UNPRECEDENTED. That’s an apt description of the rejection the United States (US) suffered recently when Barbados, Britain, Mexico, Jamaica, France, Russia, China, Canada, Trinidad and Tobago and 182 other countries voted at the United Nations (UN) to send a sharp message to Washington: end the punitive economic embargo against Cuba.
For almost quarter of a century, countries around the world, Barbados and its CARICOM neighbours among them, have been urging successive US administrations to abolish the economic blockade of the Caribbean’s largest Spanish-speaking nation. The reason was clear: the embargo was impeding Cuba’s economic and social development. The trouble was Washington wasn’t listening. It systematically ignored the requests of the international community and chances are it is going to do so again this year and the next.
What made the UN action so unsual was that 191 out of the 193 member states back the resolution which contended, quite rightly, that the end of the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed was an urgent necessity.
In prior years when Cuba placed the measure on the UN’s agenda, Washington countered by getting several states either to vote against it. Not so this year. For the first time, no country abstained, leaving the US and Israel as the only states that voted against the call.
That result brought to mind the first two verses of Casabianca, Dorothea Hermans’ famous 19th century poem – “the boy stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled.”
Ironically, it was President Barack Obama’s White House, using its executive powers that paved the way for America’s abandonment by so many countries. Last December, Obama stunned the world by announcing plans to normalise America’s diplomatic relations with Cuba by easing travel and trade restrictions, loosening financial controls on remittances to Cuba and by both sides agreeing to reopen their diplomatic outposts in the respective capitals.
But the big elephant in the room remains. It is the economic embargo which Obama can’t remove on his own. It requires a US Congressional green light. With the Republican lawmakers in charge of Capitol Hill, it’s highly unlikely they would agree to end it. After all, they are adamantly opposed to Obama’s Cuban policy.
Asked about the UN vote, Tony Marshall, Barbados’ new UN Ambassador, offered a straightforward explanation.
“Given the length of time the embargo has been in place and the recent clear signals from the Obama administration of its willingness to mend fences, it was not suprising that there was almost unanimous support of the General Assembly of the United Nations,” Marshall told BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY.
“Resolutions similar in content have been brought before the General Assembly for the last 23 consecutive years, on most occasions attracting increased support. But this is the first time that so many member states, 191 of 193, voted in support. Last year, only the US and Israel voted against it but three countries abstained. In the eyes of CARICOM and the majority of the international community, the embargo is not just a punitive act but an impediment to the advancement of Cuba’s sustainable development.”
Marshall didn’t stop there.
“The January 15, 2015 regulations promulgated by the [US] Departments of Commerce and Treasury related to travel to Cuba, telecommunications and remittances are indeed encouraging. But there is still much more to be done to put the two countries on a tension-free and harmonious path,” he said.
Clearly, Cuba feels that way too. President Raul Castro and his foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla rejected Washington’s insistence that the resolution’s language should be softened to reflect recent developments.
“We find it unfortunate that despite our demonstrated bilateral progress the Cuban government has chosen to introduce a resolution that is nearly identical to those tabled in past years,” said Ronald Godard, US deputy permanent representative. “Nevertheless, the United States will not be bound by a history of mistrust.”
But Rodriguez told the UN lifting of the sanctions “would give some meaning to the progress achieved recently” and it would “set the pace towards normalisation”.
It seems clear, the foreign minister recognised Obama’s strategy: a softer resolution would pay the way for a US abstention and therefore avoid an outright “no” vote. The White House had earlier sent signals that it was considering abstaining, a move designed to show up the Republicans in Congress as right wing isolationists. It’s known that Obama wants the embargo lifted but he can’t act alone and he is seeking to pressure the Republicans in Congress to lift the blockade.
But Cuba isn’t prepared to play ball with the White House. It was the first UN vote since the normalisation process began and it’s not going to be the last. The Cuban government has some highly vocal critics in both the House and Senate and they aren’t going to change their stance in order to make life easier for the Castro government, even if it means delaying economic progress in their parents’ birthplace.
