Gov. George Ryan's Cuban trip should hasten the return of sanity

by Charles N. Wheeler III

Gov. George H. Ryan doesn't speak Spanish, and he's never been to Cuba before. But he's hoping his visit to the Caribbean nation carries a message that transcends language barriers: Illinoisans care about the people of Cuba, especially the island's children.

"We've got an opportunity," the governor notes. "We're the land of plenty here. People and children in Cuba need the help that I think we can provide."

Ryan is careful to describe his visit — the first by a sitting governor in more than 40 years — as only a humanitarian mission to provide the impoverished country with needed food, drugs, medical supplies and educational materials.

"This should not be confused in any way with any kind of a trade mission, because there's no trade involved here," he stresses. "This is strictly ... to take some needed supplies there."

Why, a sensible person might wonder, would the governor of a major exporting state take such pains to deny any hope of economic benefit for his factories and his family farms? The answer, of course, is that trade with Cuba is forbidden under a U.S. embargo instituted after Fidel Castro came to power 40 years ago and installed a communist government.

That the embargo — arguably one of the most ineffectual moves the nation has ever taken — remains in place today has little to do with rational foreign policy. Rather, it owes its longevity to domestic politics dominated by a small but shrill colony of anti-Castro Cuban exiles who've parlayed their strength in south Florida into a national stranglehold on the issue.

Why would a governor of a major exporting state deny any hope of economic benefit for his factories and his family farms? The answer is that trade with Cuba is forbidden.

Granted, the embargo is a highly visible symbol of the deep hatred for Castro harbored by the exiles, among them members of the oligarchy forced to flee after the 1959 ouster of Fulgencio Batista, the island's corrupt dictator. By any other measure, however, the embargo has been a miserable failure, at once ineffective, inhumane, inconsistent and injurious to the United States' best interests. Consider the facts:

• Ineffective. After almost four decades, there's no sign the embargo is anywhere near its stated goal of replacing the Castro regime with a democratic government. Apologists for the economic sanctions used to explain

that Castro clung to power only because of massive aid from the Soviet Union. Well, the USSR has been history for almost a decade now, and Fidel is still in charge. Some analysts even suggest the embargo actually helps Castro, providing him a convenient scapegoat — yanqui imperialismo — to explain the economic woes facing Cuba today.

• Inhumane. Visitors to Cuba, including a Ryan advance team, note shortages of basic foodstuffs, drugs, medical supplies and other goods taken for granted in this nation. So the Cuban people clearly are enduring hardships because of the embargo. Decent Americans, though, ought to question the morality of the United States attempting to use the suffering of innocent families as a tool to achieve its political goals.

• Inconsistent. Some Cold Warriors argue trade with communist Cuba would reward Castro or condone his human rights violations; others see the presence of "Red Cuba" just 90 miles from U.S. soil as a threat to national security.

Yet walk into any store anywhere in the country and check out how much of the clothing, plastic ware and other goods comes from China, a communist nation that enjoys normal trade relations with the United States despite a nuclear arsenal capable of reaching anywhere in the country.

Or consider the U.S. decision a month or so ago to ease trade sanctions on North Korea, in hopes of slowly inching that isolated, Stalinist regime away from triggering a second Korean War with unthinkable consequences for this nation.

Does anyone really believe the rulers in Beijing and Pyongyang would take a back seat to Castro when it comes to human rights abuses?

• Injurious to U.S. interests. Instead of isolating Cuba, the embargo has placed the United States outside international consensus; when the United Nations last year overwhelmingly approved a resolution urging that the

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embargo be lifted, only Israel voted "no" with the United States. Though not voting at the U.N., Pope John Paul II also called for an end to the embargo during his historic 1998 visit to Cuba.

Nor has the embargo deterred foreign competitors of American businesses from trading with Cuba;

companies from more than 130 other nations, including some of our closest allies, now do business there.

And the trade possibilities are great. When U.S. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, a Democrat from South Dakota, and U.S. Sen. Byron L. Dorgan, a Democrat from North Dakota, visited Cuba in August, Cuban officials told them the country now imports about $1 billion in food, a figure that could double in the next five years.

No doubt a piece of that market would look mighty good to Illinois farm families awash in corn, soybeans and, in some cases, red ink due to collapsed commodity prices.

Ryan, ever a pragmatist, nurses no ancient grudges; the embargo should be lifted, he says. "We've tried this policy for 40 years. Don't give them food, don't give them drugs, don't do business with them. For 40 years we've tried it and it hasn't worked."

The two Democrats went to Cuba after 70 senators voted to lift the embargo on food and medicine as part of an agriculture funding measure. Despite the clear U.S. Senate preference, the bill's final version left sanctions in place at the insistence of the Republican U.S. House leadership, held in thrall by a tiny, Castro-hating Cuban-American delegation from south Florida.

Ryan, ever a pragmatist, nurses no such ancient grudges; the embargo should be lifted, he says. "We've tried this policy for 40 years. Don't give them food, don't give them drugs, don't do business with them. For 40 years we've tried it and it hasn't worked," he adds.

"We're just talking about going down to do some humanitarian things to help Cuba, so that maybe, if the time ever comes that it opens up, we'll have the opportunity to sell the grains and the products that we need to sell there.... But that's not the purpose of this mission," he quickly adds.

One can hope, though, that Ryan's visit will hasten the day when sanity returns to U.S.-Cuban relations for the good of future generations in both nations.

Charles N. Wheeler III is director of the Public Affairs Reporting program at the University of Illinois at Springfield.

Illinois Issues November 1999 / 47