Cuba: Biden’s policy put to the test
The Cuban people are staging the largest anti-government protests since the revolution in 1959, said William LeoGrande in TheNation.com, but President Joe Biden’s response has been “predictable”—and disappointing. Angered by a flailing government’s failure to address growing “economic desperation” and the rampaging Covid pandemic, young Cubans with no loyalty to “the Revolution” have poured into the streets of 60 cities and villages to demand change. But Biden has merely “expressed solidarity” with protesters; he has not fulfilled campaign promises to reverse the Trump-era “sanctions that hurt families,” including bans on travel and remittances to the island, which have left Cuba broke. Biden no doubt fears “political repercussions in Florida,” where Cuban-Americans largely support a decades-old trade embargo—and “where Democrats took a beating in 2020.”
The best way to help Cuba’s protesters is by “ending the trade embargo,” said Benjamin Powell in TheHill.com. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel has already blamed the U.S. embargo for his country’s “homegrown problems.” This is nothing new: Fidel Castro “scapegoated the U.S. embargo for decades” to evade responsibility for his government’s disastrous economic planning. Freeing up trade with Cuba would bring relief to the suffering population while undermining the regime by showing how free markets “create opportunity and promote prosperity.” Biden is squandering a chance to reverse Trump’s “hard-line” policies, said Elise Labott in Foreign Policy.com. “China and Russia are already visible on the island,” and should the dictatorship ultimately crumble, the U.S. “won’t have any credibility” with the Cuban people it abandoned.
Don’t fall for that, said Mary Anastasia O’Grady in The Wall Street Journal. The Cuban government is eager to “use the population’s agony as a negotiating tool.” But the embargo—from which food and medicine are exempt—is not the problem. Cubans are furious that their leaders have refused outside aid as the coronavirus crisis there reaches “cataclysmic proportions.” The real problem is “the lack of freedoms in Cuba,” said Fabiola Santiago in the Miami Herald. CubanAmericans have called on Biden to “address the Cuban people” directly and support their demands of the regime. Instead, the administration told Cubans, “Don’t even think of coming” to the U.S. Democrats will lose the Cuban-American vote forever if Biden bungles this critical moment.