Unfortunately, Joe Biden is your prime example of a standard Washington, D.C., politician. As such, as president he will just accept the status quo, defer to the national-security establishment, and do his best to make the welfare-warfare state function efficiently.
That means that the U.S. policy of interventionism and regime change toward Cuba will continue to remain the same as it has been since Cuban revolutionaries ousted the U.S. dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and ended up replacing him with Fidel Castro and a communist regime.
That’s unfortunate, but not surprising. Donald Trump, of course, was no different. Neither were Obama, the two Bushes, and Clinton, While there are slight variations, Republicans and Democrats have always had the same mindset toward Cuba as the Pentagon and the CIA — i.e., the mindset of interventionism and regime change.
It is imperative that we libertarians continue raising people’s vision to a higher level, one that entails having the U.S. government simply leaving Cuba alone. When Americans finally come to their senses about conservatives and liberals and their statist philosophy, they will inevitably be searching for a principled, viable, moral foreign policy toward Cuba. That’s where we libertarians come into play.
Here are the principle tenets of an ideal U.S foreign policy toward Cuba:
1. Immediately lift the U.S. embargo against Cuba.
The embargo is a direct infringement on the rights and liberties of the American people to spend their money the way they want and to travel wherever they wish. Keep in mind, after all, that if Americans get caught violating the embargo, the U.S. government targets them for arrest, prosecution, incarceration, and fine.
By targeting the Cuban people as a way to secure regime change in Cuba, the embargo is the epitome of a cruel, brutal, and immoral program. The idea is that by impoverishing or killing Cuban citizens, they will rise up and revolt against their communist regime and replace it with a U.S.-supported regime. But 60 years after the embargo was instituted, it still has not achieved its regime-change goal even though it has brought, in combination with Cuba’s socialist system, untold suffering to the Cuban people . The fact is that while many Cubans are opposed to their socialist economic system, they are even more fiercely opposed to control of Cuba by the Pentagon and the CIA.
2. Abandon the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay. Leave it to the Cubans to take over. The U.S. government has no more business establishing military bases in foreign countries than foreign countries have establishing military bases in the United States. The fact that the Pentagon and the CIA have used Gitmo to establish a torture and prison center that is arguably worse than a communist prison in Cuba makes the matter even worse.
Gitmo was acquired more than a century ago as part of the U.S. government’s turn toward empire. But America was never supposed to be an empire, especially one with foreign military bases. It was supposed to be a limited-government republic.
Moreover, the U.S. government’s lease for the land was acquired through coercion, duress, and fraud, making the lease null and void since its inception. The only reason it is still operative is the overwhelming military power of the U.S. national-security establishment and its practical ability to maintain control over a part of Cuba.
3. Terminate all assassination programs against Cuban officials. Assassination is not among the powers delegated to the federal government in the U.S. Constitution. It is nothing more than legalized murder. It should be brought to an end immediately.
4. Open the United States to the free movement of Cubans and Americans. Free trade, open immigration, and free movements of people, back and forth. Freedom, not socialism, is the way to combat socialism.
Sometime after assuming power, a U.S. television newscaster asked Cuban leader Fidel Castro what Cuba wanted from the United States. His answer was simple but profound: We just want to be left alone.
Unfortunately, the U.S. national-security establishment has never been able to just leave Cuba alone. But that’s what the American people should be demanding of President Biden, the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, and other U.S. officials. Leaving Cuba alone is a key toward restoring a free, peaceful, moral, harmonious, and prosperous society to our land.