by Zach Bigalke

Created on: July 12, 2007

As the United States looks at placing missile defense systems in the formerly Communist states of Eastern Europe, we are hearkened back to foreign policy in the 1960s. When Cuba accepted Soviet requests for missile storage on the tiny island ninety miles off the coast of Florida, it sparked an international standoff. The end result? Another several decades of contentious relations between the two superpowers, and an embargo of a government unsavory to American interests.

Now, with the American government looking to place large-scale missile defenses in Poland and other former Iron Curtain states, it is Russia which is posturing itself defensively. Who will face economic sanctions this time? What we must realize is that we are no longer in the Cold War. If the majority of Cubans are content with their government enough to not uprise against it, then the United States should finally wake up and realize that there is no threat of a Communist domino effect.

Cuba is of little consequence to the United States; the only people harmed by the embargo are the average Cuban citizens denied access to American goods, and the Cuban economy as it continues to be denied access to the world's largest and wealthiest marketplace. Castro, capitalism's supervillain decades ago, is nothing more than an ailing leader merely looking to provide as many opportunities as possible for his citizenry. The island nation has no weapons caches of any threat to the international hegemon; rather, the largest stockpile on the island is the infamous Guantanamo Naval Base.

If the United States can demand that the Cuban government honor the 1903 Cuban-American Treaty, procured through force at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War (and thus null and void under Article 52 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties), then it should do the right thing and cancel its outdated animosities. But, with the atrocities committed by American forces on the island, it would be detrimental to the misguided interests of the present administration to fulfill its duties under the 1903 treaty and recognize ultimate Cuban sovereignty over the area.

The Cuban trade boycott was borne from fears of mutual destruction between two ideologically-opposed superpowers four decades prior. The international landscape has altered immeasurably since that time. Perpetuating a boycott without any benefit or circumstance is pointless and another example of the United States playing the role of schoolyard bully in the international community. The time will come when U.S. conceit will come back to contribute to its demise; precedents such as the barbaric embargo of Cuba only serve to heighten the distrust and animosity the rest of the world is increasingly feeling toward the American hegemon.

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