Cuba: home of high quality cigars, more than 2,000 miles of beaches.
This 3,735 km equals 2,320 miles, and the most famous Communist government this side of the Pacific. While we were on winter break, President Obama announced that his administration would be attempting to end the trade embargo we have long had with this neighbor 90 miles south of our border.
As with much of what President Obama says, establishment Republicans were immediately up in arms. Among the most notorious on the subject was Marco Rubio, senator of Florida and a second generation Cuban-American immigrant, who said that “it won’t lead to freedom and liberty for the Cuban people, which is my sole interest here.”
Ted Cruz, another Cuban-American leader within the Republican Party, argued that “the Castros are brutal dictators,” and that American trade with Cuba would only serve to strengthen their regime.
The changes Obama proposed on Cuban policy did find a few seemingly unlikely allies. Republican Justin Amash, who is known for his Libertarian leanings, posted on Facebook that, “an isolationist foreign policy that blocks trade and restricts travel between our country and Cuba hasn't made our neighbor free or democratic. And the United States' half-century embargo hasn't brought down the Castro regime.” Libertarian-Republican Senator Rand Paul got in a bit of a Twitter battle with Rubio by tweeting, “The United States trades and engages with other communist nations, such as China and Vietnam. So [Marco Rubio] why not Cuba?”
Republicans and Democrats alike have long straw-manned Libertarians as isolationists for refusing to militarily interfere in other nations. Amash and Paul are aptly defending what the Libertarian argument on foreign policy actually is — that the best way to promote freedom and democracy throughout the world is not with tanks and smart bombs, but with TVs and sliced bread. Trading with other countries allows their citizens to get to experience the many wonderful things that a free society can produce. It allows them to see that somewhere out there is an alternative to the oppression they live under, one that is so much more beautiful, bountiful and beneficial than what they have been subjected to.
To see this in action, just rewind the sands of time. In 1960, the most oppressive regimes were in China, Russia, Vietnam, Korea and Cuba. We maintained relations and trade (at varying degrees) with the first three and a half of the countries on this list (with the half being South Korea) and embargoed the last one and a half (North Korea and Cuba). Fifty years later, those who got a taste of freedom through trade with the United States and its allies have either completely broken the shackles of communism (Russia and South Korea) or have rejected it to the degree that they are communist in name only (China and Vietnam). Those without trade (Cuba and North Korea) haven’t changed a bit.
When it comes to trade with foreign countries whose governments are enemies of freedom, we have one of two options. The first (isolation/embargoes) is to shut them out, forcing the people of these countries to pay in the currency of avoidable despair and hunger for the sins of their leaders, hoping that this suffering will somehow change the mind of the tyrants in power. The second is to open our markets to trade and ship to otherwise inaccessible shores the seeds of freedom, seeds that are planted in the hearts and minds of those that enjoy its fruits.
I’m glad to see President Obama realizing the failure of economic isolationism and joining the Libertarians in supporting free trade. For the sake of the people living in Cuba, and other similarly situated nations across the world, I hope that establishment Republicans can make the trip too.