05-04-2009, 02:29 PM
Quote:The problem with this is that dictators do not need a large number of resources to remain in power. What they lose in absolute wealth can be made up in expropriation. Castro has not remained in power *despite* 50 years of embargo. He has remained in power *because* of 50 years of embargo. How long did Saddam Hussein last during his embargo? His country was blown to smithereens, and yet, his dictatorship hung on by its fingernails for a decade as he slowly went bananas.
When was the last time any dictator was brought down by an embargo? Dictatorships feed on suffering and desperation.
-Jester
It's not a matter of the dictator losing power. It's a matter of the dictator losing power and the people wanting something other than a dictator. Yes I'm aware it's not the greatest premise, but the people of Cuba seem to want a change and as has been mentioned in the Somali case the people must want change. So while Cuba has had several attempts to get rid of Castro we decided to not back them after the Bay of Pigs failure. We are trying a different tact to get rid of a dictator and we fully expected it wouldn't happen until he died.
Raul has purged some of Fidel's people, he has lifted sanctions on the people and so we are working with him. We've accepted around 1 million Cuba refugees since the 60's if I did the math right. We have been offering food and other necessities for decades though that aid was not accepted until 1993 by the Cuban leadership. Now it's possible this is just Raul trying to keep power as long as he can but we might be on the way back to a democratic Cuba which for a time had a better GDP per capita than Italy and Japan before Fidel ran it into the ground.
So what do you want? As mentioned there haven't been a lot of embargo attempts to remove someone from power there aren't really a lot of data points to look at. We tried it, we didn't really do the best, I'll admit and Canada and Mexico backing out in the 70's may have actually hurt the process or they may have been correct and it's never going to work.
We could try the military option and get a lot of people killed and hope the country will stay in tact afterwards which we've seen doesn't work in other places. We could have not had an embargo and hoped for another civil war since the people would have supposedly been better supplied, but when Saddam wasn't under embargo the people were still pretty much living as poorly as they were during the embargo. Fidel killed a lot of people, but the total loss of life in this longer process could very well be less than other wars, and while the outcome is still undecided a democratic Cuba could still emerge from this and other thugs will see that we won't help prop them up. Of course that would require that we stop propping up the thugs we currently are. Yes I understand we send mixed messages on this policy which is why I want a consistent policy as I mentioned in my other post.
I'm not sure it doesn't work, because as mentioned it hasn't really been tried before.
---
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.