define the agenda, said Michael Shifter, head of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank. With Maduro entering office with a much weaker mandate than his colorful predecessor, the Castro-led regime may not enjoy the same economic benefits, potentially threatening the communist islands lifelineA clause in Venezuelas constitution allows
for a possible referendum to revoke a president half way through his six-year term, a consideration that will weigh on Maduros foreign policy, after his narrow election win. The outcome could accelerate Cubas reform process, Shifter told AFP, alluding to the likely need for Maduro to focus his efforts on domestic policy. The (Cuban) government will be compelled to pursue other economic options. Developments in Caracas will compel Cuba to accelerate a reform program designed to update its stalled socialist model, r eports suggest: To date, measures under Ral Castro, 81, the president, have

bettered everyday life but failed to improve Cubas underlying performance, critics say. For the regime, it is a balancing act: change too fast and the regime could unravel; change too slow and the economy will deteriorate and undermine the Castro brothers legacy anyway.

3. Gradualism key sudden lifting causes an immigration crisis and civil war 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: Cuba s 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) Some in the United States have long supported severe sanctions intended to starve the Cuban regime of resources and thereby precipitate a political breakdown. Yet, within presidential rhetoric,

the national security bureaucracy of the U.S. Executive Branch, notwithstanding occasional sudden breakdown, it is feared, would entail substantial risks for U.S. interests, including an immigration crisis right off of our shores, and in the worst case, irresistible pressures for intervention to quell a bloody civil war and halt a mass exodus of refugees.
there is a strong preference for gradual, peaceful evolution in Cuba . A

4. Alt causes to Cuba dictatorship Embargo cant resolve Corzo later than 2009 Humberto Corzo, Humberto (Bert) Corzo was born in Cuba. In 1962 he graduated
from University of Havana with a degree in Civil Engineering. Since coming to the United States in 1969, he established his residence in Los Angeles, California, where in 1972 he obtained the registration as a Professional Engineer. He has over forty five years of experience in the field of Structural Engineering. He is a Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Cuban-American Association of Civil Engineers. (Lift the Cuba Embargo?, CubaNet, last date mentioned was 3/10/09, http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y09/abril09/09_O_3.html, accessed: 7/3/13, amf)
Lifting the embargo Cuban economys bankruptcy is the sole responsibility of Castros regime. Under this system the economy will continuous to deteriorate without any hope of improvement. The economy is closely linked to the social development and standard of living of the Cuban people, which make very difficult the improvement of those under the existing regime. Cubas

problems are not the result of the embargo; they are due to the corruption and ineffectiveness of a system that is against private property and free enterprise. These and no others are the real reasons of the problems. Lifting the embargo and travel ban without meaningful changes in Cuba will: 1. Guarantee the continuation of the current totalitarian structures. 2. Strengthen state enterprises, since money will flow into businesses owned by the Cuban government. 3. Lead to greater repression and control since Castro and the leadership will fear that U.S. influence will subvert the revolution. 4. Delay instead of accelerate a transition to democracy on the island. The necessary steps required to be taken by the Cuban government to lift the ban on trade and travel between the two countries shall be: 1. Opposition parties should have the freedom to organize, assemble, and speak, with equal access to all airwaves. Political prisoners must be released and allowed to participate. 2. Human rights organizations should be free to visit Cuba to ensure that the conditions for free elections are being created. 3. Eliminate the tourist apartheid, where large number of hotels, resorts, beaches and restaurants are off-limits to the average Cuban, and the medical apartheid in some hospital that are adequately equipped and do not lack anything, and which are reserved for the nomenclature, the party elite and foreigners who pay in dollars. After all it was the United States and the European Union embargo, not investments, which helped end apartheid in South Africa. 5. Turn A. Revolution coming now more and more dissidents Tamayo 7/4/13 Juan O. Tamayo, Award-winning journalist with more than 25 years of experience as foreign correspondent and editor
with The Miami Herald, focusing on Latin America - especially Cuba - as well as the Middle East and Europe. Proven writer, editor and analyst, with contacts around the world. Excels at investigations, developing sources, explaining complex stories and guiding staff to report and write

creative stories. (Cuban dissident picks up human rights prize in Europe three years late, The Miami Herald, 7/4/13, http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/04/3484020/cuban-dissident-picks-up-human.html, accessed: 7/4/13, amf) Cuban dissident Guillermo Farias, finally picking up a European human rights prize that Havana kept him from receiving in 2010, said Wednesday that Cuba

will be democratic some day because its people are demanding the freedoms that you enjoy. Clearly emotional as he received the European Parliaments Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Conscience in the French city of Strasbourg, Farias raised a clenched fist and said, This fist symbolizes the strength of the hope that democracy will some day reach Cuba. The 51-year-old psychologist was awarded the 50,000 euro prize about $67,000
in 2010 but authorities did not allow him to leave the island to pick it up. European Parliament officials left an empty chai r at that years award ceremony. Three years ago, I could not be here, and in my place there was an empty chair. Today I say that Cuba will be free, thanks not to its rulers but to the will of its citizens, Farias said, drawing applause from Euro-deputies, staffers and supporters at the ceremony. Dissidents

are the true forces of change because we represent the power of a people who do not submit to living without the freedoms that you enjoy, added Farinas, a former member of the elite special forces who fought in Angola but later turned against the communist system. Farias has become one of Cubas top dissidents through his constant activism in the opposition movement and his estimated 23 hunger strikes to demand that the government respect human rights and free political prisoners. He was the islands third winner of the
Sakharov Prize, after the late Oswaldo Pay in 2002 and the Ladies in White, female relatives of political prisoners, in 2005. Havana also barred the women from picking up their prize that year, and they received it only this April at the European Union headquarters in Belgium. Cuba has allowed about 20 dissidents to travel abroad this year under a reform of its migration system that eased restrictions on leaving and reentering the island. But it has blocked travel by others, most of them freed early from prison because of health issues and now on parole. The

Cuban government brands dissidents as mercenaries paid by the U.S. government to undermine its rule. The Sakharov Prize, named after the late Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, has gone in the past to South Africas Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma. Farinas told the Spanish EFE news agency after the ceremony that a democratic Cuba is closer than we think He added: The level of social protest is higher each day and when theres more the government will have its hands tied because there will be so much critical mass that it will be impossible to repress it. B. Keeping the embargo is key driving force in political change Bustillo 5/9/13 Mitchell Bustillo, Mitchell Bustillo will be attending Columbia University in the fall where he
will be majoring in Engineering with a minor in Economics on a Pre-Law track. He is a first-generation CubanAmerican, a Hispanic Heritage Foundation Gold Medallion Winner, and a former United States Senate Page, appointed by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. He one day hopes to return to the Hill. (Time to Strengthen the Cuban Embargo, International Policy Digest, 5/9/13, http://www.internationalpolicydigest.org/2013/05/09/time-tostrengthen-the-cuban-embargo/, accessed: 7/3/13, amf)
Despite being Chvezs

handpicked successor, Maduro only won by a narrow margin and will likely be forced to cut spending on social programs and foreign assistance in an effort to stabilize Venezuelas dire economic problems. Therefore, now is the ideal time to take action. Without Venezuelas support, the Cuban government will assuredly face an economic crisis. Strengthening the embargo to limit U.S. dollars flowing into Cuba would place further pressure on the Cuban government and has the potential to trigger an economic collapse. A change in the Cuban political climate is within reach. According to U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, Tourism to Cuba is a natural resource, akin
to providing refined petroleum products to Iran. Its reported that 2.5 million tourists visit Cuba 1.5 million from North America1 million CanadiansMore than 170,000 from EnglandMore than 400,000 from Spain, Italy, Germany, and France combined All bringing

in $1.9 billion in revenue to the Castro regime. This behavior undermines the embargo, which is why the U.S. should urge other nations to adopt similar policies toward Cuba. A strong and unyielding embargo, supported by the U.S. and its allies, is necessary to incite political change . Furthermore, Sen. Menendez argues, Those who lament our dependence on foreign oil because it enriches regimes in terrorist states like Iran, should not have a double standard when it comes to enriching a brutal dictatorship like Cuba right here in our own backyard. If the policy of the U.S. is to challenge these

behaviors, then it must also stand up to Cuba. It would be a disservice to squander the progress of the past 50 years when opportunity is looming. No solvency foreign investment fails to promote democracy Corzo later than 2009 Humberto Corzo, Humberto (Bert) Corzo was born in Cuba. In 1962 he graduated
from University of Havana with a degree in Civil Engineering. Since coming to the United States in 1969, he established his residence in Los Angeles, California, where in 1972 he obtained the registration as a Professional Engineer. He has over forty five years of experience in the field of Structural Engineering. He is a Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Cuban-American Association of Civil Engineers. (Lift the Cuba Embargo?, CubaNet, last date mentioned was 3/10/09, http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y09/abril09/09_O_3.html, accessed: 7/3/13, amf)
Among the dissidents of associations within Cuba that work for the advance of Human Rights and peaceful changes towards democracy and social justice, and support the embargo the following ones stand out: Doctor

Oscar Elas Biscet, president of the Lawton Foundation of Human Rights (FLDH), who served a prison sentence of three years for acts of
protests in defense of human rights, was sentenced on April 10, 2003 to 25 years in prison for supposedly having violated law No. 88 with regard to Cubas protection of national independence and economy. In May 1999, after the reading of the document answering the declarations of senator Dodd [6], responding to one of the questions of the journalists said, The

embargo is one of the weapons in a nonviolent civic fight. The reply of the FLDH to the statement of senator Dodd The moment for lifting the sanctions against Cuba has arrived was as follow "The lifting of the embargo must be conditioned on respect for human rights, the freeing of political prisoners, the acceptance of the multi-party system and free and democratic elections. This is a question of principles, not business ."
The document finish with this statement: "We know that we can be jailed for up to 20 years under Law 88, but it is preferable to suffer and maintain our decorum than to embrace injustice because of cowardice." The

economist Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello member of the Grupo de Trabajo de la Disidencia Interna (GTDI), has a long history of working for human
rights and Cubas freedom. She was one of the authors of the document The Homeland Belongs to All, which caused her to spen t 19 months in prison. Martha Beatriz, condemned to 20 years in prison for exercising her right to free speech and promotes the well being of the Cuban people, is the only woman sanctioned among the 75 opponents, intellectuals and independent journalists sentenced in summary proceedings carried out on April 2003. On 2002, she received the Heinz R. Pagels Human Rights Award for Scientists, given by the Academy of Science of Ne w

Before the demise of the USSR, in Cuba the embargo was not even talked about but now it has become a mater of live or death for the regime, since only the financial flux from the United States, opening the possibility of obtaining lines of credit, the American tourism and the increment of the remittances of relatives, will allow the regime to confront the desperate situation in which it has submerge the country. In an article on the Wall Street Journal [8] she says, The State has failed to redistribute the resources in an equitable way and has created a very serious situation of inequality. Economic growth requires foreign investments, but the possibilities of important foreign investments are minimal due to the conditions created by the control of the state. When one understands the great impact with which the policy of the system has towards investments and commerce, it is very easy to see that the influence of the embargo in Cubas poverty is minimal .
York. In her excellent analysis of the Cuban economy published in Revista Hispano Cubana, No. 14 [7] she wrote Speaking in Havana on November 2002 during the first session of Cuba's National Assembly Castro dismissed any possibility of success to the opponents of the regime. He said: "There is no opposition to speak of because the dissidents are like fish in an empty fish tank; there is no oxygen left for the counterrevolution and there will be even less in the future

US Democracy at lowest pointfails to model for other countries Summers 4/15--Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard and former U.S. Treasury Secretary (Is
Americas democracy broken?, Reuters, http://blogs.reuters.com/lawrencesummers/2013/04/15/is-americas-democracy-broken/, Accessed 7/10/13, jtc)

With the release of the presidents budget, Washington has once again descended into partisan squabbling.

There is in America today

Congress is viewed less favorably than ever before in the history of public opinion polling. Revulsion at political figures unable to reach agreement on measures that substantially reduce prospective budget deficits is widespread. Pundits and politicians alike condemn gridlock as angry movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party emerge on both sides of the political spectrum, and partisanship seems to become ever more pervasive. All this comes at a time of great challenge. Profound changes, as emerging economies led by China converge toward the West, will redefine the global order. Beyond the current economic downturn,
pervasive concern about the basic functioning of our democracy.
which is surely the most serious since the Great Depression, lies the even more serious challenge of the rise of technologies that may well raise average productivity but displace large numbers of workers. Public

debt is running up in a way that is without precedent except in times of all-out war. And a combination of the share of the population that is aged and the rising relative price of public services such as healthcare and education pressure future budgets. Anyone who has worked in a political position in Washington has had ample experience with great frustration. Almost everyone
involved with public policy feels as I do that there is much that is essential yet infeasible in the current political environment. Yet context is important. Concerns about gridlock are a near-constant in American political history and in important respects reflect desirable checks and balances; much more progress is occurring in key sectors than is usually acknowledged; and American decision making, for all its flaws, stands up well in global comparison. It is a commonplace that the missing center makes political compromise impossible. Many yearn for a return to what they imagine as an earlier era when centrists in both parties had overlapping opinions and negotiated bipartisan compromises that moved the country forward. Yet fears about the functioning of our government like those expressed today have been recurring features of the political landscape since Patrick Henrys 1791 assertion that the spirit of the revolution had been lost. Its sobering to consider the degree of concern about paralysis that gripped Washington during the early 1960s when the prevailing diagnosis was that a lack of cohesive and responsible parties precluded the clear electoral verdicts necessary for decisive action. While there was a flurry of legislation passed in the 1964-66 period after a Democratic landslide, what followed were the cleavages associated with Vietnam and then Watergate, all leading to President Ji mmy Carters famous declaration of a crisis of the national spirit. Whatever the view today, there was hardly high rapport in Washington during the term of Ronald Reagan. President Bill Clinton worked hard to establish rapport and compromise with a Congress controlled by the opposition only to be impeached by the House of Representatives after a bitter struggle. Intense division and slow change have been the norms rather than the exceptions. While often frustrating, this has not always been a bad thing. Probably there were too few not too many checks and balances as the United States entered the Vietnam and Iraq wars. By my lights and that of many others, there should have been more checks and balances on the huge tax cuts of 1981, 2001 and 2003 or on unpaid-for entitlement expansions at any number of junctures. Most experts would agree that it is a good thing that politics thwarted the effort to establish a guaranteed annual income in the late 1960s and early 1970s or the effort to put in place what would today be called a single-payer healthcare system in the 1970s. The great mistake of the gridlock theorists is to suppose that all progress comes from legislation and that more legislation consistently represents more progress. While these are seen as years of gridlock, consider what has happened in the past five years. The

United States moved faster to contain a systemic financial crisis than any country facing such a crisis has moved in the last generation. Through all the fractiousness, enough change
has taken place that without further policy action, the debt-gross domestic product ratio is expected to decline for the next five years. Beyond that the outlook depends largely on healthcare costs, but growth there has slowed to the rate of GDP growth for three years now, the first such slowdown in nearly half a century. At last, universal healthcare is in sight. Within a decade, it is likely that the United States will no longer be a net importer of fossil fuels. Financial regulation is not in a fully satisfactory place but has received its most substantial overhaul in 75 years. Most public schools and those who teach in them are for the first time evaluated on objective metrics of student performance. Gay marriage has become widely accepted across the states. No remotely comparable list can be put forth for Japan or Western Europe. Yes, change comes rapidly to some of the authoritarian societies of Asia. But it may not endure and may not always be for the better. Anyone prone to pessimism would do well to ponder the alarm with which the United States viewed the Soviet Union after Sputnik or Japan in the early 1990s. It is the capacity for self-denying prophecy of doom that is one of Americas greatest strengths. None of this is to say that we do not face huge challenges. The challenges, though, are less of getting to agreement where the answer is clear than of finding solutions to problems like rising inequality or global climate change, where the path is uncertain. That

is not a problem of gridlock - it is a problem of vision.

Human-Rights Neg
The embargo will fall in the squo A. waning political support 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)

Political support for the embargo is eroding. Another problem for embargo aficionados is that younger Cuban Americans in Florida, the all-important next generation of voters, just aren't as passionate about it as their parents and grandparents were. "When I lecture down there, they couldn't care less about
Castro and the embargo," says Roett. A recent poll by Florida International University in Miami bears this out. It found that just 50% of

Cuban-Americans still support the embargo, and 80% think it has failed. It's also worth noting that Obama got a lot more of
the Cuban-American vote in Florida in the 2012 election, despite the awareness that he is more willing to lift the embargo, says Hidalgo. With their constituents defecting on the issue, congressional backers of the embargo may be losing ground. "The Cuban vote in Florida is changing, thus sticking with the embargo doesn't makes sense," believes Hidalgo. 3. Venezuelan President Hugo Chvez may be on his deathbed The big wild card in all this is Venezuelan President Hugo Chvez, who may be rapidly losing his fight against cancer. Here's why his

demise

could lead to an end to the embargo. Chvez has an unusually close personal and ideological relationship with Fidel Castro that goes back many years. This explains why Venezuela subsidizes the Cuban economy to the tune of about $8 billion worth of oil a year. It's not clear that whoever succeeds Chvez would continue the oil subsidy. Without it, says Roett, the Cuban economy would tank and a social crisis would ensue. That might either force out the Castro brothers or pressure them to pass the torch and make the political and economic reforms needed for the U.S. to lift its embargo and possibly lend the economic aid that would avert chaos. Loss of oil subsidies Allen 13 Michael Allena - Special Assistant for Government Relations and Public Affairs at the National Endowment for Democracy,(Bad
news for Cuba in Venezuela vote: end of subsidies could trigger social upheaval,demdigest.net,04/13,http://www.demdigest.net/blog/2013/04/bad-news-for-cuba-in-venezuela-vote-end-of-subsidies-could-triggersocial-upheaval/,accessed:7/10/13jw,)

Venezuelas disputed poll result is bad news for Cubas Communist regime, which relied on former leader Hugo Chavez for hard currency and an annual supply of $6bn of subsidized oil . The end of chavista subsidies could trigger social upheaval on the island, analysts suggest. Cubans cant be cheering this result. They have to be worried that Maduro proved so politically weak. The opposition has the momentum and will define the agenda, said Michael Shifter, head of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank. With Maduro entering office with a much weaker mandate than his colorful predecessor, the Castro-led regime may not enjoy the same economic benefits, potentially threatening the communist islands lifelineA clause in Venezuelas constitution allows
for a possible referendum to revoke a president half way through his six-year term, a consideration that will weigh on Maduros foreign policy, after his narrow election win. The outcome could accelerate Cubas reform process, Shifter told AFP, alluding to the likely need for Maduro to focus his efforts on domestic policy. The (Cuban) government will be compelled to pursue other economic options. Developments in Caracas will compel Cuba to accelerate a reform program designed to update its stalled socialist model, r eports suggest: To date, measures under Ral Castro, 81, the president, have

bettered everyday life but failed to improve Cubas underlying performance, critics say. For the regime, it is a balancing act: change too fast and the regime could unravel; change too slow and the economy will deteriorate and undermine the Castro brothers legacy anyway.

Gradualism key sudden lifting causes an immigration crisis and civil war 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 Econ omy 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) Some in the United States have long supported severe sanctions intended to starve the Cuban regime of resources and thereby precipitate a political breakdown. Yet, within presidential rhetoric, there

the national security bureaucracy of the U.S. Executive Branch, notwithstanding occasional is a strong preference for gradual, peaceful evolution in Cuba. A sudden breakdown, it is feared, would entail substantial risks for U.S. interests, including an immigration crisis right off of our shores, and in the worst case, irresistible pressures for intervention to quell a bloody civil war and halt a mass exodus of refugees. Turn lifting embargo enriches the elites Bustillo 5/9/13 Mitchell Bustillo, Mitchell Bustillo will be attending Columbia University in the fall where he will be majoring in
Engineering with a minor in Economics on a Pre-Law track. He is a first-generation Cuban-American, a Hispanic Heritage Foundation Gold Medallion Winner, and a former United States Senate Page, appointed by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. He one day hopes to return to the Hill. (Time to Strengthen the Cuban Embargo, International Policy Digest, 5/9/13, http://www.internationalpolicydigest.org/2013/05/09/time-tostrengthen-the-cuban-embargo/, accessed: 7/3/13, amf) Still there

is the idea that further increasing American tourism to this nearby Caribbean island will at least aid their impoverished citizens in some manner, but this is neither a straight-forward nor easy solution. From the annual throng of American visitors, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio declared at a 2011 Western Hemisphere Subcommittee Hearing that an estimated, $4 billion a year flow directly to the Cuban government from remittances and travel by Cuban Americans, which is perhaps the single largest source of revenue to the most repressive government in the region. These remittances are sent by Americans to help their
Cuban families, not support the Cuban government. It is also a common belief that the Cuban embargo is a leading cause of poverty among the Cuban citizens and that lifting the embargo would go a long way toward improving the Cuban standard of living. However, no

amount of money can increase the living standards there as long as their current regime stands. After all, the authorities were already skimming 20 percent of the remittances from Cuban-Americans and 90 percent of the salary paid to Cubans by non-American foreign investors, states Alvaro Vargas Llosa, Senior Fellow of The Center on Global Prosperity at The Independent Institute. However unfortunate it may be, Cuba, in its current state, is a nation consisting only of a wealthy and powerful few and an impoverished and oppressed proletariat, who possess little to no means to escape or even improve their fate. Lifting the trade embargo will not increase the general prosperity of the Cuban people, but it will increase the prosperity of the government. Ergo, the poverty and dire situation of the Cuban people cannot be blamed on the United States or the embargo. Alt causes to Cuba rights violations lifting embargo cant resolve Corzo later than 2009 Humberto Corzo, Humberto (Bert) Corzo was born in Cuba. In 1962 he graduated from University of
Havana with a degree in Civil Engineering. Since coming to the United States in 1969, he established his residence in Los Angeles, California, where in 1972 he obtained the registration as a Professional Engineer. He has over forty five years of experience in the field of Structural Engineering. He is a Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Cuban-American Association of Civil Engineers. (Lift the Cuba Embargo?, CubaNet, last date mentioned was 3/10/09, http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y09/abril09/09_O_3.html, accessed: 7/3/13, amf)

The economist Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello member of the Grupo de Trabajo de la Disidencia Interna (GTDI), has a long history of working for human rights and Cubas freedom. She was one of the authors of the document The
Homeland Belongs to All, which caused her to spent 19 months in prison. Martha Beatriz, condemned to 20 years in prison for exercising her right to free speech and promotes the well being of the Cuban people, is the only woman sanctioned among the 75 opponents, intellectuals and independent journalists sentenced in summary proceedings carried out on April 2003. On 2002, she received the Heinz R. Pagels Human Rights Award for Scientists, given by the Academy of Science of New York. In her excellent analysis of the Cuban economy published in Revista Hispano Cubana, No. 14 [7] she wrote Before the demise of the USSR, in Cuba the embargo was not even talked about but now it has become a mater of live or death for the regime, since only the financial flux from the United States, opening the possibility of obtaining lines of credit, the

American tourism and the increment of the remittances of relatives, will allow the regime to confront the desperate situation in which it has submerge the country. In an article on the Wall Street Journal [8] she says, The

State has failed to redistribute the resources in an equitable way and has created a very serious situation of inequality. Economic growth requires foreign investments, but the possibilities of important foreign investments are minimal due to the conditions created by the control of the state. When one understands the great impact with which the policy of the system has towards investments and commerce, it is very easy to see that the influence of the embargo in Cubas poverty is minimal . US not key for international human rights Moravcsik 02-- Andrew Moravcsik, Professor of Politics and director of the European Union Program at Princeton University (Why Is
U.S. Human Rights Policy So Unilateralist? in Multilateralism and U.S. Foreign Policy: Ambivalent Engagement edited by Stewart Patrick and Shepard Forman, Lynne Rienner Publishers, http://books.google.com/books?id=z_w3DkdSdhsC&pg=PA345&lpg=PA345&dq=Why+Is+U.S.+Human+Rights+Policy+So+Unilateralist?+An drew+Moravcsik&source=bl&ots=sgoPuAs4XW&sig=mIsfmf9uJ0E_FS346bhWUr14PUo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=dm3dUZiJA8fe4AONk4CIAQ&v ed=0CEcQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Why%20Is%20U.S.%20Human%20Rights%20Policy%20So%20Unilateralist%3F%20Andrew%20Moravc sik&f=false, Print, accessed 7/10/13, jtc)

Yet little

evidence suggests a close link between U.S. behavior and international norms, let alone domestic democratization. Everywhere in the world, human rights norms have spread without much attention to U.S. domestic policy. Under the European Convention on Human Rights, the Europeans have established the most effective formal system for supranational judicial review of human rights claims, based in Strasbourg, without U.S. participation. In the wake of the third wave of democratization in
Eastern Europe, East Asia, and Latin America, government after government moved ahead toward more active domestic and international human rights policies without paying much attention to U.S. domestic practice. Indeed, emerging democracies in the Westem Hemisphere are following Europes lead in ratifying and accepting compulsory jurisdiction of a regional human rights court, while ignoring U.S. unwillingness to ratify the American Convention on Human Rights, let alone accept jurisdiction of a supranational court. One might argue with equal plausibility that the pride of Latin American democracies in full adherence to the American Convention on Human Rights is strengthened by the unwillingness of the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the stable democracies in the anglophone Caribbean to adhere. Likewise, 191 countries have ratified the CRC in record time without waiting to see what the United States would do. There is little evidence that Rwandan, Serbian, or Iraqi leaders would have been more humane if the United States had submitted to more multilateral human rights commitments. The human rights movement has fiily embedded itself in public opinion and NGO networks, in the United States as well as elsewhere, despite the dubious legal status of international norms in the United States. In sum, the consequences of U.S. nonadherence to global norms, while signaling

a weakening in theory, is probably of little import in practice. Lifting the embargo would not improve US human rights credibility Sabatini 9 Christopher Sabatini, Editor in Chief of AmerQuarterly and Senior Director of Policy of ASCOA, adjunct professor at
Columbia/SIPA [Does the U.S. Embargo on Cuba Protect Human Rights? Americas, 2/25/09, http://www.americasquarterly.org/node/454, accessed: 7/10/13, JK] Third issue: lifting the embargo will improve relations with our neighbors. The argument here is that we may get more countries to stand by our side on human rights issues if we abandon our strident efforts to isolate and economically freeze out the island. This may be true. It would certainly cut the legs out from under the Castro regimes eff orts to present itself as a victim. But does it really give the U.S. more leverage on human rights? Im

not sure that any more countries would be willing to stand side-by-side with the U.S. on issues of detentions and abuses in Cuba without an embargo. For many, the issue is more one of not wanting to offend the Castros or appear to be undermining the romantic, iconic ideal of the revolution. Changing U.S. policy wont alter that. It may improve the U.S.s popularity in the region, but do we really think a more moral, united front vis vis the Castros human rights policies will result because we drop the embargo? Honestly, Im less sure it would improve our ability to rally those same countries to stand up for human rights activists and change inside Cuba.

UN-Neg
US-Cuban increasing cooperation now solves image Dinan 09 Stephen Dinan, He graduated from Stanford University with a degree in human biology and holds a master's in East-West
Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies. He has studied many systems of personal growth and facilitated workshops for over twelve years. (U.S.-Cuba Relations Continuing to Thaw, The Washington Times, April 18, 2009, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/18/us-cuba-relations-continuing-to-thaw/?page=all, Accessed: 7/2/13, sh)

Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro continued what has been a weeklong thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations, with Mr. Obama saying Friday that he has seen positive signals from the island nation, a day after Mr. Castro said he would be open to bilateral talks on expanding political rights. Attending the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad, Mr. Obama also exchanged a greeting with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has sparred frequently with the United States, and he called for a new hemispheric bargain in which other countries stop blaming the United States for every problem that arises. Mr. Obama said he is prepared to alter U.S. policy on Cuba, an issue that has become a source of bitter division between the United States and its would-be Latin American allies. The United States seeks a
Using the most conciliatory language between their nations in decades, President new beginning with Cuba, said Mr. Obama, adding that he welcomes Mr. Castros openness to talks and sees in the short term critical steps we can take toward a

relatively warm exchange with Cuba started Monday with Mr. Obamas move to lift the strictest parts of the U.S. travel and trade embargo, and it continued through Mr. Castros olive-branch remarks
new day. The

Alt causes: Security Councils inaction in Syria causes UN and US tension AP 6/25/13- EDITH M. LEDERER correspondent for the AP (US envoy: UN failure to act on Syria is disgrace, Denver Post,
http://www.denverpost.com/rawnews/ci_23537489/us-envoy-un-failure-act-syria-is-disgrace#ixzz2Yfk7Y8An, accessed: 7/10/13, ML)

Outgoing U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said Tuesday the U.N. Security Council's failure to take action to stop the conflict in Syria is "a moral and strategic disgrace that history will judge harshly." She told reporters at her final news conference Tuesday before starting her new job as U.S. national security adviser on July 1 that the paralysis of the U.N.'s most important body is "a stain" on the council that she will regret forevereven though she maintained that the U.S. and its allies were not responsible. Rice blamed three double vetoes by Russia and China of resolutions aimed at pressuring Syria's President Bashar Assad to end the
violence, even though they didn't contain sanctions. She expressed hope that the Syrian people will ultimately be able to chart their own future "and certainly the United States is committed to supporting them in those efforts and we will remain so." "I think we've seen in this region of the world and many other parts of the world that these struggles can be long and costly but rarely can I think of an instance in recent history where at the end of the day ... the unified aspirations of a people for freedom and to chart their own future are ultimately suppressed," Rice said. She wouldn't comment the refusal of China or Russia to extradite National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, and dismissed criticism of human rights in the United States by those countries and Ecuador, where Snowden has sought asylum, saying: "I think the records of other countries speak for themselves." Rice called the U.S. relationship with Russia "complex and multifaceted," explaining that during her 4 1/2 years at the U.N. there have been disagreements with Moscow but the

vast majority of accomplishments by the Security Council "have been accomplishment in partnership and with the support of the majority of the council including the veto-wielding members and that includes Russia." In the future, she said, there will undoubtedly be
important issues of divergence and disagreement. But Rice stressed: "I'm not prepared to predict that that is inevitable, and certainly not across the board, where on issues as important as Iran and North Korea and many others we have been able to find common ground." She listed the council's imposition of very tough sanctions on Iran and North Korea among the major accomplishments during her years as ambassador along with the council's authorization of military action to protect civilians in Libya, the birth of the new country of South Sudan, the political transformation in Yemen, the advance of women's equality and the U.N.'s "remarkable shift" on the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people. Yet,

she said, "conflict, abuse, atrocities, poverty and suffering persist in too many places," particularly Syria.

UN disapproves of the US wanting to intervene militarily in Syria but the US is still bent on intervening NPR 6/14/13- EYDER PERALTA reporter for NPR (U.N. Chief Opposes U.S. Military Support For Syrian Rebels, NPR, accessed:
7/10/13, ML)

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Friday that he opposes the U.S. decision to provide Syrian rebels with military support. "The United Nations, and in particular I, have been making it consistently clear that providing arms to either side would not address this current situation," Ban told reporters during a briefing. "There is no such military solution." Ban said the only solution that can solve the conflict "sustainably" is a political one that should be sought through a hoped-for U.S.-Russian brokered peace conference in Geneva. "The military path points directly towards the further disintegration of the country, destabilization of the region and inflammation of religious and communal tensions," Ban said. While calling for the on-the-ground investigation to continue, Ban also cast some doubt over the United States' claim that the regime of Bashar Assad had used chemical weapons against rebel forces. He said: "... the
validity of any information on the alleged use of chemical weapons cannot be ensured without convincing evidence of the chain-of-custody. That is why I continue to emphasize the need for an investigation on the ground in Syria that can collect its own samples and establish the facts. Our goal remains a fully independent and impartial inquiry. I have complete faith in the integrity and professionalism of Dr. Sellstrm and his team. "The use of chemical weapons by any party would be a crime against humanity. Given the seriousness of the allegations and the potentially grave consequences, I again urge the Syrian Government to grant Dr. Sellstrm's team the access we have long sought." Update at 1:19 p.m. ET. White House On Intelligence: During a press briefing, Deputy

National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes explained that the United States had a preliminary intelligence assessment in April that pointed toward chemical weapons use by the regime, but it did not have "a high confidence level." Over the intervening months that assessment firmed
up. He said the U.S. pieced "reporting from individuals who were there on the ground," "physiological samples," "open source reporting from social media and other places" and "our own intelligence reporting" to increase its confidence level. Rhodes

said the use of chemical weapons violates "clear international norms." "This should be a red line to the international community generally," he said. 2. US-UN cooperation inefficient A. Syria Batista 12- Guilherme K. Batista has an MBA from the McColl School of Business and is a writer for the Examiner regarding current
political, cultural, and societal dysfunction (Kofi Annan's resignation another sign of UN ineffectiveness, Examiner.com, A ugust 3, 2012, http://www.examiner.com/article/kofi-annan-s-resignation-another-sign-of-un-ineffectiveness, accessed: 7/10/13, lkh)

Kofi Annan expressed frustration today with the Assad regime, the Free Syrian Army, and the UN for not embracing his six-point peace plan Kofi Annan, the joint special envoy from the UN and the Arab League tasked with bringing peace to Syrian violence, has announced that he will resign after August 31, 2012. He has vowed to stay on the next few weeks and to ensure a smooth transition. UN Security General Ban Ki-Moon announced today, Mr. Annan has informed me and the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States, Mr. Nabil El Araby, of his intention not to renew his mandate when it expires on 31 August 2012. According to the UN, Mr. Annan was appointed in February by both the UN and the Arab League to bring, an end to all violence and human rights violations, and promoting a peaceful solution to the Syrian crisis. (Read the full story on the UN website here.) Kofi Annan was neither shy nor discreet when expressing his frustration with the situation in Syria. He blamed the insistence of the Free Syrian Army to continue to militarize their efforts as well as a complete lack of respect from the al-Assad regime towards his six-point peace plan and the total lack of unity within the UN Security Council for rendering his six-point plan ineffective. Mr. Annan explained his frustration b y saying, the

bloodshed continues [in Syria], most of all because of the Syrian governments intransigence and continuing refusal to implement the six-point plan, and also because of the escalating military campaign of the opposition all of which is compounded by the disunity of the international communityAt a time when we need when the Syrian people desperately need action - there continues to be finger-pointing and name-calling in the Security Council. (Read Mr. Annans full remarks here.) The frustration of Kofi Annan and the ineffectiveness of the UN is evidence that the

UN Security Councils motives are no longer pure. With China and Russia continuously vetoing any further action by the UN in Syria, the UN is at best a spectator and at worst a facilitator of the Assad regime and the violence in Syria that has claimed more than 10,000 lives since the unrest began 17 months ago. Whatever the motives of China and Russia may be in continuing to turn a blind eye to the tragic
bloodshed of tens of thousands of Syrian civilians, it is clear that their motives are no longer (and perhaps never were) humanitarian. The unwillingness of the UN and the international community to unify and

work together to end the bloodshed has become just another sad yet telling illustration of the clouded motivations of certain UN member-states as well as confirmation that the UN is now, more than ever, nothing but a symbolic organization who has the power only to wag its finger and shake its head at atrocities around the world. As atrocities in Rwanda, Darfur, and now Syria continue
to go unchecked and a standard of almost certain impunity is set, the dictators, military leaders, and despots of the world will only become more and more emboldened to use violence as a means to silence any opposition. As Kofi Annan resigns and the violence in Syria only gets worse, the UN has once again proven their ability to

remain ineffective by doing nothing more than passing a resolution condemning the Syrian regimes use of heavy weapons. The resolution condemns, the increasing use by the Syrian authorities of
heavy weapons, including indiscriminate shelling from tanks and helicopters, in population centres and the failure to withdraw its troops and the heavy weapons to their barracks T he resolution goes on to condemn all violence, irrespective of where it comes from, in an apparent plea to the Free Syrian Army to lay down their arms as well and attempt a diplomatic solution to the Syrian crisis. (Read more details of the UN resolution passed today by the General Assembly.) This rampant disunity of the UN Security Council which has rendered the UN ineffective in Syria has made the UN more of a hindrance to the peace process and a facilitator of violence because the UN now serves as a shield to countries who would otherwise act individually. The United States and countries in Europe now have an excuse to stand idly by as tens of thousands of Syrian civilians are indiscriminately murdered by the Assad regime. The U.S. and Europe can claim that their hands are tied and to supersede the UN and take matters in to their own hands would be violating UN regulations and ultimately make matters worse. To solve this situation, the

UN must either dissolve or drastically change its policies to reclaim the role of active peacekeeper in the world; the task it was initially charged with carrying out B. AIDS Boseley 12- Sarah Boseley,health editor of the Guardian and has won a number of awards for her work on HIV/Aids in Africa, including
the One World Media Award (twice) and the European section of the Lorenzo Natali prize, awarded by the European Commission (UN 'way off target' on promise to end HIV infections in newborn children, The Guardian, July 25 2012, www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jul/25/unchildren-hiv-aids, accessed: 7/10/13, lkh)

More than 330,000 children are still being born with HIV around the world every year, even though there are proven ways to prevent them becoming infected that would also save the lives of their mothers, an international conference has heard. Since 1994 it has been known that pregnant
women infected with HIV can be given treatment that will block the transmission of the virus to their baby at birth. But although rich countries acted promptly and now have few babies born with HIV, progress in developing countries is very slow. Although there is a UN-set goal to end new infections in babies by 2015, "we are totally off target," Chewe Luo, senior adviser on HIV and Aids at Unicef, told the

International Aids Conference in Washington, DC. "The analysis we have done is that at most we are
reducing these infections by 10% each year. [That means] 330,000 children are acquiring new infections each year. "Part of the problem is that we have focused our interventions on the prevention of infection from

mother to children and we have not looked at how we can transform our programmes to identify those women who need treatment for themselves." Early on, women were given drugs during pregnancy and then different drugs in labour to prevent the virus passing to their baby at birth. The baby was then also given a short course of drugs. It was complicated and ineffective for the many women who only went to the antenatal clinic once. Also overlooked was the need of the pregnant
women for treatment themselves. Only just over half 57% of women in sub-Saharan Africa who need treatment

to keep them alive are on it. Many pregnant

women have such high levels of virus in their bodies when they walk through the antenatal clinic door that they will die within two years leaving the new baby and their other children without a mother and effectively orphaned. In Zambia, a study
showed that 68% of HIV-positive women had such a high viral load that they would not survive two years without treatment. "We have made it too difficult so difficult that women who are accessing healthcare at the lower-level healthcare facilities don't have access to these interventions," said Luo. "We have to make things simpler."

International non-prolif regimes fail-NPT proves Bunn 12 George Bunn, the first general counsel for the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, helped negotiate the nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty, and later became U.S. ambassador to the Geneva Disarmament Conference. (The Nuclear Nonproliferatio n Treaty: History and Current Problems, Arms Control Association, 2012, http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2003_12/Bunn, Accessed: July 10, 2013, SD) Fifty years ago this month, President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his Atoms for Peace address to the UN General Assembly. He proposed to share nuclear materials and information for peaceful purposes with other countries through a new international agency. That speech led to negotiations which, several years later, created the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The IAEA today has the dual responsibility of helping countries that do not have nuclear weapons to engage in peaceful nuclear programs while ensuring that they do not make nuclear weapons. In the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968, the IAEA gained

authority for policing the nuclear activities of member countries to ensure that those without nuclear weapons did not acquire them. Today, the NPT is a worldwide treaty that bans all members except the United Kingdom, China, France, Russia, and the United States
from having nuclear weapons and commits those five states to eventually eliminating their atomic arsenals. The treaty provides the norm and the foundation for an international regime to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons around the world. The 187 states that subscribe to the NPT include all significant states of concern with the exception of India, Israel, Pakistan, andarguablyNorth Korea.[1] According

to

Ambassador Robert T. Grey, a former U.S. arms control negotiator, the NPT is in many ways an agreement as important as the UN Charter itself.[2] Yet, many believe that the NPT regime is battered and in need of strengthening.[3] The NPT has in fact suffered major blows. Since 1991, uranium enrichment, plutonium separation, and other possibly weapons-related activities that Iraq, North Korea, and Iran hid from IAEA inspectors have been
discovered. Iraqs weapons program was found after the 1991 Persian Gulf War thanks to UN Security Council orders demanding more intrusiv e inspections than were then required by IAEA inspection standards. North Koreas weapons program later became known through in telligence, IAEA inspections, and North Koreas own admissions. The IAEAs discovery of Irans failure to disclose experiments with pluto nium separation and uranium enrichment to inspectors has recently led to a standoff with Tehran. Historically, the IAEA has rarely demanded inspections beyond the perimeter of reactors or related nuclear sites that had been declared open for inspection by the countries where they were located. Further, uranium enrichment and plutonium separation does not violate the NPT if done for peaceful purposes under IAEA inspection. In fact, a number of more developed countries (e.g., Japan) conduct such activities. In the three countries where uranium enrichment or plutonium separation was thought to have been conducted for weapons purposesIran, Iraq, and North Koreathe activities had taken place largely at locations not declared open for inspection to the IAEA. Moreover, that North Korea and Iran both obtained enrichment technology from Pakistan suggests dangers to the NPT regime from nonparties that are not bound by the treatys prohibition against assisting non -nuclear-weapon states in acquiring nuclear weapons. The back-to-back nuclear tests by New Delhi and Islamabad in 1998 illustrate the dangers that an arms race in South Asia can have and suggest the temptation that such tests could encourage current non-nuclear-weapon parties to withdraw from the treaty in order to follow suit. At the same time, the

United States has not complied with some of its own NPT-

created obligations. For example, in 1995 the United States won the agreement of the non-nuclear-weapon NPT states-parties to extend
the NPT indefinitely by promising to negotiate a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The treaty was duly negotiated and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, but the Senate failed to ratify it in 1999. The Bush administration now opposes the CTBT, and the Senate is unlikely to consider it again, at least before the next election. That reflects a broader tendency by this Bush administration to downgrade treaties and regimes and to upgrade unilateral efforts, such as the pre-emptive use of force against Iraq, to enforce compliance with nonproliferation. In addition, the Bush administration has undertaken efforts to create new types of nuclear weapons that might well require new testing.[4] Thus, while pushing other countries to reject the acquisition of nuclear weapons for their defense, the United States seems to be relying ever more heavily on nuclear weapons for its own defense. This double standard constitutes another threat to the NPT regime. These points are all relevant to the status of the NPT today and will be explained in more detail below or in other articles in this issue. Current Problems Even as the legal regime was expanded by these agreements, the

NPT came under strain elsewhere. One of the most significant blows was Iraqs demonstrated ability to hide its nuclear-weapon-making efforts from IAEA inspectors
before the Gulf War. With inspection authority from UN Security Council resolutions adopted after that warauthority beyond what the 1970s negotiations on NPT verification standards had given the IAEAinspectors found previously hidden Iraqi efforts to enrich uranium to make nuclear weapons and even an attempt to use (for a weapon) highly enriched research-reactor uranium provided for peaceful purposes by France and the Soviet Union.[10] he uranium-enrichment and plutonium-separation efforts of Iraq, North Korea, and Iran have produced renewed calls for the NPT not to permit such efforts even if subject to IAEA inspection. The

concern is that, once a country gains access to this technology, it might then withdraw from the NPT (as North Korea did) and use its stocks of weapons-usable uranium or plutonium to make weapons. The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) had

earlier recommended that new uranium-enrichment and plutonium-separation plants of non-nuclear-weapon states be placed under multilateral ownership and control so that the co-owners from the different countries could check on each other.[18] However, Japan; some western European non-nuclear-weapon countries; and Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, and a few others, as well as all the nuclear-weapon states, have or have experimented with enrichment or reprocessing facilities. Should these all now be subject to a rule requiring multilateral ownership and oversight?

Would limiting the requirement to non-nuclear-weapon countries be regarded as adding further insult to the NPTs existing discrimination in favor of nuclear-weapon states? IAEA Director-General
Mohamed ElBaradei has recommended that all enrichment and reprocessing facilities used for civilian purposes should be multilaterally owned and controlled in the future, with each country involved being urged to check on what its partner countries are doing to make sure that the enriched uranium or separated plutonium is not used for weapons purposes.[19] The Bush administration has pressed hard on Iraq, Iran, and North Korea to restrain them from acquiring nuclear weapons, but it has done so sometimes in unilateral or domineering ways that seem inconsistent with a multilateral regime like that of the NPT. The American-led, counter-proliferation-justified, preventive-war invasion of Iraq in 2003 that the United States waged without UN Security Council authorization is a recent example. At the time, the invasion was said to be necessary to prevent Iraq from again acquiring nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons or long-range missiles. It took place even though Security Council-authorized inspections, consistent with the NPT, were going on in Iraq to look for these weapons. It resulted in UN inspectors being withdrawn from Iraq for their own safety. U.S inspectors have subsequently found little evidence of ongoing biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons programs but the decision reflected Bushs tendency to downgrade treaties and international efforts in favor of more proactive proliferation efforts.[20] Likewise, the Senate failed to ratify the CTBT in 1999. The Bush administration has not asked the Senate to reconsider that vote and instead has said that the United States will not become a party to that treaty.[21] At the same ti me, the administration seeks money from Congress for new types of nuclear weaponsones that may well need testing before the United States would rely on them. However, in 1995, when the United States negotiated an agreement with all the non-nuclear-weapon states to extend the NPT beyond 1995, it agreed to negotiate a CTBT by 1996 as part of the price it had to pay to gain agreement to renew the NPT.[22] The CTBT was negotiated by 1996. Then, in the 2000 NPT review conference, the Clinton administration agreed on the importance and urgency of ratificat ion of the CTBT without delay to achieve the early entry into force of the treaty even though the Senate then had no plans to vote again on the CTBT.[23] Is the CTBT such an essential element of the nonproliferation regime that U.S. failure to join it could provide persuasive justification for withdrawal from the NPT for those who choose to do so?[24] Other

problems of this sort occurred with Article VI of the NPT, agreed to in the original treaty negotiations in order to gain the support for the treaty of non-nuclear-weapon states. In that provision, the United States and the other recognized nuclear-weapon states promised to
negotiate nuclear-weapon reductions with the goal of nuclear disarmament. Then, to gain the votes of these parties for extension of the NPT in 1995, the United States agreed to pursue progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally, with the ultimate goal of eliminating those weapons.[25] At the 2000 NPT review conference, the Clinton administration made similar commitments. It also promised to imp lement START II (negotiated in the prior Bush administration) and to conclude START III [more reductions] as soon as possible while preserving and strengthening the [Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM)] Treaty as the cornerstone of strategic stability.[26] These

promises were shredded when the present Bush administration withdrew from the ABM Treaty. The withdrawal
nullified START II because the Russian Duma had conditioned its approval vote for START II on a continuation of the ABM Treaty. The substitute for START II negotiated with Russia by President George W. Bush, the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty of 2002, required withdrawal of warheads from many long-range missiles on each side to the end that, by 2012, no more than 2,200 warheads would be deployed on either side.[27] The treaty, however, does not require the warheads to be destroyed, calls for no inspections, has a more permissive withdrawal clause than in START II, and contains no stated plan for a subsequent treaty such as START III that would require further reductions. Does this satisfy the NPT commitment to negotiate toward nuclear disarmament? ElBaradei has suggested that the United States may be employing a double standard by not actually cutting its own arsenal of nuclear weapons (as distinct from its missiles) while attempting to restrain other countries from acquiring nuclear weapons.[28] To gain the agreement of the non-nuclear-weapon NPT parties to the treatys extension in 1995,

the United States also made promises in connection with a UN Security Council resolution calling for what are called negative security assurances, which for the United States was a promise not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear-weapon NPT parties unless they attack the United States while in alliance with another nuclear-weapon state.[29] Yet, in its Nuclear Posture Review of 2001 and its National Strategy on Weapons of Mass Destruction of 2002, the Bush administration made clear that it was prepared to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear-weapon NPT party that threatened
the use of chemical or biological weapons against the United States or its allies whether or not this NPT party was allied with a nuclear-weapon state.[30] Thus, the United States watered down another promise that was important to gaining the support of non-nuclear-weapon NPT statesparties for renewal of the NPT in 1995. Whether all

these problems will produce further withdrawals from the NPT is, of course, unknown, but they might be used as excuses for withdrawal by any who want to do so. International efforts fail to stop prolif-NPT proves CFR 13 Council on Foreign Relations, The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization,
think tank, and publisher dedicated to being a resource for its members, government officials, business executives, journalists, educators and students, civic and religious leaders, and other interested citizens in order to help them better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries. (The Global Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime, Council on Foreign Relations, June 25, 2013, http://www.cfr.org/arms-control-disarmament-and-nonproliferation/global-nuclear-nonproliferation-regime/p18984#p1, Accessed: July 10, 2013, SD) Strengths and Weaknesses

instruments for combating nuclear proliferation were largely successful before 1991, but are proving unable to meet today's challenges. Although three states (India, Israel, and Pakistan) are known or believed to have acquired nuclear weapons during the Cold
International War, for five decades following the development of nuclear technology, only nine states have developed and since 1945 none has usednuclear weapons. However, arguably not a single known or suspected case of proliferation since the early 1990sPakistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, or Syria was deterred or reversed by the multilateral institutions created for this purpose. The continued advancement of Iran's nuclear programdespite the implementation of crosscutting economic sanctions and near universal global condemnationhas elicited serious concerns from states including Israel, the United States, and Saudi Arabia. Additionally, recent nonproliferation success stories, such as Libya's abandoning its nuclear program in 2003 and the accession of all of the Soviet successor states except Russia to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) as nonnuclear weapon states, have been the result of direct government-to-government negotiations and pressure rather than action by global bodies. In dealing with today's proliferation challenges, international organizations work in tandem with ad hoc forums of interested parties, such as the Six Party Talks on North Korea, the P5+1 grouping on Iran, and the most recent development of biannual global nuclear security summits. But such forums have often proven inadequate to arrest the spread of nuclear technology, and states such as Iran and North Korea continue to pursue nuclear capability, if not outright weaponization. Given these trends, rising

doubts about the sustainability of the nonproliferation regime are no

surprise. But nonproliferation as an international issue has recently benefited from revived attention. The United States and Russia signed a legally binding
replacement agreement to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which expired in December 2009. New START entered into force in February 2011. President Obama has made nuclear issues a centerpiece of his international agenda, convening a high-level Nuclear Security Summit in April 2010, dedicating serious political effort to strengthen the NPT at the NPT Review in May 2010, and building consensus in the UN Security Council and elsewhere for new economic sanctions targeting Iran. The Obama administration has also pledged to win U.S. Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), reduce the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. defense doctrine. Recently, it initiated discussions with the Pentagon about potential deep cuts to the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Yet even with these renewed efforts, major challenges and threats remain, namely with regard to Iran and North Korea. Establishing a normative and legal framework: Fairly comprehensive, but with significant gaps The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) is the core component of the global nonproliferation regime, and establishes a comprehensive, legally binding framework based on three principles: (1) states without nuclear weapons as of 1967 a year before the treaty opened for signature agree not to acquire them; (2) the five states known to have tested nuclear weapons as of 1967 the nuclear weapon states (NWS)agree to not assist other states in acquiring them and to move toward eventual disarmament; and (3) the nonnuclear weapon states (NNWS) are guaranteed access to civilian nuclear technology and energy development. NNWS are subject to safeguards to ensure that materials and technology from civilian activities are not diverted to weapons programs. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is the implementing body for the NPT, monitoring compliance with the treaty and assisting NNWS in developing civilian technology. Although the scope and mandate of the NPT and the IAEA are relatively broad, : 189 states are party to the treaty, but three of the world's nine nuclear powers India, Israel, and Pakistanhave never joined, and a fourthNorth Koreawithdrew in 2003. Thus, even if enforcement of the existing regime were not an issue, nearly half of the world's nuclear-armed states are excluded from its provisions. By design,

there is a critical gap in coverage

NPT does not address proliferation by nonstate actors. After the September 11 attacks, the UN Security Council UNSC) adopted Resolution 1540, a legally binding instrument requiring all UN member states to enact and enforce measures to prevent nonstate actors from acquiring WMD. Many states in the UN General Assembly, however, have argued that the UNSC did not have the authority to impose a binding resolution in this area. Partly as a result, some states have resisted cooperation with the 1540 Committee established to oversee implementation of the resolution. The UNSC, recommitted itself to1540 in April 2011 with Resolution 1977, extending the mandate of the 1540 Committee by ten years. However in addition to resistance facing the implementation of Resolution 1540, the legally binding Convention on Nuclear Terrorismwhich defines nuclear terrorism and requires international cooperation to prevent and punish such actshad only seventy-nine parties as of June 2012. Moreover, two important elements of the nonproliferation regime have never come into effect, largely because of resistance by the United States and other nuclear weapon states. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) of 1996 has been signed by 183 countries but cannot enter into force until all forty-four states with significant military or civilian nuclear capacity ratify it. China, India, Israel, Pakistan, and the United States have not yet done so. Efforts to conclude a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT) to ban the production of weapons-grade material have also stalled. The United States has been criticized for blocking progress on both
the ( issues, but the Obama administration has signaled that it will move to again ask the Senate's advice and consent on ratification of the CTBT (the body rejected the treaty in 1999) and to revive negotiations on an FMCT with verification measures. A review of the NPT in 2010 concluded with modest success. The final outcome document recommits signatories to the principles of the treaty, provides some specific action plans for nonproliferation and disarmament, and calls for the elimination of nuclear weapons from the Middle East through the establishment of a nuclear weapons-free zone in the region. The need for unanimous agreement resulted in some new U.S. initiatives, such as stronger verification requirements, being eliminated from the final document. Preventing proliferation by state actors: Poor record on

Despite the broad legal coverage of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), a string of failures since the early 1990s have highlighted the ineffectiveness of existing nonproliferation instruments to deter would-be nuclear weapon states. In theory, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) can refer countries that do not comply with the NPT to the UN Security Council (UNSC), which in turn can impose sanctions or other punitive measures. In practice, however, political calculations have often caused deadlock at the UNSC, enabling nuclear rogues such as Iran to defy successive, fairly weak UN sanctions resolutions with virtual impunity. The IAEA did however, refer Syria to the UNSC in June 2011 due to an "absence of confidence that Syria's
compliance Poor compliance, continued risk of breakout nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes."

Health Care-Neg
1. The embargo will fall in the squo waning political support and Chavezs death 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)

Political support for the embargo is eroding. Another problem for embargo aficionados is that younger Cuban Americans
in Florida, the all-important next generation of voters, just aren't as passionate about it as their parents and grandparents were. "When I lecture down there, they couldn't care less about Castro and the embargo," says Roett. A recent poll by Florida International University in Miami bears this out. It found that just 50% of Cuban-Americans still support the embargo, and 80% think it has failed. It's also worth noting that Obama got a lot more of the Cuban-American vote in Florida in the 2012 election, despite the awareness that he is more willing to lift the embargo, says Hidalgo. With their constituents defecting on the issue, congressional backers of the embargo may be losing ground. "The Cuban vote in Florida is changing, thus sticking with the embargo doesn't makes sense," believes Hidalgo. 3. Venezuelan President Hugo

Chvez may be on his deathbed The big wild card in all this is Venezuelan President Hugo Chvez, who may be rapidly losing his fight against cancer. Here's why his demise could lead to an end to the embargo. Chvez has an unusually close personal and ideological relationship with Fidel Castro that goes back many years. This explains why Venezuela subsidizes the Cuban economy to the tune of about $8 billion worth of oil a year. It's not clear that whoever succeeds Chvez would continue the oil subsidy. Without it, says Roett, the Cuban economy would tank and a social crisis would ensue. That might either force out the Castro brothers or pressure them to pass the torch and make the political and economic reforms needed for the U.S. to lift its embargo and possibly lend the economic aid that would avert chaos. 2. Gradualism key sudden lifting causes an immigration crisis and civil war 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) Some in the United States have long supported severe sanctions intended to starve the Cuban regime of resources and thereby precipitate a political breakdown. Yet, within the national security bureaucracy of the U.S. Executive Branch, notwithstanding occasional presidential rhetoric, there is a strong preference for gradual, peaceful evolution in Cuba. A

sudden breakdown, it is feared, would entail substantial risks for U.S. interests, including an immigration crisis right off of our shores, and in the worst case, irresistible pressures for intervention to quell a bloody civil war and halt a mass exodus of refugees. B. Reform solving AP 12- (U.S. embargo on Cuba firmly in place, Washington Times, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/13/us-embargo-oncuba-firmly-in-place/?page=all, 2/13/12, accessed: 7/3/13, ML) Also each

year, Cuba updates its estimate of how much the embargo has cost it, using a complicated - and Last years estimate summing 49 years of sanctions was $975 billion. Even some critics of the embargo call Havanas claims exaggerated. They concede that the sanctions had a tremendous impact when first put in place but argue Cuba was able to adapt and benefit from relationships with like-minded allies like the former Soviet Union and Venezuela. Theres no doubt that the embargo is detrimental to the Cuban economy. It complicates international financial transactions, but more importantly, it limits Cuban families access to medicine,
some say flawed - calculus that takes into account years of interest, the end of the gold standard and other factors .

said Geoff Thale, a Cuba analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, which supports ending the policy. At

the same time, Cubas economic problems go beyond the embargo. President Raul Castro is in the process of allowing more private-sector activity, decentralizing state-run businesses, implementing agricultural reform and slimming government payrolls. The United States actually does have significant trade with Cuba under a clause allowing the sale of food products and some pharmaceuticals.
According to the most recent information available from Cubas National Statistics Office, the United States was the islands seventh-largest trading partner in 2010, selling $410 million in mostly food products.

3. Cuban health system is a success Haseltine 12 Bill Haseltine - Trustee at the Brookings Institute,(The Cuban Biotechnology
Industry,brookings.edu,2012,http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/newsletters/pres_letter/052012/cuba_biotech_report,Accessed:7/3 /13,JW) The Cuban

biotechnology industry is a remarkable success. It has produced a remarkable array of products, advanced vaccines, pharmaceuticals, and diagnostic products. The current set of drugs in development is robust . The industry also produces animal, fish and plant protection products.
The Cuban biotechnology industry has played a central role in improving the health of the population. Despite being a very poor country where an average workers salary is $20-30 a month, Cuba has one of the lowest maternal/child death rates in the world and one of the longest average

Cuban biotechnology industry is to one of the largest and most productive U.S. biotechnology firms or mid-sized international pharmaceutical company, as judged by size, output and products in development. The industry employs about 10,000 people, of whom more than 3,000 have university degrees, more than 500 have masters degrees, and more than 250 have received PhDs in science. Their work is done in about fifteen separate facilities that operate in concert, but apparently semi-autonomously. More than 40 products and technologies created by the industry are currently in use. The industry now produces 33 different vaccines, 33 anti-cancer drugs, 18 products to treat cardiovascular disease, and 7 drugs to treat additional diseases. The facilities seem excellent, although I did not

lifespans. These results are achieved in a country that is very poor. In my opinion, the

roughly comparable

see them first-hand. Officials claim the production facilities meet the most stringent regulatory requirements of both the U.S. and European authorities. However, the sales and value of the industry, according to my estimate, is between one-fiftieth and one-hundredth of a counterpart company in other countries, as the market for its products is almost entirely domestic since intentional restrictions apply to the sale of its products abroad. How can such a poor, communist system produce such a success? The answer is that from the earliest days the government placed health and health technology, along with education, at the center of its efforts.

4. Alt causes to why cuba is not getting medical suppliesChina, donations, and illegal smuggling AP 09- (Embargo as genocide? U.S., Cuba spar over it, AP,http://www.nbcnews.com/id/34277833/ns/world_news -americas/t/embargogenocide-us-cuba-spar-over-it/#.UdRPyDvVAuc, 12/4/09, accessed: 7/3/13, ML) Another factor, according

to two U.S. suppliers and a research group, is that China or other countries provide the goods more cheaply. "It's not the embargo," said John Kavulich, a senior policy adviser at the New York-based U.S.-Cuba Economic Trade Council, which provides nonpartisan commercial and economic information about Cuba. "These are economic and political decisions not to buy." In his U.N. speech, and later to
reporters, Rodriguez singled out the case of Alexis Garcia Iribar, a 6-year-old born in the eastern province of Guantanamo with a congenital heart defect who underwent successful but unnecessary surgery in March. Rodriguez gave no further details, but said he could have mentioned a dozen other cases where children between the ages of 5 months and 13 years also went under the knife for want of technology made only in the United States. Rodriguez named four U.S. companies he said were blocked by the embargo from selling catheters or other desperately needed supplies to Cuba. Two of them, Massachusetts-based Boston Scientific and AGA Medical of Minnesota, declined to comment. The parent company of another firm he mentioned, Applied Biosystems, said it has "not sought to sell products to Cuba, and has not applied for a license from the Commerce Department to sell products to Cuba." The fourth company, NuMed, Inc. of Hopkinton, New York, would only say: "We will make every effort to work with the U.S. government and the Cuban government in order to get our product into Cuba to help their children." To export to Cuba, medical supply companies need licenses from the Commerce Department and Treasury that also must be reviewed by the Defense and State Departments. Once a sale goes through, a third party must verify the goods' arrival in Cuba to ensure they are not re-exported, or used for military purposes or human rights violations. Restrictions also apply to other countries' medical products with more than 10 percent U.S. content. If machinery breaks, Cuba often can't get spare parts, and American firms may be denied U.S. permission to send technicians to the island to make repairs. "The letter of the law allows (the exports), but in practice, it limits Cuba's options," said Lorenzo Anasagasti, president of the Cuban Oncology Society. Commerce Department spokesman Kevin Griffis said licenses were approved for about $142 million in health care items for Cuba sold or donated in 2008. He said the licensing process was not onerous. So why did medical goods worth only $1.2 million

reach Cuba last year? Griffis wouldn't comment. Cuba

often waits for allies to donate what it needs, said the trade council's Kavulich. "They'd rather get things for free than pay for them." He said he worked with
U.S. companies that brought the first sample medical equipment to Cuba after the embargo was loosened in 1992 but Fidel Castro's government bought nothing. Sales are possible. Two years ago, Miller Exports of Key West, Florida, sold about 100 portable sonogram machines to Cuba, items totaling less than $1 million. To get around servicing problems, it included 10 extra units that could be raided for spare parts. But company head James Beaver also cited

the China factor. He said Miller Exports once had a deal in principle to sell Cuba MRI machines, but a Chinese firm offered a lower price at the last minute.
How much American medical technology Cuba really needs is also open for debate. The communist government says no patient dies for lack of medicine or equipment in its universal health care system. Also, Cuba's

Health Ministry sends buyers to the U.S. "to buy everything we need" and carry them back without permits, said Anasagasti, the Cuban oncologist.
The buyers "are blond, with blue eyes," he said, "and they even speak good English."

5. Embargo not key A. Health Care supplies exempted AP 09- (Embargo as genocide? U.S., Cuba spar over it,
AP,http://www.nbcnews.com/id/34277833/ns/world_news-americas/t/embargo-genocide-us-cuba-spar-overit/#.UdRPyDvVAuc, 12/4/09, accessed: 7/3/13, ML)

U.S. law exempted medicine and health care supplies from the embargo in 1992. It also lifted the ban on
agricultural exports in 2000 and is now Cuba's biggest supplier of food $710 million worth last year. The U.S. says it approved about $142 million in commercial and donated medical exports to the communist island in 2008. So why did less than 1 percent of it get here? The answer lies somewhere in a war of words between the estranged countries and provides a cautionary lesson as the U.S. and Cuba take halting steps toward better ties: Reality often takes a back seat to rhetoric. Cuba claims that despite the embargo exemption, the U.S. government imposes extra regulations on medical exports to discourage American companies from participating. U.S. medical export firms interviewed by The Associated Press agree the paperwork can be troublesome, but say they won't go on the record or give specific examples for fear of jeopardizing pending or future export applications. Others complained about both sides in private, but said they preferred not to do so for attribution given how touchy a subject U.S.-Cuba relations can be. The

U.S. Commerce Department says it takes only about 14 days to get a license to export medical supplies to Cuba about twice as fast as for ordinary exports to other countries . Another factor, according to two U.S. suppliers and a research group, is that China or other countries provide the goods more cheaply. " It's not the embargo ," said John Kavulich, a senior policy adviser at the New York-based U.S.-Cuba Economic Trade Council, which provides nonpartisan commercial and economic information about Cuba. " These are economic and political decisions not to buy." B. Its because of the terror list Garfield 99 Richard Garfield, Richard Garfield, nurse and epidemiologist, is professor of clinical international nursing at Columbia
University. He is the co-chair of the Human Rights Committee of the American Public Health Association and director of a PAHO/WHO collaborating centre at Columbia University. He worked in the ministry of health in Nicaragua. (The Impact of Economic Sanct ions on Health and Well-being, Relief and Rehabilitation Network Paper, November 1999, http://www.essex.ac.uk/armedcon/story_id/The%20Impact%20of%20Econmoic%20Sanctins%20on%20Health%20abd%20Well-Being.pdf, accessed: 7/2/13, amf) (In order to reduce damage the following should be considered) - Create streamlined procedures to speed up the approval of essential humanitarian goods. This could involve both a standard list of exempt items and blanket exemptions for a select group of international relief organisations. This should also involve the empowerment of a technical group to specify what goods are essential, what goods are unambiguously humanitarian, and which have a credible potential for dual use. In

most sanctions regimes it is not technical experts but politicians who define how to handle a given exemption request. While the desire of politicians to control matters is understandable, the result has been greater confusion among potential supply companies, delays in decision-making, and the politicisation of humanitarian assistance. Tragic examples include the denial of purchasing rights for spare parts for breast Xray equipment for Cuba for the stated reason of the potential for medical terrorism[sic] and the denial of permits to import nitro-glycerine paste for Iraqi angina patients due to the mistaken belief that the medicine had a potential application in building bombs.

Trade/Econ-Neg
Cant trust the aff statistics too difficult to measure the impact of an embargo Garfield 99 Richard Garfield, Richard Garfield, nurse and epidemiologist, is professor of clinical international nursing at Columbia
University. He is the co-chair of the Human Rights Committee of the American Public Health Association and director of a PAHO/WHO collaborating centre at Columbia University. He worked in the ministry of health in Nicaragua. (The Impact of Economic Sanct ions on Health and Well-being, Relief and Rehabilitation Network Paper, November 1999, http://www.essex.ac.uk/armedcon/story_id/The%20Impact%20of%20Econmoic%20Sanctins%20on%20Health%20abd%20Well-Being.pdf, accessed: 7/2/13, amf)

The methodological challenges to establishing a valid assessment of the impact of an embargo are daunting: Embargoes spread a small increase in risk of death, illness, or social stress among a large group of people. Small risks are difficult to measure with precision. This small change in risk may be obscured by concurrent events that contribute independently to the negative outcomes which may result from an embargo, such as war, mass migration, or economic crisis. The impact of trade sanctions on health and wellbeing is mediated by a countrys economic and social systems. However, sanctions impact considerably on the
production, importation and distribution of essential goods. There are thus multiple pathways and steps by which influence is exerted on health and well-being outcomes. Each sanction on economic trade is a type of natural experiment, where the

intervention is national in scope and control groups with which to make comparisons do not exist. Baseline information available in sanctioned countries is usually limited in coverage or quality and, with the exception of Cuba, the quality of information on health and well-being has declined under sanctions. Change in the distribution of essential goods within the family or due to political or social mobilisation modify the impact of resource change brought on by trade sanctions. These modifying influences are difficult to isolate and often go unrecognised or unmeasured. Even a dramatic decline in key resources does not always or immediately lead to an increase in morbidity or mortality due to the resilience of health assets as public education, healthy behaviours, trained health workers, and infrastructure, which deteriorate only gradually. Much available information comes from service statistics provided by health or social service provider institutions. These organisations have information on services provided or people served (a numerator) but seldom have information on the underlying populations (the denominator) from which service users come. Such information usually cannot be used to establish valid rates or identify changing levels of demand, need or severity. A prejudice in
favour of quantitative measures often generates an excessive focus on these service statistics or incomplete population indicators when there are, in reality, only partial counts. More

attention should be given to identifying key changes occurring in peoples lives (qualitative indicators) to focus on the most effective interventions for improving life chances and reducing mortality. To do so, special studies have to follow groups of people over time; studies carried out at one point in time cannot identify such trends. Where quantitative indicators are used the information is almost always presented as a single number, for example, a death rate of 100/1000. This form of data presentation fails to communicate the relative level of precision possible for the numbers presented. More accurate would be
the inclusion of a 95 per cent statistical confidence interval for example, 100/1000 +/- 10/1000. Researchers should also describe their impressions of the imperfections in the data drawn upon and the biases inherent in them in order to communicate the level of uncertainty associated with a numerical indicator.

Cuba Econ-Neg
Cuban economic reforms now creation of middle class Burnett 7/6/13 Victoria Burnett, writer for the New York Times. (Slowly, Cuba Is Developing an Appetite for
Spending, The New York Times, 7/6/13, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/world/americas/slowly-cuba-isdeveloping-an-appetite-for-spending.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0, accessed: 7/6/13, amf) If people have a little more money to spend, they look for ways to spend it , said Mr. Alejandro, who works at a state-owned recording studio by day and builds Web sites for his own clients by night. Now, you have a few more options for going out and entertaining yourself. Mr. Alejandro is part of a small, but increasingly visible, consumer class in Cuba whose appetite for luxuries, albeit modest ones by American standards, has caught the eye of the islands entrepreneurs . Some savvy businesspeople are transforming their homes and garages into small movie theaters,

others are renting out swimming pools or opening sports bars, cafes with video games, carwashes and even pet-grooming shops. Its not consumption as such not yet, Mr. Alejandro said. Its the seed of consumption. People like Mr. Alejandro are strictly a minority in Cuba, where the state pays its four million workers an average salary of $19 a month and pensioners receive just over half that. Though they get food rations, health care, and, in many cases, remittances from relatives or money from black-market trade, most Cubans live humbly, with even toilet paper a luxury.
A woman who requested that she be identified only by her first name, Yunesky, said her hu sbands salary of $80 a month as a private security guard was barely enough to cover food, soap and detergent for her family of five. A 3-D movie? No, no, she said, pointing to her two daughters and her grandson. I cant even afford to buy them an ice cream.

But the number of Cubans who have spending money has grown over the past four years, as President Ral Castro opened the economy to limited nonstate business and farming. Today, about one million Cubans, or 9 percent of the population, work or farm in the private sector, up from about 600,000 in 2009, according to government statistics. At the same time, new markets for used cars and houses have flushed money into the system, economists say, while the Cuban diaspora has pumped cash and goods into businesses. The new entrepreneurs and farmers have joined the others who make up Cubas peculiar consumer class:
waiters, artists, musicians, black marketeers, corrupt government workers and a clutch of longstanding business owners. And they are spending more and more openly. On an island where everyone is supposed to be equal, the privileged often keep a low profile, building scruffy walls around a well-appointed house, say, or drinking beer in their living rooms rather than in the local bar. But that is changing, said Livn Beltrn, 47, who two months ago opened a carwash and a diner in the yard of his house. There, he cleans 60 cars a day, the majority belonging to Cubans, for $3 to $7. Mr. Castro has repeatedly railed against egalitarianism, which he loosely defined as one worker loafing while another works hard. Cuba must strive for a society that is less egalitarian, but more fair, he said in a speech to the National Assembly in February. Soon after taking office in 2008, Mr. Castro opened the way for more consumption by allowing Cubans to stay in hotels for the first time and to buy mobile phones and laptop computers. Since then, the economic overhauls have legalized many businesses that formerly operated underground and have reduced the stigma attached to having money, Mr. Beltrn said. The question is not whether there are Cubans with money, said Mr. Beltrn, gesturing at the Cubans and foreigners sipping beer while his workers sprayed their cars with power hoses and vacuumed the interiors. Its

where do you spend it? How do you spend it?

With ease, apparently. Figures published by the National Statistical Office indicate that nearly 1.5 million Cubans stayed at hotels or spent money on tourist activities in 2012, up from 1.3 million in 2011. A
worker at a hotel sports club, where monthly membership costs about $50, said the ratio of Cuban clients to expatriates had risen significantly over the past three years. In Havana, privately owned restaurants that a year or two ago catered mainly to expatriates now have more Cuban clients. Outside nightspots like the comedian Roberto Riverns 3-D Caf where customers can watch a stand-up routine or a movie through a mist of dry ice the many yellow license plates, which denote cars owned by Cubans, are a clue to the heavily local crowd. Joseph L. Scarpaci, a professor emeritus at Virginia Tech who is one of the authors of a book on consumption in Cuba, said private- sector workers were a new shade of middle class, the petite bourgeoisie in Marxist terms, that emigrated after Fidel Castros 1959 revolution or evaporated when he nationalized businesses in the 1960s. He said there was now much more class stratification, but predicted that Cubans reserve about flashing their money would endure, while a residue of socialism would temper the islanders love of luxuries. Its a Cubanized version of middle-class activity, in that its not that ostentatious, he said. A Cuban guy once told me, You need to know when to flash your gold chains and when to hide them. Certainly, mistrust lingers. One Cuban, who rents out equipment for childrens parties at $60 per half a day, said his family routinely threw its garbage out a few blocks away to avoid too much attention on all he is consuming. Everyone watches, he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he feared drawing attention to his business. Cubans are very envious. Some worry that the economic changes which have generated a busy retail sector and thousands of food kiosks, bars and restaurants, but almost nothing in the way of manufacturing have created an aura of well-being that belies Cubas staggering lack of production.

Lifting embargo doesnt solve poverty only enriches the elites Bustillo 5/9/13 Mitchell Bustillo, Mitchell Bustillo will be attending Columbia University in the fall where he
will be majoring in Engineering with a minor in Economics on a Pre-Law track. He is a first-generation CubanAmerican, a Hispanic Heritage Foundation Gold Medallion Winner, and a former United States Senate Page, appointed by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. He one day hopes to return to the Hill. (Time to Strengthen the Cuban Embargo, International Policy Digest, 5/9/13, http://www.internationalpolicydigest.org/2013/05/09/time-tostrengthen-the-cuban-embargo/, accessed: 7/3/13, amf) Still there is

the idea that further increasing American tourism to this nearby Caribbean island will at least aid their impoverished citizens in some manner, but this is neither a straight-forward nor easy solution. From the annual throng of American visitors, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio declared at a 2011 Western Hemisphere Subcommittee Hearing that an estimated, $4 billion a year flow directly to the Cuban government from remittances and travel by Cuban Americans, which is perhaps the single largest source of revenue to the most repressive government in the region.
These remittances are sent by Americans to help their Cuban families, not support the Cuban government. It is also a common belief that the Cuban embargo is a leading cause of poverty among the Cuban citizens and that lifting the embargo would go a long way toward improving the Cuban standard of living. However, no amount of money can increase the living standards there as long as their current regime stands. After all, the

authorities were already skimming 20 percent of the remittances from Cuban-Americans and 90 percent of the salary paid to Cubans by non-American foreign investors, states Alvaro Vargas Llosa, Senior Fellow of The Center on Global Prosperity at The Independent Institute. However unfortunate it may be, Cuba, in its current state, is a nation consisting only of a wealthy and powerful few and an impoverished and oppressed proletariat, who possess little to no means to escape or even improve their fate. Lifting the trade embargo will not increase the general prosperity of the Cuban people, but it will increase the prosperity of the government. Ergo, the

poverty and dire situation of the Cuban people cannot be blamed on the United States or the embargo. The USFG must strengthen the embargo Bustillo 5/9/13 Mitchell Bustillo, Mitchell Bustillo will be attending Columbia University in the fall where he
will be majoring in Engineering with a minor in Economics on a Pre-Law track. He is a first-generation CubanAmerican, a Hispanic Heritage Foundation Gold Medallion Winner, and a former United States Senate Page, appointed by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. He one day hopes to return to the Hill. (Time to Strengthen the Cuban Embargo, International Policy Digest, 5/9/13, http://www.internationalpolicydigest.org/2013/05/09/time-tostrengthen-the-cuban-embargo/, accessed: 7/3/13, amf) Undoubtedly, Cuba is

capitalizing on this weakness by using the embargo as a scapegoat for all of its woes without any immediate fear of reinstated restrictions. Because the goal is to promote Cuban
democracy and freedom through non-violent and non-invasive means while refraining from providing any support to the current oppressive Cuban government, the current legislation regarding the embargo and travel ban against Cuba needs to be modernized and strengthened . The need for an embargo has never been

more important or potentially effective, even considering the current human rights and economic arguments against the embargo. Washingtons goal in its dealings with Havana is clear: facilitate the introduction and growth of democracy while increasing personal freedoms. There are many who argue that the best way to spread
democracy is by lifting the embargo and travel restrictions. U.S. Rep. Michael Honda argues that an influx of politically enlightened U.S. travelers to Cuba would put Havana in a difficult place, leading to their own people calling for change. However, this is erroneous. Due to the fractured and weakened state of the embargo,

over 400,000 U.S. travelers visited Cuba in 2011, making the United States the second-largest source of foreign visitors after Canada, according to NPRs Nick Miroff. Obviously, this influx of what has been theorized to be liberty-professing tourists has not resulted in an influx of such democratic ideals into this overwhelmingly federally controlled country. Embargo doesnt increase poverty Corzo later than 2009 Humberto Corzo, Humberto (Bert) Corzo was born in Cuba. In 1962 he graduated
from University of Havana with a degree in Civil Engineering. Since coming to the United States in 1969, he established his residence in Los Angeles, California, where in 1972 he obtained the registration as a Professional Engineer. He has over forty five years of experience in the field of Structural Engineering. He is a Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Cuban-American Association of Civil Engineers. (Lift the Cuba Embargo?, CubaNet, last date mentioned was 3/10/09, http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y09/abril09/09_O_3.html, accessed: 7/3/13, amf)

The economist Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello member of the Grupo de Trabajo de la Disidencia Interna (GTDI), has a long history of working for human rights and Cubas freedom. She was one of the authors
of the document The Homeland Belongs to All, which caused her to spent 19 months in prison. Ma rtha Beatriz, condemned to 20 years in prison for exercising her right to free speech and promotes the well being of the Cuban people, is the only woman sanctioned among the 75 opponents, intellectuals and independent journalists sentenced in summary proceedings carried out on April 2003. On 2002, she received the Heinz R. Pagels Human Rights Award for Scientists, given by the Academy of Science of New York. In her excellent analysis of the Cuban economy published in Revista Hispano Cubana, No. 14 [7] she wrote Before the demise of the USSR, in Cuba the embargo was not even talked about but now it has become a mater of live or death for the regime, since only the financial flux from the United States, opening the possibility of obtaining lines of credit, the American tourism and the increment of the remittances of relatives, will allow the regime to confront the desperate situation in which it has submerge the country. In an article on the Wall Street Journal [8] she says,

The State has failed to redistribute the resources in an equitable way and has created a very serious situation of inequality. Economic growth requires foreign investments, but the

possibilities of important foreign investments are minimal due to the conditions created by the control of the state. When one understands the great impact with which the policy of the system has towards investments and commerce, it is very easy to see that the influence of the embargo in Cubas poverty is minimal . The Cuban economy has not only worked itself out around the embargo but is also opening up. AP 12- (U.S. embargo on Cuba firmly in place, Washington Times,
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/13/us-embargo-on-cuba-firmly-in-place/?page=all, 2/13/12, accessed: 7/3/13, ML) Also each year, Cuba updates its estimate of how much the embargo has cost it, using a complicated and some say flawed - calculus that takes into account years of interest, the end of the gold standard and other factors. Last years estimate summing 49 years of sanctions was $975 billion. Even some critics of the embargo call Havanas claims exaggerated. They concede that the sanctions had a

tremendous impact when first put in place but argue Cuba was able to adapt and benefit from relationships with like-minded allies like the former Soviet Union and Venezuela. Theres no doubt that the embargo is detrimental to the Cuban economy. It complicates international financial transactions, but more importantly, it limits Cuban families access to medicine, said
Geoff Thale, a Cuba analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, which supports ending the policy. At the same time, Cubas economic problems go beyond the embargo. President Raul Castro is in the process of allowing more private-sector activity, decentralizing staterun businesses, implementing agricultural reform and slimming government payrolls.

The United States actually does have significant trade with Cuba under a clause allowing the sale of food products and some pharmaceuticals.
According to the most recent information available from Cubas National Statistics Office, the United States was the islands seventh-largest trading partner in 2010, selling $410 million in mostly food products.

Cubas economy improving Xinhuanet 7/2- xinhuanetnews, The Xinhua News Agency is the official press agency of the People's Republic
of China and the biggest center for collecting information and press conferences, ( Cuba making economic progress: president, xinhuanet.com, 7/2/13, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/business/2013-07/02/c_132503979.htm, Accessed: 7/3/13, MH) HAVANA, July 1 (Xinhua) -- Cuban President Raul Castro has praised his country's economic progress as "noticeable," the official daily Granma reported Monday. "We are progressing at a faster rate than

estimated by those who had criticized our supposed slow pace and who didn't know the difficulties we face," the president was quoted as saying at a recent meeting with the Council of Ministers
reviewing the 2012 budget and other economic issues. Economy and Planning Minister Abdel Yzquierdo said it was officially estimated that Cuba's gross domestic product (GDP) will grow 2.3 percent in the first half this year, with most economic sectors reporting an uptick, especially in trade, transportation, communication and manufacturing, the daily said. During the first half of this year, Cuban exports grew more than 5 percent year on year from 2012 and 168 million U.S. dollars less were spent on food imports thanks to lower prices of several products, Yzquierdo said. The state budget closed the first half of the year with a slight surplus, while revenue growth exceeded 4 percent mainly due to taxes, Cuban Finance and Prices Minister Lina Pedraza Rodriguez added Castro said that "we demand everyone pay his or her taxes; we cannot allow this issue to be born with problems. We have to educate and teach schoolchildren the importance of taxes in the redistribution of wealth."

US-Cuba Realtions-Neg
Status quo solves relations - Obama implementing unique approach Peters 10 - Philip Peters, Vice President of the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Virginia. (President Obama and
Cuba, Lexington Institute, March 30, 2010, http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/library/resources/documents/cuba/cuban-triangle/palabranuevamarch2010.pdf, accessed: 7/6/13, LR)

In the arena of direct diplomacy with Cuba, the Obama Administration has sought to end the restrictions that limit American diplomats to Havana and Cuban diplomats to the Washington, D.C.
area. The electronic signboard that the Bush Administration had installed on the fa ade of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana was turned off last June. The odd post that the Bush Administration created in the State Department that of Cuba Transition Coordinator has been quietly abolished. And while President Obama, like all his predecessors, presses Cuba for changes in domestic policies regarding civil and political liberties, his approach is different. According to a report last October in Madrids El Pais that the White House did not contradict, President Obama sent the following message through Spains foreign minister, who was about to travel to Havana: Let him tell the Cuban authorities that we understand that they cannot change things overnight but that, after a few years have gone by and we look back, it should be clear that this was the moment when change began. If not, there will be deep disappointment.

No negotiations possible both sides have more incentive to keep embargo Padgett 13 - Tim Padgett, 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, for Newsweek as its Mexico City bureau chief from 1990 to 1996, and for Time as its Latin America bureau chief, first in Mexico from 1996 to 1999 and then in Miami, where he also covered Florida and the U.S. Southeast, from 1999 to 2013. Padgett has also written for publications such as The New Republic and America, and he has been a frequent analyst on CNN, Fox and NPR, as well as Spanish-language networks such as Univision. (Why This Summer Offers Hope For Better U.S.-Cuba Relations, WLRN, latest known date was early June, when Snowden leaked NSA information, http://wlrn.org/post/why-summer-offers-hope-better-us-cuba-relations, accessed: 7/3/13, amf)

Cuba really doesnt want improved dialogue with Washington, since conflict with the U.S. offers more political payoff on the island. Hence Cuban leader Ra l Castros 2009
First, communist Christmas gift to Obama: the arrest of U.S. aid subcontractor Alan Gross on dubious espionage charges. Second, the hardline U.S. Cuban exile lobby doesnt want improved dialogue with Havana, since conflict with Cuba offers (or has traditionally offered) more political payoff here. Hence the CubanAmerican congressional caucus efforts in 2011 to keep Obama from letting convicted Cuban spy Ren Gonzlez return home to finish his probation, a fairly benign gesture that might have enhanced the chances of Gross r elease.

No negotiations possible embargo used as scapegoat and Cuba on the terrorist list is a pre-requisite to better relations Padgett 13 - Tim Padgett, 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, for Newsweek as its Mexico City bureau chief from 1990 to 1996, and for Time as its Latin America bureau chief, first in Mexico from 1996 to 1999 and then in Miami, where he also covered Florida and the U.S. Southeast, from 1999 to 2013. Padgett has also written for publications such as The New Republic and America, and he has been a frequent analyst on CNN, Fox and NPR, as well as Spanish-language networks such as Univision. (Why This Summer Offers Hope For Better U.S.-Cuba Relations, WLRN, latest known date was early June, when Snowden leaked NSA information, http://wlrn.org/post/why-summer-offers-hope-better-us-cuba-relations, accessed: 7/3/13, amf) Conflict As Scapegoat

Still, there are just as many reasons to be pessimistic -- starting with the imprisonment of the year-old Gross, who is serving a 15-year prison sentence in Cuba. Saladrigas says thats a sign that

64-

communist hardliners still hold sway on the island. Conflict with the U.S. has been the perfect scapegoat for many of the problems and failures of [their] revolution, he notes. The Castro regime says the U.S. does its own part to further that conflict by keeping Cuba on a list of state sponsors of terrorism, even though there appears to be scant evidence for doing so.
Cuban-American Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart recently told Fox News that Cuba should be viewed more like North Korea, or compare it to Iran.

Closing Guantanamo Detention Center AND Naval Base is a pre-requisite to Latin American relations seen as US imperialist symbol COHA 6/6/13 - Council on Hemispheric Affairs, was founded in 1975, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs
(COHA), a nonprofit, tax-exempt independent research and information organization, was established to promote the common interests of the hemisphere, raise the visibility of regional affairs and increase the importance of the inter-American relationship, as well as encourage the formulation of rational and constructive U.S. policies towards Latin America. (Guantnamo Bay: Closing GTMO Detention Center Is Wilting Olive Branch To Cuba And Rest Of Latin America Analysis, Albanay Tribune, 6/6/13, http://www.albanytribune.com/06062013-guantanamo-bayclosing-gtmo-detention-center-is-wilting-olive-branch-to-cuba-and-rest-of-latin-america-analysis/, accessed: 7/4/13, amf) For many people in the United States, including President Obama, closing Guantnamo Bay means shutting down the detention center but leaving the naval base open. However, closing only the detention center would do

little to improve the relationship between Cuba and the United States. Timothy Ashby, a Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs and a former senior official at the U.S. Department of Commerce has observed: I do not think closure of the GTMO center would have any impact on bilateral relations with Cuba. If the entire base were shut down and handed back to Cuba, I think the Cuban government would react favorably and see it as a goodwill gesture. But that will not happen even though the actual
base is an unnecessary expense and serves no more of a strategic purpose than the detention center. For Obama, closing the Guantnamo Bay detention center has more to do with improving the image of the United States in the world than it does with improving U.S. relations with Cuba or other Latin American countries and the Caribbean. As Obama decried in his May 23 speech, the Guantnamo Bay detention center is an unnecessary moral and financial burden on the United States. But the naval base itself, which Obama has never suggested closing,

still serves a strategic purpose of projecting U.S. military power in the Western Hemisphere.
Washingtons cursory discourse concerning Guantnamo Baywhich neglects to consider reverting the naval base to Cuba as an optionsuggests that its imperialist inclinations have not fully abated. Broadly speaking, the continued presence of U.S. troops at Guantnamoregardless of whether or not those troops are there to detain terroristsshows that Washington is not ready to step down from its

traditional strategic/militaristic position in Latin America or improve relations with Cuba.

Bolender argued that:

Guantnamo is a symbol of the imperialistic past [of the United States] towards Latin America, and in particular Cuba. The detention center should be shut down, those not charged freed immediately, and the rest, if any are truly guilty, sent to the United States. The bigger situation is that the base itself, forced upon Cuba more than 100 years ago, should be returned to Cuba. [U.S. citizens] have no right to be there, except under a one-sided treaty that the Cuban government has long condemned. That would certainly improve relations between the two countries, but the Americans have made it clear they have no intention
of returning what rightfully belongs to Cuba.

Obamas failure to address the imperial history of the Guantnamo Bay naval base or respond to (let alone acknowledge) the Cuban governments pleas for the naval base to be returned to Cuba are

symbolic of Washingtons unflinching Latin America policy. Even as it shows faint signs of winding down its global war on terroras evidenced in Obamas speechWashingtons maintenance of the naval base in Guantnamo remains an obstacle to developing a policy of mutual respect in U.S.-Latin American relations. US-Cuban relations strengthening Obama sees positive signals from the island Dinan 09 Stephen Dinan, He graduated from Stanford University with a degree in human biology and holds a
master's in East-West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies. He has studied many systems of personal growth and facilitated workshops for over twelve years. (U.S. -Cuba Relations Continuing to Thaw, The Washington Times, April 18, 2009, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/18/us-cuba-relationscontinuing-to-thaw/?page=all, Accessed: 7/2/13, sh) Using the most conciliatory language between their nations in decades, President

Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro continued what has been a weeklong thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations, with Mr. Obama saying Friday that he has seen positive signals from the island nation, a day after Mr. Castro
said he would be open to bilateral talks on expanding political rights. Attending the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad, Mr. Obama also exchanged a greeting with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has sparred frequently with the United States, and he called

for a new hemispheric bargain in which other countries stop blaming the United States for every problem that arises. Mr. Obama said he is prepared to alter U.S. policy on Cuba, an issue that has become a source of bitter division between the United States and its would-be Latin American allies.
The United States seeks a new beginning with Cuba, said Mr. Obama, adding that he welcomes Mr. Castros openness to talks and sees in the short term critical steps we can take toward a new day. The relatively warm exchange with Cuba started Monday with Mr. Obamas move to lift the

strictest parts of the U.S. travel and trade embargo, and it continued through Mr. Castros olive -branch remarks Thursday and the Obama administrations
various replies Friday. We have sent word to the U.S. government in private and in public that we are willing to discu ss everything human rights, freedom of the press, political prisoners, everything, Mr. Castro said Thursday in Venezuela, where he was meeting with other leftist leaders from the Western Hemisphere ahead of the weekend summit. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, traveling in the Dominican Republic, said the U.S. welcomed Mr. Castros comments and the overture that they represent, and were taking a very serious look at how we intend to respond. While signaling a warming of relations, the back and forth does not guarantee anything. The White House said this week it wants concrete actions by the Cuban government as a show of good faith.

Cuba does not want dialogue, it wants money Calzon 13 Frank Calzon - He is the executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington. (Castro
Wants Money, Not a Dialogue, The Miami Herald, April 14, 2013, http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/14/3340674/castro-wants-money-not-a-dialogue.html, Accessed: 7/2/13, sh) Venezuelan President Hugo Chvez died, and Ra

l Castro is searching for investors in Cuba. Chvez spent billions of Venezuelas petro-dollars shoring up Cubas economy but Venezuelas new leaders may not be as beneficent. Venezuela may cut off its Cuban subsidy, just as new Russian leaders did after the Soviet Unions demise. American taxpayers are at the top of Castros list, but can the Cuban communist government cash in on its
years of political theater proclaiming itself the victim of American economic aggression while running its own economy into the ground and training and financing anti-American insurgencies around the world? Perhaps it can, given that the collective U.S. memory is rather short if not wholly forgiving.

Earlier this year,

Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy visited the Cuban dictator and returned home saying this is the time to overcome continuing obstacles and to improve relations because that would be in the best interests of both countries. The senator means well, but his statements cry out for a
more detailed appraisal of U.S.-Cuban relations.

The real questions are: Improve relations for what purpose? And under what conditions? It might be in Americas best interests to improve relations with North Korea, Syria and Iran too, but the obstacles standing in the way are similar to those in Cuba. There is no quid pro quo their leaders are willing to offer.
Granted that while in Cuba, Sen. Leahy managed to wrangle permission from Gen. Castro to visit Alan Gross, a subcontractor with the U.S.Agency for International Development, who is serving a 15-year prison sentence. Gross after-the-fact crime was giving a laptop computer and satellite telephone to a Jewish organization seeking access to the Internet. Gross is innocent and also quite ill. Amnesty International reports hes los t more than 100 pounds in prison, and he has developed a growth that may be cancerous. Havana wont allow an American physician chosen by his family to see him. There are others. Amnesty International says that Calixto Martinez, a Cuban independent journalist a reporter not working for state-run media was jailed when he went to Havanas international airport to ask about a shipment of cholera medication sent by the World Health Organization. He has not been charged nor had a trial. Havana does not want tourists to hear about a cholera outbreak. But, back to the benefits of lifting what remains of the U.S. embargo against the Castros dynasty:

Cuba is broke and has suspended payments to many creditors.

There is no ban on American companies selling foodstuffs or medicines to Cuba, which they do on a cash-andcarry basis. But Washington wont provide credit to Cuba, i.e., absorb the loss if the regime fails to pay its suppliers. Thus American companies selling to Cuba get paid and American taxpayers arent on the

hook when the regime fails to pay what it owes. Individually, Cubans have no purchasing power to speak of. The government is the islands only employer and pays workers the equivalent of $20 a month. Except for cigars, Cuba now has very little
to sell to anyone. For 200 years, the engine of Cubas economy was its sugar industry. It is now in shambles due to state planning. Lastly, the United States lists Cuba as a state-sponsor of international terrorism. It does so, despite the best efforts of Ana Belen Montes, a high-ranking Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, who presented Havana as peace-loving and no threat to anyone. Montes was a spy for Cuba. She pleaded guilty and is now in a federal penitentiary. Her reports are still used by Castros advocates.

It is difficult to improve relations with dictatorships that deny human rights, ban labor unions and abuse and jail peaceful dissidents for talking about democracy. Visiting members of European
parliaments have been arbitrarily arrested in Cuba. President Obama tried unilaterally to extend a hand of friendship without success. Today Havana wants money, not a meaningful dialogue that might lead to a transition. Like Sen. Leahy, I wish things could be different, but that requires a demonstrable Castro initiative to change the nature of his rule in Cuba.

Cuba Energy-Neg
Drilling in Cuba wont cause US energy independence Claver-Carone 08 Mauricio Claver-Carone is the Executive Director of Cuba Democracy Advocates in Washington, D.C., a nonpartisan organization dedicated to the promotion of a transition in Cuba towards human rights, democracy and the rule of law. In an independent capacity, Mauricio serves on the Board of Directors of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, the largest, single foreign-policy political committee in the United States. Until November 2003, Mauricio was an attorney-advisor for the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Poder Magazine recently recognized Mauricio as one of 20 entrepreneurs, executives, leaders and artists under 40 who are shaping the future of the U.S. and the world. (How the Cuban Embargo Protects the Environment, The Ney York Times, July 25, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/25/opini on/25ihtedcarone.1.14793496.html?_r=0 , Accessed: 06/27/2013, sh)

Frankly, it

is bewildering why some seem to believe that U.S. companies partnering with one more anti-American dictatorship to explore and develop oil fields will somehow reduce fuel costs for American consumers and contribute to U.S. energy independence. One needs only to look at the reaction of the international oil markets when Hugo Chvez of Venezuela nationalized assets of U.S.-based ConocoPhillips and Chevron. What message would the United States be sending to oil-rich, tyrannical regimes around the world about the consequences of expropriation if we were now to lift the embargo that was imposed after Fidel Castro expropriated the assets of Esso, Shell and Texaco?

Tourism-Neg
Tourism doesnt solve democracy or censorship gives money to regime Bustillo 5/9/13 Mitchell Bustillo, Mitchell Bustillo will be attending Columbia University in the fall where he
will be majoring in Engineering with a minor in Economics on a Pre-Law track. He is a first-generation CubanAmerican, a Hispanic Heritage Foundation Gold Medallion Winner, and a former United States Senate Page, appointed by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. He one day hopes to return to the Hill. (Time to Strengthen the Cuban Embargo, International Policy Digest, 5/9/13, http://www.internationalpolicydigest.org/2013/05/09/time-tostrengthen-the-cuban-embargo/, accessed: 7/3/13, amf) One example is the case of Alan Gross, an American citizen working for USAID. He was arrested in Cuba in 2009 under the allegations of Acts against the Independence and Territorial Integrity of the State while distributing computers and technological equipment to Jewish communities in Cuba. He is currently serving the fourth of

his fifteen-year conviction, is in poor health, and receiving little to no aid from the U.S., according to the Gross Family website. In light of this, it is hard to believe that the U.S. would be able to protect a large number of tourists in a hostile nation, especially when they plan to profess
political freedom. This view is further promoted by the Ladies in White, a Cuban dissident group that supports the embargo. They fear ending it would only serve to strengthen the current dictatorial regime because

the real blockade, they claim, is within Cuba. Allowing American travelers to visit Cuba does not help propel the cause of Cuban democracy; it hampers it. Still there is the idea that further increasing American tourism to this nearby Caribbean island will at least aid their impoverished citizens in some manner, but this is neither a straight-forward nor easy solution. From the annual throng of American visitors, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio declared at a 2011 Western Hemisphere Subcommittee Hearing that an estimated, $4 billion a year flow directly to the Cuban government from remittances and travel by Cuban Americans, which is perhaps the single largest source of revenue to the most repressive Tourism bad crushes key wildlife safe havens Kramer 10- Kelley Kramer, Proposal/Technical Writing Intern at Coastal Environmental Group, (Cuba: The
Accidental Eden, Last Date 2010, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/cuba-the-accidental-eden/productioncredits/5807/, Accessed: 7/2/13, MH) Cuba may have been restricted politically and economically for the past 50 years, but its borders have remained open to wildlife for which Cubas undeveloped islands are an irresistible draw. While many islands in the Caribbean have poisoned or paved over their ecological riches on land and in the sea in pursuit of a growing tourist industry, Cubas wild landscapes have remained virtually untouched, creating a safe haven for rare and intriguing indigenous animals, as well as for hundreds of species of migrating birds and marine creatures. Coral reefs have benefited, too. Independent research has shown that Cubas corals are doing much better than others both in the Caribbean and around the world.

Hurricanes-Neg
Cuban hurricane prevention efforts effective and impressive Sims and Vogelmann 2- Holly Sims and Kevin Volgeman, Department of Public Administration and Policy,
State University of New York, Albany, NY, USA, (POPULAR MOBILIZATION AND DISASTER MANAGEMENT IN CUBA, Center for Urban Studies, 2002,http://www.centerforurbanstudies.com/documents/electronic_library/cuba/disaster/disasterpreparation.pdf, 6/28/13, MH)

Cuba has effectively implemented a system of popular mobilization and education to prepare people for such natural disasters as hurricanes. Compliance with evacuation orders is impressive. Top priority is attached to saving lives. The countrys acclaimed programme accounts for the limited toll of Hurricane Michelle in November 2001, which was the most powerful storm since 1944. Five Cubans died in the storm, which wreaked havoc in Jamaica, Honduras, and Nicaragua. This article reviews recent Cuban experience in disaster preparedness, which was achieved despite material scarcity. Since the
prestigious Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns of increased susceptibility to disasters in future,

Cubas record deserves wide attention.

UN CP
UN COUNTERPLAN Solvency Advocate: The US should be more involved with UN reform and function Anderson 11 Ericka Anderson, has worked in political communications, worked on Capitol Hill for the House Republican
Conference, holds degree in journalism from Indiana University [Morning Bell: Should America Carry the U.N. The Heritage Network, 10/28/11, http://blog.heritage.org/2011/10/28/morning-bell-should-america-carry-the-u-n/, accessed: 6/28/13, JK] In the latest installment of Heritages Understanding America series, Brett Schaefer addresses Americas role as a member o f international organizations. He

explains that conflicting interests will nearly always hinder forward movement on issues of peace, security, and human rights but that doesnt negate the benefit of having a platform for achieving U.S. interests. Schaefer further explains the risks of participation in these bodies: Supporting international organizations is not without consequence. It is a burden, albeit sometimes a burden worth bearing. But refusing to recognize the limitations of international organizations and their potential to cause harm does a disservice to the American people. Joining with friendly nations for a mutual benefit or avenue to problem solving can prove to be valuable for the United States, but Americas leaders must never sacrifice the greater
American interest for the sake of compromise. When does our commitment to an internati onal organization become a problem? Thats a question U.S. leaders must continually ask themselves. Schaefer explains how the United States must seek to strike that balance: If the United States is not to undermine its interests, it must abandon its default position of supporting and engaging with international organizations regardless of their performance. Instead, the U.S. must assess honestly whether each organization works, whether its mission is focused and attainable and not dependent on good faith that does not exist, and whether it advances U.S. interests. International

organizations are a tool to attain a goal, not an end in themselves. They are one way for the U.S. to defend its interests and to seek to address problems in concert with other nations. But they are not the only option, and their strengths and weaknesses should be clearly understood. America played a key role in the founding of the U.N., so our stake in its success is important. But there are always risks in working with other nations and each international organization relies at least in part on the good faith of those involved. However, each countrys own priorities come first, which is why American leadership must be eternally vigilant in assessing the record and actions of participating countries. US funding is a tool for UN reform Blanchfield 11 - Luisa Blanchfield, specialist in International Relations for the Congressional Research Service [United Nations
Reform: U.S. Policy and International Perspectives, Congressional Research Service, 12/21/11, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33848.pdf, accessed: 6/28/13, JK]

In the past, Congress has used its authority to limit U.S. funds to the United Nations as a mechanism for influencing U.N. policy.53 In some cases, Congress withheld a proportionate share of funding for U.N. programs and policies of
which it did not approve. In the past, it has withheld funds from regular budget programs, including the U.N. Special Unit on Palestinian Rights (for projects involving the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO]), and the Preparatory Commission for the Law of the Sea. Currently, the only proportionate U.S. withholding from the regular budget is for some activities and programs related to the PLO or entities associated with it.54

The overall impact of withholding a proportionate share of assessed payments depends on the origin of the programs funding. If a program is funded by the U.N. regular budget and the United States withholds a proportionate share of its normal contributions, the cost of the program will most likely be covered by surplus regular budget funds. Some U.N. programs are funded from several budgets
that may include the U.N. regular budget, specialized agency budgets, and separate conference and administrative budgets. Because of this, it may be more difficult for U.S. proportionate withholdings to have a significant impact because the programs funding comes fr om several sources. In such cases, a U.S. withholding would have little or no impact on the programs operation or funding levels. If the United States withholds funds from a program funded primarily by member state contributions, however, the

impact of the United States

withholding or suspending contributions could be greater. In addition to withholding a proportionate share of U.S. funding, Congress may consider enacting legislation decreasing or increasing U.S. assessment levels or linking payment of U.S. arrears to policies it favors. In October 1993, for example, Congress directed that
the U.S. payments of peacekeeping assessments be capped at 25% (lower than the assessment level set by the United Nations).58 Congress also

used this strategy to further its U.N. reform policies. Enacted legislation such as the Helms-Biden Agreement linked U.S. assessment levels and the payment of U.S. arrears to reform benchmarks

The US will involve itself in UN reform with better relations; Obama proves Blanchfield 11 - Luisa Blanchfield, specialist in International Relations for the Congressional Research Service [United Nations
Reform: U.S. Policy and International Perspectives, Congressional Research Service, 12/21/11, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33848.pdf, accessed: 6/27/13, JK] While the

Obama Administration supports U.S. engagement in the United Nations, it recognizes the need for improving the organization through reform. Examples of the Administrations reform priorities include: enforcing budget discipline by taking cost-saving measures such as eliminating vacant U.N. posts and exploring alternate budget practices; improving transparency and accountability by strengthening the effectiveness of U.N. bodies
charged with evaluating performance and investigating abuses, including the Ethics Office, the Independent Audit Advisory Committee, the Board of Auditors, and the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS);66 reforming

human resources practices to create a more mobile and merit-based workforce by further streamlining U.N. staff contracting and conditions of service across the U.N. system; and overhauling day-to-day business practices such as upgrading information technology, and
improving procurement procedures, accounting procedures, and budgeting processes

US uniquely key to implement necessary reforms in the UN BWC 9 - Better World Campaign, works with policy makers, media and American public to foster a strong US UN relationship that
promotes core American interests and builds a more secure, prosperous, and healthy world [Renewing the U.S.-UN Relationship: Opportunities for 2009, Better World Campaign, 2009, http://www.betterworldcampaign.org/assets/pdf/briefing-book/renewing-the-us-un-relationship.pdf, accessed: 6/27/13, JK] In our increasingly interdependent, globalized world, the

United Nations is the indispensable platform for international cooperation on the great global challenges of our time -- from proliferation of weapons to widespread poverty, climate change, and terrorism. Working through the United Nations helps to share the burdens and costs of creating a safer and more peaceful, prosperous, and just world. The United Nations must be updated to meet the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. However, UN renewal will not succeed without strong U.S. commitment and leadership . U.S. investment in the United Nations will pay off substantially in
helping to enhance our standing internationally and strengthen President Obama's ability to keep America safe and strong.

DEFENSE Absent reform, UN fails Ros-Lehtinen 13 - Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, US Representative from Floridas 27th district [The Broken UN Needs a Strong U.S. Presence
to Facilitate the Reforms it Badly Needs, Says Ros-Lehtinen, 6/7/13, http://ros-lehtinen.house.gov/press-release/broken-un-needs-strong-uspresence-facilitate-reforms-it-badly-needs-says-ros-lehtinen, accessed: 6/27/13, JK]

The United Nations is an institution in need of serious reform. While at the UN, Ambassador Rice was unable to institute positive changes to fix this broken system. She brought a more laissez-faire approach to a problem that needs someone willing to roll up her sleeves and make reform a priority. The UN needs someone who can work to bring true reforms to that mismanaged institution, and I hope Samantha Power has the desire and the ability to
recognize what corrective actions need to be taken, and will push back and fight harder against the anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, anti-United States agenda in that body.

Fundamental problems are spread throughout the UN Robertson 6 - Geoffrey Robertson, human rights lawyer, academic, author, and broadcaster, [Eight Reasons Why the UN Human Rights
Committee is Ineffective, Center on Law and Globalization, 2006, http://clg.portalxm.com/library/keytext.cfm?keytext_id=122, accessed: 6/27/13, JK]

Robertson says that it is not fair to single out the Human Rights Committee as unique with respect to the challenges it faces. In fact, the

problems are endemic to the UN system. Because the UN is made up of member states, it will often go out of its way to avoid criticizing its members. Though the UN Security Council will occasionally level sanctions against a member state, the balance of history demonstrates that UN organs are more likely to turn a blind eye to human rights abuses. The UN is ineffective logistically now, Congo proves Dixon 12 - Robyn Dixon, writer for Los Angeles Times, winner of RFK Journalism Award which recognizes outstanding reporting of the
lives and strife of disadvantaged people throughout the world, [UN force in Congo, MONUSCO, criticized as ineffective, Los Angeles Times, 12/22/12, http://articles.latimes.com/2012/dec/22/world/la-fg-un-congo-20121223, accessed: 6/27/13, JK] In June, the International Crisis Group, a think tank specializing in conflict resolution, said

the mission had lost its credibility

and called for a review of its functions. "Without a new approach and reengagement by the Security Council, MONUSCO risks becoming a $1.5-billion empty shell," the International Crisis Group's president, Louise Arbour, wrote in an open letter to the U.N. Security Council in June, when the mission's mandate was up for renewal. " The mission has had strikingly little success at fulfilling its primary objective to protect civilians," Arbour said, though she acknowledged some
improvement. U.N. officials this month announced a sweeping review of MONUSCO's peacekeeping mission to determine how to better assist Congo civilians. In 2000, when the force first arrived in the capital, Kinshasa, people lined the streets and cheered. Five years later, dozens

of peacekeepers were dismissed for sexually abusing Congolese teenagers. The peacekeeping mission now numbers about 18,000 troops, mainly from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Uruguay, Egypt, Nepal and South Africa. At this point, analysts say, the mission's biggest problem is logistical. The peacekeepers have few helicopters, and poor road conditions between Goma and
outlying villages, where militia attacks often take place, can delay troops for hours. But critics also maintain that the force is reluctant to take swift, firm action to prevent atrocities. "MONUSCO faces a serious shortage of well-trained and equipped peacekeepers, intelligence analysts, interpreters, helicopters and military assets such as fire support," Human Rights Watch said in a 2011 report. It said the Lord's Resistance Army, led by Joseph Kony, widely accused of war crimes, continued to mount attacks on civilians in Congo, but MONUSCO deployed less than 5% of its force to areas where that militia operates. "Far too often ,

national armies and United Nations peacekeepers have left terrified civilians to face the LRA threat on their own," the report said.

Conditions CP
CP Text: The US should condition lifting the embargo on freeing of political prisoners and acceptance of a multi-party system Conditions CP best shouldnt sacrifice principles for business Corzo later than 2009 Humberto Corzo, Humberto (Bert) Corzo was born in Cuba. In 1962 he graduated
from University of Havana with a degree in Civil Engineering. Since coming to the United States in 1969, he established his residence in Los Angeles, California, where in 1972 he obtained the registration as a Professional Engineer. He has over forty five years of experience in the field of Structural Engineering. He is a Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Cuban-American Association of Civil Engineers. (Lift the Cuba Embargo?, CubaNet, last date mentioned was 3/10/09, http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y09/abril09/09_O_3.html, accessed: 7/3/13, amf)
Among the dissidents of associations within Cuba that work for the advance of Human Rights and peaceful changes towards democracy and social justice, and support the embargo the following ones stand out: Doctor

Oscar Elas Biscet, president of the Lawton Foundation of Human Rights (FLDH), who served a prison sentence of three years for acts of
protests in defense of human rights, was sentenced on April 10, 2003 to 25 years in prison for supposedly having violated law No. 88 with regard to Cubas protection of national independence and economy. In May 1999, after the
reading of the document answering the declarations of senator Dodd [6], responding to one of the questions of the journalists said, The

embargo is one of the weapons in a nonviolent civic fight. The reply of the FLDH to the statement of senator Dodd The moment for lifting the sanctions against Cuba has arrived was as follow "The lifting of the embargo must be conditioned on respect for human rights, the freeing of political prisoners, the acceptance of the multi-party system and free and democratic elections. This is a question of principles, not business ."
The document finish with this statement: "We know that we can be jailed for up to 20 years under Law 88, but it is preferable to suffer and maintain our decorum than to embrace injustice because of cowardice." The

economist Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello member of the Grupo de Trabajo de la Disidencia Interna (GTDI), has a long history of working for human
rights and Cubas freedom. She was one of the authors of the document The Homeland Belongs to All, which caused her to spent 19 months in prison. Martha Beatriz, condemned to 20 years in prison for exercising her right to free speech and promotes the well being of the Cuban people, is the only woman sanctioned among the 75 opponents, intellectuals and independent journalists sentenced in summary proceedings carried out on April 2003. On 2002, she received the Heinz R. Pagels Human Rights Award for Scientists, given by the Academy of Science of New York. In her excellent analysis of the Cuban economy published in Revista Hispano Cubana, No. 14 [7] she wrote

Before the demise of the USSR, in Cuba the embargo was not even talked about but now it has become a mater of live or death for the regime, since only the financial flux from the United States, opening the possibility of obtaining lines of credit, the American tourism and the increment of the remittances of relatives, will allow the regime to confront the desperate situation in which it has submerge the country. In an article on the Wall Street Journal [8] she says, The State has failed to redistribute the resources in an equitable way and has created a very serious situation of inequality. Economic growth requires foreign investments, but the possibilities of important foreign investments are minimal due to the conditions created by the control of the state. When one understands the great impact with which the policy of the system has towards investments and commerce, it is very easy to see that the influence of the embargo in Cubas poverty is minimal .
Speaking in Havana on November 2002 during the first session of Cuba's National Assembly Castro dismissed any possibility of success to the opponents of the regime. He said: "There is no opposition to speak of because the dissidents are like fish in an empty fish tank; there is no oxygen left for the counterrevolution and there will be even less in the future

Politics
Wasserman hates the plan --- empirically proven Wasserman 12 --- Debbie Wasserman Schultz is the U.S. Representative for Florida's 23rd congressional district, a member of the
Democratic Party and the Chair of the Democratic National Committee (Floor Statement: Wasserman Schultz Speaks Out on Oil Drilling, February 16, 2012, http://wassermanschultz.house.gov/2012/02/wasserman-schultz-speaks-out-on-oil-drilling.shtml, accessed July 3, 2013, MY)

rise in strong opposition to the so-called PIONEER Act that among other things, repeals the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, or GOMESA. Its hard to believe that the lessons of the Deepwater
Mr. Speaker, I Horizon oil spill are already being forgotten, less than two years after almost five million barrels of oil flowed out into the ocean and devastated the Gulf regions environment and economy. Through this horrible tragedy, we learned first-hand the dangers of drilling at extreme ocean depths and the difficulties in stopping a spill once it occurs. We also learned the dangers posed by the powerful Gulf of Mexico loop currents in the eastern Gulf. These loop currents are capable of transporting spilled petroleum into the Florida straits, through the Florida Keys, and onto shorelines up the Atlantic side of my home state, endangering hundreds of miles of coastline. We were extremely lucky that more of Florida was not affected by the Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010, and that the site of the spill was not within these normally occurring loop currents. Allowing drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico would place leasing directly within the strong loop current and is the height of folly. Even if we did not have such a powerful precautionary tale as the Deepwater Horizon accident, drilling near Floridas coast simply does not add up. Floridas $65 billion tourism industry relies on pristine beaches. Florida is also home to 85 percent of the United States c oral reefs which are profoundly sensitive to oil spills. Coastal resources like mangroves and sea grasses would also be put in harms way, as well as Floridas vibrant commercial and recreational fishing industries. That

is why so many bipartisan members of Floridas Congressional delegation have lined up in opposing drilling near our shores. In fact, a few weeks ago Florida Congressman John Mica held a field hearing in Miami to discuss the dangers of offshore drilling by Cuba that is within 100 miles of Floridas shores. The Florida Lieutenant Governor, Jennifer Carroll, stated at the hearing that, the Deepwater Horizon incident in 2010 has shown that a spill that poses even a potential of impacting Floridas water or land causes a huge negative impact on the economy. I could not have said it better myself, and this is why we simply should not allow drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. I would welcome a debate weighing the harms
against the benefits of expanding offshore exploration off Floridas coastline if the benefits were comparable to the risks -- but they are not. Not even close. Expanding

drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico would not lower gas prices, or produce enough oil to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. In short, opening the eastern Gulf of Mexico is not the answer to our energy concerns. If we are serious about weaning our dependence on foreign oil, we
need to continue the clean energy policies of the Obama Administration and efforts in recent years by Congress. For example, the 2007 bipartisan effort to increase the fuel efficiency of cars over the next decade will hav e a profound effect on the demand side of the supply-demand equation. The Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that by 2020, the new auto fuel standards will save consumers $65 billion in fuel costs by cutting consumption by 1.3 million barrels a day -- more than could be produced in the eastern Gulf in an entire year. Finally, a little history lesson on the 2006 law this bill will repeal. In 2006, Republican leadership in both houses of Congress enacted GOMESA which opened eight million acres for new oil drilling leases off Floridas panhandle in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico. In exchange, the 2006 law placed the rest of the Eastern Gulf under a statutory moratorium until 2022. That agreement should be honored, not tossed aside less than six years later. Our

word must be our bond or negotiations and handshakes are rendered meaningless. Beyond the economic and environmental reasons for honoring the 2006 deal, protecting our military training areas is also important. The military uses the Eastern Gulf of Mexico for training operations and the Pentagon has said that drilling structures and associated development are incompatible with military activities, such as missile flights, low-flying drone aircraft, and training. For this reason, the Pentagon has long opposed
expanding offshore drilling in the eastern Gulf. The 2006 law incorporates an agreement between the Department of the Interior and the Defense Department to set aside waters east of the military mission line to preserve military readiness. On

behalf of Floridas tourism industries, fishing industries, and on behalf of the needs of the Defense Department and in the name of military readiness, I urge my colleagues to remove this terrible provision from this legislation. To add insult to injury, it is unconscionable that House leadership has refused to allow a vote on a bi-partisan amendment that
I co-sponsored with my Florida colleagues that would have stripped out the GOMESA repeal.

Wasserman against Cuban policy Ham 4/9 --- Mary Katherine Ham is Editor-at-Large at Hot Air and a contributing editor at Townhall Magazine and Ham appears regularly
on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News program, The O'Reilly Factor (Showdown: DWS vs. Beyonc on Cuba trip, April 9, 2013 , http://hotair.com/archives/2013/04/09/showdown-dws-vs-beyonce-on-cuba-trip/, accessed July 3, 2013, MY)

Its not just Republican lawmakers raising their eyebrows at the vacation recording artists Jay-Z and Beyonc took to Cuba this week. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is head of the Democratic National Committee, but also represents a chunk of Miami and many Cuban-American voters: U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Weston said Tuesday shed like to know more about the recent Cuba visit by mega-entertainers Beyonc and Jay-Z Im absolutely uncomfortable with the way, and concerned about, how not just Jay-Z and Beyonc but some of the travel, the people to people travel, that has been occurring in Cuba, has resulted, Wasserman Schultz said in a brief interview Tuesday with the
Sun Sentinel.

Immigration Turns Case

Immigration reform is key for promoting human rights Human Rights Watch (Why Immigrant Stories Matter: The Human Rights Case For a Path To US Legal Status, No Date,
http://www.hrw.org/features/why-immigrant-stories-matter, accessed: 7/10/13, ckr) Within the impassioned debate on immigration in the United States, many arguments have been made for comprehensive immigration reform that would include a path to legal status for the millions of undocumented immigrants in the US. President Barack Obama said in his State of the Union address that allowing talented young undocumented immigrants

to legalize their status would brighten the

social and economic future of the United States. Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York believes such reform is crucial
for revitalizing the economy. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush has argued that deporting 12 million undocumented immigrants would be ineffective and expensive. These are all valid policy considerations for the US government. The US government must not forget, however, that

there are also human rights reasons for immigration reform. As Human Rights Watch has previously documented, undocumented immigrants are particularly vulnerable to human rights abuses, such as trafficking, rape, and other serious violent crimes. Undocumented immigrants, like everyone else in the US, have a right
to protection from such abuses and the right to access remedies, rights that are not adequately protected now. At the same time, many undocumented immigrants have lived in the US for a long time and have ties to US communities through family, work, education, and civic engagement. Although no single one of these factors entitles an immigrant to legal status, international law recognizes that the case for nationality is strengthened by the extent of an individual's ties to the country. Similarly, long-term

residence and deeply rooted ties implicate the human right to respect for one's family and private life, rights that are guaranteed in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which the US has been a party since 1992. We
met the people whose stories are told below in just one small corner of the United States, but there are many others like them throughout the country. In their stories, you will see how human

rights are central to the everyday lives of real people living in the US today. The color coding in the stories highlights how specific details of their lives support the protection of these rights. Together
with the Human Rights Watch report, "Tough, Fair, and Practical," these stories illustrate how a human rights framework strongly supports a program of earned legalization for undocumented immigrants in the US. Human Rights Watch thanks the immigrants who generously shared their stories, as well as Professor David Griffith at East Carolina University and Brianna Castro who provided invaluable assistance.

CIR key to democracy Brawner 6/27- Steve Brawner is a freelance journalist, a former newspaper editor, and a former aide to former Gov. Mike Huckabee and
Lt. Gov. Win Rockefeller Commentary: Failure Of Immigration Reform Means Failure Of Democracy, Times Record Online Edition, June 27, 2013, http://swtimes.com/sections/opinion/steve-brawner/commentary-failure-immigration-reform-means-failure-democracy.html, accessed: 7/10/13, lkh) The Founding Fathers deliberately designed American democracy to be hard, but they did not design it to fail . If some type of immigration reform is not enacted within the next 12 months, then American democracy will have suffered a major failure. The current immigration process is completely broken, and everyone knows it. Eleven million people now live here illegally, forming a shadow economy and living on the periphery of the law. If Congress cant do anything about this, what problems can it address? Lets be blunt: Illegal immigrants are here because they work cheap. More of us benefit from their labor than are deprived of the jobs they displace, so policymakers have let this continue for decades. The government has held one hand up, palm out, telling them to stay away. With the other, its motioned behind its back for them to come here. The result is an entrenched system that mocks the law, makes us less secure, takes advantage of impoverished people and traps their children in a life of second-class noncitizenship. It should be obvious that the country has reached the point where, using the blueprint provided by the Founding Fathers, elected officials are supposed to work together and make progress, even though no one will get exactly what they want. While we can argue over the details and goodness knows we will theres really only one broad framework that makes that progress possible, and its roughly wha t the Senates so-called Gang of Eight has proposed. Before anything else happens, the border must be made more secure. Enforcement measures and penalties must be stiffened against employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. Then, there must be a long and difficult path to citizenship for current illegal immigrants. We cannot simply send home 11 million people without severely disrupting the entire Western Hemispheres economy. Well need younger workers to help pay for Social Security and Medicar e, anyway. Finally, a much easier path to citizenship must be defined for those who were brought here illegally by their parents in many cases, carried here in their arms. Does

anyone really want to make the argument that a child who was brought to America at age 4, excelled in American schools and enlists to serve in the American military shouldnt be given a chance to be an American citizen? Of course, passing any kind of major reform requires getting it past a gauntlet of selfish
interests, but the Founding Fathers knew people are selfish and took that into account when they devised the lawmaking process. Besides, its in both Republicans and Democrats selfish interest to pass comprehensive reform. In the last election, 71 percent of voters wh o consider themselves Latinos voted for President Barack Obama. Both parties want to appeal to this fast-growing group of voters. If Republicans dont,

theyll stop winning presidential elections for a very long time. To sum it up, everyone

recognizes the status quo is unacceptable. Elected officials have incentives to try to change that status quo. And a path forward exists that can make the border more secure, create more law-abiding taxpayers, and treat fairly those whose only crime was to be brought here by their parents in search of a better life. If Congress cant do anything about
this, it wont be just the immigration system that has failed to serve us. It will be our democracy.

CIR boosts ag increased effectiveness and stability Looker 6/27 Daniel Looker, business editor, agricultural economics (Senate Passes Immigration Bill, Agriculture.com,
http://www.agriculture.com/news/policy/senate-passes-immigration-bill_4-ar32270, accessed: 7/10/13, LR)

"The Senates passage today of a balanced immigration reform bill that includes a fair and workable farm labor provision is welcomed by Americas farmers and ranchers," said American Farm Bureau Federation president Bob Stallman. "A comprehensive agricultural labor plan that works for all sectors of agriculture and across all regions of our nation is long overdue. We commend the Senate for addressing this very important issue, which will help ensure the continued success of agriculture in our nation." National Farmers Union president Roger Johnson also welcomed the passage of S. 744, the Border Security Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act. "S. 744 includes important provisions that will bring greater stability to the farm workforce and provide a practical, legal means for immigrants to work in agriculture," Johnson said in a statement. "It also allows for peace of mind for all parties in agriculture to know that a more easy-to-use and effective system will be enacted." Stallman mentioned the bill's increased resources for boosting patrols and barriers along America's borders, adding, "One of the best ways to improve border security is to create a legal, workable way for farm workers to enter our country. With less time and resources wasted locking up lettuce harvesters, the focus can shift to where it properly belongs keeping those with criminal intentions out of our country." Both groups offered to work with members of the House of Representatives on passing similar legislation. "It is critical that both chambers pass legislation that can be reconciled in conference and signed into law," Stallman said.

See, for example, Mastanduno (1992); Davis (1999); Skalnes (2000); Papayoanou and Kastner

(1999/2000); Copeland (1999/2000); Abdelal and Kirshner (1999/2000).